The spies told the Israelites all this and concluded their report by saying, “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and in the eyes of the Canaanites as well!”

With such testimony, it was no wonder that the anodyne assurances of Joshua and Caleb did not outweigh the majority report, which concluded, “We cannot go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.” The Israelites lifted their voices and wept.

It is hard not to sympathize with those Israelites. They had now spent more than a year in a harsh desert, a place of serpents and scorpions, a thirsty place with no water, a place where they could not hope to survive without God’s constant intervention. They had come from a place where they had been enslaved. Now they learned from the spies that the land to which they were headed was one that consumes its own people and whose inhabitants could easily destroy them. In their distress, the familiar hardships of Egypt seemed better than the Promised Land or even the desert. In a mad moment, they considered returning to Egypt. But even they must have realized that the best they could expect there was to be again enslaved, after being punished for fleeing. No wonder they spent the night in lamentation.

In the morning light, admonished by Moses, despondent at learning their punishment—40 years of pointless wandering in the desert, never (in their lifetimes) to achieve the tranquility and security of living in a fertile land of their own—and stunned by the sudden death of the 10 who recommended against proceeding to the Land, the people had a change of heart and decided to invade after all. In their eagerness, they flouted Moses’s warning to remain in the camp and attacked—but Moses and the Ark of the Covenant stayed behind. It was too late to undo their failure of trust. God punished the leaderless mob of invaders by allowing the Amalekites and the Canaanites to decimate them.

The shocking thing about the episode is that it �徱���’t need to happen, for physically, the people of the desert generation were anything but weaklings. Tradition reports that as the 40 years went by, they aged and died one after the other, and their corpses lay baking in the desert for centuries. One time, an Arab traveler said to a rabbi, “Come with me, and I’ll show you the Desert Dead.” He got up and went with the Arab. Deep in the desert lay a whole generation of Israelites on their backs, huge petrified corpses—so huge that the Arab could ride on his camel under one corpse’s flexed knee with his lance raised. Not only were the Desert Dead huge, but they also enjoyed mysterious protection from the elements and from men. The 6th-century Hebrew poet Yannai confirmed the formidability of the spies, saying that the men were like lions and tigers, elite warriors bearing trenchant swords.

The Israelites of the desert generation might have been as intimidating to the Canaanites as the Canaanites were to them. Indeed, God rebuked them for so misjudging their own powers: “Perhaps you seemed to yourselves to be grasshoppers, but how could you know that you appeared as grasshoppers to the Canaanites? Maybe to them you were giants!”

Were they giants or grasshoppers?

Which are we?

In thinking about the condition of the Jewish people in his own time, the poet Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik revived the image of the gigantic Desert Dead in his great poem of that name (“מתי מדבר” in Hebrew). He depicted the endless, silent desert strewn with their enormous corpses lying as if petrified in the sun, impervious to time and its vicissitudes. One by one, the desert beasts—the eagle, king of the heavens; the serpent, king of the underworld; and the lion, king of the terrestrial realm—approach, attack, are mysteriously repelled, and wander off, while the Desert Dead lie inert, oblivious to any threat, even to any presence.

But once in a long while comes a moment when the desert rebels against its fate of eternal stasis and against the Creator who has doomed it to eternal desiccation. A violent storm blows up and throws the desert into chaos. Rocks and the dunes seem to rise up against the heavens, as if trying to throw off the chains that have bound them to eternal sameness. With the desert, the Desert Dead, too, are at last roused. They wake and sit up, their eyes flashing with their ancient martial vigor. Their hands reach for their swords, and their voices sound loud over the crashing tumult of the raging desert:

Mighty warriors we!
The last of the slaves,
The first of the free! . . .
We and heaven’s eagles have sipped freedom at its source!
Who is lord over us? . . .
In the face of heaven and all its spite,
Here we are, ready to storm, to conquer!
And if God has withdrawn from us,
If His Ark will not move from its place—
We will conquer without Him!

                                   (Translation from Bialik’s Hebrew by Raymond Scheindlin)

The moment passes. The sun and the silence return, the desert goes quiet, and the Desert Dead are again recumbent, impassive, immutable. For a moment, they had glimpsed their own power—and for once, correctly assessed their own vigor and potential—but they have fallen back into their native passivity and once again have lost the power to affect anything, even themselves. The poem concludes:

The silence returns as before.
The desert stands barren.

