5771 פרשת שלח

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us the occurrences surrounding the actions of the Meraglim. The Torah tells us that Moshe sent 12 men, one from each tribe to go to Eretz Yisroel and check out the land and its inhabitants and report back to Moshe and Bnei Yisroel.

 When the Meraglim returned they told Bnei Yisroel that Eretz Yisroel  was a beautiful country but that it would be impossible for them to conquer it as the inhabitants were giants and there is no way that they can be defeated.

 The response of Bnei Yisroel was to complain against Moshe, Aharon and God. The Torah describes one of the complaints of Bnei Yisroel as saying “Why did God take us out of Egypt to have us and our families killed and taken captive?”

 The Siforno explains this complaint the following way. Bnei Yisroel was saying what sin have we committed that God hates us so much that He would  do this whole plan to take us out Egypt with all the plagues and the splitting of the sea just to have us killed and our families taken captive when we try to enter Eretz Yisroel.

 If we look at the Siforno a bit more closely we can ask the following question. From the Siforno it seems that based on the fact that the Meraglim said that the nations living in Eretz Yisroel were too strong to defeat; Bnei Yisroel assumed that all of the exodus and all the other miracles God did for Bnei Yisroel were all done because God hated them and wanted them taken captive and killed by the nations in Eretz Yisroel. Logically speaking if a person would look at a situation with 2 possible outcomes; the first being more logical and based on precedent and the second being far fetched, he would pick the one based on precedent.  In this situation Bnei Yisroel had two ways to view the report they received from the Meraglim. The first being that God who has already did tremendous miracles for them including the exodus, the manna, the well of Miriam in the Midbar, and many others over the prior 2 years would continue to perform miracles for them and help them defeat the armies in Eretz Yisroel.  The second was that God did all of those miracles just to have them killed in this manner. Logically, they should have picked the first one. If this is the case, why did Bnei Yisroel faced with those 2 choices pick the more far fetched one.

 The answer could be that when a person is caught up in their emotions their mind can make even the most irrational ideas not only rational but even more so even than other more logical explanations. When Bnei Yisroel heard the words of Bnei Yisroel they began to panic and instead of focusing on what was obviously the more logical explanation of the events, they grabbed onto the more irrational idea to fuel their original fears.

 In our daily lives we always experience events that cause our emotions to take control of us, however before we react we should try to get a grip of our emotions so that we don’t react in a way that might Chas Veshalom cause us to react in an inappropriate and potentially incorrect manner.

 5770 פרשת שלח

 In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us the incident regarding the actions of the spies. The Torah tells us that after the spies returned from Israel, they spoke badly about Eretz Yisroel and convinced Bnei Yisroel to lose faith in God and request that it would be better for them to die in the desert than to try to conquer Eretz Yisroel. When God heard their rebellion, He wanted to punish Bnei Yisroel by killing them in an instant through a plague and remaking Bnei Yisroel all as descendants of Moshe Rabbeinu. The Torah describes to us how Moshe, when God told him of his desire to wipe out the rebellious members of Bnei Yisroel which in this case would have been a very large portion of Bnei Yisroel, prayed to God to remove the decree from Bnei Yisroel. The prayer of Moshe to God was that if God wiped out all of Bnei Yisroel in one shot it would cause a great Chilul Hashem.

 The Ohr Hachayim explains that unlike by the sin of the golden calf where Moshe prayed that Bnei Yisroel should be spared, in this case, Moshe understood the enormity of the sin being the tenth time that Bnei Yisroel had challenged God during their sojourn in the Midbar and did not request a full pardon but rather that Bnei Yisroel who were to be punished not be punished all at once but rather to have the punishment enacted over time.

 The Torah then tells us that after God heard Moshe’s entreaties, God pardoned Bnei Yisroel. When describing the conversation God had with Moshe when God told him that he would pardon Bnei Yisroel, the Pasuk says: “I will pardon them like your words.”

 The Ohr Hachayim asks why does the Pasuk says “like your words”, why did God not just say to Moshe that I will pardon them?

 The Ohr Hachayim explains that God did not fully forgive Bnei Yisroel for the sin, but rather just acquiesced to the request of Moshe that Bnei Yisroel not be punished all at once rather the punishment will be meted out over time.

