One of modernity’s most
interesting creatures is the tourist. The pre-modern world had pilgrims, traders
and vagabonds, but the idea of people travelling the world simply of their own
accord is totally new. Tourism has since become not only a staple of affluent
modern life, but also one of the most apt metaphors for a way of being in the
world. Being a tourist is about the ability to be “in all places, but of
none of them.” In small doses this can be a fantastic experience, but as a way
of life I find it quite troubling.
This week’s parasha is
bookended by the notion of tourism – in the tale of the 12 spies (“go tour
the land”) and in the commandment to wear Tzitzit (“and you shall not tour
after your hearts and eyes”). It’s a good opportunity to explore what we know
of tourism and to re-read the “tourism texts” of our parsha in that light.
Parashat “Shlach” tells the
tragic tale of the 12 spies sent to “tour the land”, performing reconnaissance
on behalf of the Israelites. But the spies declare the land “unattainable”, creating
a mass rebellion against God and Moshe. A
period of 40 years of wandering ensues. The Mishna claims that the sin of those
twelve tourists was the original cause for Tisha b’Av – a national day
of grieving our failures. Reams have been written about the sin of the spies
actually was, and yet I wonder if their tale can be retold as a “sin of
Tourism.”
Scholars distinguish between two
types of Tourist experiences: modern and post-modern. Modern tourists seek out
authentic cultures – be they ancient or contemporary – on a quest fed by their
own desire for authenticity. “Tourism is the secular modern substitute for the
pre-modern religious experience” claims sociologist Erik Cohen.
The predicament of the authenticity-seeking tourist is that at best the tourist
finds a “staged authenticity,” for his very presence undermines the
authenticity of the natives. Indeed, the rigorous tourist seeks to break
through the “front” presented to her, to the “back” – the real life at the
visited destination (enter a million stories about how “we really saw
the real thing…”). Yet it is mostly a self-defeating exercise, since
that “authentic core” is exactly what cannot be experienced by an outsider.
Post-modern tourism, on the other
hand, is described as unburdened by the search for authenticity or originality.
Playfulness and entertainment are at the center, regardless of whether the experience
is staged or not. It is a studied stance which does not privilege the authentic
over the inauthentic. The only criterion is an aesthetic “experiential” one. It
is this type of tourism which has turned from a stance into a way of life, as
described best by Zygmunt
Bauman:
The
tourists want to immerse themselves in a strange and bizarre element (a
pleasant feeling, a tickling and rejuvenating feeling, life letting oneself by
buffeted by sea waves) – on condition, though, that it will not stick to the
skin and thus can be shaken off whenever they wish. They choose the elements to
jump into according to how strange, but also how innocuous, they are: you
recognize the tourist haunts by their blatant, ostentatious oddity, but also by
the profusion of safety cushions and well-marked escape routes.
The
tourist’s world is fully and exclusively structured by aesthetic criteria (to
the detriment of its other, also moral, dimensions…). Tough and harsh realities
resistant to aesthetic sculpting do not interfere here. One may say that what
the tourist buys, what he pays for, what he demands to be delivered is
precisely the right not to be bothered, freedom from any but aesthetic spacing.
The
problem is though, that as life itself turns into an extended tourist escapade,
as tourist conduct becomes the mode of life and the tourist stance grows into
the character, it is less and less clear which one of the visiting places is
the home... Homesickness means a dream of belonging; to be, for once, of
the place, not merely in… When tourism becomes the mode of life, when
the threshold of excitement climbs relentlessly upwards and each new shock must
be more shocking than the last one – the possibility of the home-dream ever
coming true is as horrifying as the possibility of it never becoming real. (Zygmunt Bauman, “From Pilgrim to Tourist – or
a Short History of Identity”, pg. 29-31)
Returning to our parsha with these
insights, I wonder if the Israelites’ fear of entering the land is a fear of leaving
the innocuous stance of the tourist. It is a fear of engagement beyond the
surface, a fear of taking on responsibility, with all of the dangers and risks
involved in such an involved stance. As slaves in Egypt and followers of God in
the desert, the Israelites didn’t have to exert responsibility or take on
significant risks. They were allowed to be tourists, dreaming of home but also
fearing what that would entail. When faced with the real costs and risks of
“arrival”, they balk. Their tourism has grown into their character, and they no
longer want to relinquish their surface-deep freedom for a home. Perhaps they
never knew what such a home was.
Today, with the enormous
opportunities to encounter and experience, tourism is no longer an occasional stance
but has become a smost attractive way of life. The highest accolades belong to
those of chameleon-like abilities, existing “in all places” without
being “of any place”. From the lives of the ultra-educated-hyper-mobile-global-professionals
to the odyssey year’s confusion of “Girls”, postmodern living can easily lead
us into becoming tourists in our own stories.
It is this second idea, not being
“of any place” that the spies and their followers are doomed to live the
rest of their lives as they wander through the desert for 40 years. But the end
of our Parasha suggests a remedy for both being in the world and of
the world. Take it as a material commandment or a powerful counter-metaphor, the
mitzvah of Tzitzit can be described as the act of “anti-tourism”:
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…וְהָיָה לָכֶם, לְצִיצִת, וּרְאִיתֶם אֹתוֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם אֶת כָּל מִצְוֹת
יְהוָה, וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם; וְלֹא תָתוּרוּ אַחֲרֵי לְבַבְכֶם, וְאַחֲרֵי
עֵינֵיכֶם, אֲשֶׁר-אַתֶּם זֹנִים, אַחֲרֵיהֶם. לְמַעַן
תִּזְכְּרוּ, וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֶת-כָּל-מִצְוֹתָי; וִהְיִיתֶם קְדֹשִׁים, לֵאלֹהֵיכֶם.
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Tzitzit are a mitzvah of the eyes. Eyes are a funny thing – they never
are where we are. They are always beyond - searching, looking, leaving. Eyes
are also the first tool of the search for meaning (“Raise your eyes and see –
who created all this?” says Isaiah) or philosophy (Maimonides’ first
commandment in the Code is to “look”). It is the move to compassion and
empathy, the first base for the creation of meaningful bonds. But the eyes
first must be grounded, they must be “of a place” before they take us to
a new place.
Read in this frame, Tzitzit
is about creating a portable home, encasing ourselves in a flexible film which
enables the heart and the eyes to emanate from a place of self-knowledge, and
from there to take in the world. But Tzitzit are not just about self-knowledge,
they are about knowing oneself to be obligated: “and you shall see the tzitzit, and you shall remember
the mitzvot, your incumbent obligations – and you shall preform them”.
More than anything else, obligation
is the opposite of tourism. Rather than understood as a protective armor
against a seductive world, tzitzit might be a way to engage with the world out
of a frame of obligation and belonging, a grounding point for all future
journeys.
Shabbat Shalom.
