Sh'lach
Num. 13:1-15:41
Num.13:33 “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
In this week’s parasha, Sh’lach (the 27th of 54 parshiot, marking the half-way point in the yearly reading cycle), Moses is ordered to “send out” (sh’lach) 12 scouts (some call them spies), one from each tribe, to examine the Promised Land. They go out and search the land, from north to south, from east to west, before they return and report their findings. They inform the Israelites that the land is indeed bounteous. However, 10 of the party give fearful reports of the dangers posed by the inhabitants. They are quoted as saying “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Num. 13:33). Only Joshua and Caleb state that that with faith in God, the People would in fact take ownership of the Land promised to them.
The People are frightened, and their “murmuring” turns into something close to panic. God tells Moses that He will destroy the People, but Moses intercedes. The punishment is, however, severe: the People are sentenced to spend 40 years in the wilderness.
The 10 scouts demonstrate a basic human emotion: fear. They have only recently been released from slavery, and they lack the confidence to confront the opposition. They also display a second human emotion: a lack of faith in themselves. Finally, they reveal a third all-to-common emotion: a lack of faith in God. Fear, a lack of faith in themselves, and a lack of faith in God join to doom them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, where the generation of the scouts (and their slave mentality) will die out, leaving the entrance to the Land to the next generation, a generation raised in freedom.
The Sages suggest that the 10 scouts were guilty of yet another error. While Caleb and Joshua expressed confidence in the ability of God to see them through the difficulties of conquering the Land, the scouts spread their message of fear, self-denigration, and a lack of trust in God to the People.
Today, the Jewish People around the world as well as those who reside in Israel face an ever-rising tide of hatred and opposition, filled with slander and violence. This is a new kind, or perhaps a re-emergence, of anti-Semitism unseen for many decades. And today, we have among the Jewish People the equivalent to the 10 scouts: those Jews who out of a sense of opposition to the Israeli government’s positions on certain issues (settlements, as an example) support the BDS Movement, which has as its goal the discrediting of the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Israel, like Joshua and Caleb, often seems to be left quite alone and virtually friendless.
The Jewish People of this century have a choice. We can choose to be like Joshua and Caleb, and reject fear, have faith in ourselves and faith in God to secure a bright future for us and for Israel. Or, we can act like the 10 scouts, be fearful and speak doom and gloom, and cast doubt on ourselves and on the legitimacy of the Jewish People’s right to a state of our own. Joshua and Caleb demonstrated faith, patience, and a refusal to be downcast by the size of the opposition. Can we do less today?
