You shall see what [kind of] land it is,

and the people who dwell upon it;

are they strong or weak? Are there few or many?

(Bamidbar 13:18)

And the people

who inhabit it – He told them to inspect the state's laws and customs,

as that sage said, that when you enter a state you should check its laws, since

troubles come upon a state only because of its laws… and when a state's

judges are righteous its people are also righteous, but when they are wicked

its people are likewise evil, for it is said: A ruler who hearkens to false

words-all his servants are wicked (Proverbs

29:12). That is why he said, [the people who] dwell upon it

and not who dwell in it, as he said, and what

of the cities in which they reside? (13:19). And so he

says, [and what of the land] in which it dwells [yoshev]? (13:19). It is written yashav

rather than yoshev, to tell us that it is the

leaders and judges who bring about settlement in the land; strength comes from

laws and morals. Know that this caused them to be in the land and your coming to take it over from them; it was not due to

their wickedness but rather to your righteousness. And if they are lax in their

laws and customs and everyone does as he pleases, know that because of the

wickedness of these nations [the Lord your God drives them out from

before you]… not because of your righteousness (9:5,6).

Are there few or many, the leaders and judges are sufficient to

cause their being man or few.

(R. Mordekhai HaKohen MiTzfat, Siftei Kohen, 16^th

century, ad loc)

Israel is not to be

interested in whether the inhabitants are weak or strong. The conquest is no

question of yes or no, so that this question is put, not one or the other but

only side by side as only an accidental difference but not in terms of actual

contrast. Thereby the whole mission would be given quite a different character

to what was originally intended by its proposers. Not

for the purpose of the conquest, but for a permanent important teaching for all

future time is the knowledge of the land in its present conditions to be

obtained. The tradition of the disadvantages which the land and people show at

present will be handed down in future in comparison with the flourishing happy

conditions under the protection and blessing of God; what it has to show now in

abundance and riches will give some idea of the height of happiness and

blessing it will blossom up into under a development directed by God; but,

above all what it shows in strength and might and greatness in its Canaanite

present could transmit to all succeeding generations of the Jewish future, the

lesson of how all power and greatness, however gigantic it may be, cannot

protect a nation from ruin if it neglects to render homage with everything and

in everything in the first place to God's laws of morality.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch 13:18, Levi translation)

Send out for yourself or Let us send people?

Netanel Warschawski

Send out for yourself… Rashi's

interpretation of this verse follows Bamidbar Rabbah: "According to your own

understanding. I am not commanding you, but if you wish, you may send. Since

the Israelites had come [to Moses] and said, Let us send men ahead of us…

Moses took counsel with the Shekhinah. He [God] said,

"I told them that it is good… By their lives! Now I

will give them the opportunity to err… so that they will not inherit it"

(Judaica Press translation).

The story of the spies

is described several times in the Torah. The two most detailed descriptions

appear in our parasha and in the beginning of Devarim (1:24-46). In

contrast to our parasha, in which God curtly commands

Moses Send out for yourself, Devarim

describes at length the request the Israelites made of Moses: And all of you approached me and said, "Let us send

pleased me; so I took twelve men from you…" The midrash quoted above relates

negatively to the Israelite request to send spies, while the description of the

events in Devarim does not offer any criticism of the

request; quite to the contrary – Moses accepts and even praises the idea.

Bamidbar

does not actually mention the peoples' request; there we only find God's

command Send out for yourself.

This is one of many differences between the two accounts of the spies' story. Bamidbar quotes at length the spies' denigrating remarks

regarding the Land – a land that consumes its

inhabitants – and their troubling report on its population – the people

who inhabit the land are mighty. In Devarim

the spies simply say that the land the Lord, our

God, is giving us is good. According to Devarim,

it was the people, rather than the spies, who began the mutiny, and you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord, your

God. Furthermore, while Bamidbar tells us

that Joshua and Caleb stood up to the spies and tried to stifle the rebellion,

in Devarim it is Moses who opposes the people's

mutiny: And I said to you, "Do not be broken or

afraid of them. The Lord, your God, Who

goes before you He will fight for you…" Finally, in Devarim Moses explains God's refusal to let him enter the

Land: The Lord was also angry with me because of

you, saying, "Neither will you go there…"

even though Moses had already been prohibited from entering the Land in the

wake of the events at Mei Meriva – and not because of the sin of the spies.

The commentators attempt to resolve these contradictions in

various ways. Most of them present the two stories as complementary accounts

which fill out each other's details, as in the passage from Bamidbar

Rabbah cited above. Rashi

explains the spies' words in Devarim – the land the Lord, our God, is giving us is good

– as having been uttered by Joshua and Caleb, but not by the other spies. Abarbanel tries to resolve the contradiction regarding

Moses' punishment: "…Moses and Aaron did not die because of the sin at Mei Meriva… rather,

when the Israelites asked for spies, they only said, and

they shall bring us back word… and God, may He be blessed only

said, send out for yourself men… but our master Moses added many items

to their mission, commanding them to observe the people… and the land… and

the towns." That is to say: Moses and Aaron were not punished for the events

of Mei Meriva,

rather each was punished for his part in a different sin, Aaron for his role in

the sin of the Golden Calf, and Moses for his part in the sin of the spies. Of course,

Abarbanel's explanation does not jibe with the plain

meaning of the verses (Bamidbar

20:24; 27:14; Devarim 32: 51; etc.) which

attribute Moses and Aaron's punishment to Mei

Meriva. His attempt to overcome the contradiction

is also a bit strained: "In the parasha of Zot Hukkat HaTorah it says: since you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me…But it does not say, to sanctify me with the water…"

"Waters of Contention"].