 If we look at this Ohr Hachayim a little more closely, we can ask the following question. The concept of a pardon is that the punishment that was supposed to be meted out would be removed. In this case, the punishment was that Bnei Yisroel would die in the Midbar and not go into Eretz Yisroel and that the night of Tisha B’Av   would be a night of suffering for Bnei Yisroel for all generations. All that still occurred; the only difference was that it took 40 years for all of the men who were over 20 at the time of the exodus to die instead of them all dying at once. Why would this be considered a pardon? Nothing really changed.

 The answer could be that we don’t truly appreciate the value of a day of life. To live another day means being able to do more Mitzvos and do Teshuva and earn more reward in the next world which is our purpose in life. This is why the Torah describes getting extra time before the punishment is meted out as a true pardon. 

פרשת שלח5769

In this week’s Parsha, the Torah discusses the actions of the spies and the impact of their words on Bnei Yisroel. The Torah describes how while 10 of the spies were trying to convince the Bnei Yisroel that entering Eretz Yisroel would be a dangerous and impossible endeavor, Yehoshua and Calev were trying to persuade them that God will help them and they would surely be successful. The Pasuk tells us that when Yehoshua and Calev were speaking to Bnei Yisroel, they said:

 Don’t rebel against God and you should not be afraid of the people who are presently living in Eretz Yisroel.

 The Rabbeinu Bechai learns out from this Pasuk that the fear of Bnei Yisroel of the inhabitants of Eretz Yisroel was considered to be a rebellion against God.

 If we analyze this Rabbeinu Bechai, we can ask, why is it that being afraid of the inhabitants of Eretz Yisroel is considered a rebellion? I can understand that it might be considered a lack of faith in God, but why would it be considered a rebellion, the fear was not with the purpose of rebelling it was a natural emotion to external stimulus.

 The answer can be that there are two different reasons that a person should not be afraid of a particular situation. The first one is that he feels secure that he can control the situation and the second one is that he is with a person with whom he is confident would not do anything to harm him and also had the ability to ensure that nothing would happen to him.

 Let us see if Bnei Yisroel at the time of the spies fit into any of these categories and if their actions could be construed as a rebellion against God.

 God had commanded Bnei Yisroel to go and conquer Eretz Yisroel. From their past experiences Bnei Yisroel knew and understood that God can do anything. Furthermore, as the commentaries explain the reason that Bnei Yisroel was able to say Naaseh Vnishma at the time they received the Torah was that they understood that God will not do anything to harm them. All this being the case, how could Bnei Yisroel have let their fear get the better of them? It should have been a non-starter. The fact that they were afraid meant that they did not truly believe that God would not cause them any harm, inherently undermining and breaking the relationship they had with God, hence their fear equals rebellion.

We are not on the level of Bnei Yisroel at that time and therefore we for the most part fall into the first category and when we have external stimuli they can cause us stress and fear. The more a person can put his trust in God the less stress he will feel. However, what we must realize is that when it comes to doing Mitzvos and not doing sins we must understand that God will never tell us to do anything that is to our detriment. When we are put in situations that for whatever reason we feel uncomfortable or stressed to do a particular Mitzvah or not do a particular sin we must realize that if that is what we are supposed to do then it can never be to our detriment because God does not tell us to do things that are bad for us. Even if the immediate result may look bad on the surface, we know that everything God does is for our good even if we can’t see it right away. If we can focus on that, it will give us the strength to do the Mitzvos even when things are tough and to get through the other difficult times that arise in our lives.

 5768 פרשת שלח

 In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes the actions of the spies who went to spy on Eretz Yisroel. Of the 12 spies who went, 10 of them said Lashon Hara about Eretz Yisroel while only two of them: Yehoshua and Calev said good things about Eretz Yisroel. We know that Yehoshua, before he went, received a special Bracha from Moshe Rabbeinu that he should not get caught up in the plans of the spies, but how did Calev save himself from their fate? The Gemara explains this based on the following Pasuk:

 They went up into Eretz Yisroel through the southern part of the country and he came to Chevron.

