Weekly Internet Parsha Sheet s5

Weekly Internet Parsha Sheet

Drasha - Parshas Shelach

A Matter of Perspective

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 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.

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky is the Associate Dean of the Yeshiva of South Shore

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Ohr Torah Stone - Rabbi Riskin’s Shabbat Shalom

Parshat Shelach 28 Sivan 5763, 28 June 2003

Efrat, Israel - Everyone who thinks of this week’s Torah portion emphasizes the heinous sin of the Scouts, the refusal of ten tribal princes and- under their influence- the entire desert generation, to attempt to conquer the Land of Israel as a result of their ill-advised reconnaissance mission. And of course the Divine punishment is immediately meted out:”... Your children.... Will be the ones whom I shall bring here (to the Promised Land)...”You however will fall as corpses in the desert” (Numbers 14:31,32).

But what follows this sin and punishment is an even stranger account, a story which seems to dispute the very power of repentance to achieve forgiveness and a second chance.”Moses related these words (of penalty and desert destruction) to all the children of Israel... And they arose early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain, saying:”We are now ready; let us go up to the place that G-d described: we have sinned!” And Moses said,”... Do not go up; G-d is not in your midst.... But (the people) wickedly (Hebrew Vaya’apilu, which Targum takes to mean wickedly, and Rashi translates as defiantly) went up to the top of the mountain, while the ark of the covenant of the Lord and Moses did not move from the midst of the encampment. The Amalakites and the Canaanites who dwelt on that mountain scooped down and defeated (the Israelites), pursuing them with crushing force all the way to Hormah” (Numbers 14: 39-45). But why was G-d not in their midst? Why did the Almighty cause the Israelites to be defeated? They seem to have repented; they were apparently trying to repair the sin of the scouts and make it to Israel! Why is this story taken as an added transgression rather than as an act of repentance, the repair, or tikkun, for the major transgression of the desert!

I would add to this major question, which is asked by the Abarbanel as well as by other Biblical commentaries, a further question. What follows this incident of the ma’apilim (the wicked or defiant climbers of the mountain) seem to be a string of disparate commandments which hardly seem connected to our theme of the Land of Israel: the sacrificial offerings, the gift of hallah, national atonement for unwitting transgressions, the sin of the wood gatherer on the Sabbath and the commandment of the ritual fringes. What have these laws to do with each other, and what is their collective connection to the sin of the scouts and the story of the ma’apilim?

Let us begin by trying to comprehend the negative quality of the action of the mountain climbers. The Biblical text initially hints that we are not dealing with an act of true repentance by the perverted order of their words:”we are now ready. Let us go up to the place... We have sinned” (Numbers 14:40). Repentance demands recognition of sin and contrition for past misdeeds; only after atonement has been made, ought the individual proceed with his act of reparation. Here they are focused first and foremost on the place; they mention their sin merely as an afterthought without any expression of contrition.

The issue becomes even clearer as the text continues. Moses tells them not to ascend the mountain to Israel because G-d is not in their midst; they are Israel oriented rather than G-d oriented, committed to occupying a land rather than to fulfilling Divine will. Indeed, they barely seem to recognize the relationship between the physical soil of Israel and the Divine soul of Israel.

