The Lure of Life

Parshas Shlach

Posted on June 21, 2022 (5782) By Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky | Series: Drasha| Level: Beginner

Rarely do we find that Hashem’s commands assume personal connotations. The commands are meted for the sake of Judaism and the glory of Heaven. Yet, disturbingly, we find the mission of the spies defined with very personal invectives.

 

The Torah begins with Hashem commanding Moshe, “Send for yourself spies to scour the land of Israel.” Why is the command tainted with such a personal epithet? Is Moshe sending the spies for himself? In fact, Moshe reviews the entire episode in Deuteronomy, stating how the idea of spies found favor in his eyes. The commentaries are quick to point out that the idea found favor in Moshe’s mortal’s eyes, but Hashem disapproved. Therefore, He told Moshe send the spies for yourself. “As far as I am concerned,” Hashem infers, “it is a mistake, but if that is what you desire, then proceed.” Thus, the words, “send for yourself spies.”

 

Of course, the dire consequences of the mission are well known. The spies returned and maligned the Land of Israel. They were punished along with the entire nation that joined them in their misconceived sorrow, and the next 40 years were spent wandering in the desert.

 

But we are human, and our intentions are tinged with mortal bias. Isn’t every mortal action filled with human bias and mortal partiality.

 

Adam Parker Glick, President of the Jack Parker Corporation, told me a wonderful story:

 

A wealthy man decided to take up the sport of fishing. He rented a cottage near a Vermont lake and barreled into the local sport and wildlife shop and demanded to see the manager.

 

“I want to buy the best of everything: the most expensive rod and tackle, the best hooks, anglers, and even the most exquisite bait!”

 

The store owner, who had seen his share of city-folk, was not impressed. He instructed a young salesman to follow the man around the store and serve as a human shopping cart. The man chose the most exquisite rods and reels; he selected a mahogany tackle box and a refrigerated bait cooler. Money was no object, and the fisherman-to-be selected the finest of all. The enthusiastic young salesman was extremely eager to please and offered him every imaginable fishing item and accessory. The owner, a crusty and seasoned Vermonter just smirked at the naivete of the new-found angler.

 

As the tycoon approached the checkout counter, he noticed brightly colored, hand-painted fishing lures whose prices were as outlandish as the colors. “Wow!” he exclaimed, as he gathered a bunch into his hand. “These look really wonderful!” Then he turned to the manager and in a voice sounding as well informed as possible, he asked the owner, “do fish really go for these?”

 

“Don’t know,” shrugged the old-timer. “I don’t sell to fish.”

 

Moshe reluctantly agreed to the whims and premonitions of a nervous and anxious nation. He agreed to their pleading to allow spies to check the land that they would ultimately inherit. But by no means was it a Divine mission. Hashem told Moshe send spies for yourself. He taught Moshe that missions that are fueled by self-fulfillment are doomed.

 

Often, we stand at the check-out counter of life and choose the impulse items with the view that they are necessary for our success. We marvel at the brightly-colored lures and find it hard to imagine life without them. We rationalize that they are needed for the sake of family, livelihood, and even spirituality. We think we are purchasing them for lofty reasons and negate the fact that perhaps selfishness and insecurity are the driving forces behind the proverbial sale. We buy them thinking that they are the items that will catch the fish, but ultimately, we are the only ones caught!

 

Moshe was about to send spies on a seemingly sacred mission. The mission may have been falsely justified in hundreds of different ways: the operation would save lives, it would prepare a young nation for a smooth transition and pave a new level of spirituality for the fledgling folk. But those were not the true objectives. There was selfishness involved. And the mission was doomed. For the road to the lowest of places is paved with disingenuous holy-intent.

 

Therefore Hashem told Moshe that there is only one motivation behind the mission. They are not sending spies for Hashem. The nation is sending spies for its own ego and insurance. “Send them for yourself.” G-d does not need scouts, guides, or pathfinders. He does not sell to fish. He just may yield to those who are selfish. And ultimately they get the hook.

