Bar’chu
et YHVH ha-m’vorach, Baruch YHVH ha-m’vorach l’O’lam va-ed! Baruch ata YHVH Eloheinu
melech ha-olam asher bachar banu m’kol ha-amim, v’na -tan lanu eht Torah-to.
Baruch atah YHVH, noteyn ha-Torah. Ameyn.”
(Bless
YHVH the blessed One; Blessed is YHVH, the blessed One for all eternity.
Blessed are
you, YHVH, our Elohim, King of the Universe, you have
selected us from among all the peoples, and have given us your Torah.)
Only two sins on a national scale are singled out
during Israels’ wilderness journey: the sin of the golden calf – Shemot/Ex
32-34 and the rebellion of the scouts sent out to spy the promised- land described
in this week’s parashah. In both cases YHVH threatens Israel with annihilation.
Mosheh intervenes and pleads for YHVH’s mercy and YHVH withdraws His Hand of
destruction.
1Sa 15:23
“For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and stubbornness is as wickedness
and idolatry. ..”
Aliyah Rishon 13:1-20
Num 13:1 And יהוה spoke to Mosheh, saying,
Num
13:2 “Shelach
lecha” – send! You send men to spy out the land of Kenaʽan,(Heb – kana – humbled) which I am
giving to the children of Yisra’ĕl. Send one man from each tribe of their
fathers, everyone a leader among them.”
Num 13:3
And by the command of יהוה Mosheh sent
them from the Wilderness of Paran, all of them men who were heads of the
children of Yisra’ĕl. (Paran is believed
to be the same place as modern day Petra)
Midrash – it has been speculated that this verse implied
that the spies (prominent leaders) were sent out to see how desperately
overwhelming the circumstances were in the land. The implication is that only a
series of major miraculous interventions from YHVH would be able to save them
from being completely destroyed by the inhabitants of the land. The inhabitants
of the land were not only physically intimidating but were also steeped in
occult power and practices which caused great fear to come into any potential
enemy.
Today we too need to trust YHVH to show us the true
reality of what is happening in our world and that only His miraculous powerful
intervention will be able to save us. The challenges facing His people today
are very challenging.
Vs 4-15 give the names of the leaders of the tribes. The
tribe of Levi is excluded because YHVH was their inheritance. We must remember
that these leaders did not bring back false reports, what they saw was real,
they failed however to believe that YHVH would be able to deliver them, in
spite of all the miracles they had witnessed in the wilderness.
Num 13:16 These
are the names of the men whom Mosheh sent to spy out the land. And Mosheh
called Hoshĕa the son of Nun, Yehoshua.
A “yud” is added to “Hoshea's” name. His name then becomes
“Yehoshua” the same name Hebrew name was used for our Messiah. This name means
that “YHVH” will save or help.
Num 13:17 And
Mosheh sent them to spy out the land of Kenaʽan, and said to them, “Go up here
into the South, and go up to the mountains,
Num 13:18 and see
what the land is like, and the people who dwell in it, whether strong or weak,
whether few or many,
Num 13:19 and
whether the land they dwell in is good or evil, whether the cities they inhabit
are in camps or strongholds,
Num 13:20 and
whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are forests there or not.
And you shall be strong, and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time
was the season of the first-fruits of grapes.
Aliyah Sheni 13:21-14:7
Num 13:21 So they went up and spied out the land from
the Wilderness of Tsin as far as Reḥoḇ, near the entrance of Ḥamath.
Num 13:22
And they went up through the South and came to Ḥeḇron. And Aḥiman,
Shĕshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anaq, were there. Now Ḥeḇron had been
built seven years before Tsoʽan in Mitsrayim.
Num 13:23 And
they came to the wadi Eshkol, and cut down from there a branch with one cluster
of grapes. And they bore it between two of them on a pole, also of the
pomegranates and of the figs.
Num 13:24
That place was called the wadi Eshkol, because of the cluster which the
men of Yisra’ĕl cut down from there.
Num 13:25
And they returned from spying out the land after forty days.
