Shlach
Spy Lessons
What can we learn from the story of the meraglim?
The children suggested that we learn 1. about the severity of lashon harah, 2. the value in Eretz Yisroel and 3. that it is important that we take example of others’ experience: the meraglim did not learn from Miriam’s suffering.
I suggest this parsha teaches us an important lesson. Hashem had told Moshe to send the meraglim. However, Hashem was merely going along with what they had wanted. The Ibn Ezra makes note that although Hashem explicitly authorized certain things, He was dead set against them. He SAID to go ahead and do them, but He did not want them done. This was the case here.
In life as well, where a person wishes to go, he is generally led. Success means little in actually determining whether or not it was the proper thing for him to do.
If so, how indeed can we calculate if we are doing what we want, or what Hashem wants? Rav Dessler suggested: Even when you think you are in the right, consider the other path. Often enough, you will agree that the other way is right too, maybe even more right, only that your way is also okay. Let that be a red flag to you. If you see the other way being right too, chances are that it is the only right, – and that your way is flat-out wrong.
Initiating Conversation
‘Motzei dibas ha’arretz’ is the Toreh epithat for the Spies. Rashi explains that the unusual term ‘Motzai Dibah’ refers to initiating a flow of talk, either for good or for bad.
The spies sinned not necessarily in what they had actually said. Rather, they had sparked conversations. People all over the camp began talking, debating the merits and demerits of Eretz Yisroel, questioning the wisdom of going there. This is many times more significant than any words they themselves spoke.
It goes both ways: Initiating a worthwhile conversation carries great merit, more than anything one can say himself. So keep away from sparking Lashon Hara discussions, but please do try to initiate discussions of Mitzvos!
Bias Of The Familiar
Confronted by the frightening report about Canaan, the Jews’ reacted: ‘It would have been better had we died in Egypt or in this desert. Why is Hashem bringing us to Canaan to be killed, our wives and children taken captive?’ And they said ‘Let’s appoint a new leader, and return to Egypt’
Why didn’t they try a third possibilty: neither Canaan nor Egypt? Were there no unclaimed areas in the world? And why would it be better for them to die in Egypt, where their wives and children were likewise captives, indeed, actually enslaved?
Perhaps the truth is that it wasn’t really better for them. Objectively speaking, almost any option beat returning to Egypt. However they knew Egypt. They knew how to survive there, although survive is all they did. It was the known unpleasant versus the scary unknown. The known always beats the unknown.
The lesson for us is to second-guess our own decisions; are they coming from a rational preference, or is our automatic leaning towards the known influencing us?
Being A Skeptic
The Meraglim returned with large claims. They said they had seen giants to whom a human being was small as a grasshopper.
What is the relationship between a human and a grasshopper? I’d say 1:100 is a conservative estimate. So it follows that these giants were 500 feet tall, almost half the size of the Empire State building.
What then did they eat, these people? The Meraglim had the fruit in their arms, one carrying a pomegranate, another figs and the rest dragging the huge cluster of grapes. They were huge, to be sure, as were the general population in Canaan ‘and all the people we saw there were people of great measure’. But they were not food for 500 foot tall Nefilim. One of those guys would finish off a herd of cows for breakfast! For lunch he could eat out a vineyard and for supper an orchard. How long could that last?
Were there really people there of that gigantic size, or was it just the Meraglim making up stories in order to frighten the people?
There were giants there, to be sure, people twenty or fifty feet tall. But as big as the Meraglim claimed?!
Perhaps the Jews, who had seen the actual size of those fruits, ought to have challenged the Meraglim. They ought to have taken a step back and seen that the Meraglim were working them, manipulating the crowd and stirring up panic. And they ought to then have rejected their testimony.
Don’t lose your head. Ever. Separate the half-truths from the lies. Don’t go with the flow, rather keep your skepticism level up, even when no one else is!
Do We Really Need To Know This?
Who needs to know the names of the meraglim, the spies. Sinners they were, what gain is there in knowing their names? Why does the Torah list them?
The saga of the meraglim is our story, our history. We shy away from talking about resha’im, but we do so when the story pertains to us and our history. We need to know our history even when it is ugly and bad. It is our makeup, our essence built of our experience. Knowing our history is knowing ourselves. Not everything can be sanitized.
Beware Empty Words
Hashem told Moshe to tell the Jews “Indeed, As you have spoken, will it be done to you; you will die here in this desert!”
They requested that??
Rashi comments that earlier they had said “If only we would die here in this desert and not be killed by the giants, with our wives and children being taken as captives!”
They said the words, never intending them to be fulfilled. Those words were thrown back to them.
Our words carry meaning and consequences – often unintended and unwished for. The gemarah tells how Pinchas, brother of the sage Shmuel, was sitting shivah for his son. When Shmuel came to comfort him he noticed how long his fingernails were and asked him why wasn’t he cutting them. Pinchas answered “Were your son were to die, would you cut your nails?!” Next week Shmuel’s son died. When Pinchas came to comfort Shmuel, Shmuel bitterly threw his fingernails at him ‘Don’t you know that the lips have the power over life and death? You have killed my son!!’
The gemarrah brings a (rather strange!) source for it; Hashem told Avraham to sacrifice his son on the Mizbeach. Yet Yitzchak lived: we are his children. Why did Yitzchok survive? Because Avraham said to his servants ‘Wait here and WE will return to you’ That slip of the tongue returned Yitzchak safe and sound.
For good as well as bad; the tongue reigns supreme. We ought to be wary of its power and not say ‘I’ll never get out of this mess!’ ‘You will always fail at this!’ because the saying so may cause it to be. Beware the mighty tongue!
©2013
kollel parshah | Tiferet Ramot 83-21, Jerusalem, Israel, 97290
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