Were they giants or grasshoppers? Which are we?

The imaginative elaborations of the story of the spies (from  and 14) used in this piece can be found among the rabbinic traditions collected by Louis Ginzberg in Legends of the Jews (7 vols.; Philadelphia, 1909-46) 3:261-78; their sources are identified ibid. 6: 92-96. Yannai’s poem is found in Z. M. Rabinovitz, (מחזור פיוטי יניי 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1987) 2:48-49.

This commentary was originally published in 2015

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

וַיִּקְרָא מֹשֶׁה לְהוֹשֵׁעַ בִּן־נוּן יְהוֹשֻׁעַ

Moshe called Hoshea the son of Nun ‘Yehoshua’” (Num. 13:16).

Midrash Rabbah (Sotah 34b and Rashi on this verse) tells us that this name change was in fact a prayer for Yehoshua to be saved from the counsel of the other scouts, as the verb “called” can also refer to prayer (cf. Jeremiah 29:12) and the name “Yehoshua” can mean “May YHWH save him.” In consonantal Hebrew, the change from Hoshea/הושע to Yehoshua/יהושע is achieved by the addition of the single letter yod, י. But the midrash teaches us that this was no ordinary י; God had been saving it for this moment in time. When God changed Avram and Sarai’s names to Avraham (via the addition of a medial ה) and Sarah (via the replacement of the final י with a ה), the letter י complained to God: “Because I am the smallest of all the letters, you have taken me out of the name of the righteous Sarah!” God appeased this י by telling it that its new location would be at the beginning of Yehoshua’s name. This special little י knew that despite its size it was fulfilling a holy purpose in the world by being a part of a righteous person’s name, and it �徱���’t want to settle for anything less (Bereishit Rabbah 47:1).

The י may be the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet but it is important. Beyond its place in the names of biblical righteous people, י stands in the most prominent place of the most prominent name of all: the beginning of God’s holy name, the Tetragrammaton, יקוק/YHWH. The י also played an important role in YHWH’s creation of the world. Isaiah 26:4 reads:

בִּטְחוּ בַיהֹוָה עֲדֵי־עַד כִּי בְּיָהּ יְהֹוָה צוּר עוֹלָמִים׃

Trust in YHWH forever, indeed, in Yah, YHWH, the Eternal Rock.[1]

Midrash Tehillim (114:1). reads the second half of this verse in an acontextual hermeneutic manner, as is the midrashic way: “for with “Y-H” (the letters yod/י and heh/ה) God formed the worlds.” That is, God used the two letters to create two worlds, this World and the World to Come. But which letter was used to create which World?! Genesis 2:4 reads: אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ בְּ_הִבָּרְאָם, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” The ה in the word בְּהִבָּֽרְאָ֑ם is written small in the Torah, serving as an invitation for rabbinic interpretation. Midrashically, the word can be read as if it were vocalized בְּ׳ה׳־בְּרָאָם (with the letter ה God created them). Thus, the heavens and earth, i.e., this World, were created with the letter ה, and the World to Come was created with the letter י. What a large feat for such a small letter!

Elsewhere, Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, teaches that just as the written letter י floats above the other letters on a line of text, the י represents the metaphysical—that which transcends the earthly physical world and its constraints of time, matter, and space. Thus, י is truly the letter of the metaphysical World to Come. The letter י is also the recipient of a few special written forms in a Torah scroll. The text of each Torah scroll is written precisely, with certain layout formats, certain words beginning each column of text, certain words written with seemingly superfluous or missing letters, and certain letters written in unusual forms, e.g., upside down, inverted, majuscule/enlarged, minuscule (such as the aforementioned ה in Genesis 2:4), and with dots placed above them.[2]  One occurrence of the letter י with a special written form appears in this week’s parashah where an enlarged י is found in Moshe’s plea to God to muster God’s strength to forgive the nation for their rebellion:[3]

וְעַתָּה יִגְדַּל־נָא כֹּחַ אֲדֹנָי

Now may the power of the Lord be magnified (Num. 14:17).

