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From the Rabbi:
As our eyes and hearts are following the news in Eretz Yisrael, this week the Parsha too focuses on Eretz Yisrael and our relationship with her. Our relationship to The Holy Land is defined by this parsha perhaps more than any other, and everyone's opinions and perspectives on Israel, Zionism and diaspora are easy to hear within the Biblical narrative this week. Even those Jews who's opinions on these matters aren't based in Torah still sound awfully familiar during parshat Shlach.
A brief synopsis of the Parsha: Parshat Shlach begins with the sending of twelve spies from the encampment in the desert to scout out Eretz Yisrael. The spies come back and while two of them, Yehoshua and Kalev encourage the people, the ten remaining spies are convinced of our inability to conquer the Land of Israel. Their discouragement spreads through the camp and people weep through the night. That night was Tisha B’av, and in the morning, God declares (according to Rashi and the Midrash) “you’ve wept needlessly tonight, now I shall give you reason to weep on this night throughout your generations”, and so God decreed upon us that we will not go into The Land, all that generation must die out in the desert save Joshua and Calev, and their children would be the ones to go into The Land after forty years in the desert. After the decree, a group takes it upon themselves to go up and conquer The Land anyway, and despite Moshe’s warning that God was not with them in the endeavor, they attempt to go take Eretz Yisrael by force of arms. They are all slaughtered.
There is more to the Parsha, but for our purposes, we’ll stop here.
The intense Zionist voice today echoes Yehoshua and Kalev. The Charedi Anti-Zionists have long identified the Zionist movement with the ma'apilim, those who went up to take The Land by force without God. Voices critical of Israel, or perhaps of her actions sound a bit like the spies, speaking ill of Israel. Another interpretation I heard was that the spies' objection to conquest was that it would require too much violence. We hear similar pacifist shades today too. Today's debates are nothing new, it's all there in the Torah.
Well, what about us here in the diaspora? Where are we in this Parsha? Some will tell us that we're the spies: pampered cowards, stubborn in our refusal to rise to our destiny. Others may tell us that we're the good ones, patiently waiting for God to send Mashiach. Neither of these are satisfying to me. At all. Is there no room in this parsha for us to see our life here in the diaspora as meaningful?
I believe we can, and I'll give you two angles to consider. Not in the voices of Calev and Joshua. Not in the voices of the spies nor even of Moshe, but in the words of God Himself.
The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni) explains God's decree of forty years of exile with a parable: A king found a perfect match for his son, a woman of extraordinary beauty, wisdom and virtue. When the son is informed that he’s to be married, he insists on seeing the bride before agreeing to the match. His father thought, ‘if I don’t let him see her, he’ll think it’s because she’s ugly’, and so the king reluctantly allows the prince to see the intended bride. When he does meet her, the prince is so awestruck by her beauty, wisdom and virtue that he feels entirely unworthy of her, and so he refuses the match lest he be overshadowed and put to shame by his illustrious queen. The father, recognizing the quality of this bride, then decrees, 'very well, if you aren’t worthy, I will marry your son to her daughter'. Similarly, (14:31) “Your little ones, who you said, would be plundered, they will I bring in, and they shall know the Land which you have rejected.”
This midrash gives us the perspective that rather than refusing to enter Israel because of disdain for The Land, it was and is rather our extreme love of Israel coupled with sadly low spiritual self-esteem that keeps us in exile, ever preparing ourselves to be worthy of Eretz Yisrael. Not us as individuals, but us as a People. I actually really like this, because it makes us here in the diaspora the vanguard of spiritual development, 'growing where no-one has grown before', pioneering the spirituality of the future. Not that this isn't also happening in Israel, but I've found that there is far greater resistance to the development of new modalities of Avodat Hashem, the sense being that having arrived in Israel, they're already 'good enough'.
So let's examine then what might be a critical piece of maturation which will get us ready to live out our great destiny.
After forgiving the sin of the spies but before decreeing the forty years of exile, Hashem swears, (14:21) “but truly, as I live, all the Earth shall be filled with the Glory of the Lord… ” I believe this is not merely an oath giving credence to God’s ensuing decree. ‘Just as my glory fills the Earth, so too shall none of you see the Land…’ No, this is more. This is a statement about the very purpose of exile.
If the prevailing iteration Zionist dream came true, and all us diasporic Jews got up today and made aliyah, would that bring mashiach? Would the ensuing ‘redemption’ really be messianic up to our highest aspirations? Perhaps, but barring vast subconscious transformation among 7.9 billion people, at best it would still be only a national redemption. But that' isn't God's dream, nor does if fulfill the oath which he swore. God has not sent us into exile as punishment, nor have we chosen exile out of self-deprecating cowardice. Rather, exile has a purpose, a goal towards which we are deployed. Our purpose in The Diaspora is to make sure that the whole world is in on God’s Glory. The ultimate redemption must be for the entire Earth; the resolution of all Humanity with Hashem.
May our aspiration be to see God's dream come true. Amen.
Shabbat Shalom,
Reb Shlomo
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