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 NEPHILIM THERE - THE
ANAKITES ARE PART OF THE NEPHILIM -
AND WE LOOKED LIKE GRASSHOPPERS TO OURSELVES,
AND SO WE MUST HAVE LOOKED TO THEM."
(Bemidbar Chap. 13)
"And
so we must have looked to them"- Falsehood, Wild Imagination,
or Reality?
Said Rav Mesharsheya: The spies were liars. For it is understandable that they said, "and we were in our own eyes as grasshoppers" - that is very well! But the statement "and so we were in their eyes" - how could they have known that? [Evidently they were liars!). But it is not so [argues the Gemorrah. The spies did not lie] - for when [the Amorites] would serve the mourners' meal, they would serve it beneath cedars. When the spies saw them [the mourners] coming, they were afraid, so they climbed up and sat in the tress. They heard them [the Amorites] saying "We see men that are like grasshoppers sitting in the trees."
(Bavli, Sota 35a)
"AND
THE PEOPLE CRIED THAT NIGHT"
THE SIN
OF THE SPIES IN CONTEMPORARY REALITY
Ronen
Achituv
An awful fear grasped the people. The spies
Returned to their homes weeping, each surrounded
By his sons and daughters, their sons and daughters -
Weeping bitterly, and the neighbors gather
And weep, and family hears family, and window
From window, and the sobbing moves as fire through thorns
And all the tribe cries, and so its neighbor
And all the other tribes, six hundred thousand weeping...
"For what purpose the plagues? To what end the violent revolution?
Why the long sojourning, in the heat of day, in the cold
Of night, leaving the corpses
Behind -
In order to squeeze into a land possessed?
To expel, to destroy, to bequeath - on the ruins
To build my happiness?
Will I always have to hear from below
The wail of Emorite children?
Better to die in the desert, or return
And be slave a thousand times
Than to begin the story of my life
From destruction, from expulsion, from bloodshed."
Great dreams - are they really intended to be realized?
We went out to redeem the world, but we haven't
Even repaired ourselves.
Only the ancient promise hovers above us
Like an eagle
While we trod... continuing
And rejected. A ghost trek between redemption and curse . . .
(From: En Route to the
Promised Land/ Eli Elon, 1989)
The sin of the spies recorded in our parasha is described as a terrible
sin, perhaps the most severe of the Children of Israel's sins in the desert.
This is the only case in which Moshe was unable to avert punishment. This was
the transgression which delayed settlement of the Land by a generation. The sin
- according to plain reading of the test - is the sin of cowardice, of lack of
motivation and willingness to fulfill the mission, and of insubstantial trust
in the Lord.
Modern literature has a long history of attempts to tie the sins of the
Generation of the Desert to the Zionist experience. Bialik (probably under the
influence of Yehuda Leib Gordon), in his poem "The Dead of the Desert",
describes the people of that generation as rebels against God . The rebellion
which Bialik presents is not the action of the spies, but rather the subsequent
attempt to ascend the mountains:
"We are ready to ascend!
If God has abandoned us
And His ark will not leave its place -
We shall go up without Him...
We are ready... we will ascend
The mountain!"
Bialik gave poetic expression to what he considered to be his
generations's rebellion against God -- the Zionist aliya to the Land without
the consent of most rabbis. In his poem, Zionism is portrayed as a mutiny
against the Almighty and as the pathetic attempt to ascend the mountain (which
concludes, both in the Bible and in Bialik's poem, in failure!). Bialik ignores
the Biblical message, that the primary sin of the Generation of the Desert was
their opposition to aliya. He, too, considered this opposition as unacceptable,
a sign of weakness. Therefore he could not see it as analogous to the Zionist
rebellion against God, a phenomenon which he viewed positively. Instead, he
found literary support in the secondary Biblical narrative - the attempt to go
up the mountain.
Eli Alon, a member of Kibbutz Ein Shemer, penned his poem in the 80's. Alon continues Bialik's line, which views the sins of the Generation of the Desert as a "secular" rebellion against God. But in contrast to Bialik, Alon succeeds in interpreting the spies' rebellion as one of positive values. According to Alon's poem, the people's crying and their refusal to enter the Land are not a consequence of weakness and lack of confidence in their ability to conquer the Land, nor in selfish yearning for the fleshpots. Alon depicts a refusal on moral grounds; he interprets the act of the spies as a moral revolt against the order to conquer.
Alon's interpretation confronts us with the dilemma facing contemporary Israel which tends to see the conquest on one hand as an existential necessity, and - on the other hand - as a moral dilemma. Alon's Generation of the Desert chose to flee, to remain in the wilderness or to return to Egypt, in order to avoid the test of realizing the dream. Alon sends an ironic allusion regarding his heroes (created in our form and image) who are never capable of redeeming themselves, who are doomed to remain in the wilderness because of their moral sensitivity and their spiritual stature.
