I recently decided to finish up school while studying in Israel. I found a program, was accepted, and everything looked amazing. I would be free from the spiritually lacking world of New Jersey, where I spend all day slaving away at a keyboard, to receive Torah from amazing teachers— in Jerusalem of all places!— instead. Then something suddenly hit me, and I started to panic— how the hell was I going to afford to stay a year in Israel? I immediately started to doubt if I could do it; sure I had ideas, but when you’re going to a far away place, you don’t want to be relying on something that you, well, can’t necessarily rely upon. The way I felt is exactly how the Jewish people felt in this week’s Torah portion, Shelach.
The Jewish people were on the cusp of something great— they too were about to enter the land of Israel, the place God had promised them, the end point of their journey from Egypt. Before entering, they stopped, deciding that it was a good idea to send a few people over the border to check out what they had in store for them. The biblical commentator Rashi says that this was an error itself, as it shows that they lacked faith in God. We can see where Rashi is coming from, it does seem a bit of a slap in the face to God. God brought them out of Egypt, split the Sea of Reeds, and brought down manna for them to eat, and they didn’t think that God would take care of them crossing the border into Israel?
Yet, God did give them permission in telling Moses to send the spies. Also, can we really blame them for wanting to know what they were going to encounter? Throughout the Torah, we learn that God helps those who help themselves. While speaking with my mother the other day about my concerns, she gave me one of her favorite lines, what I often refer to as “motherly rhetoric”: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” No my mother isn’t Benjamin Franklin. Moses and the Jewish people just wanted to know what they would be facing, that didn’t mean they were going to go against God, they just thought having some plans might help move things along.
So Moses went ahead and created the first-ever Mossad unit. Setting a standard for success, the spies sneaked into the land of Israel, and, despite apparently being smaller than the giant population of the land, managed to gather a full report. Unfortunately, the report for 10 out of 12 of those spies was quite negative. Wanting to break the bad news carefully, they delivered the good news first: the land was indeed flowing with milk and honey. Then they told everyone that it is also filled with giants, and that there was no way that they could take it.
Bam! Just like that, Joshua and Caleb— who said the land was good and God would help them conquer it— were ignored, and their good reports immediately forgotten. The Jewish people started panicking, screaming that they wanted to go back to Egypt. All their hopes for better, more meaningful lives were flushed.
The panic and doubts of the Jews angered God, and in a very fitting punishment, God decided that the entire generation would not enter the land of Israel. Instead they would die in the desert, then after 40 years of wandering in the desert, their children would enter the land.
The connection to my own life is apparent. I had something good sitting right before me, but one little doubt blew it up in my face. Suddenly, I didn’t know if I could do it, and I was even considering the possibility of backing out.
The Torah is speaking directly to people like myself who are standing at the cusp of making a huge move in our lives. If we doubt ourselves, and don’t have faith, whether in ourselves, God, or humanity in general, we will fail. When the Jewish people, at the very turning point of their lives, decided that they could not do it, God made sure that they could not do it. The opportunity faded, fled from their grasp, and only their children would get the chance, 40 years later.
Fortunately, in my case, I had Joshuas and Calebs to encourage me. They didn’t tell me my fears were unfounded, but they reassured me that this was a great experience that I needed to go through with. I listened to them and to myself, and hopefully will soon be going to Jerusalem for another year.
The Joshua and Calebs don’t actually have to come from outside, they can also come from the positivity within ourselves. We can’t give in to our negative thoughts. We must remind ourselves of why we want to take action, and how important it is for us to act.
Yet looking at the benefits isn’t always enough. There was plenty of positivity brought back with the spies, there was just more negativity. Sometimes, if we think of it like a scale, the negative seems to outweigh the positive so much that we turn away from making the right decision. In those cases, it comes down to faith. We have to believe that things will work out. Throughout everybody’s life there are those moments where we just don’t know what is going to happen. We can freeze and let life pass us by, or close our eyes and take the next step.
After the incident with the spies, many of the people decided that they were indeed ready to go up to Israel. Unfortunately, it was too late for them, and they would never see the land. If we let negativity get in front of us, we too can lose the chance to do something great. Instead of letting the moment pass, we need to say to ourselves “You can do it!”
David Gutbezahl is a student at Gratz College.
