The Jewish Formula for Resisting the Crowd
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
Dr. Mijal Bitton is the Rosh Kehilla of The Downtown Minyan and Scholar in Residence at the Maimonides Fund. This Dvar Torah was edited from her weekly Torah Substack on living Jewishly, dedicated to the memory of those lost on 10/7 and all who have given their lives defending our people since.
In the 1950s, a psychologist named Solomon Asch ran one of the most unsettling
experiments in social science.
Asch brought subjects into a room with other individuals seemingly just like them.
The group was shown two cards – one with a single line, one with three lines of different lengths – and asked which line matched. The answer was obvious. A child could see it.
But Asch had actually filled the room with actors. And the actors, who always answered first, unanimously chose the same wrong line. And then it was the real subject’s turn to choose.
When I first read about Asch’s experiment, I told myself confidently that I would always speak the truth my eyes saw. But this is not what happened to most of the subjects.
Asch ran each subject through the gauntlet multiple times. Seventy-five percent of them went along with the obviously false answer at least once.
Asch’s work showed how much we are wired to treat social consensus as evidence of reality.
When everyone around you sees something differently, a voice inside you whispers: Maybe I am the one who is wrong.
Now read Parashat Shelach with that in mind.
Twelve leaders, one from each tribe, are handpicked by Moses and sent to scout the land of Israel. Ten return and deliver a catastrophic report: The land devours its inhabitants. The people there are giants. We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.
Caleb is the first spy to object and say, “We can go to the Promised Land.”
The people of Israel listen to the catastrophic report. They weep all night and beg to return to Egypt. God punishes them and decrees that this entire generation will die in the wilderness.
The traditional commentators ask how the ten spies who were distinguished leaders could have failed so completely.
Inspired by Asch, I think that is the wrong question.
Most people read Asch’s experiment as a story about conformity.
But the real mystery is not the seventy-five percent who followed the crowd. It is the twenty-five percent who didn’t. How did they resist?
The ten spies are not a mystery. Caleb is the mystery.
The question that should keep us up at night is this: how did Caleb resist the crowd? And what can we learn from him to do the same?
The Torah does not give us Caleb’s origin story. But the rabbis offer us an illuminating detail.
According to the midrash, during their trip Caleb slipped away to Hebron and prostrated himself on the graves of the patriarchs and matriarchs. He said to them: pray for me, that I be saved from the counsel of the spies.
What strikes me about this episode is that Caleb does not behave like someone confident in his own independence. He does not assume that when the pressure comes, he will somehow rise above it.
He assumes he is vulnerable. He knows how easy it is to confuse consensus with truth.
Instead of relying on willpower, he does something shrewder.
Before the pressure arrives, he anchors himself in something the crowd cannot reach: the memory of his ancestors and the long faith of people who had trusted God through worse.
This is psychologically profound.
We like to imagine that nonconformists possess some rare inner steel that the rest of us lack. Caleb seems to have believed the opposite.
The secret to standing alone in a crowd isn’t believing that you are immune to social pressure. It is knowing that you are not.
Caleb did not trust himself to resist the crowd. That is precisely why he was able to resist it.
Then there is Joshua, who also plays a role.
Caleb speaks first, putting his reputation on the line before anyone stands with him.
Joshua is quiet at first; but he eventually stands with Caleb, and they become a fellowship of two dissenters. This matters more than we realize.
Asch’s own data hints at why.
When even one other person in the room gave a different answer from the group, the pressure to conform collapsed almost entirely.
The presence of a single dissenter — not a majority, just one — was enough to free people to trust their own eyes.
Asch ran his experiment in a controlled university setting. We are living ours in public, at scale, with our people’s safety and wellbeing on the line.
Since October 7th, we have experienced immense pressure to deny what our eyes have seen, to accept obvious double standards, and to repeat dangerous libels that would once have been dismissed out of hand.
The pressure is not going away. In that environment, the silence of good people is not a mystery. The question is what we do with that.
First, we must learn from Caleb to prepare ourselves before the pressure arrives.
Do not assume you are strong enough to resist alone. Find community, spiritual fellowship, and Jewish wisdom to anchor you before the crowd closes in.
Second, never underestimate the power of a single voice.
Asch showed what Joshua and Caleb lived: when even one person stands against the crowd, it becomes possible for others to trust what their own eyes see. You do not need to convince the room. You need to make it possible for the person across the room to stop doubting themselves.
Third, we must sustain the dissent even when it gets exhausting.
Asch found that when the lone dissenter gave up and rejoined the majority, the conformity effect returned in full.
Those arrayed against Israel and the Jewish people are counting on exactly that — on crowds and fatigue wearing down the few who are still telling the truth.
A single act of courage is not enough. We have to keep it up.
That’s what Caleb and Joshua did. They held their ground when it was unpopular and stayed stubbornly loyal to a future the majority could not see.
And forty years later, when a new generation stood at the border of the land, it was Caleb and Joshua who led them in.
