Sh'lach: Of Fear and Faith

Jay Stanton, "Fear Perception and Imagination: Grasshoppers in Whose Eyes?," https://www.keshetonline.org/resources/fear-perception-and-imagination-grasshoppers-in-whose-eyes-parashat-shelach-lecha/

These words offer a snapshot into human nature. When hearing that a task is difficult, how often do we respond to a challenge by convincing ourselves we are inadequate to the task ahead? This portion plays on universal tendencies to underestimate ourselves and let our worries overtake our reason. It is all too easy to see the courage of Caleb, and yet to identify with the concerns of the ten scouts.

We, as [people and Jews], are often afraid. We have good reason to be; in life, there are many threats. [W]e know that some people wish to do us harm. This is the fear expressed in the scouts’ comment about being grasshoppers. How can we, such a small group of people, ever face a group of people bigger in size and numbers than we are? How can we have Caleb’s courage to go forward, despite the odds? The task of overtaking the land of Canaan, a sure thing that God promised the Israelites, suddenly becomes impossible when the scouts take a look at the people who inhabit the land. They, like many of us, fear failure.

Dena Weiss, "Growing Where You Already Are," https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/growing-where-you-already-are

The fear and panic that Benei Yisrael exhibit here is understandable, but examining what they say more closely can give us access to the real concern that animates them. Benei Yisrael do not say that they want to go back to Egypt because they will be safer there. They understand that they are in a landless, dangerous condition that will likely lead to death, regardless of the course they take. This leads to the fundamental question: If they are going to die anyway, why do they prefer to die immediately in the desert or to go back to Egypt? Why do they choose to retreat rather than to charge forward?

It seems that they aren’t afraid of death; what they are afraid of is defeat. The worst outcome they can imagine is that someone would lead them into a situation where they would put in effort and not succeed. And the moral lesson to be learned from their mistake is that learning to love work for work’s sake, and being willing to put forth effort that yields no tangible results, is essential to developing oneself both spiritually and morally [...]

Benei Yisrael did not need to be willing to go into Israel and die there, but to be willing to accept being where they are. Their real sin was not that they were swayed by the negative report of the spies; their sin was in their reaction, their impatience. If you are in the desert, you are supposed to be in the desert. If you are on a path, your job is to walk, even without a guarantee that you’ll reach your destination. And this might have been too steep a demand for Benei Yisrael to meet, but it is still a goal that we, as their descendants, can strive for.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "Two Kinds of Fear," https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/shelach-lecha/two-kinds-of-fear/

The spies were not afraid of failure [...]They were afraid of success.

What was their situation now? They were eating manna from heaven. They were drinking water from a miraculous well. They were surrounded by Clouds of Glory. They were camped around the Sanctuary. They were in continuous contact with the Shechinah. Never had a people lived so close to God.

What would be their situation if they entered the land? They would have to fight battles, maintain an army, create an economy, farm the land, worry about whether there would be enough rain to produce a crop, and all the other thousand distractions that come from living in the world. What would happen to their closeness to God? They would be preoccupied with mundane and material pursuits. Here they could spend their entire lives learning Torah, lit by the radiance of the Divine. There they would be no more than one more nation in a world of nations, with the same kind of economic, social and political problems that every nation has to deal with.

The spies were not afraid of failure. They were afraid of success. Their mistake was the mistake of very holy men. They wanted to spend their lives in the closest possible proximity to God. What they did not understand was that God seeks, in the Hasidic phrase, “a dwelling in the lower worlds”. One of the great differences between Judaism and other religions is that while others seek to lift people to heaven, Judaism seeks to bring heaven down to earth.

