"And God spoke to Moses saying: Send for you men that they may spy out the land of Canaan which I give to the children of Israel..." (Numbers 13:1-2). The root word of this weeks Torah portion, shelach, "send," interestingly appears in two other portions as well. The Torah portion where Jacob sends messengers to Esau, as he readies himself to re-enter the land of Israel after a twenty year absence, is called Vayishlach. The portion where Pharaoh sends the Jewish people away after years of slavery is called Beshalach. In addition to all three portions sharing the same root word, they also have in common coming to the land of Israel.
Jacob sends messengers when coming to the border of the land in order to appease his brother Esau, hoping it will lead to a peaceful entrance into the land. By Pharaoh sending the people from Egypt, it begins their journey, whose final destination is Israel. Finally, in our portion, Moses sends spies in order to assess the land and its inhabitants in order to plan their conquest of Israel.
The Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schnersohn, taught that the numerical equivalent of the word shaliach, "a messenger [with a specific purpose and mission]," having the same root as "send," equals 348. If connecting an additional letter yod, which equals 10, to the word shaliach, they equal 358, the same as Mashiach, the Messiah. He explained that the additional yod is the hidden point of pure potential, the spark of Mashiach within every Jew.
The prophet Isaiah encapsulated the mission of the Jewish people to be "a light unto the nations." This light is initially hidden within every Jew. When activating this light, the dormant spark of Mashiach, the innate leadership qualities within is also stirred. When a critical mass of individual sparks are awakened, this will manifest the energy of the Messiah into the world.
One might think to accomplish this it would be best for Jews to be scattered to the four corners of the earth in order to spread the light. In truth, this is one of the spiritual and mystical meanings of the exile. For the last 2,500 years the Jewish people have brought the light of Torah to every corner of the globe and the influence on religion, law, ethics, literature, music, art, philosophy, ethics, medicine etc in each host country and culture has been enormous. Nonetheless, the vision of Isaiah is predicated on the light, emanating in a most concentrated manner from Israel and Jerusalem, only then spreading to the entire world. As the Jewish people continue the ingathering of the exiles, all those individual sparks are being brought home, setting the stage for a new light of revelation and redemption to shine in Zion.
Though the spies failed in their mission, ultimately the Jewish people are destined to fulfill their purpose. Though we wandered for forty years, Joshua eventually lead us into the land. But returning to the land is not the end of the story, it is actually just the beginning. For until we establish a just and righteous society based on the principles of Torah the light will be shaded and cloudy. The light of Torah is waiting to be revealed, waiting for us to do our parts.
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Connecting an additional letter yod, equaling ten, to the word shaliach, as explained above, is very appropriate to this Torah portion as we will now see. Moses chose twelve spies, one from each tribe to spy out the land. Ten of them banded together and came back with an evil report, while Kalev and Joshua urged the people not to listen to them and to trust God and their own ability to conquer the land. From the fact that the Torah calls the ten spies an "evil assembly" the Sages learn that an assembly or congregation is made up of ten people. From this we learn that ten men are needed to form a minyan, a prayer quorum (Megillah 23b). Every minyan in essence is a rectification of the power of ten to form an assembly, and in the case of the spies, to do evil.
As Moses sends the spies on their way he adds a letter yod to the name of Joshua, who was known till then as Hoshea. (Numbers 13:16). Every change of name in the Torah signifies a change of status, a new consciousness and mission. On the simple level, as Rashi explains, Moses changed his name to indicate his own prayer that God should save him from the plotting of the spies. The fact that the letter added to his name was a yod, equaling ten, indicates Moses' intuition that he would need the power of this letter to ward off their power of ten. In connection to what we learned above, Moses was building up Joshua, activating his inner spark of Mashiach and leadership, his deepest potential. By adding a yod to his name, Moses was preparing and grooming him for his eventual mission to lead the people into the land.
