Parasha Shelach
By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.
SAN DIEGO –Each week, we see the birth of contemporary psychology unfolding in our Torah readings. This week what leaps out is a key concept underlying cognitive behavioral therapy, namely, “cognitive distortions.” We learn of how the Jewish People disqualified the positive, focused on the negative, and saw life through a filter of excessive bleakness. Our minds today, as Avrohom Birnbaum puts it in his column in Yated Ne’eman, the mishkon of our siechel, continue to be impaired by the irrational tumah we feed on.
Fear, “false expectations appearing real,” puts the breaks on a good life. Faith, “fear ain’t in this house” or “forward all issues to Hahshem” takes the brakes off and promotes a more enjoyable life. This week we are reminded just how powerful and limiting irrational fear can be. Yet fear is a natural, healthy response, that when mixed with hope, can move us forward to our own personal, “Promised Land.” Without faith however, fear alone cripples us.
Recall the defeatist spies, 12 princes of Israel, great men, spiritual leaders, coming back with this belief, “The land does flow with milk and honey. However, the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.” Our sages teach (Tanḥuma, Sanhedrin 104b, Taanit 29a) that the sin of the spies took place on the ninth day of Av and was the foundation for the destructions of both the first and second Temples (both occurring on the same date in future years).
Calev says, “Let’s go,” but he was ignored when the people listened to and bought the groupthink, “…the people are big and strong, and the land is difficult. The people there are giants; we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” So much for Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not fear…” Calev was not the cognitive coach he may have hoped he’d be, since he could not help the People overcome their cognitive distortion that led them to want to return to Egypt. It takes independence of thought, being “FIT” (fundamentally independent thinking), to move forward to achieve optimal living. They held on to their slave mindset due to their cognitive distortions. Through the Spies, Hashem tested our abilities to see through negative filters and properly, with wisdom, discernment and insight, see what was truly good and bad. The spies magnified the negative and minimized the positive – a common distortion that many of us are also guilty of doing.
Like many slanderers do, according to our sages, the Spies begin with flattery, from “the land flows with milk and honey,” it’s bounteous and fertile, and end with evil, to the people in it are nefillim, giants, and compared to these terrifying people who could cause our hearts to collapse “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” From their lack of trust in Hashem they spread lies, calamities, fear, dibah (defamation) leading to the people wanting to overthrow Moses and Aaron. Sound familiar? Hashem questions, “How long will this people provoke Me? How much longer will they not believe in Me after all the signs I have performed in their midst?”
Two people often see the same thing quite differently, and that’s no surprise, right? Yet, when we look closely at the words inside of Shelach, we glean important insight into this experience. “They went, and they came to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel…” They went, and they came? When we look inside of the Talmud in Sotah, 35a, we see an important perception. “And they went and they came. Rabbi Yoḥanan says in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai: This verse likens their going to their coming. Just as their coming back was with wicked counsel, so too, their going to Eretz Yisrael was with wicked counsel.” Joshua and Caleb went on their journey armed with faith and they never lost it. The other ten went and returned armed with a pessimistic mindset.
We also see how lashon hara, gossip, enters the parasha. That’s what ten of the “spies” spread, motzie shem ra, they stained the good name of the Land of Israel, equivalent to murder, idol worship and incest, weakening trust…and they perished in a plague. In our own generation, we see the destruction, harm and disorder that lashon hara brings. It’s not new. Maimonides, Rambam, in Hilchot De’ot 7:2 teaches us, “Who is a gossiper? One who collects information and [then] goes from person to person, saying: “This is what so and so said;” “This is what I heard about so and so.” Even if the statements are true, they bring about the destruction of the world.” The Chofetz Chaim teaches us that the sins of speech, including speech and leitzanus, are far more harmful to our neshamos than immoral or indecent behavior bring. The churban brought to us through the media alone, including social media, which ridicules all that is holy to us, has brought a precipitous fall.
From Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, we learn that when we face a mission anchored in our deeply held purpose, our responsibility is to get started, not to spin thinking about whether we can do it, what if we fail…no, we are to do. We learn in Ethics of our Fathers, “You are not responsible to finish the job, yet you are not free to desist from it.” Hashem decides if we finish it, not us.
Virtues or faults…what do you fill your mind with? The Jewish People irrationally saw themselves as grasshoppers, they rated themselves in ways that prevented them from being true nation builders. Thankfully, we no longer see ourselves in this harmful, limited way – at least those who aim for success do not. The Talmud tells us that, “Man is led in the path that he chooses to travel!”
Yes, as I’ve written, “the link is what you think.” Sure, there will be dark times. Our days, our holy days, begin with the darkness, the night before – there is always hope for daylight to come…look for it. It’s right there in your heart. When we persist in weighing ourselves down with worry, we drag ourselves down a path of discontent. However, if we alter our perspective, change our self-talk, and instead take life’s inevitable adversities as opportunities to exercise our endurance and grow, turn the “lemons in our lives” into tasty lemonade, then we differentiate ourselves from spies, learn from their lesson and see that when we are in a shadow, that means light is nearby. That light can lead us to our Promised Land. Let’s not fall for false stories, false news and false reports but rather, from our hearts, be the positive influencers, bringing the light of Torah to our world, fearlessly, with faith and confidence.
From our hearts? The parasha ends by telling us about the mitzvah of tzitzit and says, “…have them make tzitzit on the corners of their garments for all generations. These shall be your tzitzit, and when you see them, you shall remember all of Hashem’s commandments so as to keep them. You will then not stray after your heart and eyes. Which [in the past] have led you to immorality.” We learn that the way the heart is directed influences how we see things, good or bad.
A story is retold by HaGaon Rav Zevadia HaCohen, Shlit”a, the Head of the Batei Din in Tel Aviv about a Holocaust survivor who stopped observing Torah and mitzvot. After some time, the Rosh Yeshiva of Brisk met him and asked him, “You grew up as someone observant of the Torah and mitzvot, why did you stop observing?” The man cried and said, Because of something that he saw in the camp during the Holocaust he stopped observing Torah and mitzvot. He told the Rav that “In the camp there were thousands of people who lived in great starvation and were forced to do back breaking work from dawn until night. After some time, a new Jewish person arrived at the camp, and he had a small siddur. Immediately there formed a huge que from all of those in the camp to see the siddur and read some prayers from it. However, to my surprise he requested from each of them that they give him half of their meagre daily bread rations. And so, each person that came to pray gave half of his daily bread rations and only afterwards was he allowed to pray from the siddur. I saw this and shuddered.”
This man told the Brisker Rav, “From that day onwards I decided to cease observing the mitzvot, for how could a person take advantage of impoverished people lacking all hope of being saved and take from them from the little bread that they had so that they may pray from a siddur? And then I told myself, if this is the religion, I have no interest in it!”
The Brisker Rav heard this and said to the man, “Why do you only see with your eyes that individual who behaved in this appalling way and from him you made long term decisions, and you don’t see in that very same event the hundreds of people who stood in line and were prepared to give from their meagre bread to pray from that old siddur? You should have seen this, and from here you should deduce the self-sacrifice they had for Torah and prayer in every situation and all ages acting so!”
The man heard this and burst into tears and made teshuva.
We can see clearly how two people can see the same situation and depending on how his or her heart is aimed, can lead to a different narrative.
Let’s take from Shelach an optimistic, trusting, faith-filled vision of ourselves and our lives, come and go with it wherever we travel, and guard our tongues from gossip mongering and becoming purveyors of unbridled lashon hara and motzie sheim ra. Our outlook depends on our “inlook.”
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Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly D’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family are members. They are also active members of Congregation Adat Yeshurun. He may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com
Thank you for studying and preparing this thoughtful commentary. Very timely to what we see on the news daily…much more productive to work hard to ignore the negative and remain positive and focused on doing good in the world.