Shlach: Sending Messengers

Dedicated to Erez Lieberman-Aiden, upon the completion of his PhD.

In this week's portion, the people of Israel face one of the most difficult challenges yet. Moses sends messengers into the Land of Israel in order to bring back a report on the land and its inhabitants. The consequences are disastrous: 10 out of the 12 men come back with a negative report, defying the man who sent them (Moses), and stating that the land could not be conquered at all (apparently, not even by God). They say that the men in the land were like giants and they the spies were like grasshoppers in their eyes. (How they could have known what they looked like in the eyes of the others is also a good question). Furthermore, the 10 men also blaspheme the land, saying that it "consumed its inhabitants." The people get swayed by this account, and cry. Hashem responds with what is apparently quite a severe punishment: 40 more years in the desert.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the real problem here was that those messengers that came back with a negative report had another motivation: they were quite happy with the spiritual life being led in the desert. They did not want to be "consumed" by the physicality of the land. Here they were receiving bread from Heaven (the mannah), being taught Torah by Moses himself, all their basic needs taken care of, what else could they want? Why give up such spiritual bliss to enter a land in which one would have to sweat hard not only to conquer the land, but then to farm it, harvest it, etc?

The answer, of course, is that this was Hashem's will. God's desire is that the world be inhabited and that physicality be engaged with and elevated by human beings. If He wanted the world to be mainly spiritual, He could have given it to the angels instead. By punishing the people by leading them another 40 years in the desert, God was giving the people what they wanted. It took a whole new generation to be born so that we could enter the Land of Israel with the right perspective.

Recently, a friend of mine, a deeply religious Jew, received a very prestigious award for his extremely important and innovative scientific work. (For more info on this, click here) He is a living example of someone who is not satisfied in only learning Torah and living a spiritual life, but also wants to elevate his environment and change the world for the better.

At the time he received this reward, he gave a brief explanation as to the key to his success - mentorship: "One of the most powerful things a mentor can do is to point you to things you're good at and give you productive ways to use those skills; it's also crucial that they encourage you to seek out areas outside of your comfort zone."

The mistake made by the spies (and those that followed them) was that they gave up their relationship with their mentor, to the man that hand sent them on their mission in the first place. They decided to remain enslaved to their comfort zone.

My friend also stated: "One of the greatest lessons I apply to my work and share with my own mentees is that from big mistakes, you learn the ingredients for big successes."

May we all learn from the big mistake we made as a people, and may the lessons learned by the ingredients to our big success, as we break through all our perceived limitations, and greet the coming of Mashiach.