Parashat Shelach Lecha 5785, 2025: "Baseless Bitter Tears"

 
Rabbi David Etengoff
 
ה' יעזור וירחם על אחינו כל בני ישראל בארץ ישראל ובכל חלקי הארץ
 
Imagine we live in a world of universal peace in which war is unknown, a time when the Mashiach is king of the entire Jewish people, the Beit HaMikdash stands in its full glory, Israel is governed by the laws of the Torah, the Sanhedrin renders ultimate judgment, and anti-Semitism is no more. According to Chazal, the beginning of our parasha offers the potential for precisely this messianic vision. Moshe could have been Mashiach, led our people into Eretz Yisrael, and built the eternal Beit HaMikdash. At that time, the entire world would have recognized the truth of monotheism and our people’s singular role as Hashem’s chosen nation. As Zechariah the prophet proclaimed: “And Hashem shall become King over all the earth; on that day shall Hashem be one, and His name one.” (14:9)
 
What exactly took place that brought these glorious plans to a screeching halt? In his Commentary on the Torah, the Ramban zatzal (Nachmanides, 1194-1270) maintains that it was the result of our ancestors’ reaction of fear and dread to the meraglim’s report that portrayed the seeming impossibility of conquering Eretz Yisrael. In addition, we must remember that this poignant episode transpired on the night of Tisha b’Av:
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The entire community raised their voices and shouted, and the people wept on that night. All the children of Israel complained against Moshe and Aharon, and the entire congregation said, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this desert. Why does Hashem bring us to this land to fall by the sword; our wives and children will be as spoils. Is it not better for us to return to Egypt?” They said to each other, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt!” (Sefer Bamidbar 14:1-4, translation, The Judaica Press Complete Tanach)
 
In his Torah commentary on our parasha, Akeidat Yitzchak, Rav Yitzchak Arama (1420-1494) suggests that the final verse of our passage contains the key for understanding our forebears’ response:

They [the people] rejected the Land of Divine promise. It is this rejection of the land which has been our undoing throughout the ages. On account of it, we were exiled from our country, divorced from our soil, and became a reproach to our neighbors, a scorning and a derision to those around about us. There is no way of restoring our integrity other than by returning unto it. (This and the following translations, Aryeh Newman in, Nechama Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar, pages 145-146)
 
At this juncture, Rav Arama asks and answers a powerful question as to why our ancestors’ behavior eventuated in the permanent ban on the men of this generation from entering Eretz Yisrael. In so doing, he helps us understand our seemingly never-ending years of galut:
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What was the reason for the terrible wrath of the Almighty in giving forth this irrevocable decree? What should it matter to the Holy One blessed be He that they rejected a goodly land, a land flowing with milk and honey? Surely all these goods are only transitory!
 
But the truth is that it was not [only] these earthly things that they rejected, rather they rejected Hashem, they despised the Holy One of Israel who granted them life and its joys, surrounded by the precepts of the Torah...They retreated saying, “We cannot go up,” implying that they did not desire to scale the heights of spiritual perfection, the ladder to which was the Holy Land itself, but preferred to choose a leader and go back to Egypt, descending to an impure land. (With my emendations)
 
Based upon Rav Arama’s incisive commentary, we can now better understand the dual sin of the meraglim and the people’s response to their report: the rejection of the Land of Divine promise, and the repudiation of Hashem and His holy Torah. In a very real sense, our forerunners’ rejection of the land represented the worst form of kafui tovah (rejection of the good). Finally, the moment was at hand. Eretz Yisrael was all-but in our grasp. Hashem’s beneficence was boundless, His rachamim unending. Yet, we rejected His unlimited chesed.
 
Our ancestors cried for no reason, and it is precisely these baseless bitter tears that have stained our relationship with the Almighty until our own historical moment. May the Master of the Universe finally absolve us from the ancient chet of the meraglim and help us appreciate the unlimited wonder of our beloved land. As Yermiyahu the prophet cried out so long ago: “Cause us to return to You Hashem so that we may return and renew our days as they were in earlier times.” (Megillat Eichah 5:21, translation my own) May this happen soon and, in our days, v’chane yihi ratzon. 
 
Shabbat Shalom

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