Rabbi Zelig Golden, "Send for Yourself and Transcend your Fears," https://wildernesstorah.org/teachings/2009/06/03/send-for-yourself-and-transcend-your-fears-parsha-shelach-lekha/

This story tells of an invariable spiritual truth — it is profoundly difficult to escape the slavery of our conditioning and fear. Even when we glimpse the Promised Land, the place of freedom and land of milk and honey, we must return to the wilderness of our lives to continue the journey of self-discovery, healing, and knowing the One. As Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches, “over a lifetime we are given glimpses, flashes, and hints that open our awareness to the Reality of paradise and unity that underlies this world.” Our journey is long, yet like the seed of a tree, each glimpse of freedom is the fuel for our journey through the wilderness of our growth.

Rabbi Jonathan Kligler, "Healing the Crushed Spirit,"

https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/healing-crushed-spirit/

In chapter 6 of Exodus Moses makes a stirring speech to the Israelite slaves, promising that YHVH had heard their cries, and that their liberation was coming. “But the people would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.” (Ex. 6:9) Now, in our portion, the Israelites have certainly left slavery, but has the crushing imprint of slavery left them? This is the lifelong challenge we each face: to contest our “learned powerlessness”; to recondition ourselves, day by day, to think of ourselves and to act as fundamentally equal and worthy as those around us. Only then will the Promised Land appear attainable to our eyes.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, "Boundaries and Forgiveness," https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2019/06/boundaries-and-forgiveness.html

[F]or a moment there, God is really angry. Moshe convinces God to calm down. And Torah says, ויומר ה׳ סלחתי כדברך / vayomer Adonai salachti kidvarecha. "And God said, 'I pardon, as you have asked.'" And, God adds, none of you will make it into the Land of Promise. None of you are ready for freedom. Your outburst just now made that clear. So you won't be going.

God and Moshe are the two-parent duo: when one of them gets angry, the other acts as the balance. Ultimately God is forgiving, and affirming love, even while drawing boundaries around what's appropriate and what's not.

Drawing a boundary isn't a sign of lack of love. On the contrary: it can be precisely a sign of love, love for the other and love for oneself. It's precisely because I love my child that I set boundaries around appropriate behavior.

And if my child were to do something that goes counter to the rules and expectations of our household, I would hope to respond as God does here: I love you; I forgive you; and, here's the consequence for the poor choice that you made.

Rabbi David Cohen-Henriquez, "Have No Fear, Especially in the Desert," https://jewishjournal.org/2017/06/15/rabbis-parsha-shelach-have-no-fear-especially-in-the-desert/

Why were the people punished so harshly? What is the sin of being afraid?

A midrash tells us:

They said “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” G-d said, “this I can overlook. But, ‘And so we look in their eyes’ – here I am angry! Did you know how I made you look in their eyes? Who told you that you didn’t look like angels in their eyes?” (Midrash Tanchuma).

The problem here is beyond fear and how we react in the face of adversity. What seems to anger G-d is an issue about self-perception.

The generation that left Egypt was a generation without hope either in themselves, in their leaders, in their project of a nation or in the G-d who had liberated them and given them the Torah. Their desire was to return to the land of their oppressors, to devolve once again to the slave mentality. They were a people that preferred humiliation and the whip, as long as there was food and shelter. It was very hard for the long-enslaved Israelites to grasp the idea of self-determination. In the face of adversity, their knee-jerk reaction was to go back to the known oppressor who was Pharaoh and his brutal regime.

Rabbi Shai Held, "The Tragedy (and Hope) of the Book of Numbers," https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/tragedy-and-hope-book-numbers

This is, needless to say, a sad and dark tale. God has tried to breathe new life into the people, but they have been unable or unwilling to receive it. And so they die before God’s promises are fulfilled. Had Numbers ended there, we would be faced with an unmitigated and irredeemable tragedy. Crucially, though, covenantal crisis is not the end of the story. After the people’s second collapse into idolatry [Numbers 25], when the last remaining adult members of the older generation have died out, something remarkable happens: Numbers launches into a census of the new generation, the people who will—despite everything— conquer and inherit the land (Numbers 26). In stark contrast to what has happened until now, in the last eleven chapters of the book, we encounter “no death, no murmurings, no rebellions against the leadership." Something genuinely new seems to have emerged.