This past week at Shabbat services (9:45 am – 12 noon followed each week by lunch with the community) we discussed the notorious incident of the twelve scouts.
As the Israelites are approaching the land of their ancestors, God instructs them to send twelve representatives, from each of the tribes, to scout the land—to understand the country, its current inhabitants, the level of fortification, the soil, and to bring back some of its fruits and reports.
What transpires turns out to be, along with the incident of the golden calf, the nadir of the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness: according to the scouts’ report, “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey… However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large… We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we… The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size… and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Numbers 13: 27-28, 31-33).
What was supposed to be a mission to help better understand, and prepare for, the remainder of the journey ahead leads instead to an instinct to turn back altogether from the calling of the people to go forth to the promised land.
And the rest of the Israelite people go along with the report of the scouts: “The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night. All the Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron. ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt,” the whole community shouted at them, ‘or if only we might die in this wilderness! Why is יהוה taking us to that land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be carried off! It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!’ And they said to one another, ‘Let us head back for Egypt'” (Numbers 14:1-4).
The rabbis of the Talmud interpreted this response by the people to have planted the seed for our subsequent dispersion into exile. “‘And the people wept that night,’ [it said in Numbers 14:1]. ‘That night’ was the night of the Ninth of Av [the date that became the subsequent destruction of the Temple and the initiation of exile]. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to them: You wept without cause that night, and I will therefore make this an eternal day of mourning for you” (Taanit 29a).
For those of us studying the Torah portion in services together, this response begged the question: Granted that the response of the scouts and the people was not the ideal response; still, why did it warrant such a harsh verdict from God, according to rabbinic tradition? Why, according to rabbinic tradition, did it presage subsequent suffering? What can we learn from this text for our own lives?
Some participants in the Torah discussion lifted up the relational nature of the dynamic: God had called the people forth from oppression, had helped lift them out of oppression to freedom, brought them to Sinai and formed a covenant with them, and just as things appeared to get hard, the people stepped back from their obligations. Analogizing it to our engagement with the world around us, participants imagined the notion of not doing what we can to heal our broken world even though it seems daunting, as a means of understanding the incident with the scouts.
Other Torah commentators pointed to the notion that the failure of the scouts can warn us about the dangers of failing to believe in ourselves. “Because the Israelites saw themselves as ‘grasshoppers,’ weak and ineffectual, they assumed that others saw them the same way,” the commentary from Etz Hayim writes. Citing Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787-1859) it continues, “Why are you so concerned about how you look in the eyes of the Canaanites, to the point that it distracts you from your sacred task?”
By failing to believe in ourselves, by being so concerned with how others perceive us, we stop ourselves short of our potential to contribute to the world. We and the world suffer for, not because of some externally imposed punishment but because we aren’t sufficiently nurturing the seeds of what we have to offer.
It was a powerful message.
Two Ships
This week has been a tale of a tragedy of two ships. Many of us have been captivated by the exploits of the Titan this week, a submersible craft with five people on board traveling 13,000 feet underwater to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. We learned today that it is likely that all five are dead after what is being called a “catastrophic implosion.” We pray for the comfort of their families, and that their memories be blessings in this world.
Perhaps less attention has been given to another devastating tragedy aboard a ship this week, when an approximately 90-foot fishing boat, the Adriana, carrying up to 750 migrants from Syria, Egypt, and Pakistan, sank, killing all but 104 survivors. No matter the dangers of the journey, countless people continue to endure wretched conditions and fatal risks to reach better living conditions in different parts of the world, be Middle Eastern or North African migrants to Europe, or Central American migrants to the United States.
As Jews, each chapter of our history has been forged in conditions that led us to migrate: exile from Jerusalem, expulsion from Spain, waves of emigration from Czarist Russia, to name just a few examples. The mitzvah “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9) remains as pressing now as it ever did. The migrant crisis has not stopped, and we need to work for conditions that do not lead to what took place on the Adriana with hundreds lost. We pray deeply for the comfort of their families, and that their memories be blessings in this world.
Shabbat Shalom—may you be blessed to experience a Shabbat of peace,
