Shelah - The Heschel School

“seeing” or “looking,”/ro’im, and, “impulsivity,” (even “adulterous” behavior, or
“lascivious” behavior, in its strongest connotation)/ zonim/zanu. This constellation of
words repeats throughout chapters 13-14. The scouts enter to look and see the qualities of
the land, its inhabitants, its produce, its terrain. The military context of scouting the land
prior to an incursion is immediately recognized as metaphorical as well as practical.
There is nothing unusual about sending scouts to determine the best advantage for an
attack in a military campaign. This expedition, however, results in a passionate split over
the viability of the entire operation, with theological implications. The majority of the
scouts not only fail to find military egress; they demand the people return to the
oppression of Egypt where they can rely on a security of their daily routines. Only two
scouts object strenuously. God experiences this report a blasphemous rejection of the
relationship God has tried to establish with Israel, and threatened to destroy them all and
begin building a relationship with a different group of people, preserving Moses as their
leader. Moses has to help God see a larger picture, which he does by invoking what the
rabbis called the 13 attributes of God’s character. These attributes emphasize God’s
patient, non-judgmental character. (God needs reminding.)
These attributes were invoked once before, when God threatened to destroy the
nation in the wake of their having created and celebrated before the golden calf. This fact
itself suggests that God sees these two actions: the worship of the calf, and the rejection
of the opportunity to enter and settle the land of Israel, as parallel! In other words, failure
to settle the land of Israel is as much of a rejection of the opportunity to actualize God’s
vision for our people as turning our backs explicitly on God by becoming pagans. I think
this is because only by settling the land of Israel can the Jewish people build a society
with complete autonomy and power and responsibility for every decision we would
make. Only in the land can the Jewish people potentially build a society which would
reflect God’s hope and vision for humanity. God has set God’s hopes on us to accomplish
this task. If this is the covenantal purpose of the Jewish people, then the land of Israel
becomes the central tool for the execution of this purpose. Paganism has no integrated,
covenantal vision for the world; paganism projects a self-serving, fragmented world
view. Living in covenant is supposed to project an integrated holistic world-view which
sanctifies life in its many diverse dimensions.
Moses succeeds. Instead of destroying the nation, God decrees that the generation
will lose a year for every day of the scouting expedition: 40 days will turn into 40 years,
resulting in the conquest of the land falling to the second generation while the elders
perish in the midbar. This decision, of course, sets the stage for the people to struggle
with their own character as an incipient nation. It is in the wilderness that our ancestors
learn their own character. It is in the wilderness that they wrestle with the nature of
leadership, experience transitions, encounter the challenges of Midianite cultural
seductions and negotiations with other nations. The experience of leaving Egypt and
living in the midbar transforms a group of slaves into a nation, with an administrative
structure and sense of sacred purpose. It is in the wilderness, in galut, in exile, that the
people receive the Torah, construct the mishkan, and learn to tolerate the challenges to
faith, vision, and loyalty.
The final section of this parasha, the teaching of wearing tzitzit on four-cornered
garments, is organized around the same core vocabulary as the scouting expedition:
zonim/acting impulsively by following values which would seduce one away from the
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