Parasha Shlach
SAN DIEGO — This week’s parasha provides us with a most fitting opportunity to improve our contemporary lives, particularly as we absorb even the slightest bit of so-called “news.”
Twelve “spies” do some investigative reporting on the Land of Israel, return displaying an enormous volume of fruit of the land, while ten of that group broadcast a most subjectively negative, failure-filled version of their vision, with bountiful fruit in hand.
Like many slanderers do according to our sages, they [ten 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?”
Ahh, thank goodness for two other “reporters,” Caleb and Joshua, who’s optimistic vision led them to file, “The land we passed through to scout is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord desires us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us, a land flowing with milk and honey. But you shall not rebel against the Lord, and you will not fear the people of that land…” (14:7-9).
There’s a great deal to learn from this. 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 Shlach, 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 all mold our vision of reality to conform to our beliefs. And we see how dangerous, disconcerting and destructive this can be.
One such danger is lashon hara, gossip. That’s what ten of the “spies” spread, motzi shem ra, they stained the good name of the Land of Israel, equivalent to murder, idol worship and incest (!), weakening trust…oh and they perished in a plague. In our own generation, we see the destruction, harm and disorder that loshon hara brings. It’s not new. The 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.”
Perhaps our schools of journalism ought to be teaching this. After all, we learn in Psalms, “Who is the man who desires life, who loves days to see goodness? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceitfully.”
Let’s take from Shlach an optimistic, trusting, faith-filled vision of ourselves and our lives, come and go with it wherever we travel, and guard our tongues. Our outlook depends on our “inlook.”
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Michael Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly d’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family worship. He may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com