Parashat Sh’lach
June 25, 2022 | 26 Sivan 5782
Torah: Numbers 13:1-15:41 | Triennial: 15:8-15:41
Haftarah: Joshua 2:1-24
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Thoughts Upon Riding a Camel Under the Knee of the Dead", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "Stronger Than Whom?" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes a dvar haftara called "Whores and Heroes".
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Thoughts Upon Riding a Camel Under the Knee of the Dead
Ilana Kurshan
Our parashah is bookended by the story of the spies and the commandment of tzitzit. At the beginning of the parashah, God instructs Moshe to send twelve spies to scout out the land of Canaan; ten of them return and distress the people with their negative report, and as a result, God decrees that over the course of the next 38 years, the entire generation will die out in the wilderness. At the end of the parashah, God instructs Moshe to tell the people to make fringes on the corners of their garments to serve as a reminder to observe God’s commandments. These bookended passages are linked by the verb la-tur, to scout out or search after, as Rashi (on Numbers 13:25) and others have noted. Just as the spies were sent to scout out (v’ya-turu) the land, the mitzvah of tzitzit is intended to remind us not to search after (ta-turu) the lustful urges of our hearts and eyes. But the Talmud also conjoins the story of the spies and the mitzvah of Tzitzit in the context of a strange, unusual rabbinic travelogue, offering insight into the purpose of the mitzvot and the way they can shape our lives.
In the fifth chapter of tractate Bava Batra (73b-74a), amidst a discussion of the laws governing the sale of ships and other moveable property, the Talmud embarks on a long digression in which the late-third-century Babylonian sage Rabbah bar ba Hannah recounts his fantastic adventures at sea and in the desert. Rabbah bar bar Hannah is guided by an Arab who points out various sites along the way, playing Virgil to his Dante. At one point the Arab says to Rabbah bar bar Hannah and his travel companions, “Come, let me show you the dead of the wilderness.” He shows the travelers the corpses of the wilderness generation, those whose death was decreed as punishment for the episode with the spies.
Upon seeing the dead bodies resting on their backs all around him, Rabbah bar bar Hannah observes that the knee of one of the corpses is elevated. The corpse is so enormous that the Arab guide is able to ride his camel underneath its knee while holding his spear upright – perhaps an allusion to the wilderness generation’s all-too-credulous belief that the people of the land were like giants. Rabbah bar bar Hannah leans in and cuts one corner of the dead man’s garment affixed with tzitzit, at which point he finds himself paralyzed; he cannot take another step. The Arab says to him, “Perhaps we are stopped because you took something from the dead? Return it, as we know that one who takes something from the dead cannot walk.” The rabbi returns the corner of the dead man’s garment and they proceed on their journey.
In the continuation of this passage, the sages denounce Rabbah bar bar Hannah for cutting off the dead man’s tzitzit. They assume that Rabbah bar bar Hannah was motivated by a desire to bring these fringes before a rabbinical court, thereby settling once and for all the dispute between the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai over how many threads need to be conjoined in the fringes (see Menachot 41b). But the Tosafot (on Bava Batra 74a) take this story in a different direction, questioning whether Rabbah bar bar Hannah’s testimony is evidence that the dead are supposed to be buried with tzitzit affixed to their garments.
The Tosafot cite a story in tractate Berakhot in which Rabbi Hiya and Rabbi Yonatan were once walking through a cemetery when Rabbi Yonatan’s tzitzit began dragging on the ground. Rabbi Hiya told him to lift them up so that the dead would not think that Rabbi Yonatan was mocking them, since the dead are not obligated in mitzvot and thus do not wear tzitzit. The Tosafot resolve the apparent contradiction between the two stories—why did the dead man of the wilderness generation wear tzitzit, while the dead men in the cemetery did not—by explaining that only the members of the wilderness generation were buried with their tzitzit, because of the unusual way in which they died: Every Tisha b’Av in the desert, a voice would instruct every individual to dig his or her own grave and sleep in it, then in the morning, the voice would proclaim, “Let the living separate from the dead,” as only some would rise. When the Israelites got into their graves, then, they were still wearing their tzitzit. However, ordinarily a person is not buried with tzitzit because, as the Tosafot quote from the Talmud in Niddah (61b), “Once a person dies, he is free from the mitzvot.”
The notion that the dead are no longer obligated for the commandments is all the more true of tzitzit, which are a sort of meta-commandment that serve to remind us to fulfill all the other mitzvot. The midrash (Tanchuma on Numbers 15:37) invokes the analogy to a person who was drowning at sea, when a helmsman on a passing boat extended a rope to him, urging him, “Grab this rope and do not let go, for if you let go, you will lose your life.” In the same way, God extends the tzitzit fringes to us and tells us that as long as we adhere to the commandments, we will remain alive. The tzitzit are a reminder of the mitzvot that sustain us and allow us to draw close to God in this world; once we are dead, we have no need for them anymore.
Over time it became customary to wrap the dead in a tallit, but to cut off the tzitzit prior to burial. As the midrash teaches, the dead no longer have any need for the lifeline that tzitzit represents. But tzitzit is not just a lifeline, but also an opportunity. So long as we are alive, we still have the chance to draw closer to God and to elevate ourselves through the performance of God’s commandments; once we die and our souls are restored to God, we lose that chance.
