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 to his brother: Truly we are guilty: concerning our brother! - that we saw his 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 Israel saw it they said each man to his brother: Mahn hu - what is it? For they did not know what it was. Moshe said to them: It is the bread that God has given you for eating."

(Shemot16)

 

"For the Lord had caused the Aramean camp to hear a sound of chariots, a sound of horses - the din of a huge army. They said each man to his brother: The king of Israel must have 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 up into the hill country. And see the land - what it is like, and population that is settled in it: are they strong or weak, are they few or many; and what the land is like, where they are settled: is it good or ill; and what the towns are like, where they are settled therein: are they encampments or fortified places; and what the land is like: is it fat or lean, are there in it trees, or 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 it out: it is a land that devours its inhabitants; all the people that we saw in its midst are men of great stature, for there we saw the giants - the Children of Anak come from the giants - we were in our own eyes like 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 and say unto them, when you enter the land of your settlements which I am 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 native is to sacrifice these thus, to bring near a fire offering of soothing savor for God"(15:13), there appear three additional passages: "Now when there sojourns with you a sojourner, or one that has been in your midst, throughout your generations, and he sacrifices a fire offering of soothing favor for God, as you sacrifice it, thus is he to sacrifice it. Assembly! One law for you and for the sojourner that takes up sojourn, a law for the ages, throughout your generations: as it is for you, so will it be for the sojourner before the presence of God. One instruction, one regulation shall there be for you and for 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 sojourner that sojourns in your midst: one instruction shall there be for you, 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 inhabitants of the land, along with the Children of Israel, should live under 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 the dwellers of the land are of a spiritual inclination, the vigor of the earth will be exploited for spiritual activity and not for the giant body stature.

 (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, Bemidbar 13:33)

 

"And they shall make fringes"- Completion of the Garment As a Metaphor for Man's 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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