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Moses selects twelve leaders from the tribes of Israel to scout out the “Promised Land.” Tired of hearing the constant complaints of the Israelites, Moses initiates this mission confident the tribal leaders will bring back positive reports and quiet the concerns of the people. Unfortunately, Moses did not have a back-up plan. Ten of the twelve scouts returned with a troubling report. While two of the scouts (Caleb and Joshua) announced, “Let us go up to this Land and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it! (Num. 13:30)”, the other ten countered by declaring, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we. . . . The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. . . . .and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them! (Num. 13: 31, 33).”
According to Murphy’s Law, if you think you are going to lose, you probably will! The ancient Israelites, still suffering from their years of slavery in Egypt, faced their first real challenge and came away feeling like grasshoppers in the presence of their enemies. Not a good recipe for success!
Aaron Beck, of the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the founders of a most effective form of psychotherapy: cognitive therapy. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes Beck’s work by noting, “He began to detect a pattern among his [depression] patients. It had to do with the way they interpreted events. They did so in negative ways that were damaging to their self-respect and fatalistic. . . . Essentially, they keep telling themselves ‘I am a failure. Nothing I try ever succeeds. I am useless. Things will never change.’ ”
One of Beck’s students, David Burns formed several identities describing the above behavior. Among these depression identifiers were:
1) “All-or-nothing” Thinking. Everything is black or white, good or bad, easy or impossible.
2) Negative Filtering-One discounts the positive as being insignificant, and focuses almost exclusively on the negatives.
3) Catastrophizing-Expecting disaster to strike, no matter what.
4) Emotional Reasoning-Letting your feelings, rather than careful deliberation, dictate your thinking.
One need not be clinically-depressed to identify with one of the above categories. They are all disqualifiers for the mission Moses was commissioning. His failure to select the most qualified (intellectually and emotionally) people to serve as scouts may have later cost him the opportunity of leading the Israelites into the Promised Land.
The lesson for us in our day is found in the profound words of Rabbi Sacks: “Never let negative emotions distort your perceptions. You are not a grasshopper. Those who oppose you are not giants. To see the world as it is, not as you are afraid it might be, let faith banish fear.”
Rabbi Howard Siegel
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