I was reminded of this teaching a few months ago when running in the Jerusalem half-marathon. At the end of the race, my legs were heavy and tired and I was so tempted to slow down and take it easy for the last few kilometers. But I could see the finish line off in the distance, and I knew that once I crossed it, I would have ample time to rest. Now, while the race was still on, I had the chance to run as fast as I could and achieve my best time.
Death is the ultimate finish line. The conjoining of the story of the wilderness generation fated to die with the life-affirming mitzvah of tzitzit reminds us that so long as we remain alive on this earth, we still have the chance to keep pushing ourselves to perform the mitzvot that enable us to live a full life.
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Stronger Than Whom?
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Bemidbar 13:30-14:11
13:30Then Caleb… said, “Let us surely go up and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” 31But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we/He.” 32 And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land “…all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. 33…we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” 14:2And all the children of Israel complained…3Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? 11Then the Lord said to Moshe: “How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them?”
- The spies said the land is unattainable, the people there being stronger than we/He. Based on the text, which of the 2 possible readings (we/He) do you think they meant?
- Based on God’s reaction, how did God understand their words?
Commentary: Ramban Bemidbar 13:29
…Then the spies spoke up again, explaining their words clearly, and said, we are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than us, meaning: "Even if the people came out unto us into the field, we are not able to contest them in battle…”
- How does Ramban read v.31: we or He?
Commentary: Rashi Bemidbar 13:31
For they are stronger than we/He – They said this — if this were at all permitted to say so of God — with reference to the Omnipresent.
- According to Rashi’s reading of the statement of the spies, what is the problem that will prevent them from conquering the land?
- Compare this with Ramban’s reason, which do you find more compelling? Why?
- Which reading do you think matches the reason for God’s anger?
Super-commentary* on Rashi: Gur Aryeh (Maharal of Prague) Bemidbar 13:31
“From we/He” cannot be referring to Israel… for to say so would suggest that Israel is strong as well, but they are merely stronger. That is not possible since they viewed themselves, in relation to the people in the land, as grasshoppers…
*Rashi has over 300 super-commentaries, explaining his commentary.
- Rashi translates “stronger than He”. How does the Gur Aryeh commentary explain that it could not be referring to Israel (“From we”)?
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For those who followed last week’s Torah Sparks questions: What image of the people at this stage is emerging in Rashi’s commentaries? How does this affect your reading?
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Whores and Heroes
Bex Stern Rosenblat
This week’s parasha starts out gloriously - we are to scout out the land in order to enter it. This land is that very land which has been promised to us for hundreds of years, and now we, a group of former slaves, are about to be the generation to enter it. The ending of the parasha is dismal. Not only will we not merit to enter the land, we are told, repeatedly and graphically, that we will die before entering the land, that our carcasses will fall in the wilderness.
It is only natural that before our second attempt to enter the land, we are thoroughly warned about what constitutes proper and improper behavior so that we do not lose out again on living in the land. The main thing we must not do, above all others, is worship other gods when we enter the land. The language used to describe this action is to whore, whoring after other gods. We are warned in Exodus 34 not to make a covenant with the peoples of the land lest that led to us whoring after their gods. Likewise, God warns Moses shortly before he dies that when Israel enters the land, they will whore after foreign gods and break the covenant.
Entering the land is scary. We have longed for it all of our lives but we also know that to be in relationship with the land is a tremendous responsibility. We have been warned. Yet in our haftarah, just as we are poised to enter the land again, Joshua sends out scouts again to “go and see the land.” And yet their very first action is “go and enter the house of a woman, a whore.” Despite the warnings, despite the memory of the last stories of the spies, we can’t get two steps into Israel before stumbling into the house of a whore. It makes something of a mockery of the warnings.
The text portrays Rahab, the whore, incredibly positively. She is the only named character besides Joshua in the story. She functions as the driver of the action, the hero who recognizes God’s power and takes action against the Canaanite enemy. Rahab is rewarded in the end with a place in the new world order. Rashi follows the Targum and tries to soften the irony - he understands her as an innkeeper rather than as a whore.
Malbim goes in a different direction. He reads the spies’ move as clever and strategic. The spies, in his eyes, go to Rehab because, as a whore, she will have all the relevant gossip. She will know state secrets and perhaps be willing to divulge them. This understanding of what it means to be a whore is in accordance with the way the rest of the Tanakh describes whoring. Rahab is functioning as a traitor to her people, but the god she whores after is our God.
The idea of whoring after foreign gods develops throughout the historical and prophetic texts as we see it happen in real time. We do enter the land and we do go astray after foreign gods and foreign nations. We do it to such a degree that the prophetic texts start to describe us as a whore rather than just someone who has the propensity to whore. It becomes our defining attribute.
But the story of Rahab helps us understand ourselves in a different light. We read her story with respect and with sympathy. We will inevitably go astray and we will inevitably suffer. We will see others from our own nation suffer for our actions. But there is a way to remember ourselves as heroes even as we go astray.
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