Parashat Shlah
The Eyes Have It
The commandment of
tzitzit (fringes) follows the
incident of the spies, reminding us to enhance our vision with faith and see
new possibilities.
By Rabbi Randy E. Sheinberg
The following article
is reprinted with permission from The Union of
American Hebrew Congregations. For
a free e-mail subscription to the UAHC's weekly Torah commentary, please click here.
Parashah Overview
- Moses
sends 12 spies to the Land of Israel to report on the inhabitants and the
country. Despite the positive report of Joshua and Caleb, the people are
frightened. (Numbers 13:114:10)
- God
threatens to wipe out the Children of Israel but relents when Moses
intercedes on their behalf. To punish the people, God announces that all
those who left Egypt would not enter the Land of Israel except for Joshua
and Caleb. (Numbers 14:1145)
- Moses
instructs the Israelites regarding setting aside challah, the observance of the Sabbath, how to treat
strangers, and the laws of tzitzit
(fringes). (Numbers 15:141)
Focal Point
Adonai [God] spoke
to Moses, saying, "Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving
to the Israelite people; send one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each
one a chieftain among them." So Moses, by Adonai's command, sent them out
from the wilderness of Paran, all the men being leaders of the Israelites.
(Numbers 13:13)
At the end of forty days, they returned from scouting the
land.
This is what they told him [Moses]: "We came to the land you sent
us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However,
the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified
and very large
." Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, "Let
us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely
overcome it." But the men who had gone up with him said, "We cannot
attack that people, for it is stronger than we." Thus they spread
calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, "The
country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the
people that we saw in it are men of great size; we saw the N'philim there--the Anakites
are part of the N'philim--and we
looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them."
(Numbers 13:2533)
Your Guide
What is the purpose of the scouts' mission in the Torah
portion? How does it differ from that of the scouts in the haftarah portion
(Joshua 2:124)?
What is the nature of the scouts' transgression according to
the Torah portion? Does their punishment fit the crime?
Who issues the command for the scouts to enter the land? Why
does God allow and even command this action, given the results that ensue?
Why is the commandment to make fringes on the corners of one's
garment placed at the end of this Torah portion after the incident involving
the scouts? Is there any connection between the two? (Hint: The word tzitzit is connected to l'hatziz, "to glimpse or peek.")
By the Way
"The land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite
people" [Numbers 13:2]. The Torah added another condition to make the spy
mission an acceptable one: It is that those who do the spying be aware it was
God who was going to give them this land. The Israelites would not be able to
conquer even a single town in that land by themselves. The only way they would
be able to do so would be "if I give it to them" [Numbers 13:2]. (Or HaChayim)
"Adonaispoke
to Moses, saying, Sh'lach-l'cha, 'Send
forth.'" L'cha here denotes
according to your [Moses'] understanding. As for Me, I do not command you to do
so; if you so desire, then send them. (Rashi on Numbers 13:1)
The purpose of sending the spies was so that future
generations would not claim: "The previous inhabitants of Canaan were
weak, and the Israelites conquered the country by natural means." (Tzvi
Yisrael in Torah Gems, p. 59)
One can understand their statement "We looked like
grasshoppers to ourselves" for that was the way they really saw themselves.
However, what right did they have to say "and so we must have looked to
them?" What difference should it make how we [the scouts] appeared to
them? (Rabbi Menahem Mendl of Kotzk on Numbers 13:33 in Torah Gems, p. 67)
Did the spies lie? Did they make up what they told the
people? Obviously not; they told the people exactly what they had seen. What,
then, was their sin? The answer is that not everything that is not a lie is the
truth.
The truth is not necessarily as things appear but stems from the depths
of the heart, from the sources of one's faith. Truth and faith go hand in hand,
and a person does not acquire truth easily and by a superficial glance. What is
required is hard work and effort, wisdom and understanding. The spies did not
work at finding the truth in God's word. They did not understand the divine
secret. They preferred their limited and deceptive vision to God's promise,
which is the absolute truth--and that was their great sin. (Rabbi Menahem Mendl
of Kotzk in Torah Gems, p. 64)
"All thine enemies have opened their mouths against
thee" [Lamentations 2:16]. Rabbah said in Rabbi Johanan's name: Why [in
Lamentations 3:4651 and 4:1617, which are written in the form of alphabetical
acrostics] did he place the [verse beginning with the letter] peh before the [verse beginning with the
letter] ayin? Because of the spies
who spoke with their mouths [peh
means mouth] what they had not seen with their eyes [ayin means eye]. (Talmud, Sanhedrin
104b)
Blessed are You, Eternal One, who helps the blind to see.
(from the Morning Blessings)
Your Guide
Based on Or HaChayim, Rashi on Numbers 13:1, and Tzvi
Yisrael in Torah Gems, do you think that the decision to send the scouts was a
good one?
How could it have had a better outcome? How accurately did
the scouts assess their potential foes? Compare the opinions of Rabbi Menahem
Mendl of Kotzk with that of Sanhedrin
104b. How important was it that the scouts' report be objective?
According to Rabbi Menahem Mendl of Kotzk, what is the
connection between faith and perception?
D'var Torah
This week's Torah portion provides both a diagnosis and a
prescription. The diagnosis: The Israelites suffer from imperfect vision. When
their leaders go to scout the land of Canaan, what they see is distorted in
many ways. They see the enemy as if through a magnifying glass: Everything the
enemy does or has is larger than life. And they see themselves as if through
the wrong end of a pair of binoculars: as diminished and inconsequential as
insects are.
But the greatest failure of the Israelite scouts lies not in
their inability to see the land accurately but rather in their inability to see
beyond the "reality" that confronts them. Their world, like ours,
gives them many reasons to fear, to despair, and to want to return to the
restrictive but familiar routine life they led in Mitzrayim (Egypt). Just as insects are drawn to a flame that will
burn them, the scouts' glance is constantly drawn outward toward those things
that daunt them the most.
The scouts fail to look beyond the surface reality of the "what
is" that scares them to the "what could
be" that might inspire them. They fail to look with the inner eyes of
faith and are instead led astray by eyes that see only the worst. They forget
that God, the source of belief and hope, is at least as real as any giant and
that miracles happen all the time.
And so the prescription: To correct superficial vision, look
at the tzitzit, a symbol of faith and steadfastness, l'maan tiz'k'ru, "so that you remember." Remember that
the present is pregnant with possibility even if we can't always see it with
our ordinary eyes. Remember that we are not alone and never powerless.
As we confront the giants in our personal lives and the ones
that plague the world, may we train ourselves to see with eyes strengthened by
faith, and may that vision inspire us to walk in paths of righteousness so that
we help to create a brighter tomorrow.
Rabbi Randy E.
Sheinberg is a rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, New York, NY.
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations is the
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