Num. 13:1-15:41
Précis: Moses is ordered to “send out” (sh’lach l’cha) spies to examine the land. Representatives of each tribe go out, report on its bounty, but also report about its fearsome inhabitants. 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 People are sentenced to spend 40 years in the wilderness. The parasha then returns to matters concerning the Tabernacle, with a discussion of the offering for unintentional sins. Near its end, the parasha discusses the wearing of tzitzit, a paragraph which is part of the traditional recitation of the Sh’ma. This is the 27th of 54 parshiot, marking the half-way point in the yearly reading.
Num. 13:33 “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
God has decided that the generation which left Egypt lacks the necessaries to enter the Promised Land. After all, there has been nothing but murmuring and complaints. The miracles they have seen and experienced are insufficient to provide the faith needed to enter the land. Another generation is needed. But is even another generation sufficient to instill faith? Much can happen in a single generation.
And that brings us to today's Supreme Court rulings. For more than two generations, a woman's control of her body has been a constitutional right. Now this current Court, packed with two stolen Justices by Mitch McConnell, has decided that this constitutional right is to be eliminated. And at a time of unprecedented mass shootings, this Court has eased state regulation of guns, by somehow finding that the 2nd Amendment allows people to carry guns outside of their homes.
Many of us today feel like the spies, who saw themselves as grasshoppers, unable to take any action. What can we do? Are we condemned to wait for another generation to arise to protect the rights of women and to protect our very lives? I wish I knew.
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