Scouts

There is honestly so much Midrash out there concerning the story of the so-called spies that it’s so times difficult to remember what is actually contained in the context. 

First, the commentaries I learned made it seem like the people were begging to send spies up to the Land in a show of already lacking faith. The Torah really doesn’t indicate this at all - after all, how oftrn do we see the Torah give a commandment just because the people ask for it?  

But what the incident clearly is is a test. A test that we should be reminding ourselves every single day. I sit here on vacation, and while my wife seems totally checked out and in the moment, it’s still difficult for me, an attorney, not to think about the “giants” I’ll be facing (giants is the Torah’s word, of course, to describe those that dwell in the Land) when I get home. I don’t think people truly understand how stressful it is being a lawyer - any lawyer, but especially a litigator - given that the entire profession is built upon adversity. One must win and one must lose and, as the industry saying goes, if we compromise, then we both lose (loose interpretation of something a former boss used to say to me sitting at the meditation table).  

In any case, the Torah delivers another deeply relevant and ageless reassurance, and our ancestors’ failure should be a lesson for us in letting that be the last time. Life is hard. Very hard. The situations and people we encounter are giants, and they seem insurmountably powerful, like they could kill us. And  m o to the Children of Israel, they most certainly seemed like they could. And to us, while the existential threats aren’t as in-your-face - they most certainly exist. Each new day could be a cruel ending. The fear is real and certainly must be acknowledged - and that wasn’t the “spies’” fault. We should all be very cognizant of challenges lest we storm into them unprepared. 

What the real issue was was not falling back on the faith, and the power. Just as the giants were real, this people had literally just been shown miracle after miracle - to no avail. Even the miracles seemed to have been at least somewhat lost on them, too. Today we take daily miracles for granted, too. 

But - but!  The promise of G-d is still there, just as the cloud is and the miracles and yes the adversaries, too. They are all still there and they must be acknowledged. But with prayer and faith and meditation and joy and the urge to keep progressing forward just as we must have done at the Sea, we must move forward without fear. 

That was the issue - not the fear, but the desire not only not to move forward but to return to Egypt. Let us not return there, ever.