We owe it to ourselves and to others to embrace our God-given capacity for greatness, even in the face of our fears.
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses sends 12 meraglim (spies) – one from each tribe – to reconnoiter the land of Canaan and bring back a report. And from his instructions, it seems that Moses is looking for a factual assessment. Moses tells the spies (Nu 13:18): “Go and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is this country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not?” And then Moses’ final instruction is: “v’hitkhazaktem… Strengthen yourselves and bring back some of the fruit of the land.” It seems that what Moses is after is just the facts.
When the meraglim return, they unanimously report that it is indeed a fertile and desirable land: They announce to Moses in the presence of all the Israelites: “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” The spies had brought back an enormous cluster of grapes, so large, in fact, that it had to be carried hanging from a frame between two men. Many of us recognize the image, which today is the ubiquitous logo of the Israel Tourism Board. The spies all agree that the land is good. But that is the end of their agreement. Only two scouts – Calev and Yehoshua – urge the People to press on, while ten of the spies opine that the inhabitants of the land are too powerful to conquer, saying (Nu. 13:33): “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” This causes despair to spread among the Israelites to the point that they cry out: “Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword?... It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!” For the sin of the spies and for the lack of faith on the part of the people, God condemns the Israelites to wander in the wilderness for 40 years so that those of the slave generation will die out – only their children will inherit the land that God promised.
I’ve always been troubled by God’s response. While perhaps fitting, it seems harsh. Certainly a lack of faith in God is a punishable offense; but, frankly the whole Book of Numbers – indeed, much of the Torah – is full of examples of our rebelliousness. Why is this of all our offenses such a grave crime? And what precisely was the sin that the spies allegedly committed? After all, they were tasked with a mission to scout out the land and they brought back an honest assessment.
The Hasidic master Menachem Mendel of Kotsk[1] comments that the spies were guilty of at least two sins. The first is the sin of not knowing the difference between fact and truth. Truth is more than a report of empirical observations. Truth must also account for context and consequences. Perhaps the land was, in fact, inhabited by powerful people; but a truthful report would also have taken into account that it was God who had promised this land to the Israelites, that God had promised to be with us in conquering the land, and that spreading negative reports would undermine the confidence of the People of Israel. In other words, the spies’ report was factual but not true. The second sin, according to the Kotsker Rebbe, was to be distracted from their mission by concerning themselves with what the Canaanites thought of them. In other words, their job was to assess the land, not to judge themselves.
There is a midrash that imagines God responding to the spies: “I take no objection to your saying, ‘we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves.’ But I take offense when you say ‘so we must have looked to them.’ How do you know how I made you look to them? Perhaps you appeared to them as angels.”[2]
You see, according to the Midrash, God did not punish the spies for their fear. After all, you can’t blame someone for how they honestly feel. What God objected to was how the spies saw themselves through the eyes of the Canaanites. Their sin was to project their fears and insecurities onto others. Their sin is was taking responsibility for their fears. And it occurs to me – thinking about the parsha in this way – that we are all at times guilty of this sin. Often when we are afraid or unhappy we blame others for how we feel. Perhaps it is too painful to confront our own fears and shortcomings. So we project those feeling onto others – we blame others for our feelings or we convince ourselves that it is only others who stand in the way of our success and happiness.
I don’t mean to say that our fears are baseless or imaginary. Like the spies, our assessment may be factually correct. And I also don’t think that we should beat ourselves up for what we feel. After all, the spies were not condemned for their fear or self doubt. The sin of which we are guilty – the sin of the spies – is the sin of lacking vision. It is a failure of imagination that leads us to blame others for our shortcomings. It is the failure to see possibilities in the midst of great challenges. It is a failure to recognize our greatness despite our fears. Author Marianne Williamson in her book A Return to Love, puts it this way:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You’re playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
In other words: what right do we have to see ourselves as grasshoppers when in fact we are angels. The failure of the 10 spies was that they did not believe in themselves. They had no way of knowing what the Canaanites thought of them. In fact this week’s haftarah, which recounts the scouting of the land under Joshua a generation later, reports that the Moabites were terrified of the Israelites. How often do we blame others for our own fears; and how often is it that those very fears are the only things that, in truth, stand in our way? Allowing our fears to stifle our vision condemns us to wander the wilderness – just as our ancestors did – until we can break away from old beliefs and old habits that enslave us to self-destructive thinking.
Humility is important. Honest self-assessment is important. But when we allow our fears to stifle us, we cannot reach our potential. We owe it to ourselves and to others to believe in our own capacity for greatness. Remember Moses’ instructions to the spies. When he asks them to bring back some of the fruit of the land he uses an unusual command: hithazaktem, which literally means, make yourselves strong. When we look at ourselves we must be honest and recognize our fears, but we have a responsibility to make ourselves strong in the face of life’s challenges. If we have the vision to see beyond our shortcomings, we too can merit a land flowing with milk and honey.
Shabbat Shalom.