This weakness is not entered in the desert generation's debit column. Alon - with his Kafka-esque wisdom - is teaching a truth of every great dream of redemption; one cannot realize the dream and still remain whole. Both the realization of the dream and escape from the dream are strewn with obstacles, both contain an element of curse. The Israelite nation, according to Alon's myth, is sentenced to wander forever between promise and curse, whether he choose the wilderness or the Land.
And we, where do we
stand? Every decision is difficult, but is it possible not to decide? Shall we
revolt and remain in the wilderness, like Alon's heroes - or remain faithful to
the mitzvoth of life? Will we fight to find a place in the Land, or flee in
fear from the unfortunate children of the Emorite?
Ronen Ahituv, of Mitztpeh Netopha in the Lower
Galilee, is a member of the Midrasha in Oranim
"THE FINGER OF GOD" AND
MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS DECISIONS
"The entire community lifted up and let
out their voice, and the people wept on that night" - Said Rabba in the name of Rabbi Yochanan:
That night was the ninth of Av. Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He, to them: You
cried for no good reason - I shall give you reason to weep for generations to
come. (Bavli, Taanit 79a)
It is almost impossible to fully exhaust the significance of the fact
that the people which merited that which no generation before and no generation
thereafter merited - for the giving of the Torah was a one-time, never to
re-occur event - that this generation in particular should fail totally,
bringing about the nullification of the divine plan which included the promise
to bring the nation to the promised land.
From this we derive that man, through his actions, can ruin the world,
even notwithstanding the divine plan. The entire story of the generation which
exited Egypt is replete with signs, omens, and revelation, yet all of these
were unable to change man's nature, unable to bring him to faith, and certainly
not to the repair of the entire nation. One incapable of recognizing from
within himself his status before God and its ensuing commitments will never
achieve this awareness through any external agent. This conclusion is valid not
only with regard to the distant past, but also to the present and future;
Divine supervision and all that is humanly perceived to be "the finger of
God" cannot bring men to find their way even in political, national or
social matters … the correct path in management of the world, the state and
society or the determination of historical courses of events. All these flow
from human understanding, with the reaching of conclusions and making
decisions. Paths of action are never given man as a grant, through the medium
of wondrous revelation, by supernatural means.
We do not belong to the generation of the desert which merited divine
revelation; we belong to the generation of the wilderness which has no divine
revelation. We do not know - we cannot know what event or act has elements of "the
finger of God" in the sense of divine intervention in historical
processes. We cannot know which of these phenomena belong in the category of "Olam
k'minhago noheg" - "the world acts in its usual way." We
must beware the great and terrible danger of dependence upon that which seems
to be "the finger of God", a dependence with potential for casting
off responsibility from the shoulders of man and nation, the responsibility of
determining their way according to their understanding and their
accountability.
(Y. Leibowitz: Seven Years of the Discussion on the Weekly Parasha, pp.
665-666)
"You
Shall Not Follow the Desires of Your Hearts" - Does Man's Nature Tend to
Good or to Evil?
"When
you look upon it you will remember all the commandments of the Lord" -
remember that you are servants of God, Blessed Be He, and that you accepted his
commandments with pledge and vow. This will occur as you see the fringes, which
are like the King's seal upon his subjects, and thus you will cease to
follow the desires of your heart to obtain your goals through wealth, position,
and even theft.
(Sforno, Bemidbar 15:39)
The soul of
man and his powers were created in an upright fashion, and the nature of the
heart tends to good, but man warps his nature and considers evil
possibilities. Therefore, the passage does not say: "And you shall go
after your hearts", for if one were to go according to the
heart's paths carved in the nature of his being, his behavior would be good and
straight.
(Malbim, Bemidbar 15:39)
Regarding
Torah and "Natural Morality"
Morality,
in its natural state, in all the depths of its glory and its great power, must
be imprinted in the soul, and be a seedbed for those great influences which
evolve from the power of Torah. All Torah matters must be preceded by Derech
Eretz (proper comportment). If it is a matter which is consonant with natural
intelligence and integrity, it must proceed on the straight path, with the
heart's proclivity and the assent of the pure desire imprinted in man.
The Torah
was given to Israel so that gates of light - which are clearer, wider, and
holier than all the gates of light of man's natural intelligence and spirit of
natural morality - be opened to us, and through us, to the entire world.
