by Elyse Frishman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Sh'lach L'cha is about faithlessness. It's hard to comprehend the treachery of the scouts and the response of the Israelites. Throughout their wanderings, the people doubted God, yet God protected and moved them toward the Land. What caused their betrayal? The portion begins:

The Eternal spoke to Moses, saying, "Send notables to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people; send one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them." So Moses, by the Eternal's command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all of them being notables, leaders of the Israelites . (Numbers 13:1-2)

The twelve men scouted the land for forty days. Upon return, ten of them spread lies among the masses, paralyzing them with fear. The people cried that it would be better to appoint new leaders and return to Egypt. The people wanted to replace Moses and Aaron!

Until now, with one exception, uprisings were spawned by complaints about food or water; they didn't undermine Moses and Aaron. That exception was the Golden Calf episode, which needs examining.

Leaving Egypt, the people journeyed with Moses for just forty-nine days when they arrived at Mount Sinai. Finally they gathered around Mount Sinai, stunned into silence by its smoking, fiery grandeur. Moses ascended and remained hidden in its heights, not for hours but for an additional forty days - allowing plenty of time for uncertainty to take seed and rebellion to break out.

Moses saw that the people were out of control . . . so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them. Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, "Whoever is for the Eternal, come here!" And all the men of Levi [Moses's tribe] rallied to him. (Exodus 32:25-26)

Three thousand people were killed . Moses eliminated a serious threat. But at what cost? The aftermath: God warned the people, " Butwhen I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins ." God sent a plague to afflict the people "for what they did with the calf which Aaron made." (Exodus 32:34-35). God then said to Moses, who relayed these words to the people,

Set out from here, you and the people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, "To your offspring I will give it"--I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites-- a land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go in your midst, since you are a stiffnecked people, lest I destroy you on the way , (33:1-3).

How could the Israelites forget this harsh rebuke? I will bring you to account for your sins and I will not go in your midst.

Two years later, following the construction of the desert sanctuary, the people set off for Canaan. Did the rebuke still ring in their ears? Were the scouts concerned? Is it possible that they felt set up for failure, doomed under any circumstance?

God's words in Exodus were confusing: on one hand, God's emissaries would drive out the other peoples. This suggested that the Israelites would overcome the "giants" of the land. Yet God declared that the Divine Presence would be absent. Would the people be physically secure but spiritually endangered?

Consider now Moses's retelling of the scouts' story from Deuteronomy 1:19-23:

When we reached Kadesh-barnea, I said to you, "You have come to the hill country of the Amorites which the Eternal our God is giving to us. See, the Eternal your God has placed the land at your disposal. Go up, take possession, as the Eternal, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Fear not and be not dismayed." Then all of you came to me and said, "Let us send men ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to." I approved of the plan, and so I selected twelve of your notables, one from each tribe.

Here, it was the people who requested that scouts be sent into the land. Were they worried that God had deserted them? Shouldn't they then have trusted the scouts? Were the scouts too afraid to bear the weight of the decision, knowing the fears and doubts of their people? Again, the people must have known that God would protect them physically; was their fear spiritual?

Importantly, Moses entreated: Lo tira, " fear not" (Deuteronomy 20:1). In English, the same word "fear" is used for mortal fright or spiritual awe. In Hebrew, though, pachad is mortal fear; yir'ah is more profound: fear in the sense of awe. Moses wasn't comforting their anxieties about the battles that lay ahead, but about the very reason for entering this Land. It was not a material existence they were moving toward, but rather a heightened one. They were to become a people of God, living by Torah, realizing the holiness of the Land and of themselves.

But they were spiritually weak and afraid, of God's expectations of them, of God. When the scouts returned with abundant fruit, and Joshua and Caleb urged them to believe that they could conquer the enemy, it did not mitigate their spiritual anxiety. It didn't matter that they could overcome the enemy in the Land; they couldn't overcome the enemy within themselves.

Thus after God's punishing decree that they would wander for forty years, the group that broke off and determined to enter the land was slaughtered. They had no spiritual core.

It seems that our ancestors did not want to trust Moses or God; after so many generations of slavery, of reliance on others, they wanted to figure it out for themselves. God declared that the next generation would enter the Land. But would they be more faithful? Children are deeply influenced by parents. Imagine two opposite scenarios unfolding over the next forty years: humbled parents not sharing the legend of their faithlessness and encouraging their children to obey Moses and the elders. Or: parents grumbling, children listening behind tent flaps, absorbing their parents' discontentment.

Indeed, the struggle to be spiritually faithful continues to this day. Life evidences against God: natural disaster, disease, all the suffering that afflicts humanity. What allows some to be faithful?

Joshua and Caleb never lost faith. Why weren't they disillusioned like the others? Caleb was Miriam's son and therefore Moses's nephew. Caleb's own son was Bezalel, the architect of the Mishkan , the desert sanctuary. Joshua was Moses's assistant and three of his accomplishments were recorded. He led the successful battle against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-13). He alerted Moses to the building of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:17-18). And Joshua protested the prophesying of Eldad and Medad in last week's portion (Numbers 11:28). Both scouts would have had a keen understanding of the inner workings of the camp from high up; and both would have trusted Moses and God.

But most of us do not have this yichus , this connection to spiritual giants such as Moses, who might pull us up toward them. How do we orient our thinking, our vision, so that our faith is elevated? As we journey, how do we navigate with trust in our direction and hope for our future?

The common garden warbler spends summers in northern Germany and winters in the southern Congo. It migrates alone and at night; and though weighing barely three-quarters of an ounce, travels with great speed, averaging over 100 miles a night. Its course is true.

In 1958, a team of researchers contrived a planetarium set up so they could determine what guided the bird's flight. Projecting different star patterns on the ceiling and releasing the birds in flight, they found that the birds showed a preference for south-southeast, the direction of their migration route. But only when the sky was clear. If the night sky was hazy with city light, or clouded, or only the moon was visible, the birds flew randomly. The birds actually read the pattern of the starry sky for their physical compass (John N. Bleibtreu, The Parable of the Beast [New York: Macmillan Company, 1968], pp. 57-59).

The warbler looks up to the heavens to find its way. What it does by instinct, we must learn.

Looking up to the heavens, we witness a pattern that includes us in its heavenly expanse. We understand that our place is not to self-serve, but to fulfill a greater purpose. Guided by this, we let go of petty fears; we trust.

Guided only by an inner voice, how could we be anything but afraid? Our days are filled with challenges economic, familial--even mortal. How to cope? Shabbat beckons: ease into me, breath. Look up from your feet where you watch every step; lift your gaze into the eyes of those you love, toward the beauty of the forests and oceans, to the heavens. Regain your spiritual compass.

Rabbi Elyse Frishman is the spiritual leader of The Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. She is the editor of Mishkan T'filah, A Reform Siddur.

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