Sh'lach L'cha

[cellio]

Last night I led the evening minyan, which meant giving a short d'var torah. Here is approximately what I said.

This week we read about the spies who were sent to scout out the land before the conquest. They came back with a bad report and the people cried and complained, saying they could not go into the land. God responded by saying "ok, have it your way", and that generation died in the wilderness instead of getting the land that God had promised them. (It is for this and not for the golden calf that the people were condemned.)

The rabbis generally agree that the people were punished for not having faith in God. Sure, taking the land might be hard, but with God on their side, was there anything they couldn't do? They should have accepted God's plan and not questioned it.

That explanation isn't wholly satisfactory, though. We are a people that wrestles with God. We don't hold with "shut up and do what you're told". Yes, we are expected to have faith in God, but we tend less toward blind faith and more toward "trust but verify". We are expected to use our God-given capacities for analysis and reason.

Ok, so what about the spies? We need to take a closer look at what happened. It is not as straightforward as I described earlier. Ten of the spies gave a bad report, and two dissented. That should have raised some questions. The spies came back with proof of the bounty of the land; the talmud tells us that it took eight men to carry a cluster of grapes and that one man was fully loaded carrying one pommegranate. This should have led the people to see value in attempting the difficult task.

But in the face of this bounty and the contradictory reports, the text does not show the people questioning the spies, asking for more details or for each side in the dispute to support its case. I couldn't find any midrash showing that, either. The people follow the majority without seeming to consider the minority.

It seems to me that we are often more ready to accept a negative report or prediction than a positive one, especically if it's about another person or nation. We are often skeptical about promises but all too ready to accept nay-saying as truth. Being a pesimist is easier than being an optimist.

So let me offer another interpretion of the people's punishment. Perhaps they were not punished for failing to simply follow, but rather for doing so. Perhaps, instead of just accepting what they'd been told, they should have questioned and wrestled, coming up with a different result.

We should evaluate what we hear. It's not a sign of distrust to want more evidence or support. Rather, when we are dilligent in evaluating what we are told, we become stronger -- more likely to reject what is not true and more likely to fully get behind what is true. May God grant us the continued ability to seek, analyze, and reason.

Comments

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the useful insights! I'm reading 3 verses tomorrow (because I'm a slacker Torah reader) and was struggling to find something interesting for our minyan's discussion.

[cellio]

Glad to hear it helped. What three verses did you read, and what did you end up talking about?

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

I read Numbers 15:20-23, which is God forgiving the people (the quote is used in the Yom Kippur liturgy) and then announcing that this generation will not live to see the Land. We chatted about the topics you brought up in your post -- it wasn't a very lively discussion, so mostly it was just me talking.

Funny thing with the Torah reading. I assumed that the scroll would be rolled to somewhere near this week's portion. Ten minutes before we were due to start the service, I started looking for my portion. I'd forgotten my tikkun at home, so I only had a chumash to go by [translation: I had the Bible broken into logical chunks with commentary and vowels, but nothing that looked just like the scroll]. Thank goodness I had an Israeli willing to help me; Michal and I spent 20 minutes looking for the parsha. I'm not sure I'd have found it at all without her. The scroll hadn't been used for months, by the looks of it.

[cellio]

Some chumashim indicate in the (Hebrew) text where the white space is (look for free-floating pehs or samechs). That can help with navigation. Others don't, and in that case you're kind of stuck. :-( (Been there, done that.)

When I'm reading I always go early to look at the scroll, not only to wind it but to read it over once lest there be calligraphic challenges. The last time I read it looked like there was a word missing (!), which would have rendered the scroll unfit; on closer examination, it was there but squished in so tightly at the end of a line that my eye had just passed right over it. Would have done it during the reading too if I hadn't previewed.

Our congreation has multiple scrolls, so usually our Shabbat morning group just has to wind from last week to this week. Every now and then, though, we find that someone used "our" scroll for, say, a holiday service the previous week, or for someone to practice his bar-mitzvah portion that's not for two months, and we have to do a lot of winding to get to the right spot. That's when it's really helpful to have the fluent people around.