Hence,”(the people) wickedly went up to the top of the mountain while neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses moved out from the midst of the encampment (ibid. 14:44).” Remember they had been warned only one verse previously that”up ahead were the Amalekites and the Canaanites, and you will fall by the sword” (ibid. 14:43); and they had already gotten the message that”(Only) when the Ark (of the Lord) went forth, (would) Moses say,”Arise Oh G-d and scatter your enemies and cause those who hate you to flee before you’” (Numbers 10:35). Nevertheless, these defiant mountain-climbers were prepared to face their enemies on their way to the Land of Israel without the Ark of G-d and without Moses, the prophet of G-d. Apparently they were completely secular Zionists, who may have been committed to the land but were blind to its Divine mission and messages. Perhaps this is what Rabbi Yehuda Ben Betera had in mind when he argues against Rabbi Akiva- that Tselafhad, whose daughters insisted on their feminine rights of inheritance to the land of Israel, was one of the defiant mountain climbers (ma’apilim) and not the Sabbath desecrator who gathered wood (B.T. Shabbat 96b). The Bible teaches that Tselafhad died in the desert because of his sin. Rabbi Yehuda Ben Betera refuses to accept the fact that the father of such righteous lovers of Zion could have been guilty of a crime as major as that of Sabbath desecration as Rabbi Akiva maintains. He prefers to believe that his sin was rather that of the ma’apilim, an incomplete appreciation of the Land of Israel. But Tselafhad did succeed in transmitting his passion for the Land of Israel to his daughters, who added their commitment to G-d. From this perspective, we can well understand the list of laws which follow the incident of the ma’apilim. The Bible reminds the Israelites that when they do ultimately enter the land, they must be mindful of its true purpose: offerings to G-d, national atonement, commitment to the Sabbath and involvement in all 613 commandments. The land of Israel and the laws of the Torah must be connected as one to express the true mission and message of our nation. Shabbat Shalom.

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Jewish History by Rabbi Berel Wein

Jerusalem Post June 27 2003

THE MARK OF LUNACY

There is famous chasidic story about a king and his wise adviser and counselor who discovered that the grain crop of the coming year contained a substance that, when ingested, would induce lunacy. Since the kingdom was wholly dependent on the local grain crop for its sustenance there was no escape from consuming this lunacy-inducing grain. The king initially suggested to his counselor that he would obtain healthy grain for himself, for the advisor, and their families. The advisor gently reminded the king that if everyone else in the country was insane and he and the king remained sane, then the whole country would judge them to be the insane ones. The king sighed and said, “You are right. We will also eat from the lunacy-inducing grain so that we will be like everyone else. But, let us at least place a mark on our respective foreheads so that when we look at each other we will realize and be reminded that we are really insane!”

I can think of no better parable to describe our current political, diplomatic and military situation. What sane country would dismantle settlements, release terrorist murderers from prison, offer to strengthen the hands of those who are pledged to destroy it, all in the name of an illusory roadmap to peace that has no more chance of ever leading anywhere than all of its ill-conceived predecessors that have been advanced over the last forty years? And to do so when its citizens are subject to daily terrorist attacks? So our government and we are insane. Good. That apparently seems to meet the wishes of most of the population here, let alone satisfying the desires of the famous wise men of the US State Department, the UN, the EU, Russia and other assorted savants, all graduates of Chelm University, who have created such a wonderful world for us to live in. But at least let us mark our foreheads so that we will know, ourselves, that we are insane.

Let us not stupidly state that terror will not deter us from making peace, that Abu Mazen has to be given a chance, that Arafat is irrelevant, and that a Palestinian state next to us will somehow be a good thing. And, let us protest against Shimon Peres, now the temporary head of the Labor Party negotiating his own foreign policy with world leaders and at international conferences as though nothing has changed in the last decade. We have heard and experienced this all before and it has led only to blood and trauma beyond belief. We are therefore insane for pursuing such policies further. But since this is an insane world, we desire to be like everyone else. Perhaps we have no choice but to follow such an insane policy, what with America and the rest of the world insisting on it. But we should at least mark ourselves so that we know that we are behaving in an insane fashion. Simple honesty requires at least that.

The Palestinians may not be much of a partner for peace but they certainly are our partners in lunacy. Just as the king needed his counselor marked in order to confirm his own insanity, so too the Palestinians serve as our companion in this dance of the macabre. In an interview last week published in Haaretz (certainly, where else?) Dr. Rantisi of Hamas stated that this struggle against the Jews would go on, if need be, for another five hundred years. Imagine that! What sane person would wish to subject his people to another five hundred years of abject poverty, social disruption, “martyred” suicidal children and a permanent feeling of alienation, rejection, inferiority, and hatred?