Mitzvah d'var

In my Torah portion, Parashat Sh’lach L’cha, which is found in the book of Numbers, chapter 13: verses 21-33, the Jews have escaped from Egypt and are now coming across the desert to the promised land, or the Land of Israel. G-d tells Moses to send scouts into Israel, a representative from each of the Jews' 12 tribes. They went into the land and scouted it for 40 days.

Afterward, they arrived back to report their findings to Moses, bearing grapes from the land and jars of honey. 

10 of the scouts told Moses and the Jews that the land did indeed flow well with milk and honey. They reported that, even though it was true that the promised land was an amazing place, the current inhabitants were two large both in size and numbers, and they would surely defeat the Jews if they tried to take the land. 

The last of the scouts, Joshua and Caleb, shared a different perspective. They thought that while the people were strong, the Israelites could surely overcome them. Because more scouts were skeptical about the Israelites’ ability to defeat the people inhabiting the land of Israel, and the news they brought back instilled a great sense of fear into the Israelites, the people believed the 10 scouts. The people wept all night long, fearing that they would be killed if they entered the promised land of Israel. The Israelites began to doubt G-d, and think that their life was better in Egypt because even though they were enslaved, at least they got good food and had a home, however terrible the conditions. 

G-d was infuriated by the Israelites’ behavior, having just done all of this work to get the Jews out of slavery, and because of this, G-d planned to kill all of the Jews. Moses, who did not think this was the right or just thing to do, and so bargained with G-d. He said that if G-d were to kill the Israelites now, right after freeing them from slavery, it would ruin G-d’s entire image. Moses asked G-d: how would it look if you killed an entire people, your people, for reminiscing upon their past lives, even if they were wrong to do so? 

Eventually, Moses convinced G-d to have the Jews wander the desert for 40 entire years before they could come back to the promised land. G-d had them wander for this long so that all of the people who had been slaves in Egypt would have died off, leaving a new generation who were grateful for the promised land, and not busy reminiscing about Egypt, having never been there themselves. At the end of these 40 years, G-d allowed the new generation of Jews to enter the land of Israel. 

The section of my Torah portion that I would most like to focus on is when the scouts report back to Moses and say, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” By explicitly saying the word attack, they imply that the only option to get into Israel was to overthrow the current people living there. Why do the Israelites have to attack those who are living in Israel?  Why can’t they live alongside the people who are already living there? I find this question interesting. It shows that humans have a primitive instinct to fear what is different from them , or what they don't understand, which often leads them to either run away or fight.

Sforno, an Italian rabbi from the 16th century, says that the scouts in my Torah portion purposefully exaggerated the size of the people dwelling in Israel, to convince the community not to travel there. I agree with Sforno that the spies exaggerated some because they were afraid to go into Israel, into what was unknown to them.

Nehama Leibowitz says that the scouts convinced the Israelites not to go into Israel by stating a positive fact about the land, immediately followed by something negative about the land that counteracts that, making it appear that their perspective was objective because it presented both sides of the story. I think that this interpretation is interesting, showing that the scouts used old psychological tricks - a good news-bad news scenario to sway the Israelites to take their side. 

However, I think that all of these interpretations are missing something. I believe there was perhaps something deeper going on. In this part of the Torah, the Jews had just come out of Egypt, where they had been forced into slavery for generations. While they were technically free in the desert, they were still feeling the impact of having recently been enslaved, and may have been scared that if they go into Israel, and were defeated by the people who lived there, they would be forced back into slavery again. They feared that history would repeat itself and that this time, G-d might not assist them to escape from slavery. I think this could be why the scouts, who were afraid themselves, exaggerated the information about the inhabitants of Israel. They did not want to settle there out of fear. Given all of this, I think we should have some compassion for the 10 scouts, even if they did lie or use fake news.

Morally and logically, it would make more sense for the Jews to live alongside the inhabitants of Israel.  If the Jews had attacked them and lost the war, the current inhabitants might have enslaved them.  I argue that If the Israelites had come there in peace, there would have been no reason for them to enslave them.  The Israelites would have had to make it very clear that they were coming in peace, given that they were a large group of people, and the inhabitants of the land might have feared a hostile takeover.

However, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to go into the land peacefully.  There were instances, when the Israelites were on their way to the Land of Israel and asked those who lived along the way if they could get through peacefully.  The Israelites wanted to pass through the land, but instead, they were dragged into a war by those inhabitants, which could have happened in the Land of Israel as well.  

Might there have been a different way for the Israelites to not start a war with another group?  Was there a way to show their potential enemies that the Israelites had a greater army than them without having to use the army against them?  This way, they could scare the people inhabiting Israel into living alongside the Jews, and not attacking them. We might never know the exact circumstance, however, I believe it still gives us some very important lessons for today.

The fear the Israelites felt back then ties into a very human primitive fear of what is unknown and what can be frightening about things that are different from us. This fear is still prevalent today, just as it was thousands of years ago. Today, racism, homophobia, antisemitism, sexism, and any other forms of bigotry come from that same fear of others. Even and perhaps especially today, people’s fear of others runs so high that they sometimes commit unspeakable acts of violence against those that they are afraid of. 

Now that I am a Jewish adult, the lesson I have learned from my Torah portion is that we need to manage our fears, especially when acting on those fears outwardly can cause harm to others, whether physically or emotionally. We can actively try to involve ourselves in getting to know different people, or whatever we have a bias against. If we have stereotypes, this can help erase those, to see that they are not as accurate as we think, thus limiting the bias.

So what was different about Caleb and Joshua that made them not be afraid?   The answer is that they had faith and trust in G-d.  They believed that G-d would take care of them and that if they followed G-d’s laws, they would become a strong nation, just like what was talked about in my friend Zeke’s Torah portion. Trust and faith are the foundation of any good relationship, whether with other people, G-d, or even yourself. Anyone hoping to form good relationships needs to be open to trusting the other person in the relationship, even if that person is yourself. 

But trust and faith take time to develop, even in the best of relationships. And when someone has been hurt or enslaved or is the victim of any form of bigotry, it takes even longer to build trust. The Jews lacked both faith and trust at the time, but after G-d gave them 40 years, they eventually came to trust G-d enough to follow G-d’s lead. We should be more like Caleb and Joshua, showing trust and faith, but also showing compassion to those who have been harmed in any way, even if they are still afraid. Shabbat Shalom.