 

Good Shabbos

(c)1998 Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

 

Hard Choices

Parshas Shlach

Posted on June 22, 2022 (5782) By Rabbi Naftali Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner

The vast Jewish encampment stands at the edge of the desert on the threshold of Canaan. It is a time of incredible excitement. After centuries of bondage in Egypt, the Jewish people are finally returning as a nation to their ancestral homeland. They know that Hashem has promised them the land, but they also know they will have to fight a war of conquest. They choose twelve outstanding men, one from each tribe, and send them off to reconnoiter the land before they invade. The results of this ill-fated expedition are disastrous, to say the least.

 

The spies deliberately slant their reconnaissance reports to sow fear and despair among the people. The generation of the Exodus loses its chance to enter the Holy Land and is doomed to remain in the desert for forty years. Moreover, as our Sages tells us, because of the betrayal and subversion of the Meraglim, the night of their return, the ninth of Av, becomes an occasion of national mourning for all time.

 

How could such a thing happen? Was it a mistake to send the spies?

 

The Torah tells us that the Jewish people asked Moses to send the spies, and as always, Moses presented the question to Hashem.

 

“Shelach lecha,” Hashem replied. “Send for yourself.”

 

What did Hashem mean by “send for yourself”? Rashi explains that, in effect, Hashem was saying, “You decide. Send them if you so choose, but I am not instructing you to send them. I leave it completely to your discretion.”

 

Many questions immediately come to mind: Why did Hashem refrain from giving Moses specific instructions regarding how to proceed? Why didn’t Hashem spare the Jewish people all this grief by simply instructing Moses not to send the spies?

 

Furthermore, since Hashem specifically declined to endorse the reconnaissance plan, why did Moses choose to go ahead with it anyway? Why didn’t he let the whole thing go, just to be on the safe side?

 

The answers to these perplexing questions derive from one of the fundamental aspects of Judaism. We all know how difficult it is to cope with the temptations and challenges of life, and it would certainly be easy to deal with it by withdrawing into a monastic life of sheltered meditation. But that is not what we are meant to do. The Torah teaches us to live spiritually at the very center of civilization. It teaches us not to run away but to face the issues squarely and make the hard choices.

 

As long as the Jewish people were in the desert, they lived in a spiritual cocoon, shielded from the choices of everyday existence. Their food, water and clothing were miraculously provided, nor did they engage in commerce or agriculture. But all this was part of the process of preparation for their entry into the real world where they would face the hard choices. In the desert, the bread falling from heaven conditioned to the concepts of faith and trust in Hashem, but the ultimate goal was to carry this faith forward to a time when bread would grow from the ground. This was their national destiny.

 

As they stood on the threshold of Canaan, this time had come. Soon they would inherit the land and begin the daunting task of building a functioning society built on faith in Heaven and Torah values and ideals. It was time to begin making the hard choices.

 

When Hashem told him to decide on his own if he should send spies to Canaan, Moses realized that Hashem, far from expressing divine disapproval, was actually presenting the Jewish people with their first opportunity to make their own choice. From the point of their very entry, Hashem was telling them, would already be allowed to choose. Moses chose to send the spies. But now the choice shifted to the spies themselves, and tragically, almost all of them chose poorly.

 

In our own lives, we are bombarded with myriad choices. The media and technology bring the temptations and blandishments of contemporary culture into the innermost privacy of our homes, making every day a never-ending struggle to maintain our sanity and morals. How can we preserve our ideals and values for ourselves and our children in such an environment? It can only be done if we see beyond the glitter and hype that surrounds us, if we reach into our reservoirs of faith and recognize the hand of Hashem guiding us – as it always has and as it always will.

 

Text Copyright © 2007 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.

Rabbi Reich is on the faculty of the Ohr Somayach Tanebaum Education Center.

