Parashat Shelach Lecha: The Kiddush Question

 I love questions!

People ask me questions the whole time and there are fewer thrilling experiences than when a member of my community in Staines poses a conundrum to me that I can't readily answer. These are some of my favourite moments.

Such a situation occurred last week as we were enjoying a delicious kiddush following the Shabbat morning service. The gentleman was holding a fish ball and I was gradually making my way through a (very naughty) rather large piece of chocolate cream cake when he shared this thought:

"Rabbi Claude?"

"Yes?"

"May I ask you a question?"

"Of course. I'll try my best to answer you."

"Regarding the spies, what did they do wrong? Why were they punished? They went to the land of Israel and simply reported back what they had seen. They were being honest. Why should they and the rest of their generation end up wandering the desert until they had died out?"

Another member of the community piped in: 

"Because they didn't have faith in Gd to protect them."

Now, to be honest, that would have probably been my go-to answer. It ticks many boxes.                    We know that these were not just ordinary people but the creme-de-la-creme of their respective tribes. However, something held me back from answering (and with no disrespect to the other respondent), I thanked him and said that I would investigate his question and my answer would constitute this week's Drasha.

At the start of the Parasha, the Torah tells us:

Numbers 13:1-3 

Then The Lord spoke to Moshe: “Send out men to scout (in Hebrew the term used is 'Veyaturu which means literally 'and they should scout') the land of Canaan which I am going to give to the Israelites; one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each a leader among them.” So Moshe sent them at the Lord's command out from the Wilderness of Paran. They were all leading men among the Israelites.

The Torah clearly describes how respected these individuals were. What's more, they were not sent as spies, but as scouts in the guise of tourists. They are only referred to as 'Meraglim' or spies when Moshe recounts this tragic tale in Parashat Devarim.

Moshe gives precise instructions to his VIP 'tourists' of which five are questions.

Numbers 13:17-21

1. Ascend there into the Negev and go up into the hill country.

2. See what the land is like.

3. Are the people who live there strong or weak, few or many?

4. Is the land in which they live a good place or bad?

5. Are the cities in which they live open or fortified?

6. Is the soil rich or poor?

7. Are there trees in it or not?

8. Take courage and bring back some of the fruit of the land.”

When the men return, they respond with the following answers:

'They went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran, and they made their report to them and to the whole community, as they showed them the fruit of the land.' (which was Moshe's 8th point).

'This is what they told him: “We came to the land you sent us to; it is indeed flowing with milk and with honey, and this is its fruit. '(Moshe's 1st and 2nd command). Then they proceeded to answer the question about the inhabitants (Numbers 3 and 5) 'But the people who live in the land are fierce and the cities are fortified and very large indeed; We even saw the descendants of Anak there.  In the Negev region, Amalek lives; The Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country and the Canaanites live by the Sea and by the Jordan....the land which we journeyed through and scouted is a land that consumes its inhabitants; the people we saw were tall and broad to a man. There we saw the Nefillim - the descendants of Anak are from the Nefillim. We looked to our own eyes like grasshoppers and so we were in theirs....'

Notice how they didn't answer the question about the soil or the trees (Numbers 4,6 and 7), although one could argue that the size of the cluster of grapes that they brought back would indicate that the soil would have been very fertile.

However, as my congregant stated correctly, their answers, though negative were in fact honest. So why were they punished (setting aside the obvious reasoning that their faith in Gd's protection should have negated their fears?) After all, they had recently faced a much more deadly foe in the guise of the most powerful nation on Earth and look what had happened to them?

Rabbi Sacks in his essays from 'Covenant and Conversation: Numbers - The Wilderness Years' (Maggid 2017) cites two equally valid but different interpretations of the text.

