JUNE 23 • 2022 | 41
I
n March 2020, whilst launching a
new book, I took part in a BBC radio
program along with Mervyn King,
who had been governor of the Bank
of England at the time of the financial
crash of 2008. He, together
with the economist John
Kay, had also brought
out a new book, Radical
Uncertainty: decision-making
for an unknowable future.
The coronavirus
pandemic was just
beginning to make itself
felt in Britain, and it had the effect of
making both of our books relevant in
a way that neither of us could have
predicted. Mine is about the precarious
balance between the “I” and the “we”:
individualism versus the common good.
Theirs is about how to make decisions
when you cannot tell what the future
holds.
The modern response to this
latter question has been to hone and
refine predictive techniques using
mathematical modeling. The trouble
is that mathematical models work
in a relatively abstract, delimited,
quantifiable world and cannot deal with
the messy, unpredictable character of
reality. They don’t and cannot consider
what Donald Rumsfeld called the
“unknown unknowns” and Nicholas
Taleb termed “black swans” — things
that no one expected but that change
the environment. We live in a world of
radical uncertainty.
Accordingly, they propose a different
approach. In any critical situation,
ask: “What is happening?” They quote
Richard Rumelt: “A great deal of strategy
work is trying to figure out what is
going on. Not just deciding what to do,
but the more fundamental problem of
comprehending the situation.” Narrative
plays a major role in making good
decisions in an uncertain world. We
need to ask: of what story is this a part?
Neither Rumelt nor King and Kay
quote Amy Chua, but her book Political
Tribes is a classic account of failing
to understand the situation. Chapter
by chapter, she documents American
foreign policy disasters from Vietnam
to Iraq because policy-makers did
not comprehend tribal societies. You
cannot use war to turn them into liberal
democracies. Fail to understand this and
you will waste many years, trillions of
dollars and tens of thousands of lives.
It might seem odd to suggest that a
book by two contemporary economists
holds the clue to unraveling the mystery
of the spies in our parshah. But it does.
UNDERSTANDING THE SITUATION
We think we know the story. Moses
sent 12 spies to spy out the land. Ten of
them came back with a negative report.
The land is good, but unconquerable.
The people are strong, the cities
impregnable, the inhabitants are giants,
and we are grasshoppers. Only two
of the men, Joshua and Caleb, took a
different view. We can win. The land is
good. God is on our side. With His help,
we cannot fail.
On this reading, Joshua and Caleb
had faith, courage and confidence,
while the other 10 did not. But this
is hard to understand. The 10 — not
just Joshua and Caleb — knew that
God was with them. He had crushed
Egypt. The Israelites had just defeated
the Amalekites. How could these 10 —
leaders, princes — not know that they
could defeat the inhabitants of the land?
What if the story were not this at
all? What if it was not about faith,
confidence or courage? What if it
was about “What is going on?” —
understanding the situation and what
happens when you don’t. The Torah tells
us that this is the correct reading, and it
signals it in a most striking way.
Biblical Hebrew has two verbs that
mean “to spy”: lachpor and leragel
(from which we get the word meraglim,
“spies”). Neither of these words appear in
our parshah. That is the point. Instead,
no less than 12 times, we encounter
the rare verb, latur. It was revived in
modern Hebrew and means (and sounds
like) “to tour.” Tayar is a tourist. There is
all the difference in the world between a
tourist and a spy.
What Is Going On?
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
RABBISACKS.ORG
continued on page 42