"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student." (Soren Kierkegaard)
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Archived Articles: Good and Evil
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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON - FOR SHABBAT, JUNE 20, 2009 What Do You See? Today we revisit parashat Shlach (some people call it shlach lecha, as the wording nicely parallels lech lecha [the 3rd portion of Breisheet]). The main focus of the text is the story of the scouts sent by Moshe to gather vital intelligence about the Land of Canaan during their 40 day mission. As we all know, the mission went badly, it could be described as a fiasco. God punished the Israelites with wandering in the wilderness for forty years. The older generation - those who left Egypt as young adults (or older) would die in the wilderness. The younger Israelites (along with two of the scouts, Yehoshua and Calev) would (later) set foot on the soil of the Promised land. What went wrong, how did Moshe and the ten spies fail? Listening to both scouting reports (the assessment of the ten, and the findings of the two) we are struck by the radically different conclusions found in the reports. All the spies saw the same mountains, valleys, streams, fortified city walls - how could the reports end up so different from each other? The majority group was overwhelmed by the steep odds, by the mighty people living in the fortified cities. They saw themselves as tiny grasshoppers, insignificant and weak. For them, the beautiful land was an impossible trap. They called this place an eretz ochelet yoshveha - a land which devours its inhabitants. In contrast, Yehoshua and Calev tried (unsuccessfully) to urge the people forward; God is with us. He wouldn't bring us here in order to watch us falter. We can conquer the mighty inhabitants because God is with us! The bad news melted the hearts of the Israelites, and Egypt - that terrible pit of cruel oppression - sounded better than the near-certain doom of being consumed by the challenging new land. Moshe did not foresee just how fragile and vulnerable the people would be, just how hard it would be for him to solidify and bolster their morale. What can we learn, how does the text speak to us? Locally, nationally, globally - we are overwhelmed by the fierce, seemingly intractable hatreds that boil over into daily bombings and killings. We are pummeled by scenes of poverty and hardship and uncertainty - not only in Africa and Asia, but here in the U.S., in Tennessee, in Memphis, in our own shul family. The list is daunting: war, pandemics, starvation, corruption, paralyzed ineffectual leaders - doesn't it start to sound like a land which devours its own? And yet, the list is not really new. Perhaps the details of the combatants, the specific plague, the identity of the crooked or weak leader, the severity of the economic downturn - those change, but so many folks before us have fretted and shouted about fierce foes much like the ones staring at us. Which scouting report resonates with us - the bleak and despairing message of the ten, or the hopeful charge of the determined and resolute two? Will the "giants" who terrified the ten strike fear in us, pushing us to yearn for Egypt, or might the stars have aligned, could we come together and tackle those giant challenges? From the personal to the local to the national to the global: How it all unfolds for us has everything to do with outlook. What do we see? Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Aaron
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