This enlarged י is understood by biblical commentators in various ways. One explanation is that the י, which has a numerical value of ten, is a hint to the forefathers—and particularly Avraham, who underwent ten tests of faith—that in their merit God should forgive the nation (Paaneah Raza, Tur). R. Bahya explains that the י, which represents the divine name YHWH and, therefore, God’s attribute of Mercy, indicates Moshe’s plea for God’s attribute of Mercy to ascend and prevail over God’s attribute of Justice (represented by the divine name Elohim).[4] Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests that the enlarged י in the word יִגְדַּל / “may the power be magnified,” indicates the magnitude of the strength God would need to forgive the people— a level greater than all the strength God had showed in all the miracles performed thus far, both in Egypt and throughout the wilderness.

The Jewish people share a kinship with the letter י. The י is the smallest letter and the Jewish people are the smallest nation, as acknowledged in Deuteronomy 7:7:

כִּי־אַתֶּם הַמְעַט מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים

for you are the fewest of all peoples.

But despite our size, we can, like the letter י, strive both individually and collectively for holiness and not settle for anything less. We can be great and even limitless, and not let our size hold us back. We can strive for transcendence, and always channel faith, divine mercy, and willpower. Let us strive to learn these lessons from the י and live our lives in a manner resonant with this tiny but great letter. And as we do so, may the letter י, representing YHWH, protect us from negative influence and save us from harm, as it did Yehoshua many years ago.

[1] Shadal (R. Shmuel David Luzzatto, 17th century, Italy) explains the word יכִּ in this verse as a word conveying emphasis (i.e., “indeed”) rather than introducing a reason (i.e., “for, because”), as is prevalent in poetic passages.

[2] There are many different traditions regarding writing majuscule and minuscule letters in a sefer Torah; few of them are universal.

[3] This majuscule yod, רבתי י, though not universal, is attested in the commentaries of the Paaneach Raza (Rabbi Yitzchak ben Yehudah haLevi, 13th century, N. France), Rabbeinu Bahya (Rabbi Bahya ben Asher, 13-14th century, Spain), the Tur (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, 14th century, Germany/Spain), Minchat Shai (Rabbi Yedidyah Shlomo Norzi, 16-17th century, Italy), and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th century, Germany).

[4] Midrash Aggadah (Buber) and Rashi, Genesis 1:1, s.v. אלהים ברא.

The grant has yielded many positive outcomes. One particularly striking data point is the way in which the capital improvements have given camps “something to talk about” vis-à-vis inclusion. Having a fully accessible building and/or newly paved roads and widened doorways offers camps a unique opportunity: these projects are visible expressions of their inclusion commitments and serve as springboards for conversation.  For all the camps in our study, inclusion is foundational to how they understand their mission and the environment they strive to create. And now, when camps speak to their campers, staff, families, and other stakeholders, they have something tangible they can point to that represents the significance of inclusion and the ways in which they are investing in realizing this value in their camp communities.

Yet not all reminders have to be so grand. This week’s parsha, Shelah Lekha, explores something small and often hidden from view that serves a similar purpose. God gives B’nai Yisrael the mitzvah of tzitzit. In Numbers 15: 38–39, God says to Moses:

דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וְאָמַרְתָּ֣ אֲלֵהֶ֔ם וְעָשׂ֨וּ לָהֶ֥ם צִיצִ֛ת עַל־כַּנְפֵ֥י בִגְדֵיהֶ֖ם לְדֹרֹתָ֑ם וְנָ֥תְנ֛וּ עַל־צִיצִ֥ת הַכָּנָ֖ף פְּתִ֥יל תְּכֵֽלֶת׃

Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner.

וְהָיָ֣ה לָכֶם֮ לְצִיצִת֒ וּרְאִיתֶ֣ם אֹת֗וֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם֙ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺ֣ת יְ-הֹוָ֔ה וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְלֹֽא־תָת֜וּרוּ אַחֲרֵ֤י לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַחֲרֵ֣י עֵֽינֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּ֥ם זֹנִ֖ים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃

That shall be your fringe; look at it and recall all the commandments of Adonai and observe them, so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge. 

In the same way that the Yashar projects are physical reminders of camps’ inclusive values and powerfully shape camp culture, tzitzit function to remind B’nei Yisrael of their covenantal relationship with God and encourage them to fulfill the mitzvot that God has commanded. Like camps’ newly accessible spaces, tzitzit are ever-present symbols that, at their best, help B’nei Yisrael recall their most precious values and activate their capacity to realize these ideals. 

