THE ENTIRE

COMMUNITY LIFTED UP AND LET OUT THEIR VOICE,

AND THE PEOPLE

WEPT ON THAT NIGHT.

AND THEY

GRUMBLED AGAINST MOSHE AND AGAINST AHARON,

ALL THE CHILDREN

OF ISRAEL,

THEY SAID TO

THEM, THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY:

WOULD THAT WE

HAD DIED IN THE LAND OF EGYPT,

OR IN THIS

WILDERNESS, WOULD THAT WE HAD DIED!

NOW WHY IS GOD

BRINGING US TO THIS LAND,

TO FALL BY THE

SWORD?

OUR WIVES AND

OUR LITTLE ONES WILL BECOME PLUNDER!

WOULD IT NOT BE

BETTER FOR US TO RETURN TO EGYPT?

SO THEY SAID,

EACH MAN TO HIS BROTHER:

LET US HEAD BACK

AND RETURN TO EGYPT!

(Bemidbar

14:1-4)

"And they said, each man

to his brother: Here comes the master dreamer."

                                                                                                            (Bereishit 37)

"And they said, each man

heart's distress when he implored us, and we did not listen. Therefore

this distress has come upon us!

(Bereishit 42)

"When the Children of

given you for eating."

(Shemot16)

"For the Lord had caused

hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to attack us."

(II Kings 7)

Do the above passages containing the phrase "And

they said each to his brother" have a significant common denominator? We

will be most thankful to our readers for enlightenment.

THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND – BETWEEN INTIMIDATION

AND A STRUGGLE FOR CO-EXISTENCE

Yaakov Deutch

At the heart of the parasha stands the story

of the meraglim and its consequences. The sending of the spies was

intended to prepare the Children of Israel for entry into the Land of Canaan. I

shall attempt to prove that within the parasha can be found allusions to the

way one should behave towards the inhabitants of the land. The spies – or, more

correctly translated – the scouts (the root r'g'l' does not appear in the

parasha) fulfill their mission and return after forty days. They begin to

describe the land, more or less in keeping with the specific tasks assigned

them by Moshe: "Go up this way through the Negev and then you are to go

not?"(Bemidbar

13:18-20). They reply that the land is, indeed, very good, "flowing

with milk and honey", but at the same time, the people who

dwell in the land are fierce, the towns are fortified, and among the

inhabitants are giants. In other words, the scouts provide the information as

requested, and the facts supplied are accurate, but despite that, Caleb

interjects "Let us go up, yes, up, and possess it, for we can prevail,

yes, prevail against it!"This leads the scouts to present a false

report of the land, and they become the cause of the severe punishment which

was imposed upon the entire wilderness generation. But why are the scouts so

severely castigated? What is false about their report? According to the Torah

narrative, the scouts said: "The land that we crossed through to scout

grasshoppers, and thus were we in their eyes!"Ostensibly, there is a

bit of hyperbole in the way the scouts describe what they saw, but does this

constitute so severe a sin? The Ramban deals with the sin of the scouts, and

explains that the term "le-hotsi dibba"– to slander –

is, in Torah terminology, synonymous with lying. The severity of their behavior

lies in the fact that they lied in order to intimidate the Children of Israel.

A second look at the words of the scouts reveals that they chose to employ a

catchall generalization of the country's population. True, we are told that in

the course of their expedition they did see the children of Anak, and in their

opening words they report it, but after Caleb's declaration, they say "all the people we saw in its

midst are men of great stature"Yet more, the way in which they

describe the children of the Anak deviates from their earlier report, as the

Ramban explains: "For in the beginning they said 'and also the

descendents of Anak did we see there', and now they exaggerate, calling

them 'the giants' saying 'for there we saw the giants"(Ramban on 13:42). In

their words, the scouts are guilty of multiple sins. They make all-inclusive

generalizations by calling all the inhabitants of the land 'men of great

stature' – despite the fact that in their travels they encountered only

three descendents of the Anak. Note also that with regards to the three, they

themselves are not called Anakites; they are described as nefillim – giants.

True, we do not exactly know what the nature of these giants was, but it

appears to me that with these words the scouts wanted to say that the

inhabitants of the land are not mortals but superhuman beings. So explains

Rashi, following the Midrash: [They were called] "nefillim"because

they fell [naflu] from Heaven (Rashi, 13:33). The substance of the sin, then, was the decision

to describe the inhabitants of the land, the future adversary, as superhuman

beings.

After Moshe announces their punishment for

having been swayed by the words of the scouts, the Children of Israel choose an

opposite approach to that for which they were punished. If before, the

substance of the sin was the attempt to instill fear of the land's inhabitants,

now they change direction and go to wage war against the inhabitants of the

land. In order to atone for their sin, the Children of Israel chose to go up "to

attack the place that God promised, for we have sinned!"But, as Moshe

says to the Children of Israel, the military option will not succeed, and sure

enough, the Children of Israel who go up to do battle with the Amalekite and

the Canaanite are thoroughly thrashed. The two options, then, instilling fear

of the inhabitants to the point of demonizing them, on one hand, and war

against the inhabitants of the land, on the other hand, are not the paths to

take when coming into contact with the inhabitants of the land.