When the people complained and threatened to go back to Egypt Moses prayed to God to forgive them nevertheless. "And now may the strength of my God be magnified as You have spoken saying: God, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, forgiver of iniquity and purposeful sin…" (Numbers 14:17). In the Torah the word for magnified, yigdal, is written with a large yod at the beginning of the word. Paradoxically, the yod is the smallest of all the letters and is know by the idiom - "the little that holds much." Moses realized the severity of the sin of the spies and the people's willingness to go back to Egypt. He therefore prayed for God, as it were, to go even beyond the letter of the law and to magnify whatever small merit the people may have had in order to offset their obvious deficiencies.
God answered in the positive - "I have forgiven because of your words" - but then hedges His acceptance with the words: "…all the men who have seen My glory and My signs that I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness and have tested me these ten times and have not heeded my voice…." Again we see the number ten appearing in this Torah portion. This last failing of the spies appears to be the tenth time the people have "tested" God. Moses, knowing this, prayed that the aspect of yod, ten, should be made even greater in order to forgive the people.
According to tradition Abraham was tested ten times by God. The last of Abraham's tests was his being instructed by God to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. The Midrash states that Abraham, who uttered not a word of protest during the entire ordeal, then turned to God and requested that as a reward for his faithfulness that in the future when his children will need assistance that God would show mercy on them. Perhaps the reward for Abraham passing his ten tests came in part when his children tested God ten times, yet he did not break His covenant that the children of Abraham would be His people.
In the 145th psalm of Ashrei, King David prays to God: "Open up Your hand and satisfy the desire of all living things." The word for hand in Hebrew, yad, is the same root as the letter yod. The Sages reveal one of the meanings of this verse is not to read it as "open up Your hand," but to read it as "open up Your [aspect of] yod." Yod is the fist letter of God's four letter Name and signifies His Presence in every point of reality. This is represented by the form of the yod being a formed, stylized point. The greatness of God is that he provides for all, even those who go against His ways.
Though the men between twenty and sixty did not merit to go into the land, everyone else did. The Slonimer Rebbe explains that it was not so much a punishment that they could not go into the land as much as it was a consequence of their own actions. They cut them selves off from their own destiny in the land, therefore the land could not allow them to go in. Many commentators explain many of the various "punishments" in the Torah as being more the results and consequences of peoples actions then actual punishments.
From all the above connections with the number ten and the letter yod we see that there are multi levels of connections as reflected in the stories in the Torah. These same forces occur in our private lives, the history of the Jewish people and world history in general. The letters of the Torah represent the building blocks of creation and the fabric of history as it unfolds. Our actions create harmony and redemption or dissidence and disaster and their results manifest themselves sometimes immediately and sometimes generations later. Even now, millennium later, we are still trying to rectify the failings of the spies. Even now the prayers of Moses and Abraham are assisting us in ways we may never know.
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When the spies came back from their forty days of scouting the land of Israel, ten of the spies declared that despite it being a land flowing with milk and honey, the inhabitants were far too strong to be defeated and therefore they would not be able to conquer the land. Two of the spies, Kalev and Joshua, disagreed strongly and claimed that God was with them and they would be able to conquer the land. As has been discussed previously, the Torah is prophetic and it's "stories" contain primordial energy which appears and reappears continually throughout history. It is quite amazing that since 1967, when Israel in a war for survival was able to re-conquer large parts of the Biblical land of Israel, there has been an ongoing and at times raging battle between those who say we can and should hold on to the land and others who claim we can't or shouldn't. It is important to note that the debate is not so much as to whether the lands conquered in the 1967 war constitute the ancient land of Israel. There is far less debate on this question than most people imagine. The vast majority of Jews in Israel and around the world understand that this land is in fact the cradle and heart of biblical Israel, lands on which thousands of years of Jewish history took place.