The Biblical verses hint at a couple particularly important messages that the tzitzit are meant to impart:

At the end of verse 38, God specifies that the tzitzit include tekhelet, a cord of sky-blue wool. The Gemara in Sotah 17a asks: “What is different about sky-blue from all other colors such that it was specified for the mitzva of ritual fringes?”  Rabbi Meir explains: “It is because sky-blue dye is similar in its color to the sea, and the sea is similar to the sky, and the sky is similar to the Throne of Glory . . . The color of sky-blue dye acts as an indication of the bond between the Jewish people and the Divine Presence.”

The fringes and the tekhelet in the threads are visible reminders of God and our Godliness.  In this way, they aim to communicate that we have sacred purpose and should strive to live lives of meaning and integrity. At the same time, they symbolize our connectedness.  The tekhelet is intricately tied with a bundle of other threads: we have responsibilities to each other, and we have an obligation to build holy community. Per the Sotah text, the tzitzit and tekhelet impel us to look out towards the sea and up towards the sky and the Thone of Glory—to think expansively about our personal and communal purpose and work to fulfill our full potential.

The mitzvah of tzitzit also come with a warning:

וְלֹֽא־תָת֜וּרוּ אַחֲרֵ֤י לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַחֲרֵ֣י עֵֽינֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּ֥ם זֹנִ֖ים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃

Do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge.

It is all too easy to be led astray. Whether motivated by fear, jealousy, passion, or pain, our “hearts” and “eyes” can prevent us from making good choices and being our best selves. It is no coincidence that the tzitzit are commanded on the heels of the story of the meraglim, the twelve scouts sent to survey the land. Of the twelve scouts, ten came back with a negative assessment while only two, Yehoshua and Calev, were hopeful about B’nei Yisrael’s prospects. Why the different accounts? One explanation is that the ten were paralyzed by fear. They saw bounty and goodness, but fear—of their enemies, the unknown, battle, etc.—distorted their perception. In this way, the tzitzit are presented as a corrective to this challenge: they are to serve as a reminder for us to see the world as it is and not allow our emotions to taint our perspective and obscure possibility.     

There is an oft-cited story in the Talmud Menahot 44a about a man whose “four ritual fringes came and slapped him on his face,” prompting him to change course and recommit himself to a life of Torah and learning. Recent research has confirmed that the experience of the man in this story is not uncommon. Based on the work of psychologist Ara Norenzaya and others, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explains that “what makes the difference to our behavior is less what we believe than the phenomenon of being reminded, even subconsciously, of what we believe.”[1]

Tzitzit is but one example of this in Jewish life, and like summer camps’ newly accessible buildings and grounds, there are likely many other “reminders” that might be instructive: What else do we have at our disposal that might serve a similar purpose?  What tools and symbols might we use to help us act in accordance with our “better angels?” 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

[1]

It wasn’t just when he was talking to shrubbery and confronting tyrants at the beginning of his journey that he was in the dark about what his future held. Even deep into his leadership, even after he had weathered rebellion and despair, even after he had personal encounters with the Divine, he had no idea what was coming next.

He was charged with taking these former slaves into the Land of Israel, a place about which he knew nothing. Were there a lot of people in the land, or just a few? Were they strong or weak? Were the towns open or fortified? And the soil—was it rich or poor?

Moses had no idea what he was getting into, so he sent scouts to learn more and bring back a report with useful information.

They went to see what was “out there,” and when they came back, they revealed not what was out there, but what was inside of them.

Famously, they of the people they encountered, וַנְּהִ֤י בְעֵינֵ֙ינוּ֙ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֔ים וְכֵ֥ן הָיִ֖ינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶֽם / “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Num. 13:33).

Then two of the twelve spies—Joshua and Caleb—told the people a different story. “Don’t worry,” they said. “It’s a great land, flowing with milk and honey, and the people are our prey!” They went to the same places as the other spies, saw the same things, yet told a very different story.

As the medieval commentator known as the Or Hahaim , the ten who said the land is unattainable and the two who said it is attainable both use the exact same data to justify their claims.

Of course, the spies are not responding to data—nobody ever does. At least in human affairs, data is literally meaningless until we put it in context and map it against other things we know.

Consider, for instance, 41.49413° N, 73.95983° W. These are map coordinates, meaningless until our phone plots them against some pre-existing information: a map. Indeed, Google Maps can reveal that those are the coordinates of , a great local deli. But Google Maps is not reality. Indeed, those exact same coordinates on a hiking map below will reveal a spot close to some excellent hiking trails.