As we said before, Parashat Shelach Lecha

deals at length with the preparation for entry into the land, but what exactly

is the message that Israel is to learn from the sin of the scouts and from the

failed attempt to fight against the inhabitants of the land? What are they to

do when neither the instilling of fear of the inhabitants nor war against them

bring the desired solution? It seems to me that a hint at a desired solution

may be found in the passages immediately following the description of the

battle against the Canaanites. These passages are a continuation of the preparations

for entry into the land (although the entry was delayed forty years). They

begin with the God's words to Moshe: "Speak to the Children of Israel

giving you"(15:2).

The subject is that of sacrificial offerings after entry into the land of

Canaan, but following the various laws, and after the command "every

savor for God"(15:13),

there appear three additional passages: "Now when there sojourns

the sojourner that takes up sojourn with you!"It seems to me that it

is not fortuitous that in the continuation of the parasha this motif should

appear again: "The native among the Children of Israel, and for the

for him that does anything in error"(15:29).

From this it seems clear that, in the eyes of

The Holy One, Blessed Be He, the

one statute and under one law.

Yaakov Deutch is a doctoral

candidate in the History Department of the Hebrew University in Yerushalayim.

An Attitude of Respect for the Land

Requires an Attitude of Respect for People

It has been taught, Said Rabbi El'azar ben Parta: Come and see, from the

story of the meraglim, how great is the power

of slander. If [such was the punishment] for the spies who slandered only trees

and stones, then libel of one's fellow, all

the more so!! As is written: "The men died, those bringing a report of the

land, an ill one"– because

of the slander of the land which they spoke.

 (Yalkut Shimoni, Vayikra 14, 659)

About Torah and "Natural Morality"

That morality, which is part of our nature, with all the depth of its

glory and steadfast power, must be permanently impressed upon the soul and will

become a seedbed for all those great influences that come from the force of

Torah. Every Torah matter must be preceded by Derech Eretz. If it is a matter which conforms to natural

good sense and honesty, it must pass on the straight path, with the inclination

of the heart and the assent of the pure will inherent in man.

The Torah was given to Israel so that the gates of light – brighter,

wider, and holier than all gates of light of natural understanding and of the spirit of natural morality of man – will be opened for us, and

through us, to the entire world.

 (From "The Light of Torah"of Rabbi

Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, 69-71)

Eretz Yisrael Can Sprout Physical Heroes

or Giants of the Spirit

In the land of Israel, then, there remained remnants of the giants of

the pre-deluge period. This fact well suits the position (Zevahim 113a) that

the flood did not affect Eretz Yisrael, and therefore all the original vitality

of the land was preserved. But in equal measure, this strength can make the

land appropriate for God's people, for this nation will observe God's Torah and

thus will the world return to its days of youth, and the earth will be like the

Garden of Eden. Let us not forget the dictum of Chazal to the effect that

health and physical strength are among the conditions necessary for supreme

spiritual development (Shabbat

92a). Perhaps we will not err when we say that this is the relationship

between the strength of the land and the attributes of its inhabitants;

Wherever spiritual endeavor is suspended, the earth has the power to grow

giants of great physical stature; but if

will be exploited for spiritual activity and not for the giant body stature.

 (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, Bemidbar 13:33)

"And they shall make

Partnership with God in Perfection of the World.

… The creation is like a

mantle for the Creator; an ignorant person who knows not, a wicked person, is

liable to think that there is no God. Therefore creation in general is called Begged – a garment. As pointed

out in our introduction, that creation was not complete, and the Creator, Be He

Blessed, left it for his chosen one to complete and perfect… and therefore

the Creator commanded us with the mitzvah of tsitsit, to teach us that

reality is but a garment which has – at both ends – strands which have not as

yet been woven, and is therefore in need of tassels and locks. This is to teach

that even those acts which man performs as he chooses life and goodness and to

walk in God's path, in this, too, God's assistance from above will sustain him…

And you, son of man, if you weave creation, you will become partner to God in

the act of Creation, as, in the words of Chazal, "Every judge who

dispenses true justice is considered as though he is the partner of God in

Creation"(Sanhedrin

99). And this is the meaning of "Whoever engages in Torah for its

own sake is considered as though he built a palace above and a palace below, as

is written, "to plant the heavens and to establish earth,"and

perhaps the phrase "va-asitem otam"("and

you shall make them") can be read "Va-asitem atem"- (make them for you) – as though he made them for himself.

 (From Meshech Chochma, Bemidbar 15:40)

Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation: Kadish Goldberg

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