Bulletin ShlachLecha

Welcome • ohtcv ohfurc
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Shabbat Parshat Sh’lach
23 Sivan 5784 • June 29, 2024
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We extend our congregation’s sympathy to the family of
Dorothy Scott k ”z
May her Memory Be for a Blessing
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Contributions may be sent to Beth Tikvah’s Chesed Fund.
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Yahrtzeiten
June 30
July 2
July 3
July 5
Anniversaries
June 26 Doris & Lewis Baum (66)
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June 29 • 23 Sivan Norman Antzis – Father of Debra Antzis
July 1 • 25 Sivan Judith Brown – Mother of Jack Brown
Etta Agronin
– Mother of Ron Agronin
July 2 • 26 Sivan Fran Wallack – Mother of Sharon Zoldan
Aaron (Pete) Lebowitz – Father of Ron Lebowitz
July 5 • 29 Sivan Joseph Miller – Husband of Roberta MIller
Birthdays
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Sarah Castro
Jay Kaye, Rabbi Ammos Chorny, Lawrence Macks
Michael Sobol
Lynn Nemes, Ilya Prizel
Shabbat Kiddush Sponsored by:
Aviva Chorny
In honor of her husband’s birhtday
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Sponsor a
Kiddush
Contact Arleen Sivakoff:
dsivakoff@aol.com • 239.455.8811

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shabbat Sh’lach: Numbers 14:8–15:7 (Cycle 2) (Etz Hayim p. 845)
1. 14:8-10 2. 14:11-20 3. 14:21-25 4. 14:26-38
5. 14:39-42 6. 14:43-15:3 7. 15:4-7 M. 15:37-41 (p. 854)
Haftarah: Joshua 2:1–24 (p. 857)
Torah Commentary
D’var Torah:
The Retelling – Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
We do not receive our death sentence lying down. We won’t accept it. We
will not disappear. When the spies come back with their bad report of the
treacherous land and difficult peoples, we pragmatically make a plan. If
God is taking us to die in this land promised to us, we won’t go. God could
have saved us the trouble of the journey and killed us off in Egypt or here in
the desert. So we’ll go back, we’ll return to Egypt.
As it turns out, that is not an option. For a second time in just a few verses,
we receive another death sentence. Not only will God kill us off, God will
leave our corpses to decompose in the desert. After the care we took to
bring Jacob and then Joseph’s bodies home, our bodies will never enter the
promised land.
This does not work for us either. We came all this way. We want to come all
the way home. We belong in the land promised to us. Surely, surely, God
will give us another chance. In defiance of God’s decree, we get up and go
to Canaan. We pray with our feet, we attempt to create facts on the ground.
But God is not with us. And we are utterly destroyed by the Canaanites.
However, when our bodies fall in this battle, they fall in Canaan. We come
home. We die here defying God’s decree. We may not be able to overturn
it. Yet we sacrifice ourselves in order to prove our devotion to the idea of
return. We sacrifice ourselves because we believe in second chances. We
sacrifice ourselves to prove to God that we want to come home.
The word “sacrifice” is particularly apt here. When we decide to make a
break for Canaan, the verse reads as follows: ‘And they rose early in the
morning and they went up to the top of the mountain saying, “Behold,
here we are. Let us go up to the place which God said to us for we have
sinned.”’ This verse echoes the Akeda, where we read, ‘And God said to him,
“Abraham. And he said, “Behold, here I am.” And he said, “Take now your

son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah.
And bring him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which
I will say to you.” And Abraham rose early in the morning.’
God tests Abraham, telling him to sacrifice his son, before ultimately saving
him and making big promises of land and progeny. In our parashah, we
cannot but hope that God is testing us again. God tells us that we will not
enter the land. God decrees death for us. So we reenact the Akeda. We get up
early in the morning and go to the mountain, looking for God. And where
we were hoping to meet a ram in the bushes, we meet the Amalekites and
Canaanites. We cannot force God’s hand. This was not a test, this was not a
second opportunity. This was a final decree. And this is the tragic difference
between the Akeda and our punishment after the sin of the spies.
But there is another difference between these two stories. In the Akedah,
the father is commanded to kill his son, to erase the future. In our story,
our children are already going to be ok. Our people’s future in the land is
assured. We fight in our story only for our generation. We fight so that our
graves will be somewhere our children can visit. We fight because a single
generation still matters, even if the long term future of our people is assured.
We fight because we never give up hope, we assume the best of God and of
ourselves. Even when God denies us a second chance, we still grant one to
ourselves.
Join ✺ Rabbi Chorny
for his weekly discussion
group, Tuesdays at
12:15 p.m. via
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