For our purposes, we can imagine those coordinates as “experience.” Here’s that exact same experience rendered on two different maps:

Now, there is obviously such a thing as an incorrect map—no reasonable rendering of 41.49413° N, 73.95983° W could locate us in the Sinai Peninsula, for instance.

Both of these, however, are accurate maps, at least at the time they were created. One highlights elements of the built landscape, the other highlights trails in the forest. Both are accurate, but they are clearly different and serve different purposes—Google Maps won’t help us in the forest, and the trail map won’t help us find tacos.

We don’t only contextualize new experiences and unfamiliar territory. Most of us map people more than we map terrain. We contextualize the people in our lives all day every day, usually with no recognition that we are doing so.

We have experiences with our friends and loved ones and make sense of those experiences by fitting them into the maps that we carry in our brains. When we say that a person acted “out of character,” what we mean is they acted in a way that didn’t fit with the map, or pre-existing narrative, that we had for them.

We might lament our relative powerlessness to change the data of our lives on things that really matter: the temperament of our spouse, the behavior of our children, the legacy of our parents. We can’t change the geographic coordinates in which we find ourselves. However, we can shape the maps we use to make sense of experience.

The noted sociologist Brene Brown said “If I could give men and women in relationships and leaders and parents one hack, I would give them, ‘the story I’m telling is . . . ’ Basically, you’re telling the other person your reading of the situation—and simultaneously admitting that you know it can’t be 100% accurate.”

How might our biblical tale be different if the spies came back from their scouting, described as simply as possible what they saw, and then said, “The story I’m telling about the land is . . . .”

Unlike Moses’s spies, we are both, and simultaneously, the navigator and the mapmaker. We can make choices about what we want to emphasize on the personal maps of our loved ones. Do we emphasize their strengths or their weaknesses? Do we rehearse the story of their flaws or their grandeur? Do we see them as grasshoppers or as giants?

Our biblical spies couldn’t differentiate between the terrain and their map of the terrain. Most of them read their map in a negative fashion, two of them read their map in a positive fashion, and none of them had the self-awareness or modesty to recognize that their interpretation was not reality itself. In part because of their hubris, our biblical ancestors wandered in the desert for 40 years.

We don’t have to do that.

We can recognize that the maps we use to make sense of our loved ones are just maps—not reality itself. Maps are absolutely vital—we would literally be lost in the woods without them. But some maps are inaccurate, and all maps go out of date eventually.

We can be smarter than the spies and stop confusing the maps inside of us with the terrain outside of us.

Knowing that different people have different maps might save us from wandering in relationships that are no more nourishing than the desert.

Perhaps the next time we find ourselves in conflict with someone we love, we can have the wisdom and courage to say, “Based on what I’m seeing, the story I’m telling is this.” Then, if we are feeling very, very brave, we can ask, “Based on what ��dz�’r�� seeing, what story are you �ٱ�������Բ�?”

May we all be blessed with that courage, and with friends and partners who share it.

Read more about Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek .

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

But the person who transgresses with a high hand, whether native or sojourner—he reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from the midst of his people. For he has shown contempt for the word of the Lord [devar adonai bazah], and God’s commandment he has violated. That person shall surely be cut off, his crime is upon him.

In the biblical context, “has shown contempt for the word of the Lord” clearly means intentionally and brazenly violating one of God’s commands. But rather typically, the rabbinic tradition attributes several different meanings to the phrase (BT Sanhedrin 99a). Here are among the alternatives offered for what constitutes “contempt for God’s word”:

•   Saying “There is no torah [i.e. instruction] from Heaven”

•   Epicureanism [for the Rabbis, one who denies divine providence]

•   One who exposes [presumably, to public derision] certain facets of the Torah

•   [Rabbi Meir’s view]: One who studies Torah but does not teach it to others

•   [Rabbi Nehorai’s view]: One who has the time and ability to delve into Torah study but does not do so

•   [Rabbi Ishmael’s view]: One who engages in idolatry

But the definition of “contempt for God’s word” that is most far-reaching, and thus most raises the eyebrows, is this:

An alternative teaching [tanya ideikh]: Contempt for God’s word applies even to one who concedes that the whole Torah comes from Heaven, but makes an exception for one particular verse of the Torah, saying that the Holy One did not pronounce that one verse, but rather Moses did so on his own. Moreover, even one who makes no exception for any of the verses in the Torah but does make exception for one or another grammatical inference, or logical deduction, or gezerah shavah,^[1] saying that they are of human origin—such a person has shown contempt for God’s word.