For those who favor returning the land the reasoning is based more on purely political and quasi moral terms as to whether for true peace we should return the land, or as a way to extradite ourselves from ruling over another people, or to try to put an end to the constant terrorism, or because even if we deserve it, the world simply will never accept a situation where we could keep it, as unjust and hypocritical as this may seem. For many it is a combination of the above factors that lead them to believe as the spies that "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we." For those who favor holding on to the land, beyond the obvious security considerations, it is for the most part due to the feeling that historic justice is finally being done and that the land of Israel is a gift and covenant with God - who then are we to return it. Or as Kalev said: "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it."
I do not intend to enter the debate in this format. Rather my purpose is to simply point out how the controversy that took place in the desert is not a one time event, but forms the very fabric of contemporary life in Israel today. This is a classic example of the eternal relevance of the Torah and how its "stories" reveal so much more than the simple reading of the text.
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Upon hearing the report of the spies and their description of the well fortified cities and giants who inhabited them the Torah states: "And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried; and the people wept that night" (Numbers 14:1). The Talmud discusses the ramifications of their crying. "Rabba said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: That night was the ninth of Av. The Holy one Blessed Be He said to them: You cried for no reason - I will establish for you [on this night] a crying for generations" (Taanit 29a).
There are two legitimate ways to interpret God's establishing a crying for generations. On one hand we could understand His words to indicate that the people's rejection of His promise to bring them into the land will have ramifications for generations. This is certainly true for the generation that had to wander for forty years in the desert till a new generation was ready to go into the land. It could further be understood to allude to the fact that there would be many times in the future when the Jewish people would have the opportunity to return to Israel, but would respond in a similar manner, where the majority would not follow through and grasp the opportunity and only a minority would have the faith to actually return. For example, the reality of a pitiful few returning to Israel, instead of mass immigration, manifested itself at the time when Cyrus gave the Jews the opportunity to return and build the second Temple (See the books of Ezra and Nechemia). This same opportunity for Jews to return to Israel appeared in the beginning years of the Zionist enterprise and continues to this very day in the State of Israel.
Another way of understanding the statement in the Talmud is that events that transpire in the moment can leave deep impressions in the very fabric of time, "of generations." Somehow the crying of that ninth of Av became imbedded in all future days of the same date. If viewing time as strictly linear then this proposition makes no apparent sense. Even the idea of cause and effect which would acknowledge the notion that the crying that night would have an influence, even a profound influence on the future, it would not by necessity have to be felt on every ninth of Av in the future. Yet, when envisioning time as spiral, and not linear in nature, one can more readily understand how events on a particular day pass through the same point on a continuous circular cycle, albeit on ever higher levels. Every moment in time is both entirely new and yet profoundly influenced by the past which is engraved in its spiral movement through the cycles of time. (For a more in depth understanding of the cycles of time, see my book "Seeds and Sparks: Reflections on the Cycles of Jewish Life.")
The discussion in the Talmud actually takes place in the context of the statement that five misfortunes took place during the generations of the ninth of Av, including the destruction of both Temples (Taanit 29a). Since the time of this statement in the Talmud, many more terrible events occurred on this date including the expulsions from Spain and England and key events during World War I and II. The uncanny repetition of calamities through out Jewish history on the ninth of Av leaves no doubt as to the truth of God's response to their crying that auspicious night. It does leave it us though to ponder and understand the spiritual and physical truth lying behind this phenomenon and it's impact on time and history.
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As a continuation of their crying due to the discouraging report of the spies, the people exclaimed: "And why has God brought us into this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should be prey; were it not better for us to return to Egypt? And they said one to another - let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt" (Numbers 14:3-4). This is not the first time the people reacted to the adversities of the desert with the wish to return to Egypt. One naturally asks - how could they even think about returning to the slavery and hardships of Egypt? It seemingly defies logic. Yet our judgement may be too hasty. When one thinks of the following it is much easier to understand the psychology of their reaction.