Learning from the Spies

Parshas Shlach

Posted on June 7, 2002 (5761) By Rabbi Yaakov Menken | Series: Lifeline | Level: Beginner

“Send men for yourself, and they will spy out the Land of Canaan, which I give to the Children of Israel, one man for each of the tribes of their fathers shall you send, every leader in them.” [13:2]

 

Our Torah reading relates the tragic story of the Spies, sent to travel through the Land of Canaan in advance of its conquest by the People of Israel.

 

G-d told Moses, “send men for yourself” — you, Moses, should personally select the Spies. Should we imagine, given the disastrous results, that Moses chose poorly, picking unreliable people for this important task? We know that this is not so.

 

The Torah itself says that those chosen “were leaders among the Children of Israel.” Even in the company of the Holy Generation that stood at Mount Sinai, these twelve were exceptional.

 

They stood before Moses, handpicked representatives of the Jewish People to go scout out their new homeland. Forty days later, only two returned to discuss how wonderful this land was and would be. The other ten Spies told the nation that the residents were unconquerable giants — and besides, the land was killing its inhabitants. The nation believed this evil report, and sat down to mourn its fate. As a result, G-d decreed that this generation, which mourned unnecessarily, would not be privileged to enter the land. They would, instead, die in the desert.

 

These ten great men were recorded in the Torah not for their good deeds, but for becoming an “evil congregation” and inflicting forty years of desert wanderings upon the entire nation. Obviously they fell before a destructive force of massive potential, yet one so devious in its influence that they failed to see it.

 

In reality, what struck them down was a toxic mixture of an evil eye and an evil tongue. One looks out for the bad side of every story, and the other carries that tale to others.

 

The Spies entered Canaan, and met with a wonderfully fertile land. A single cluster of grapes was so large that two of them had to carry it back, hanging from a pole (as depicted in the logo of today’s Israeli Tourism Ministry). And as they toured the country, G-d arranged another miracle on their behalf, timing deaths in various communities to coincide with the Spies’ arrival. The populace was so distracted by funerals that they did not think to confront their visitors.

 

How did the Spies respond? They found the worst possible interpretation of events. With fruits so large, the people were large as well — and the Spies discussed this as if G-d expected the nation to go in and conquer it on their own, without His help. They confidently proclaimed that such conquest was impossible. And furthermore, they viewed the funerals not as a sign of Heavenly protection, but as an indication that the land was turning upon those who lived on it, telling the nation that if they moved in, they would be its next victims.

 

The Medrash asks why the story of the Spies occurs immediately after that of Miriam, for whom the nation waited while she was cured of the spiritual blemish of Tzora’as. The answer is that she was afflicted by this blemish because of the same problem. Miriam was punished because she spoke badly of Moses’ wife, and the Jewish People saw that the evil of gossip can hit even the most upstanding members of the community. Concludes the Medrash, “these wicked men did not take the opportunity to learn ethics.” They should have learned from what happened to Miriam, but did not.

 

If the Torah has one goal for us, it is for us to learn ethics. It is for us to see the devastating power of evil, and learn to pursue good. We cannot afford to be like the Spies, who failed to take the opportunity that lay before them.

 

Who can claim not to behave like the Spies? Who among us looks only for the good in other people, refrains from repeating the latest gossip, and attempts to change the subject when gossip comes their way?

 

There is no easy antidote for this poison. Fortunately, we in the Jewish religious tradition have an extensive body of literature upon which to draw, to learn to control our nearly-instinctive penchant for evil speech. Just over a century ago, Rabbi Yisrael Mayer Kagen published a work on these laws, called “Chafetz Chaim.” Several derivative works are available in English, and there is a section of our web site devoted to gossip-controlling behavior:

 

http://www.torah.org/learning/halashon/ .

 

We, like the spies, already know how destructive gossip is. If we judge others more favorably, and refrain from spreading every harsh rumor, we can hardly imagine the amount of good we can and will do for our families, our neighbors, and our community.