A Matter of
Perspective
Parshas Shlach
Posted on June 24, 2024 (5784) By Rabbi
Mordechai Kamenetzky | Series: Drasha| Level: Beginner
This week we read about
the twelve spies who were sent to scout out the Land of Canaan. Their mission
of surveillance was meant to prepare the Jewish nation so that the entry into
their promised homeland be smooth and virtually without surprises. Total trust
in Hashem’s Divine design should have warranted no mortal meddling, but mortal
prudence or perhaps apprehension and skepticism prompted their desire to manage
the situation in their own way.
And, as has been the case
with the relationship between Jews and their land from time immemorial, the
results were disastrous. All the spies, save the righteous Calev and Yehoshua,
brought back tales of woe, predictions of destruction, and assurances of
defeat. The Jews were quickly and simply swayed, and the buoyant expectancy of
a gallant entry into the land promised to our forefathers, quickly turned into
a night of bemoaning anticipated enduring misfortunes. That night, the 9th day
of the fifth month, became engraved in the annals of our history as a night of
weeping. What began as unwarranted wailing turned into a forever fateful night
the 9th of Av. From the saga of the spies to the destruction of two Temples, to
the signing of inquisition, to the outbreak of World War I, the war to end all
wars, the 9th of Av is a hallmark of Jewish misfortunes. But if we analyze
the complaints of the meraglim (spies), we find an emerging pattern of skewed
vision. They saw fruit so big and beautiful that it had to be carried on a
double pole. Yet they viewed it as an indication of giant produce, indicative
of the degree of food matter that nourished their powerful and physically giant
adversaries.
But not only the living
species gave them conniptions. They brought forth to the Children of Israel an
evil report on the Land that they had spied out, saying, “The Land through
which we have passed, to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants!
All the people that we saw in it were huge! (Numbers 13:32).
Rashi explains the meaning of “a land that devours its
inhabitants.” The meraglim
complained, “In every place which we passed we found the inhabitants burying
their dead” They missed the point. In fact, Hashem caused
many deaths amongst them at that time, and so the Canaanites were engaged in
burying their dead. This proved beneficial for the spies, because the giants
were occupied with their mourning and paid no attention to the spies.
How can an event that was
providentially meant to be so beneficial, be misconstrued as an omen of
misfortune?
Back in the early 1950’s a
large shoe consortium with stores across the United States and Canada, decided
to take their business venture into the emerging continent of Africa. They sent
two of their salesman to explore the prospects of business in the remote
villages across the Dark Continent.
After just one week, they
received a cable from the first salesman: “I am returning at once. No hope for
business. Nobody here wears shoes!” They did not hear from the second salesman
for four weeks. Then one day an urgent cable arrived. “Send 15,000 pairs of
shoes at once! I have leased space in five locations. Will open chain of
stores. This place is filled with opportunity. Nobody has shoes!”
The Steipler Gaon, Rabbi
Yisrael Yaakov Kanievsky, in his classic work on chumash, Birchas
Peretz explains that poor attitudes help forge opinions that are diametric to
the truth. The Talmud tells us that, “Man is led in the path
that he chooses to travel!”
Imagine. The spies see
these giants wailing and weeping at massive funerals day after day. They should
have figured that this plague was an anomaly, for if this was the norm, then
the funerals would have become part of their everyday existence, and hardly an
event worthy of disrupting their normally tight security.
In fact, comments the
Steipler, that in the times of Yehoshua, the two spies who entered Canaan were
immediately detected on the very day they arrived, and they were hunted with a
vengeance!
Yet these twelve spies
remained unnoticed. But the spies did not
look at the events with that view.
When people have sour
opinions and want to see only doom and gloom, then even a ray of light will
blind them. When one is constantly weighed down with worry, he will only drag
his feet down the path of discontent. However, if we take life’s bumpy road, as
a chance to exercise our endurance, and turn the lemons handed to us into
lemonade, then unlike the meraglim (spies) we will glean light from even the
seemingly darkest abyss. And one day we will follow the path of that light to
the Promised Land.
Dedicated by Steve & Faye
Kollander and family with great praise to Hashem upon the marriage of our children Arielle and Adam Parkoff
Good Shabbos!
The
Grasshopper Syndrome
Parshas Shlach
Posted on June 26, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Naftali
Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner
So near and yet so far.
The Jewish people were massed in the Desert, waiting for the signal to enter
into the Promised Land. In a matter of days or weeks, they could have been in
possession of the land that Hashem had
promised to Abraham’s descendants centuries before. But fate intervened. They
decided to send spies to scout the land and its defenses, and these spies
returned with slanderous reports, causing an insurrection among the people and
their exclusion from the land for forty years.
Who were these spies who
took it upon themselves to slander the Promised Land, to inflame the minds of
the people with their distortions and exaggerations, to instill fear in the
hearts of the innocent? Our Sages tell us that they were among the greatest and
finest leaders of the respective tribes.
How then is it possible
that these righteous men would do such a terrible thing? Hadn’t they themselves
witnessed the wondrous miracles Hashem performed
for the Jewish people in Egypt, during the Exodus and at Mount Sinai? Did they
think He was incapable of leading the Jewish people to victory against the Canaanites
entrenched in the Promised Land?
Let us look into this
week’s Torah reading for the answer. When the spies returned from their
mission, they made a very revealing comment, “We felt like grasshoppers next to
them, and that is how we appeared in their eyes.”
The commentators explain
that this comment illuminates the underlying reason for the downfall of the
spies. These people did not believe in themselves. They lacked confidence and a sense of their
own worth. They felt like grasshoppers in the presence of the Canaanites, and
therefore, the Canaanites viewed them as grasshoppers as well. This selfsame
lack of confidence also led them to slander the land. They saw the major
obstacles that had to be overcome, and they felt intimidated and overwhelmed. They
shriveled within, unable to believe that they were worthy of yet another
display of spectacular miracles. And so they chose to slander the land in order
to deflect the Jewish people from their plans of conquest and to persuade them
to remain in the relative safety of the Desert.