Many times we are confronted with a situation which is far from ideal. We think and plan a hundred ways to escape our current reality. Then an opportunity comes our way that would allow us to extradite ourselves from our situation and embark on a totally new path. The only problem is there are no guarantees of success, the new path is unknown and we begin to doubt our own capabilities. In this sort of situation it is quite normal to begin to rethink how bad the current situation really is. Maybe its not so bad after all and with a few adjustments we could get along just fine. All of a sudden we rewrite our past script and learn to live with what still in essence is the same old bad situation. This all confirms the well know psychological reaction that for many or most of us the known, even if negative, is preferable to the fear of the unknown.
Though at first glance it may seem easy to judge harshly many of the complaints and murmuring of the people in the desert, when looking more closely we can see ourselves very clearly in the mirror.
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At the end of the Torah portion of Shelach are instructions for wearing tzitzit, fringes on certain clothing: "And God said to Moses saying: Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them that they shall make tzitzit on the corners of their garments, throughout the generations. And they shall place upon the tzitzit of each corner a thread of turquoise/blue. And it will be to you tzitzit, that you may see it and remember all the commandments of God" (Numbers 15:37-39). The Sages taught that the turquoise/blue color mentioned creates a natural uplifting progression of thought. The color of the tzitzit is similar to the color of the sea, which reminds us of the color of the heavens, which further is associated with the color of God's Throne of Glory ( Menachot 43b). Rashi, quoting the Midrash, explains that seeing the tzitzit reminds us of all the commandments due to the fact that the numerical equivilent of the word tzitzit is 600, plus the eight fringes and the five knots on each corner add up to 613, the number of mitzvot in the Torah ( Bamidbar Rabba 18:21). Therefore seeing the tzitzit will trigger their association with all the mitzvot.
Both these explanations use associative, symbolic thought in order to explain the simple meaning of the text. Though not every mitzvah is explained by the Talmud or Rashi in such a manner, Kabbalah and Chassidut understand not only the mitzvot in the Torah this way but that every story, chapter, verse and letter in the Torah yields layer upon layer of symbolic and associative meanings. For this reason the Sages state that there are seventy faces to the Torah while the Arizal spoke of 600,000 faces, one for each letter in the Torah and one for each of the 600,000 cardinal Jewish soul roots.
The symbolic strata associated with the Torah narrative does not come to weaken the simple story line or meaning of the text, rather it comes to reveal deeper and deeper levels of understanding in order to make the Torah personally relevant and meaningful to every individual.
In the 1900's a literary style of writing that captured people imagination was termed "stream of consciousness," where free style thoughts connected by loose association flowed one into the other. The modern style of rap music is based very much on this same genre. Yet, when studying the Talmud one becomes aware that these techniques are not as new as we may think. The free flow of pure logic and competing legal concepts, interspersed with constant stories and pertinent oral traditions in the Talmud, weave together intellectual and psychological strands into an awesomely beautiful tapestry of spiritual heights and practical application. Even before the Talmud, many of the deeper secrets of the Torah itself are found in the juxtaposition of the stories and mitzvot and their deeper inner connections.
The importance of kavanah, deep intent in doing the mitzvot, attempts to capitalize on pausing both before and during doing a mitzvah in order to make spiritual associations and see the symbolic ramifications of our actions. Beyond this body of knowledge given over to us by our Sages each person is then able to find new and inspiring ways to make the mitzvot relevant and meaningful in a deeply personal way. The more one learns Torah the richer the possibilities become for making connections between ideas and concepts. Ultimately we become aware of the unity of all things, how all is connected to God's oneness. Both the color and the numerical value of tzitzit allude to a deeper understanding of the Torah and life itself. In essence all the mitzvot and events in the Torah fulfill the same function.
Learning Torah leads us to elevate ourselves from simple physical reality, as symbolized by the tzitzit, and to realize the more fluid, flowing nature of things just below the surface, associated with the sea, till rising to a more spiritual understanding of material existence, symbolized by heaven, till we finally envision the ultimate unity of material and spiritual as symbolized in the Throne of Glory.