If we take a deeper

look at the contradiction between Bamidbar and Devarim, we shall discover an essential difference between

how each of the parties to the events behaves in the two versions. The

protagonists of Bamidbar's account are God, the

spies, Joshua, and Caleb. God proposes the spies' mission, then the spies sin, and then Joshua and Caleb oppose the spies'

attempt to stir up a mutiny among the people. Moses appears as an entirely

passive figure, as do the people, who are swept up by the spies' rhetoric

without exercising any degree of autonomous thought. In Devarim

the protagonists are Moses and the people. The people call for a spying mission

to be arranged and later the people rise up against Moses, who must face them

alone. The spies are barely mentioned, save in their report that the Land is

good. Joshua and Caleb are only mentioned at the story's conclusion as

having completely followed the Lord. The other ten spies are not

punished at all.

In order to understand

this account, we must recall that in the book of Devarim

Moses is presenting his farewell address to the people before his death. Moses

is not playing the historian when he tells the people the stories of their

journey through the wilderness; rather he is a leader speaking just before the

decisive moment in the lives of his followers. If so, the story told in Devarim should not be read as historical truth but rather

as a leader's final message. Bamidbar's account of

the spies is a story of a slave people that has just been liberated; a people

which initiates nothing, but rather awaits its leaders' instructions. Most of

the spies, who are important members of the people – men, the heads of the

Israelites – are faithless cowards, and the entire

people are swept up after them.

However, when Moses

retells the story he completely changes its meaning. Moses does not expect the

people to wait for God's commands; rather, they should take the initiative. On

the eve of their entry into the Land, he tells them that they asked him to let

us send people. The spies' mission is not a sin; rather it is a welcome

initiative, an important military measure taken towards the Land's conquest. No

one complains when Joshua send spies to Jericho; neither does Moses condemn the

people's request to send spies; rather he says, the

matter pleased me. As far as Moses is concerned the historical

question of who actually initiated the spies' mission – the people or God – is

of no importance. It would be reasonable to assume that a people consisting of

recently freed slaves would not initiate such a move. A slave-people would be

ignorant of the ways of war. However, Moses tells them that they were the

initiators in order to teach them something about responsibility. Moses

continues the story in order to teach the people that positive initiative must

not involve loss of faith in God. That is the message which Moses wishes to

convey to the people upon the eve of his death. In order to survive, the people

must preserve its faith in God; however, it must not be swept up by blind faith

that is without initiative. Rather, they must ask questions, try things out,

initiate moves, and know how to lead. Moses concludes the account with his own

personal story of the punishment he received when, in one isolated instance, he

failed to lead the people.

We are currently

marking the third anniversary of the passing of my aunt, Elizabeth (Babette) Warschawski, z"l. Despite the pain left in the wake of her death, I

have no doubt that everyone who knew her found in her personality those very

virtues which Moses tried to instill in the people on the eve of his death. Alongside

her faith, which brought her to make aliyah to Israel

and raise a strong Jewish family, she was also a woman who knew how to take the

initiative and take responsibility. She knew how to ask questions, to learn and

take interest in things; she never took anything for granted or let herself be carried away by the currents of mass opinion. She

succeeded in combining her profound religious faith with social values and

genuine love for others in a way that is rarely achieved. All of us loved her

for remaining a woman of faith while also a woman of strong independent

thought. Time passes, but it is still difficult to abide her loss. We do,

however, find solace in what we managed to learn from her during the course of

her life. Her spirit and the ideas which guided her life continue to encourage

us. We hope to live our own lives in accordance with those ideas and values;

thus we shall also live in accordance with the ways commanded us by Moses in

his final address.

Netanel Warschawski graduated from the Bezalel

Institute and is a graphic artist residing in Jerusalem

Elisabeth Nehama Warschawski

– "Babette" – was born in Strasbourg on

Shabbat, the ninth of Av 5718 (1958). She was the sixth of seven children born

to Rabbi Meir Shimon Warschawski

and his wife Mireille. After completing an MA at the

University of Strasbourg, she came to live in Israel and continued her studies

of the history of religion in the Second Temple period and of archaeology. In

1982 she joined the staff of the Centre de Recherche Français de Jérusalem

– a French governmental institution that supports the work of French and Israeli

researchers in the fields of archeology, history, and the social sciences – and

in 1977 became the Secretary General of the Center. Babette

died on the 15^th of Sivan 5766 after a protracted struggle with

cancer, and was survived by her husband, Daniel Rohrlich,

their daughter Talia (who became a Bat-Mitzvah two

months after Babette's passing), her parents,

brothers, sisters, and many others who loved her. This year an organizer's position in the Rabbis for Human Rights

organization has been dedicated to her memory.

The Land of Israel

or Athens?

…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 the Land

of Israel, and therefore all the original vitality of the land was preserved. When

it was under the control of a Canaanite population this power was revealed only

in the growth of giants of great physical dimensions. 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

the Sages 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 the dwellers of the land

spiritual activity and not for the giant body stature.

(Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, Bamidbar

13:33)

And they shall

Partnership with God in Perfection of the World.

…it is as if Creation

cloaks 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 to complete

and perfect… and therefore the Creator commanded us to observe the

commandment of tzitzit, 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 teaches

that even when man freely chooses life and goodness and to walk in God's path,

in these, 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 the Sages, "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–

himself.

(Meshekh Hokhma, Bamidbar 15:40)

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