A great sage told his disciples
for a walk, “Today, we will do something different.”
Without another word, he
led them to a deep ravine at the end of the town. A taut rope was stretched
across the top of the ravine, and a huge crowd was gathered a short distance
away.
Presently, a tightrope
walker holding a long balancing rod stepped off the rim of the ravine onto the
rope and began to walk across the chasm. The crowd gasped in amazement as the
tightrope walker made his way steadily along the quivering rope. When he
finally reached the opposite rim of the ravine safely, the crowd responded with
an audible sigh of relief and an enthusiastic round of applause.
The sage nodded gravely,
turned around and started to walk away. “Why did you bring us here today?” one
of his disciples asked him. “What are we supposed to learn from the tightrope
walker?”
“A very important lesson,”
said the sage. “Walking a tightrope is a metaphor of life, because all of us
are indeed walking a tightrope. Did you watch that tightrope walker? He was
totally focused on what he was doing, and he was confident in his ability to do
it. If he had lost focus or confidence he would never have made it across.”
In our own lives, we are
always faced with challenges and ordeals that may lead us to question our own
capabilities and worth. Whenever we are inspired to do something good and
worthwhile, the evil inclination immediately tries to make us second guess
ourselves. Can we really do it? Is it too difficult? Are our motivations pure?
And as our confidence erodes, the chances of success slowly fade away. But if
recognize that the source of our inspiration is the divine spark within us, if
we find within ourselves the courage and the confidence to persevere, Hashem will surely bless our efforts with
success.
Text Copyright ©
2009 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.
Gentle
Reminders
Parshas Shlach
Posted on June 25, 2024 (5784) By Rabbi Naftali
Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner
The universal image of the
devout Jew is a praying figure wrapped in a tallis, but it is not the tallis
that is significant. Rather, it is the long fringes on each of its four
corners. At the conclusion of this week’s Torah portion, we read that these
fringes were to be dyed a particular shade of blue called techeiles. What
was the significance of this particular shade of blue?
The Talmud explains:
“Because techeiles is reminiscent of the sea, and the sea is reminiscent of the
sky, and the sky is reminiscent of the Kiseh Hakavod, Hashem’s celestial
throne.” Wearing techeileth, therefore, draws the mind to thoughts of Hashem and is a source of constant inspiration.
The questions immediately
arise: Why do we need any memory devices at all to remind us of Hashem? Why doesn’t the Torah simply command us
to think of Hashem continuously?
Furthermore, why does the
Torah choose techeiles which reminds us of Hashem in
such a roundabout way? Why doesn’t the Torah simply choose a color directly
associated with Him?
The commentators point out
that our natural tendency of people is to connect what we see with whatever is
dear to our hearts. Thus, a businessman spotting a piece of paper on the ground
will think of the problems of waste disposal, the new technologies, the
investment opportunities in companies active in this field.
A policeman spotting the same
piece of paper will think of the littering laws, zero tolerance policies,
litterbug fines. An environmentalist will think of the tree that was cut down
to produce this piece of paper which was so casually discarded. The
businessman, the policeman, the environmentalist may all have been walking
along absorbed in totally unrelated thoughts. But that little deviation from
the ordinary, the simple piece of paper lying on the ground, pulls each one out
of his reverie and sets him off in his own individual direction along the route
that is dear to his heart.
In this light, the
commentators explain the rationale behind techeiles. The Torah does not make
unrealistic demands of us. The Torah realizes full well that no matter how
spiritual we want to be, no matter how much we would like think of Hashem, we still live in the mundane world. We
have to earn a living and pay the mortgage and take care of the children, and
we cannot realistically expect to keep our minds focused on Hashem at all times.
If, however, we truly
yearn to be connected with Him, if we harbor a strong love for Him deep in our
hearts, then a few gentle reminders here and there will bring Him squarely back
into our thoughts. Therefore, the Torah does not simply command us to think of Hashem at all times. It is too much to expect of
us amid the sea of distractions in which we live. Instead, the Torah tells us
to keep a symbol with us at all times, a symbol which will remind us of Hashem with just a brief glance.
To accomplish this purpose
most effectively, the Torah does not choose a symbol directly associated with Hashem. Rather, the Torah chooses a fairly
simple symbol which can insinuate itself easily into the mad rush of daily
life, a shade of blue that reminds us of the sea. But once the chain of thought
is set in motion, our natural tendencies take over. That flash of blue sets us
to thinking, and if there is a true love for Hashem deep
in our hearts, our thoughts will naturally turn to Him. If the heart is set
in a good direction, the mind is sure to follow. But the converse is also true.
A great sage was visiting an
art gallery, and he saw a large redfaced man protesting vigorously in front of
a colorful abstract painting.
“How can you display such
lewd art?” the angry man yelled.
Intrigued, the sage drew
closer and looked at the painting.
“My good fellow,” he said.
“This is a wonderful painting. It is a warm representation of a mother soothing
a distraught child. The lewd images you see on the canvas are a reflection of
the lewd images that occupy your own mind.”
In our own lives, we are
all caught up in the dynamics of our daily existence, continuously distracted
by financial, familial, social, emotional and all sorts of other concerns that
make up the fabric of our lives. Under these circumstances, it is very easy to
forget about Hashem. But if He has a permanent place in our
hearts, if deep down we recognize and acknowledge that life has no meaning
without a strong relationship with Him, then we will inevitably find myriad
symbols everywhere that will nudge us gently back on track and bring Him back
into our thoughts.
Text Copyright © 2010 by
Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.
