The idea of the Jewish people as different from other people is as old as time. Physically, Jews are still humans: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Nevertheless, Zionist aspirations aside, Jews are not merely one people much like any other. That is because, in terms of how Jews think, Jews are – and always have been – distinct.
In the natural world, being distinctive is unnatural and unhealthy. Studies have shown that zebras use their stripes as camouflage. If you paint a red dot on a zebra, visually isolating it, that zebra will be targeted by predators and killed. Even within a herd, the “ugly duckling” is often rejected by mothers and siblings. Nature rewards conformity. And so do normal societies. “Normal” may change, but nobody instinctively wants to be abnormal.
Non-conformity can be dangerous, and it is certainly not for those who just want an easy life. Over time, those who would assimilate do so, and they consistently breed away from Judaism. Which is how you end up with people like me.
So it is of little surprise that, although the population of the world is far higher than it was thousands of years ago, the number of Jews is fewer than it was two thousand years ago.
Non-conformity is one of the single most important characteristics of a Jew. Avraham is called an ivri, one who crosses over, who ignores convention and normal boundaries. This quality is the identifier for Joseph as well: Egyptians will not share a meal with ivri, with those who do not properly and instinctively respect the traditions that govern normal people. Joseph, the Jew who outwardly assimilated so much that he changed his dress, names, and language, was still never accepted as an Egyptian. And it seems he could not help it even if he wanted to: Ivri simply think differently about the world than normal people do.
Indeed, when the spies express their concerns about entering the land of Canaan, they have a very peculiar objection:
“The country that we traversed (ivri) … devours its settlers.”
That seems quite odd, does it not? (Check your own translations, which misunderstand the Hebrew to make it make sense to the translator). Especially because the spies clearly do not mean that the current residents of Canaan are “devoured” by the land. They are saying that there is a risk that is uniquely for the Jewish people. But what makes living in the land dangerous for Jews, specifically?
Here is the key: the word for “settlers” shares the root for “Shabbos” – the Jewish/Torah obsession with creating an artificial day of strictly-observed rest, of ignoring the way of the natural world (which does not change its practices and behavior entirely one day out of seven). Keeping Shabbos is a rebellion against the way of normative humanity, and it forever makes the Torah Jew stand out in comparison to everyone else. The spies point out that they, as ivri, would be consumed in such a land.
But why?
Because the rest of that verse reads: “all the people we saw in it are of measurements.” This word for “measurements”, middoh, is rare in the Torah – there are only 4, and they all follow the same pattern:
The length of each cloth was twenty-eight cubits, and the width of each cloth was four cubits, all cloths having the same measurements (middoh).
Every use of this word, middoh, refers to things that are identical to each other, all standardized, drop-in replacements. And so the reference to the people in the land of Canaan being people “of measurements,” tells us that the spies reckoned Canaan was no place for those who act differently, who are distinctive (both as a people and individuals). Instead, they asserted that it was a place only for those who fit in, for those who would not keep Shabbos.
Arguably, this is actually true not only in Canaan, but everywhere in the world. Jews have never, anywhere, been welcomed as “just another people.” All of the laws given in the Torah (Shabbos and the dietary restrictions most obviously) mark us, both to ourselves and to others, as irretrievably unassimilable Outsiders. Our practices and beliefs and ways of thinking continually reinforce our most peculiar and unnatural condition.