Num 13:26
And they went and came to Mosheh and Aharon and all the congregation of
the children of Yisra’ĕl in the Wilderness of Paran, at Qaḏĕsh. And they
brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the
fruit of the land.
Num 13:27
And they reported to him, and said, “We went to the land where you sent
us. And truly, it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
Num 13:28
“But the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are
walled, very great. And we saw the descendants of Anaq there too.
Num 13:29
“The Amalĕqites dwell in the land of the South, while the Ḥittites and
the Yeḇusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains. And the Kenaʽanites
dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Yardĕn.”
Num 13:30 And Kalĕḇ silenced the people before Mosheh,
and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are certainly able to
overcome it.”
Num 13:31 But the men who had gone up with him said,
“We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.”
Num 13:32 And they gave the children of Yisra’ĕl an
evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through
which we have gone as spies is a land eating up its inhabitants, and all the
people whom we saw in it are men of great size.
Num 13:33 “And we saw there the Nephilim, sons of Anaq,
of the Nephilim. And we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were
in their eyes.”
1Co 10:11 And all these came upon them as examples, and
they were written as a warning to us, on whom the ends of the ages have come,
1Co 10:12 so that he who thinks he stands, let him take
heed lest he fall.
For centuries the sages
have pondered what would cause the Yisraelites to behave in such perilous ways.
Have things really changed in our days? These tragic events happened on the
ninth day of the fifth month.
“Thus
it came to pass that on the Ninth of Av
-- a day which was to bode many tragedies for the people of Israel YHVH
informed Moshe that the generation that received the Torah at Sinai was not fit
to enter the Land of Canaan. He decreed that they shall live out their lives as
wanderers in the desert until a new generation would take up the challenge of
conquering the land of Canaan and developing it as a "Set Apart land”
What Happened?
Virtually
all the commentaries pose the question: What happened? Where did they go wrong?
The
spies dispatched by Moshe were no ordinary individuals: "They were all men
of distinction, leaders of the children of Yisrael" (Bemidbar/Numbers
13:3). Furthermore, in all of history, it would be difficult to find a
generation whose lives were more saturated with miracles than theirs.
Mitsrayim/ Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth at the time, was forced to
free them from slavery when "the mighty hand" of YHVH inflicted ten
supernatural plagues. When Pharaoh's armies pursued them, the sea split to let
them pass and then drowned their pursuers. In the desert, miracles were the
stuff of their daily lives: manna from heaven was their daily bread,
"Miryam's well" (a miraculous stone which travelled along with the
Yisraelite camp) provided them with water, and "clouds of esteem"
sheltered them from the desert heat and cold, kept them clothed and shod,
destroyed the snakes and scorpions in their path, and flattened the terrain
before them to ease their way.
For
these people to doubt YHVH's ability to conquer the "mighty inhabitants"
of Canaan seems nothing less than ludicrous. Yet these were the people whose
leaders said, "We cannot go up against these people, for they are mightier
than we" and even He!
Where did they go wrong?
Chassidic
master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains that the problem was one of excess spirituality.
The
daily miracles experienced by the generation of the Exodus did more than
provide them with sustenance and protection -- they shielded them from any and
all involvement with the material world. For the first generation of our
existence as a people, they lived a wholly spiritual life, free of all material
concerns; the very food which nourished them was "bread from heaven."
Indeed,
it could not have been any other way. Our sages have said that, "The Torah
could have been given only to the eaters of the manna." To properly
receive and assimilate the divine wisdom, one must be utterly free of the
responsibilities and frustrations of physical life -- something that is
possible only in the kind of environment which our ancestors enjoyed during
their sojourn in the Sinai Desert.
This
is why, says Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the Spies and their generation were loath to
enter the land. Becoming a people with a land would entail plowing, sowing and
harvesting; it would mean engaging in commerce and levying taxes; it would
require a bureaucracy to run the land and an army to defend it. Their
underlying problem with the land was, as the spies expressed it, that "it
is a land that consumes its inhabitants" -- it consumes one's time and
energy with its corporeal demands and infringes on one's capacity to study the
divine wisdom of Torah and meditate upon its truths. They were unwilling to relinquish their spiritual utopia for the
entanglements of an earth-bound life.”
