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By Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim

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This week’s Torah portion relates the shameful story of the ‘scouts’.

For over two hundred years the Jews had suffered in Egyptian slavery with only one hope in their hearts; to be free and inhabit the Holy Land that G-d promised to their forefathers.

But when it finally it began to happen something went terribly wrong!

They refused!!!

And it was all because of the scouts.

G-d freed the Jews from Egypt with great miracles, gave them His Torah at Sinai and then brought them to the border of the Promised Land. But they demanded that Moses gather more information.

So he sent a group of twelve scouts (m’raglim) who returned forty days later and …… convinced the Jews NOT to enter.

This aroused G-d’s wrath. Ten of the spies (Y’hoshua and Calev, remained loyal to Moses) died an immediate and bizarre death and everyone else was sentenced to a life of wandering in the desert.

But before we judge them too harshly let us remember that these Jews never actually heard the command to enter Israel directly from G-d. Only from Moses. And Moses had never set foot in the place.

Also remember that these ten ‘bad’ scouts were EYE WITNESSES and saw that it was suicide to enter Canaan.

So by refusing to enter the land of Israel the Jews were not only following the majority opinion, they were guarding their lives and their peace of mind.

In the desert they felt G-d’s presence and learned His Holy Torah uninterruptedly. Even the food (manna) they ate, the water they drank and the clouds that protected them were straight from the Almighty.  While in Israel they would have to toil; plow, plant, harvest, fight battles and contend with myriads of distractions, threats and temptations.

So the question is really; why was Moses so insistent that they enter Canaan? And why was G-d so angry?

And finally, the word Torah means ‘Teaching’. What is this 3,000-year-old story mean to us? After all, we already have the land of Israel?

I want to explain with a story about a well-known Lubavitcher Chassid called Rabbi Mendel Futerfass.

Rav Mendel was born in Russia in the late 1800s. His father died before he was born and his mother shortly afterward. So he was a double orphan and was raised by his Aunt.

At that time, Rebbe Shalom Dov Ber, the fifth Rebbe of Chabad, was the leader of Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic Jewry, and when Rav Mendel was six years old his aunt decided she wanted to take her little nephew to him for a blessing. Usually there was a long waiting line but she was good friends with the Rebbe’s wife. So when his birthday arrived she dressed little Mendel, in his best clothes, brought him to her and she took him to her husband, the Rebbe’s, room.

The Rebbe was preparing to begin his morning prayers with his prayer shawl over his shoulder. He took a look at the child, asked his name and blessed him:

“You should have long healthy years and be a Chassid.”

Some forty years later Rav Mendel was arrested by Stalin’s secret police for religious activities and sent to Siberia. Cold, hunger, backbreaking work, murderous guards and prisoners and anti-Semitism were his daily portion. Death was lurking around every corner and each moment he remained alive was nothing short of a miracle.

But Rav Mendel paid little attention to all this. In his mind all this was not happening TO him, but FOR him; to give him the opportunity to serve the Creator and become a better Chassid. There are many stories about the deep lessons he learned. But in my mind one of the most outstanding (I heard from Rabbi Moshe Neparstak ob’m) is as follows:

In his seven years of exile Rav Mendel never hid his identity as a Chassid or compromised his Judaism and Torah observance. This made life difficult but because the Russians respect sincerity, it won him the unsolicited admiration of some of the inmates.

But one time it almost cost him his life.

Rav Mendel would not eat the food cooked in the prison vessels. Rather he lived from raw food that he “bought” with cartons of cigarettes that his wife sent to him by mail every month and then cooked for himself.

One cold winter month, when the work was unusually hard and grueling, his package did not arrive when it was supposed to. Little by little his food ran out and with no cigarettes to trade he was soon left with nothing to eat.

After the first day he couldn’t work anymore, after two he had trouble getting out of bed and after the third day he felt he was dying.

One of Rav Mendel’s acquaintances in camp was a Jew who had been brought up in a religious home and had learned in “Yeshiva”, but, as did myriads of his Russian Jewish brethren, left it all for Communism. The reward he got for his idealism was a 15 year “correction” in one of Stalin’s “work” camps (Stalin killed tens of millions of his own people for being suspected of being capable of treason).

When this Jew saw Rav Mendel’s predicament and how he was starving, he brought him his own daily bowl of meat soup, begged Rav Mendel to save his own life and drink it. “I know what it says in the Torah” he adjoined. “According to the Torah you cannot endanger your life because there is no kosher food. If you refuse this soup, it is nothing short of suicide which the Torah forbids!”

When Rav Mendel told the story years later, he quipped that the soup was so watered down that it possibly was permissible according to Torah law (The guards stole the meat and bones, and then added so much water that there remained virtually no forbidden taste.) But he nevertheless refused to eat.

Rav Mendel looked up from his bed and explained. “When I was six years old, I received a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe for long life. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I can go jumping off of buildings; I have to make myself a ‘vessel’ for the blessing to be fulfilled.

“But,” he continued, “it can’t be that even a remotely forbidden thing can be the vessel for the Rebbe’s blessing.”

He didn’t eat the soup, but he made it through the night and miraculously the next morning his package arrived.  His self-sacrifice paid off.

This answers our question: Why was G-d upset at the Jews for defying Moses and refusing to enter Israel.

Moses wanted to inspire the Jews (as the Rebbe inspired Rabbi Mendel in our story) to self-sacrifice.

But the Jews, after hearing from the spies about the formidable challenges awaiting them in Canaan, wanted a normal, holy, religious life ….. without Moses and his message of total, supra-rational devotion to the truth.

That is why their punishment was so severe. Because self-sacrifice is the very essence of Judaism.

G-d created the world in such a way that it opposes and conceals truth. The job of the Jews; that we were ‘chosen’ for is to dispel this veneer of confusion, fear, peer pressure etc. and reveal that G-d creates us… and for a purpose: to defy and perfect this world. And the only way that can be done is by ignoring all selfish considerations and doing only what Moses wants.

This explains why Kalev and Joshua didn’t agree with the spies, although they all saw the same frightening things.

Kalev was an example of a Chassid (like Rav Mendel in our story). He learned not to follow his own nature …… even his own “religious” nature. Even though it meant denying what he saw with his own eyes, sacrificing the spiritual comfort and pleasure that he would gain by remaining in the desert, and risking his life by disagreeing with everyone. But that is what a true follower of Moses (or the Moses of every generation) must do.

But Yhoshua was to be the next leader of the Jewish people. And a true leader has to not only defy his normal senses, but also love even the biggest sinners (as Moses did in this week’s section and by the sin of the Golden Calf) inspire and encourage them to have self-sacrifice and insure that they NEVER repeat the mistake of the spies.

This is very relevant to us today.

Even though we do have the physical land of Israel today, spiritually many  of us are still in the desert.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that ours is the generation of the final redemption; the generation of Moshiach. We are about to see ALL the Jews enter the Holy Land. But we must not misinterpret what we see and hear all around us and become pessimistic or self-centered as the spies did, but rather do all we can that Moshiach should come even one instant earlier.

Moshiach will not only take the Jews from Egypt, he will take the ‘Egypt’ out of the Jews.

Like the generation that entered the Holy Land for the first time; it all depends on us! One more good deed, word or even thought can tilt the scales and bring.

Moshiach NOW!!

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