This expresses a stunningly maximalist and far-reaching point of view that, although it is brought here as “another teaching,” became all too mainstream in Jewish thought through the ages, to our own day. The idea is this: What makes inferences and deductions valid is not that they are the products of sound human reasoning, but rather because they have been transmitted to us by authoritative texts or teachers. This is a form of what is called fideism, the doctrine that faith is far more the guarantor of ultimate truth than is human reason. 

A particularly crisp example of this is found in a “confession” by the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, who was the head of the Har Etzion Yeshivah in Gush Etzion. In it, he recalls how in his teenage years certain biblical passages troubled him greatly because they seemed so clearly unethical.  He specifically mentions the command to annihilate every last Amalekite indiscriminately. But then he remembered something about the venerated Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. It was said that women who gave birth to unwanted children knew that they could leave those children at night on the doorstep of Reb Chaim’s house, and that they would be taken in and cared for. Lichtenstein wrote:

I then recalled having recently read that Rabbi Chaim Brisker would awaken nightly to see if someone hadn’t placed a foundling at his doorstep. I knew that I slept quite soundly [i.e., not worrying about the woes of others], and I concluded that if such a paragon of hesed coped with these laws [e.g., the annihilation of the Amalekite children], evidently the source of my anxiety did not lie in my greater sensitivity but in my weaker faith. And I set myself to enhancing it.

Build faith, and trust in it, rather than in the sensitivity born of one’s reasoning.

But in sharp contrast to this, consider a remarkable contemporary midrash that takes issue with the rabbinic interpretation of a biblical law that in its own way sacrifices children on the altar of religious piety and fealty. It is the law of mamzerut, a biblical injunction that, according to rabbinic understanding, stigmatizes for life as ineligible for marriage a child whose conception was the result of a severe sexual infraction by its parents. What makes this midrash especially remarkable is that it was written by an Orthodox woman, Rivkah Lubitch, who has standing in rabbinic courts in Israel to advocate for women’s rights.^[2]

There are five who weep over mamzerim, and those tears make their way to God’s Throne of Glory. They are:

•   The mamzer whose status is known to all

•   The mamzer who alone is aware of his mamzerut

•   The woman who knows that her child is a mamzer

•   The father who cannot make himself known to his own child as his father, without revealing a status that the child does not know

•   The woman who aborted her fetus because she knew it would be born a mamzer

And some add a sixth who weeps: that very fetus that was never born, who cries out each day and says, “Mommy, mommy, why did you not give birth to me?”

Tanot^[3] was asked this question: What does God do when a mamzer is born and the community brands him or her for life—and for subsequent generations—as such? And she answered as follows: “At such moments, God cries out with a loud wailing: ‘These things you are doing in My name never entered My mind; they never entered My mind.’”^[4]

Noteworthy here is that by saying that the biblical verse, or even just the rabbinic interpretation of it “never entered God’s mind,” the condemnation of the “alternative teaching” must inexorably follow: it is contempt for God’s word!

Perhaps the strongest contrast, however, to the “alternative teaching” and to Lichtenstein’s fideism appears in a brief story that Martin Buber told about a conversation he had with a deeply observant Jew. They were discussing the story of the prophet Samuel telling King Saul that he has lost God’s favor for not having completely annihilated Amalek. Buber said that he was unable to accept this as a message from God. His interlocutor challenged him with a fiery glance and said “What do you believe then?” And Buber said “I believe that Samuel has misunderstood God.” And then the story continues in this perhaps unexpected way:

The angry countenance opposite me became transformed, as if a hand had passed over it, soothing it . . . . “Well,” said the man with a positively gentle, tender clarity, “I think so too.”(“Autobiographical Fragments,” The Philosophy of Martin Buber)

Portrayed here is a man who was tortured by two beliefs: (i) that it was his religious duty to believe that everything in scripture was the word of God, and (ii) that Saul received an unfair punishment for having shown mercy and not cruelty. But then came Buber’s suggestion that one did not have to believe that God commanded cruelty; instead, consider that we humans can misunderstand God. That explains why the strain in the face of Buber’s acquaintance became relaxed and at ease. God was “off the hook” and did not have to be thought of as making unethical demands.

