Session 24: Parashat Sh'lach

“The Strivings of the Negro People,” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Atlantic, August 1897

Parashat Sh’lach includes the story of twelve spies who are sent ahead to scout the land of Canaan. When they return, most of them are fearful and concerned about the population already living there, who are “of great size.” Then their fear turns to self-doubt, creating a meta-narrative about what the others must think of them: “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

Here in the Torah we see evidence of what W.E.B. Du Bois called “two-ness” or “double consciousness” – “looking at oneself through the eyes of others.” Du Bois coined this term to refer to the phenomenon of experiencing life in this country simultaneously as an American and as a Black American. This is a common, perhaps universal, experience for minority groups who, even in our modern democracy, contend with the ways their reflexive nonconformity shapes their lives.

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