If the
"generation of the desert" would have themselves been capable of
making the transition into a people of the land, the transformation of the
material world into a home for YHVH would have been fully and perfectly
achieved in that very generation. If they would have believed in their divinely
granted capacity to "have it both ways," their sanctification of the
land would have combined their ultimate apprehension of the divine truth with a
full involvement with the natural reality.
The
generation of the desert failed to actualize the unique opportunity which
presented itself at that particular juncture of our history: for there to be a
single generation which straddled both worlds, a single generation which first
inhabited a world of utter spirituality and then proceeded to apply it to a
life on the land. Instead, they fell prey to the tendency of man to
"compartmentalize" his life, to label his experiences and attainments
as "material," "spiritual," "sacred," "mundane,"
"natural" and "supernatural," thereby delegating and
confining them to their respective domains.
“A
great majority of the physical mitzvot can be implemented only in the Land of
Yisrael, especially the agricultural laws and the laws of the offerings brought
to the Beit Ha Mikdash (Temple)... The Spies, who were on a most lofty
spiritual level, did not wish to lower themselves to the level of physical
action, preferring to remain in the desert, where they received all their needs
from above, and related to YHVH by means of the loftier levels of thought and speech
(i.e., study of Torah and prayer). They desired to draw down all the Divine
emanations into the "Land of Yisrael" that exists in the realm of
Malchut, the world of Divine speech, where there also is a
"Yerushalayim" and a "Set Apart Temple." Regarding the
physical Land of Yisrael, they said: "It is a land that consumes its
inhabitants"--if the Divine light were to be drawn down into the physical
world, our entire existence would be nullified, they thought.
But
Yehoshua/(translated in English as Joshua) and Calev/(translated in English as Caleb)
said, "The Land is very, very good." It is specifically in the Land
of Yisrael down below, and specifically by means of the mitzvot implemented by
physical action, that the truly infinite light of YHVH is drawn down--a light
that includes both the spiritual and the material, which is why it is
"very, very" good. (Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi)
Based
on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
We need to be in the land
so that He can conquer our enemies.
We need to be in the land
so that the world can see a generation of set apart people who know how to
function spiritually and physically in a way that honours YHVH.
The world is yet to see a
people who truly enjoy the blessing and protection of YHVH. This may initially
only be a very, very small remnant.
It is clear from the
prophets that there will one day In the future be a greater exodus to land of
Yisrael of all ''House of Yisrael''.
Jer 23:7 “Therefore, see, the days are coming,”
declares יהוה, “when they
shall say no more, ‘As יהוה lives who
brought up the children of Yisra’ĕl out of the land of Mitsrayim,’
Jer 23:8 but, ‘As יהוה lives who brought up and led the seed of
the house of Yisra’ĕl out of the land of the north and from all the lands where
I had driven them.’ And they shall dwell on their own soil.”
When will
those waiting to return to the land know when it is time to go?
I believe
there is a key for us to understand when and how we must return to the promised
land.
When we realize as we look back over
our lives and see that everything significant that has happened to us has all
happened to us to prepare us for the greatest moment of our lives– the return
along with a very small remnant to the land of Yisrael.
The
physical and spiritual world must both be submitted to the spiritual pattern of
the Torah – the mundane affairs of this life must be elevated to the set apart.
I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but deed. And one who speaks excessively brings on sin. Pirkei Avot 1:17
Baruch atah YHVH, Eloheynu,
Melech ha-‘Olam , asher natan lanu Toraht-emet, - v’chay-yeh o’lam
nata-b’tochenu. Baruch atah YHVH, noteyn ha-Torah. Ameyn.”
(Blessed are you Yahweh, our Elohim, King of the
U
niverse, you have given us your Torah of truth, and have planted everlasting
life within our midst. Blessed are you, YHVH giver of the Torah – Ameyn)