One can follow the “alternative teaching” and ascribe every passage—even those that offend our moral intuitions—to the divine will, or we can recognize that fallible humans writing of God may mistake the intentions of the God of goodness and mercy. And so, the stark question poses itself:  Which of these is truly to invite contempt for God’s word?

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

From a literary point of view Shelah Lekha is anything but a simple story. Perhaps the most prominent question the story raises is: Who is to blame for the disastrous consequences of the reconnaissance mission? On the surface it appears that the failure of nerve evidenced by ten of the twelve scouts directly causes the people’s cowardly reaction. After listening to the scouts, the people wail that it would have been better to have died in Egypt than to “die by the sword” (14:3) now. By those words, they choose to forget the 400 years of oppression in Egypt and God’s miraculous delivery of them from slavery. They do not recognize God’s saving hand or understand that the power that could split the Sea of Reeds could also help them defeat the inhabitants of Canaan.

But perhaps the blame is not only with the scouts or with the people. After all, Moses sends the scouts on their mission and asks them to evaluate the situation from a military point of view. The list of his questions leads to their pessimistic assessment of the situation. Even more troubling is the fact that the origin of the scouts’ mission was through God’s command. The parashah begins with God saying to Moses, “Send men to scout out the Land of Canaan . . .” (13:2) Isn’t it that command from on high that sets this whole tale down its tragic path? Traditional commentators were well aware of this possible interpretation and aimed to undercut such a reading. Rashi, for example, picks up on the two-word Hebrew command “shelah lekha” (in which the second word “you” can be viewed as superfluous) and understands it, midrashically, as “for yourself”: “Do this for yourself,” Rashi says, “I am not commanding you to do it, but if you want to, send them.” Midrash Tanhuma (Shelah 1) takes it even a step further stating that God actually �徱���’t want Moses to send out the spies—an interpretation that contradicts the plain meaning of the opening words of our parashah!

The Bible itself reinterprets the mission. In Deuteronomy Moses recounts the story of the twelve scouts and says that the people came and asked him to designate people to spy out the Land. God’s command does not even appear.

But no matter who is to blame for the impetus for the mission, we are left to ask, what exactly did the spies do wrong? What was it about their report that led to God’s disapproval? Were they lying? And if they weren’t, why should they be punished for simply reporting what they saw?

I suggest that the spies failed not by misrepresenting what they had seen in the Land but rather, they failed in more subtle ways. First, they �徱���’t take into account the social impact of their words. Their report brought despair and a virtual rebellion into the Israelite camp. While each of the spies was a “chieftain among them” (13:2)—they misunderstood the essence of leadership and proved themselves unworthy of the trust Moses had placed in them. To be a true leader one has to understand who your followers are and what support they need from you.

And secondly, the spies failed not by misstating the truth about the Land, but by their own interpretation of what they had discovered. True, the nations of Canaan were powerful. But the self-perception of the scouts was what brought about their downfall. Caleb announced that they would succeed against the inhabitants; the others proclaimed that they would fail. Surely both Caleb and the ten doubters had scouted the same land, seen the same things. But the doubters stated, “all the people that we saw . . . are men of great size . . . and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (13:33) This is the most telling line of all. In their own eyes the Israelite spies were weak. It was a failure of their own self-understanding, not the reality of the situation that was the problem.

Interestingly enough, the Torah in verses 13:21–24 never tells us what the spies actually saw. We only learn what happened from the participants themselves. Truth, the Torah suggests, is the perception of reality that each individual brings. If, as the midrash Pesikta deRav Kahana tells us, each person at Sinai received the revelation in his or her own individual and appropriate way, what we have in this week’s parashah is the terrifying other side of that midrash. Each person can doubt God’s power in his or her own individual way. Thus the story of Parsahat Shelah Lekha forms a kind of undoing of the revelation at Sinai which we celebrated just a few weeks ago at Shavuot. The people were condemned to die out in the desert because they had failed God’s expectations—having experienced Sinai through the power of each individual soul, they fail God by their very human weaknesses.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Of course, I’m referring to Numbers 13:17–20. Yes, Shelah Lekha is the first example of Israel education in Jewish history. Thinking of this story as some kind of archetypal case study for Israel education, what can we learn? What can the story teach us about the dilemmas we face in talking about Israel today?

