This is the “messing up big-time” portion of the Torah. Over the next couple of weeks, we will read about two major incidents where the Israelites just simply screw up in God’s eyes. Next week, it will be the rebellion of Korach, who tries to usurp Moses and speak for God. And to whom bad things happen.But what we read about this week is maybe more fundamental, because it involves the entire Jewish people, and it involves the Promised Land. In parashat Sh’lach Lecha, we read that Moses sends a group of scouts – or meraglim – to bring back a report about the land of Israel.
Our people have been wandering for a short time – really only about a matter of months. They’ve already reached the border of the Land. And God says to Moses:
שלח לך אנשים – “Send men to scout the land of Canaan – one from each of their ancestral tribes.” (Numbers 13:2 )
So Moses sends a group of 12 scouts into the land of Israel to see what the land is all about out. Here’s what happens:
Numbers 13:21-24: They went up and scouted the land, from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron, where lived Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the Anakites. They reached the wadi Eshcol, and there they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes — it had to be borne on a carrying frame by two of them — and some pomegranates and figs.
From this description we learn a couple of things:
– We learn that the land is exceedingly fertile. We know this from the beautiful fruit. In fact. If you’ve ever been to Israel, you might have seen the logo of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, which is based on this story.
– We also learn that the land is inhabited by other tribes.
But what this account does not give us is an assessment, a judgment of the land. For that, we need to listen to the scouts. When they return home, they give the following report:
Numbers 13:27-29 : “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the Anakites there. Amalekites dwell in the Negeb region; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country; and Canaanites dwell by the Sea and along the Jordan.”
And the people, understandably, start to rebel when they hear this. This is a scary moment. We’ve been traveling across the wilderness in the hopes of resettling in a new place. And we arrive here only to learn that the land we’re hoping to settle is already taken by bigger, tougher tribes. How could we help but want to go back to Egypt.
But if we keep reading, we find that Caleb and Joshua – who are two of the scouts – have a very different assessment of our chances.
עָלֹה נַֽעֲלֶה וְיָרַשְׁנוּ אֹתָהּ כִּֽי־יָכוֹל נוּכַל לָֽהּ
“Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” (Numbers 13:30)
So here we have two contradictory versions of the same situation: One positive, one negative. One hopeful, one hopeless. How do you explain that?
And here’s the really interesting thing. If you look closely, Caleb and Joshua don’t actually contradict the words of the original report. They were there. They saw it too. They agree that the land of Israel is filled with big, scary tribes. They agree that “we looked like grasshoppers to them.” And yet they still say “Yachol nuchal lah – We can do it.”
Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
The Israelites are in a challenging situation here, and there’s not much they can do about it. They can’t change the fact that they’ve just come from slavery. They can’t change the fact that the Promised Land is inhabited by larger tribes. All they can change is what they choose to focus on.
Ten of the scouts come back from their tour dejected and pessimistic. They just can’t get past their fear of failure, and that paralyzes them. That’s why they needed to wander in the wilderness for the next 38 years – because if they had entered the Promised Land with that attitude, they would have failed.
Joshua and Caleb are the only ones who choose to focus on the opportunity rather than the barrier. They are the only ones who choose to see that although the situation is challenging and is scary, it’s also an chance to grow and accomplish. And that’s why, 40 years later, Joshua and Caleb are the only original Israelites to enter the Land.
Our lives are filled with challenging moments – at work, with our families, in our personal and spiritual lives. There are times when we feel overwhelmed with responsibility. There are times when we feel dejected and hopeless. There are times when it seems like we’ve been dealt us a raw hand. We’ve all been in all of those places. I think that in those moments, the lesson of the Torah is: Yachol Nuchal Lah – We can make it through.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy and it doesn’t mean it’s simple. We need a lot of resources to weather some of those challenges. We need loving family and friends; we need a supportive community; we need to find ways to believe in our own ability to overcome and to grow. If you think about it, there was nothing easy about 40 years in the Wilderness, but even that punishment had silver linings. It was our chance to grow into the people we needed to be; it was our chance to create the society that we wanted to have. That opportunity was on the other side of the coin from the challenge, if we could only find how to look for it.
It’s not always easy to be optimistic, but I suspect that our own challenges also have such flip sides. And I suspect that if we focus in a certain way, we can see how our difficulties and our pain help us to grow, to be better people, to come through the other side stronger and more capable and more compassionate. And I also suspect that, with practice, we can learn how to see those opportunities in the midst of our challenges.
On this Shabbat and every day:
May we surround ourselves with the support we need, and strive to be that for others.
May we seek out chances to become the best versions of ourselves.
And may we always know that Yachol Nuchal Lah – that we are capable of accomplishing great things.
Amen.
Rabbi Micah Streiffer 