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The Depths of Faith

Shlakh 5778 / 9 June 2018

June 13, 2018

In the common understanding, parashat Shlakh is the story of faith – or rather, lack of faith. The spies, sent to scout the Land of Israel in preparation for its conquest, lack faith in God to deliver them in victory and discourage the Israelites, calling for a return to Egypt rather than certain death in battle. God punishes this betrayal with a decree that the entire generation – with the sole exceptions of Caleb and Joshua, who remained steadfast in their conviction that Israel should move forward into the land – should die in the wilderness. Today, however, I would like to suggest that there is a deeper picture here, beyond the surface reading.

The beginning of the story is straightforward enough: Moses, at God’s request, sends twelve spies; they scout across the land and return to report. Then things get messy. Ten of the spies – all of them aside from Caleb and Joshua – come back profoundly demoralized. They have great things to say about the land, but no confidence in Israel’s ability to root out the pagan nations and claim the land. In their most telling statement, and one of the best-known verses from this Torah portion, they tell the people, וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּֽחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵֽינֵיהֶֽם, “We looked in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we looked in their eyes.”[1] Here is the key: in our eyes. How could they have known what they looked like to the Canaanites? Did they conduct a survey? No, they simply projected their own view onto the other. Everything revolves around their lack of faith in themselves.

Now we’re in territory close to our own lives – maybe a little too close for comfort. Don’t raise your hand, but take a moment to consider the following questions: Have you ever passed up an opportunity because you were afraid of failing? Have you ever held back out of fear of what other people might think? It’s familiar territory. We know these spies; we are these spies, and they are us. One of the hardest things in life, certainly for me but I suspect for many of us, is to put ourselves out there and try something when there is a real chance we’ll fall flat. And yet the old sports adage is true: you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

Still, the ten discouraged spies are not wrong. Far from it. Joshua and Caleb push back against their doomsday attitude and urge the Israelites to move forward into battle, but at no point in any of their lengthy speeches do they challenge even a word of the spies’ report. Think about that for a minute: everyone in this story agrees on the facts. The land is a good land. Food is plentiful. The inhabitants are big and strong, their cities fortified. The issue here is not that the spies see the land of Canaan differently; they see themselves differently. Caleb and Joshua believe in themselves – and, by extension, the entire Jewish people – and, eventually, they get to settle in the land. The other ten spies, lacking that faith in themselves, are condemned to die in the wilderness.

The story, however, doesn’t stop there. A small, strange incident toward the end of the parshah reveals a yet deeper dimension of faith. The Torah describes how “they” – we never learn who it was, exactly – found a man out collecting firewood on Shabbat, in violation of the prohibition against labor. They bring him to Moses who, not knowing what to do, turns to God for guidance.[2] The commentaries offer a variety of theories as to why Moses needed divine guidance; the predominant theory is that while Moses knew that work was forbidden on Shabbat, he did not know how it was to be punished. Strangely, however, very few commentaries seem interested in why this person was out gathering firewood in the first place. Surely he knew what he was doing – otherwise he wouldn’t have been liable. Why would a person deliberately break Shabbat, in such a public way, knowing that it would bring dire penalties?

One daring midrash suggests that, in fact, the stick-gatherer knew exactly what he was doing when he violated Shabbat – and he did it for the sake of Heaven. After the incident of the spies, when God decreed that the wilderness generation would die out before the Israelites could go into the land, the people came to believe that their covenant with God, the brit, had been broken. As a consequence, they were no longer obligated in the mitzvot; perhaps they would still apply to their children in the land of Israel, but not to those who were to die in the wilderness. Against this viewpoint, the stick-gatherer went and did what he did so that when he was eventually executed, everyone else would see and understand that the brit and the mitzvot remained in full effect despite the spies’ sin.[3]

Here we find yet another manifestation of faith, faith that the relationship is strong enough to withstand difficult moments and even deep betrayal. I once heard the poet David Whyte say, “All long friendships are based upon mutual forgiveness.” The stick-gatherer insisted that the Israelites could carry on after the sin, even though they would never be able to fully recover. They would, indeed, die in the wilderness; but that didn’t need to be the end of their relationship with God. Their children will still go forward; the covenant will continue. Parashat Shlakh reminds us that our most important relationships are stronger than any one thing we might do wrong.

This morning’s Torah portion challenges us to cultivate three different kinds of faith. First, faith in God’s presence to support and guide us through life’s difficult passages. Beyond that basic faith, we should strive toward the examples set by Joshua and Caleb, to have deep and abiding faith in ourselves; to see ourselves as giants, not grasshoppers. Finally, the parshah underscores the strength of our most important relationships. We won’t always get things right; sometimes, like the spies, we will make quite grave errors. But in the end, the brit survives even this conflict; the relationship can continue past the disappointment. The future remains open.


[1] Num. 13:33.

[2] Num. 15:32-36.

[3] Tosafot, Bava Batra 119b s.v. “Even the youngest.”

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