Firstly, Moses’s instructions to the spies display some of the same problems that we sometimes find in contemporary Israel education. The questions he asks are pretty basic: just the surface facts. “How many people? What style of fortifications? Are there trees?” Unfortunately, we often see the same flaws in contemporary iterations of Israel education: for many teachers, the default educational move is to teach Israel’s geography and history from a facts-centric perspective. We thrust a weird triangle shape (or, if we’re left-wing, a shoe-with-heel shape) under our students’ noses, and ask them to mark Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Eilat (always the easiest one). If we’re really creative, we draw this map really big and put it on the floor. But Israel remains an abstract, academic, artificial subject, removed from children’s real life experiences as young American Jews. To borrow the terms of the philosopher of Jewish education Michael Rosenak (��”l), we teach “about” Israel, creating a “secondary relationship”: “one can instruct about a tradition in a secondary relationship, but one cannot teach it; one cannot educate toward commitment to it” (Commandments and Concerns, 106, italics in original).

What’s the result of this kind of presentation of Israel? The spies all seem to gain a great deal of knowledge. They have the answers to Moses’s questions. They would score highly on a quiz about Israel. But that’s not enough. The spies teach us that knowledge alone doesn’t create commitment. The first major challenge when teaching about Israel is to spark in our students the motivation to seek knowledge.

A second core question revolves around when to introduce children to the more difficult, frustrating, and perhaps alienating aspects of modern Israel. Should we adopt a “love first” approach in which students are only exposed to these complex issues when (or if?) they are already committed to Israel? Or should we adopt a more holistic approach, in which from day one we share with children, in developmentally appropriate ways, the flaws and failures of Israel along with its wonders and beauties, hoping to engender in students a love of and commitment to Israel that is robust enough to include critique about its problems?

Rashi offers a delightful insight on verse 17 that might be applied to this perennial question. Sensitive reader of the text that he is, he picks up on the differences between what biblical critics now refer to as the J and E sources that have been woven together here. J has the spies going only into the area around Hebron and the hills of Judah, whereas E has them going throughout Northern Israel too. Rashi (who, of course, sees the text as a unified whole) wonders why in verse 17 it suggests to start with the Negev (in other words, the Southern part of Judah, according to Jacob Milgrom). Rashi’s answer, quoting from Midrash Tanhuma, is that God is like a wise merchant: first he shows a prospective purchaser the inferior goods, then the best stuff. This might be too extreme an approach for us, but perhaps Rashi can reassure us that showing “inferior goods” along with “the best stuff” can instill a Caleb-like complex commitment to Israel. (The flaw in this argument, of course, is that God’s educational success rate in Shelah Lekha is only 17 percent, or 2 in 12! Perhaps this approach isn’t for everyone . . .)

Finally, in verses 25–33, we get a glimpse of a third major challenge that we face when discussing Israel. Two different people look at the same facts, the same empirical situation, the same set of events, and interpret them not just differently, but wildly differently: so differently that each sees the other’s position as disastrous for the future of the entire Jewish people. The difference between Caleb’s position and the rest of the spies’ position is not nuance; it is absolute. It’s a zero-sum game.

So too, much contemporary teaching about Israel is plagued with zero-sumness, the same kind of zero-sumness that has infected much of our contemporary political lives. In today’s polarized discourse, we no longer have different opinions, or contrasting arguments, or diverse positions; we have different facts. Fake news. Post-truth era. Facts in one bubble that are fiction in the other. You’re either Caleb or the spies.

Israel education continues to deal with high stakes situations for the Jewish people, and too often we respond to positions that we don’t agree with by resorting to the kind of polarized and shrill discourse that we see in Numbers 14:1–4. You’re leading us to disaster, the Israelites cry, to “fall by the sword.” Here, the Torah doesn’t offer us a satisfactory resolution, but a later Jewish tradition, recorded in Targum Jonathan, suggests that this event took place on Tishah Be’av. The association of this archetypal zero-sum situation with the archetypal day of Jewish tragedy offers us a cautionary tale. When we are presenting Israel and we find ourselves in situations where it’s either “Caleb or the spies,” with each side seeing the other as disastrous and traitorous, it behooves us to pull each side back from the brink and try to create open, respectful, thoughtful dialogue about the issues that might let us avoid 40 more years of wilderness.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).