Jun

Don’t Diss My ‘Hood

I don’t post a lot on Facebook. Just my weekly essay and articles I think are important. But I will not broadcast what I am eating for dinner nor pics of my vacation. Nor do I often comment on the status that others post. The most I will do is a quick “like”. But this week was an exception. This week I had to take a stand and speak up. A couple people dissed my ‘hood – and that I will not stand for.

There is a fb group, Inside Hollywood where people post requests, items for sale, recommendations and the like. Important stuff like: Seeking recommendations for a nail tech that does a great DIP manicure. Mine is out on maternity leave. Thanks! At any rate, someone put up the following this week:

PSA: I haven’t even moved into Hollywood (almost and we are still very excited!!) And unfortunately I was robbed in the Winn Dixie parking lot yesterday when I was picking up my children from the Machane Miami bus around 4:00pm. They stole 2 purses full of all my things right from the front passenger seat. Please be careful and don’t leave anything valuable in your cars there!! The police said it happens in that parking lot all the time!!

In the thread of ensuing comments, most expressing sympathy, someone else wrote that she heard there were a lot of muggings there as well. Muggings? A lot? Now wait a minute, I work in that plaza every day. Aish’s center is located there and my office window looks out into that parking lot. I have never heard of nor witnessed anyone being mugged.

So I commented as such in response to “mugging claimer” woman and told her that I have been there for 20 years, yet never heard of a mugging. I stressed that she should be a bit more careful before making such public declarations. She replied that it was in the news. I then asked her to please send the link. A bit later, when I went to look for it, her comment and my response were deleted. Hmmm.

Nevertheless, the original smash and grab post remained, to which I wrote: I work there at Aish and have for twenty plus years. Never had this happen. Then again I never leave anything valuable in sight. I’ve parked there overnight for 20 years of Shabbat and Yom Tovs. Nada.

Now why do I share this very local news with you? Because it contains an important lesson and is related to this week’s Torah portion, for in it we have people who went around dissing a place and it ended up creating some very extreme repercussions.

In parshat Shlach, before the Israelites entered the land of Israel to conquer and dwell in it, they sent 12 scouts to spy it out. Their mission was a straightforward one: they were to check out the weak areas, observe how fertile the land was and see if the cities were fortified, all in preparation of the Israelites moving in. And off they went on their mission.

But what happened next was one of the greatest tragedies of our early history. Of these 12 spies, 10 returned with a very intimidating report of the strength of the countryside and its inhabitants. Rather than give an objective account of what they witnessed – which was their job – they instead insinuated their own personal interpretation of their observations. They basically convinced the Jewish people that the land and people of Canaan were very powerful, too powerful in fact, and if they tried to conquer it, they would be dead ducks.

The ensuing mass hysteria persuaded God that this generation was not worthy, nor ready to go into Israel. It was decreed that they would wander the Sinai desert 40 years until the entire older generation died off and the new, younger generation under Joshua’s leadership would build the land of Israel.

And so because these 10 men dissed the Land of Israel, forgot God’s protection and miracles that He wrought for them, they created a day of tragedy – Tisha B’Av – that became the basis for all future tragedies for our people.

You see LaShon Hara, the prohibition of speaking negatively about another for no positive purpose, doesn’t apply just to people but to places as well. Speaking negatively of a land, a neighourhood or a place can have very crushing long-term consequences. Just as our words affect how we feel and view another person, so too can our words affect how we feel and view a place. We need to be very careful before we go around knocking America, Israel or Hollywood, Florida.

But when we look further into this we need to realize that a place is whatever we make of it. You can have one person who has been somewhere for 20 years and has had only good experiences there, and then you can have someone else in the exact same place, who visits once, and because of their careless behavior goes around telling everyone how dangerous it is. It is always easier to lay blame on one’s surroundings, environment or others rather than look at one’s own negligent behavior and see that as the true cause of misfortune.

This is what the spies did and this is what this Facebook person did. They projected their own failings onto the place rather than take responsibility for their own flaws. The spies were locked into their weak slave mentality, saw themselves as grasshoppers that would be squashed and vanquished (Numbers 13:33), even admitted to such, and convinced everyone else of the same, leading to the demise of all.

The spies, and the sad generation of people who believed them, never made it into Eretz Yisrael. And just as well. With their attitude they could never have built it into the beautiful country and people that it became then, and that it is today.

Don’t like a place? Think it’s too dangerous? No problem – stay away. And guess what? Everyone will be happier that you did.

I know you got your own town

I know you got your own ways

I know you got your own life…

I know there’s no place like home

But I know you gonna like it in my city

Everybody’s welcome here

Everybody welcome to my city

We ain’t got no worries here

I know you’re gonna like it in my city

-Priyanka Chopra