Shelach Lecha: Never Getting There
Some very short words on the parasha:
This week, the story of the Jewish people almost culminated in a flourish. After the slavery and unexpected - and quite miraculous - redemption from Egypt, a war with the forces of evil (Amalek), and the overwhelming experience of entering into a brit with Hashem at Har Sinai, the nation is ready to start their journey to the land that was promised to their ancestors.
The preparations must have seemed endless. The Mishkan (Tabernacle) had to be built, the Cohanim and Levites instructed in their duties, the people of Israel coached on how to achieve holiness - all preparations for building a holy people. Finally, the camp was organized according to the tribes, under the insignia of their flags.
In last week’s parasha, Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law, departs. Yitro had come to meet the Israelites at Har Sinai and saved Moshe by setting up and organized system of judges, so that Moshe would be overwhelmed. Moshe tries to persuade Yitro to stay, assuring him that the good that Hashem would bestow upon Israel would also be his. Yitro’s decision to leave almost feels like a graduation ceremony, an acknowledgment that Moshe has the situation under control and does not need a meddling father-in-law around to advise him.
Trumpets are made as a form of camp-wide signaling and communication. Signals are given, and the camp begins to move according to a pre-determined choreography.
All these elaborate preparations are for a journey that should have taken three days.
Disaster ensues.
First, there are complaints - just complaints. Then (we are talking of Jews, you know) complaints about the food and a longing to return to the free meals in Egypt - free, of course, because they were slaves. Hashem sends a rain of quail, but a plague strikes down all who eat of them. Moshe despairs of leading this people on his own, and Hashem allows him to share his prophetic responsibilities with 70 elders. Whether this signals a breakdown of the justice system devised by Yitro is unclear. Perhaps these 70 are providing more spiritual leadership than judicial authority.
Last week’s parasha ends with an unusual story of Moshe taking another wife, a black woman who remains unnamed. Many traditional commentators seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that Moshe, at 80 years old, would feel the need to wed again, and identify the new wife as the old wife, Tzippora. Moshe, according to this understanding, had separated from Tzippora because of his spiritual level.
Whichever approach you take, Miriam is unhappy, and talks to her brother Aaron - hasn’t Hashem also talked to us? You can see an incipient revolt here. Hashem reproves them and as a punishment, afflicts Miriam with leprosy for a week.
After she recovers, she is brought back into the camp, and the journey continues.
This week’s parasha, shlach lecha, finds the nation on the border of the land of Israel. Hashem commends Moshe to “send for yourselves” shlach lecha, a delegation of witnesses. These men function not so much as spies but more as national representatives who are checking out the land much as your grandmother would check out your prospective spouse. Is it really a land flowing with milk and honey? Is it really as beautiful as all that? Some commentators see this as an implied lack of trust in Hashem. I think not: no matter what your Bubbe says, you have to see her/him for yourself.
The delegation returns and confirms that it is indeed a beautiful land, flowing with milk and honey, but then the tone of their evaluation changes. It is also a dangerous land, one that eats its inhabitants. The people there are giants, to them we looked like grasshoppers. They rejected the land of Israel, and proposed murdering Moshe and the two members of the delegation who were urging the nation to go up to the land. “Let’s choose a new leader and return to Egypt!”
A real disaster.
Where did all this negativity come from?
If you look, there is not one of the troubles that does not start with the mouth.
Complaining
Complaining about food
Criticizing Moshe
Speaking evil of the Land of Israel
The last one, the rejection of the land of Israel, is accounted by our sages as a worse sin even than that of the golden calf, a rejection of God. And the description of the land they bring back - it is a land that devours its inhabitants - is belied by the truth they have brought back with them: the cluster of grapes so large that it needs to be carried by two on a pole. It is a land that nourishes its inhabitants - flowing with milk and honey. Joshua enjoins the nation: let us go up and conquer it: “have no fear of the people there, for they are as bread to us. Even their shadows will flee from them in fear, for Hashem in with us.”
What do I learn here?
Mouths are dangerous things. That’s why we have only one of them, and not two like eyes and ears. At Sinai, it is written that we saw the lightening and the smoke, we heard the voice of Hashem. The sound was so overwhelming that the Torah says that we saw the sounds. The people said little more than na’aseh” - we will do it.
But hearing and seeing are mostly passive. In talking we are more actively influencing people around us; family, friends, and community. We cajole and persuade, we complain and we criticize.
I think this is why, after our nation rejects the land of Israel and is condemned to wander the desert until that entire generation (of men, not the women!) dies off, Hashem gives us two commandments connected with our lives in the land of Israel. Yes, there is the implied comfort that even though you will never see the land I promised to your ancestors, the promise still exists and your children will live to inherit it. But the content of these two mitzvot is also comforting.
The first mitzvah is that when we offer sacrifices to Hashem in Shilo and later in Yerushalaim, we should add to the sacrifice an offering of wine and flour. Wine and flour are two of the most symbolic foods, often offered to kings or generals returning from battle as an expression appreciation for their valor. Both of those foods are changed substances (alchemy), one occurring naturally and by itself (grape juice into wine) and the other the product of an almost incomprehensible sequence of steps that requires intensive human actions.
The other mitzvah is that when we make bread, we should take a small piece of the dough and offer it to Hashem. The bread may be the product of our intensive interaction with nature, but the substances we work with are those of the land that Hashem gave us.
These two mitzvot are being given to a generation that is destined to die in the desert. In one sense, it could be almost a cruel sarcasm. But I think Hashem is trying to give a sense of hope and positive destiny to the generation that will never realize its dreams of entering the land of Israel You needn’t worry, Hashem is saying, your children will merit to inherit the land.
In a discussion with Rav Dov today, he noted that it was a particularly Jewish thing to be satisfied with situations that defer fulfillment of goals to a later generation. The idealistic dreamers of the Second Aliya knew that they would never see the deserts bloom, the swamps drained, the people on their land and thriving, but they were willing to build and suffer because they were harnessed to the future.
We wish we had some sign like Hashem gave to the generation of the desert that our children will merit to fulfill what we were not able to. Instead, we walk with blind hope, but that too is a powerful thing. Israel has been and remains the only OECD country with a positive birthrate. What better expression of hope and positivity could one hope for? And we of the older generation also have to realize that our children’s dreams may diverge from our own – and bless them for it.
And you shall see and your hearts will rejoice,
And your bones like grass will flourish.
-Isaiah 66