 The Gemara is bothered by why the Pasuk changes language from at first using the plural and then the singular form. The Gemara explains this the following way:

 Rava said, “To teach us that Calev separated from the plan of the spies and he went to the burial place of the Avos and said to them, “Daven for me that I should be saved from the plan of the spies.”

 The question that arises when learning this Gemara is why was Calev afraid that he would be caught up in the plan of the Meraglim that he needed to go daven for heavenly assistance to be saved from involvement? From the fact that he went to Daven to request that he will be protected meant that he knew that what they were planning was wrong, so it would be inconceivable that he will be caught up in their plan.

 The simple answer would be to use a concept that we have spoken about before and that is that there was a tremendous amount of peer pressure to be one of the group and do what they were doing. However, this idea would not seem to fit the situation. Most cases in Chazal where we see the concept of a person being influenced to do the same thing as the group, is when they are inherently part of the group from before and now the group is doing something wrong, there is a pressure felt to go along. In the case of Calev, though they were never a group doing something together. As Chazal tell us the spies even when they left the camp before they reached Eretz Yisroel were already planning to tell Lashon hara about Eretz Yisroel and it is apparent that Calev at that point had no such plan. We see from this that Calev was never part of this group and would not have had any peer pressure.

 In order to answer this question, we can look at the words of the Gemara which are that Calev asked to be saved from the ”Eitza” of the spies. Where else do we see the word ”Eitza” used in Chazal?

 When discussing the transgression of “Not putting a stumbling block in front of a blind man”, Rashi tells us the sin is describing not purposely giving a person bad advice. The word used for advice is “Eitza”.

 With this we can now understand the fear of Calev. What Calev was worried about is that the other spies will be able to convince him to follow their ideas based on convincing arguments even though they were wrong.

 From this Gemara we can learn an important lesson. Many times in our lives we face situations where people will try to convince us to do something we know is wrong. This can be in business or in religious issues. We should realize that a person’s arguments can have the ability to impact our decisions even though those arguments are wrong and you knew going in that it is wrong. In those cases, we should try to strengthen ourselves against those arguments and to daven since when we want to do the right thing God will help us stand up to the tests.  

פרשת שלח 5767

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses the story of the meraglim. The Torah when describing the return of the meraglim from Eretz Yisroel says the following:

And the spies returned from spying on the land at the end of 40 days.

 The Midrash asks we know that the meraglim went over the entire land from north to south and from east to west. It should actually have taken them 80 days going there and 80 days going back, so how did they make it back in just 40 days?

 The Midrash answers the following way:

 It was known to God that the meraglim would be coming and saying lashon hara about Eretz Yisroel and that God would decree on that generation years of suffering a year for every day that the spies were spying in Eretz Yisroel, so God made a miracle and shortened the time it took them to traverse Eretz Yisroel.

 If we look at this Midrash a little more closely, we will learn a very important lesson.

 It seems that God did not want Bnei Yisroel to suffer too much in the midbar so God shortened the travel time of the meraglim.

 Let us examine the punishment of Bnei Yisroel.

 Chazal tell us that the punishment of Bnei Yisroel for the sin of the meraglim was that they would have to stay in the midbar for 40 years and over that period all of Bnei Yisroel who were above 20 years old would die.

 When Bnei Yisroel were in the midbar over those 40 years, they still had the manna and the clouds of glory and all the wonderful gifts that God had given them to make life livable in the midbar.

 If there was no physical suffering for Bnei Yisroel and they were going to die anyway, the only suffering Bnei Yisroel would have, was not knowing when they would die, so what difference would it really have made if they died  over 40 days or 160 days.

God changed the nature of the world in order to minimize the suffering Bnei Yisroel would get as punishment for their sin. However, as we saw earlier the suffering to begin with was so minimal, and we also know that God does not change the nature of the world for no reason, so why would God change the nature of the world for this?

 The answer is that God has so much mercy on Bnei Yisroel that even the most minimal suffering is something that God wants to minimize even by doing overt miracles.

 We know that in our lives, we have a requirement to emulate the traits of God. If God feels so much for the suffering of Bnei Yisroel, then we must feel for the suffering of all of Bnei Yisroel no matter how minimal their suffering may be.

 If we can feel for other people’s suffering then God should continue to show his mercy to all of Bnei Yisroel and remove all our suffering by bringing the redemption in our days.