Parashat Shelach Lecha
This Shabbat we will once again read the story of The Twelve Spies that were sent by Moses to scout The Promised Land. There are a couple of things that we have to keep in mind as we prepare to re-acquaint ourselves with this Biblical Story.
First, it is important to remember that God is the one who instructs Moses to send scouts to take a look at the land but perhaps the most important thing to remember is that Moses, just as instructed by God, appoints a representative from each one of the tribes. I have always found this story to be not only interesting but also very ironic.
I am sure that many of you are familiar with the popular saying, “Wherever you have two Jews, you have three ideas!” So what exactly was Moses thinking, better still, did God really believe that 12 people were going to find a consensus as to what they thought the land looked like?
The most surprising element of this story is that the 12 scouts didn’t produce 24 different reports. It is incredibly powerful that 10 of them, the majority of them did bring back one single report and that only two differed with the majority in their view. Think for a moment of today’s world. Society has polarized itself to such a degree that it is hard to find majority opinions anymore. We usually find ourselves divided right down the middle. For these 10 scouts to have found consensus was an incredible thing.
In order to understand why there was such a decisive majority that held one opinion, we need to fully immerse ourselves in their decision-making process. These 10 scouts came together under the notion that the future was going to be terrible! They believed that if they tried to settle in The Promised Land, the “giants” who lived there were going to devour them.
It is always easy to come to a consensus when one is trying to take the path of least resistance. It is always easy to give in to the majority when you are convinced that your life is doomed only because everyone around you seems to have no hope. Darkness is one of the most awful things to experience because it spreads and engulfs you, and if you are not the one willing to kindle the light of hope in the midst of chaos, then you can’t count on the person next to you to do it. It takes a true hero to stand up for what he or she believes even when we perceive the world to have a completely different opinion of what happens around us.
What made Calev and Joshua (the two scouts that brought back the positive report) speak out for what they really saw? What was it that gave them the strength to see the world in a different way? Was it their faith in God? Was it their trust in Moses as a leader? Many of our Torah commentators have tried to deal with the nature of the “sin” of the spies.
If you carefully study many of the answers they give us, you will find that almost all explanations come to the same conclusion — “They didn’t have enough faith!” “They didn’t put their trust in God with all their hearts!” I believe that the answer is right there in front of us. I believe the answer is actually quite simple. Calev and Joshua became heroes because they DID NOT see themselves as grasshoppers compared to the giants that the other 10 scouts saw. Calev and Joshua saw themselves and The Children of Israel as a whole as a people capable of overcoming any obstacle! So, what was the sin of the 10 scouts? They saw themselves as nothing! t was not that they had no faith in God; they truly had no faith in themselves!
We learn a tremendous lesson from this Torah Portion. Our perception of reality is very important, rather than trying to understand how we perceive others, we need to spend more time thinking about who we are ourselves and if we are capable of facing the world and our daily life with optimism!
Many people have asked me why we named our first child Yoshua. Well, Yoshua’s name is really Abraham Yoshua, and we named him that way because Liz’s grandfather’s name was Abraham, and we wanted our son to see the world in the same way as the biblical Joshua saw the world, not as a hostile place that could not be moved. We want him to always understand the world as a place where optimism, hope and faith can make the most amazing dreams come true. How do you conquer your personal Promised Land? Not by seeing yourself as a grasshopper but rather by thinking yourself a giant.
© Rabbi Felipe Goodman, all rights reserved.