(From "Orot HaTorah",
Rav Kook, 69-71)
Why Was
the Parasha of Tsitisit Conjoined as a Third Parasha in "Kriyat Shema"?
The
significance of the relationship between "And you shall love" and
"And these words shall be" [the first two passages of the
first parasha of Kriyat Shema] in the "Shema", and the relationship
between this first parasha and the second parasha - "And if you will
carefully obey my commands" is illuminated by the addition of the
third parasha - the parasha of Tsitsit - to the two opening parshiot. This
portion deals with memory and action; it expressly directs man's awareness not
to the subject of "God and Man" but the subject of "Mitzvoth and
Man" ("... and you shall remember all God's commands, and you will
observe them... so that you remember and perform all My commands...").
Remembrance is a thing of the heart, and, at first blush, it would have
seemed possible to combine it with "faith" and "love" in
their abstract sense; but Scripture states the meaning of remembrance is the doing of the mitzvot. Remembrance of
God exists in the believer's consciousness on one of two planes: that of "Shema"
(pure belief 'lishemah', with no ulterior motive) - God is the Lord; and
the second plane, that of "And if you will carefully obey" (belief
'shelo lishmah' - with ulterior motive) - God is the supra-Minister of
Finance, supra-Minister of Health, supra-Minister of Security, etc.. But
regardless of whether one remembers God on the "Shema" plane
or on the "And if you will carefully obey" plane - both
obligate the observance of mitzvoth.
At the
conclusion of Parashat Tsitsit, which concludes the Kriyat Shema, there appears
a concept with specifically religious significance, the concept of kedusha -
holiness: "And you shall be holy". This concept has no
meaning outside the world of religious faith. True, the concept has filtered
into the day-to-day vernacular, taking on secular meanings, such as: "The
memory of my late mother is holy to me" - but in such as case it is no
more than an idiom with emotional content. In its original and essential
meaning, "holy" refers only to God; therefore it cannot be explained
through concepts taken from human thought or in other terms from human
language, and it cannot be applied to anything found in the world. In human
reality the category of "kedusha" can be used only to
designate activity directed toward the "kadosh" - the Holy One"
- a designation of the service of God through observance of the mitzvoth. It
designates the purpose and goal to which one must strive, and also the striving
itself, but it does not designate any given or existing thing. In human
reality, there is only functional kedusha; the essential kedusha
is God's alone. Whoever attributes kedusha to anything from the natural
or artificial reality - to man, to the land, to an institution, to an edifice,
to an object - is guilty of idol worship; he raises it to the level of the
divine. This is the great meaning presented to man by the mitzvah of Tsitsit: "so that you remember and perform all My commands
and you will be holy..."; that
is to say, you are not holy by virtue of your essence; your holiness is not
something which exists in yourself; it is something for you to achieve. The
mission is eternal, because it is tied to a condition which can be fulfilled
only with eternal effort.
We bring
the words of one of the greatest Torah scholars and believers, one of the
greatest religious thinker of recent generations, Rabbi Meir Simcha HaCohen of
Dvinsk, author of the "Meshech Chochma". Many times, with great
emphasis, he repeats in his book his explanation that "there is nothing
holy in the world... only the Lord, Blessed Be He, is holy, and only He is
deserving of praise and service"; no creation has holiness - only the
Creator, Blessed Be He"; "all things considered holy - Eretz Yisrael,
Yerushalayim, the Temple Mount, the Mikdash, the Tablets of the Law - none of
these possess intrinsic holiness, but they were sanctified through action and
mitzvoth." Therefore, when Israel repudiates the Torah and violates the
mitzvoth - all the above lose their holiness, they become profane. He repeats
this idea again and again: "Do not imagine that the mount is something
holy..." ; "... Do not imagine that the Mishkan and the Mikdash are,
in themselves, holy entities" and many more such statements. In one place
he adds the remark "This is a weighty matter" - as though he had
foreseen how "religious" Jews, 50 years after his death, would
disgrace and profane the concept of "kedusha" by exploiting as cover
for satisfaction of human needs and interests - private or communal.
It seems
that Torah desired to instill in us the deep religious significance of "kedusha",
and therefore it placed the story of Korach in juxtaposition to the parasha of
Tsitsit. A space of only three lines separates between the great programmatic
proclamation of faith voiced by Moshe our Teacher ("You shall be holy")
and the programmatic proclamation of faith voiced by Korach: "The
entire community is holy" - i.e., kedusha is not a goal which Israel
is charged to achieve but it already exists inherently and unconditionally. The
great concept of faith - kedusha - is profaned and becomes an idolatrous
concept.
(From Y. Leibowitz: Paths to
Faith in Judaism, in "Faith, History, and Values", pp. 18-19)
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