Sweat The Small Stuff

Ibn Ezra; the Jews needed to fail at the meraglim, because they were so raw. They needed more time with Moshe, and needed to cement their loyalty to Hashem and His Torah. Indeed, by failing they showed their unreadiness, that they could not possibly set up shop as a Torah Nation. In retrospect it was a shame they were not in the desert another hundred years! It was actually a very happy event that the Jews were sentenced to spend forty years in the desert.

We added that there was tragedy involved too. It was sad they were not ready. Why weren’t they? Perhaps because an unknown Jew, weary and hurt after a day of being beaten by his slave drivers, came home at night and expressed that there was no hope left. It was the fault of some grandfather who was too dispirited to teach his grandchildren about Hashem. These small failures, in the long night of the Egyptian exile, were what caused klal yisroel to emerge from Mitzrayim lacking the full measure of trust and loyalty to Hashem, and unable to be trusted on their own in Eretz Yisroel. These small failings, the excusable lapses of tortured souls, ultimately determined the fate of the entire Jewish nation.

The lesson herein to us is that we appreciate every lesson we impart to our children, every smile over breakfast and every Shma hour with the childen. We dare not trivialize any spiritual development, for ultimately that will shape klal yisroel.