John Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher and writer, had a unique take on the notion of hell in his short play No Exit. The premise of the play is that three people, all of whom have sinned some terrible sin, are sheperded into a rather bland living-room. Their names are Garcin, Estelle, and Inez. They do not know each other, and they at first imagine themselves to be merely waiting in a sort of waiting area before they are to be taken to the terrible torture chambers of hell. When they quickly begin to get on each others’ nerves, Inez suggests that they are not waiting at all; rather, in an effort at efficiency, the devil groups people together in order to have them torture each other so that no special employees or representatives of hell are needed. Hearing this, they all make an agreement, at Garcin’s suggestion:
“Garcin [gently]: …So the solution’s easy enough; each of us stays put in his or her
corner and takes no notice of the others. You here, you here, and I there. Like soldiers at our
posts. Also, we mustn’t speak. Not one word. That won’t be difficult; each of us has plenty of
material for self-communings. I think I could stay ten thousand years with only my thoughts for
company.”
When this fails, when they can’t get each other out of their heads, when they cannot focus, feel alone, experience solitude or take no notice of one another, they must finally give in. “I’d rather be alone,” says Garcin. But that is not to be. In one of Sartre’s most famous phrases, Garcin finally declares:
“So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture chambers, the fire and brimstone…. There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is – other people!”
This is an amazing suggestion by Sartre. When we are alone, when we have a chance at peace and quiet, we can take in the world, organize it, organize our minds, experience the lovely and reassuring peace of being in control. But when someone else enters the scene, all of that comes to an end. We cannot free ourselves of their gaze and judgments, of our need to please them and be liked, of our need to somehow be courteous and polite at the expense of meeting our true selfhood.
I would like to use this Sartreian view to understand the spies, separating our understanding of their actions into two different points.
The first point is their dismay when they saw the challenges inherent in conquering the Land of Israel.
There are giants, Amalekites, Hittities, Can’anites, and Jebusites. This will be a great challenge, indeed, and we can not begrudge them for noticing this very obvious difficulty.
We imagine that they entered the Land confidently, imagining what they might make of it, where their tribes might settle, what they might grow on their farms, how nice it would be to sit in judgment and successfully govern the tribes in a place where plants and trees and vines grow!
And then they discovered their interlopers, their intruders, their competitors. Other people can truly present a challenge to our best laid plans and designs.
But the second point is that this made them feel it could not be done at all! It can’t done!
But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for they are stronger than us” (Num. 14:31).
The land is dangerous, they said, and the people are enormous.
“We saw the Nephilim there… and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
Why did they draw this conclusion? They had G-d on their side, did they not? How could this be any more difficult for G-d than destroying the greatest empire known to man, splitting the sea, or providing food from heaven? G-d had revealed Himself directly to them in such a manner that not only was atheism impossible but even to doubt G-d’s omnipotence would have been nothing short of absurd! So why did they feel challenged, bereft, alone and abandoned?
We suggest that, through no great event or happening, the spies lost their connection with G-d. Through the regular process of wishing to be alone, independent of the other, they actually became so. When we think about it, we must conclude that G-d is the ultimate “other,” if we use Sartre’s understanding. We have desires, plans, things we’d like to do and here comes G-d, making rules, setting limits, sending us to shul instead of on vacation, sending us to pray and study and act for others instead of allowing us to simply sit and be ourselves!
Ah, if only we could stroll in, unchallenged, and find ourselves a place to sit without being disturbed! If only we could be unencumbered, just for a while, set up house, build a white picket fence, sit in shul, have a drink, take a rest, without being harmed, harassed, harried. If only I could just “be” – just be myself.
But others, especially G-d, give us no rest. We cannot just “be” if we are to be with others. We must work with them, help them, play with them, do things for them, and ultimately be changed by this experience! Who is not changed by a close friendship, by marriage, by children and caring for others? Who is not changed by being close to G-d?
So, the spies, wishing to be left alone, having adopted a posture of independence, truly were. Famously, they first refer to their own feelings about themselves- “we were in our eyes as grasshoppers”, and then they speculate regarding the locals “and so we were in theirs”. The spies were alone in their minds, in the way they thought of themselves, and so, when they found a challenge in their way, they folded like a house of cards. In their own minds and in their own psycho-spiritual posturing, no One stood with them.
Different, however, was Kalev. “A different spirit animated him” (Num. 14:26). He sought to go into the Land not because his assessment of the challenges was different but because he never doubted that he would be going in with G-d in the first place. As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik writes, human beings may see ourselves as being “in close union with G-d.” Our deep, “existential “I” experience,” our sense of self, should be “interwoven in the awareness of communing with the Great Self whose footprints” we discover in creation. We should “sense” and experience G-d in our innermost ontological consciousness.” Imagine, then, such closeness with G-d, and understand that Kalev felt no fear or temptation to waver. What a difference this makes.
Sartre, I think, is wrong. We need not and should not look to be alone, to be left alone, to find ourselves alone to think. We may find our truest selves in the experience of being which can only be expressed through the joining together of souls. This is a very different life, a very different way of “being” and growing and becoming. If we see ourselves as people of relationships, people who, like a flower, bloom when exposed to the sun, people who work together and feel together as a body is made up of so many parts that are as one – then we should not wish to be alone. Then we should not be upset that G-d seeks to be with us constantly, nor should we wish to be free of His presence and demands any more than we wish to shirk the rest of our relationships and friendships.