The first, according to the Lubavitcher Rebbe ztl constitutes a 'radically revisionary interpretation of the episode' (Rabbi Sacks' quotation). He stipulates that the men had witnessed Gd's defeat of the Egyptians and that, when forty years later, they did enter the land (as described in this week's Haftorah), the inhabitants of Jericho were not giants. In fact, they were as fearful of the Israelites as the spies' descendants were of the Jericho-ites (if there is such a word). The Rebbe's explanation is not that the scouts were afraid of failure, quite the opposite. They were frightened of success. Life in the desert was perfect. They wanted for nothing (as we discussed last week). There was no need to conquer the Wilderness or struggle to grow food in parched soil. The scouts who were, as we have said great individuals cherished their close relationship with Gd. Entering the land would change the status quo vis a vis their current existence. Hence the desire to deliberately sabotage the mission, which is exactly what they achieved.

Where they went wrong was in misunderstanding what it was Gd wanted to achieve by bringing the people to the Land. Rabbi Sacks writes that:

"Gd wanted the Israelites to create a model society where human beings were not treated as slaves, where rulers were not worshipped as demigods, where human dignity was respected, where law was impartially administered to rich and poor alike, where no-one was destitute, no-one was abandoned to isolation, no one was above the law and no realm of life was a morality-free zone. That requires society and a society needs a land. It requires an economy, an army, fields and flocks, labour and enterprise. "

I would add, all of which cannot take place in the arid wilderness which was their current location. They had to enter the land and according to the Rebbe, what they should have realised was that, in conquering Canaan, they would have succeeded. They should not have been afraid.

The second opinion that he cites is that of the Rambam and one which I personally relate to (with no disrespect whatsoever to the Rebbe). It is closer to the plain meaning of the text.

The Rambam looks at Shemot 13.17 which states (at the start of Parashat Beshalach)

Exodus 13:17

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For Gd said "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt". So Gd led the people around by the desert road towards the Red Sea"

The Rambam comments on this, stating that 'Here, Gd led the people about, away from the direct route He had originally stated, because he feared that they may encounter hardships too great for their present strengths. So He took them by a different route in order to achieve His original object."

 

Looking at what happened subsequently, Gd's fears were realised as we read in this week's Parasha after the scouts' report regarding the Israelites’ panicked reaction:

They said to each other, “Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt.”

The Rambam (in Guide for the Perplexed 3,32) surmises that :” it is a well-known fact that travelling in the wilderness without physical comforts such as bathing produces courage, while the opposite produces faint-heartedness. Besides this, another generation rose during the wanderings that had not been accustomed to degradation and slavery.”

In other words, the current generation who had left Egypt in a physical form had not removed Egypt from its psyche. Just like you can take the Jew out of Golders Green but as I can readily admit, you can never take Golders Green out of the Jew!

The scouts and the people to whom they related their sorry story (honestly or not) were not ready to enter the land of Israel. It would require a new generation that had not known slavery to understand what it meant to be a free individual. You cannot change a society overnight (as Rabbi Sacks' writes). It takes time for this to slowly transpire. It's not so much a case that the scouts gave a terrible report (which they did and they were justifiably punished for), it's the reaction of the people who witnessed the scene and responded in a way that proved how little they were ready to move to the next stage of their emotional and intellectual development.

That could only happen in the generation of the children who were born in the desert where Egyptian slavery and everything that it entailed (including imbibing the immoral culture that was endemic to the Empire) had been expunged from the national consciousness. It would take another 38 years for this to happen. Only Joshua and Caleb, of the original twelve scouts were able to realise the others' mistake. It is for this reason that Joshua's name was changed from Hoshea (salvation) to Yehoshua (Gd delivers). Gd and Moses were aware of what would happen but they had to let the people make their own choices and we know what transpired.

In conclusion, a question over a delicious kiddush inspired the words that you have just heard. I hope that this has not deterred you from asking others! If we can learn Torah from each other, we can truly emulate the words of both the Rambam and the Rebbe. We should never fear success and at the same time, we owe it to ourselves to avoid being caught up in the negative ruminations of others. Even the greatest minds can err as is demonstrated in this week's Parasha. That we were able to survive another existential crisis and recover to be able to reconquer the land in living memory is a testament to Gd's promise that He never abandoned us, irrespective of how many times we didn’t live up to His expectations.

But that, dear friends, is a discussion for another kiddush….

Shavuah Tov.