TorahParsha

When life frightens you

for Parshat Shelach

 

i

God tells Moses:

send spies into the Land.

Moses tells them:

Be strong

be brave

take from the Land’s fruits.

This, in the time

of the year’s first grapes.

*

When the spies report back

holding up the Land’s fruit,

fear overtakes them.

They sow panic.

They are not strong

or brave:

they forget

that God is their strength.

 

ii

Later, God says:

In the Land,

on your farms,

take from the first fruits of your field,

bring that fruit to the Temple,

declare how God has taken you

from Egypt

to this Land,

to your crop.

*

Recognizing God’s Hand like this,

each farmer reverses the work of the spies

who feared to truly possess

the first fruits they held.

 

iii

Of course this equates the spies

terrified at a strange new place

with a farmer tending his own soil

every year.

*

Perhaps to say this:

There is the fear of what is new

and there is the fear of the life you know.

In either fear,

all is possible

with God’s help.

 

_______

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

_______

Numbers 13-14:10; Deuteronomy 26:1-12

www.TorahParsha.com

Who is religious?

for parshat Shelach

 

 

i

God tells Moses

to send men

to spy out the Land

that the people will conquer.

Moses tells these spies:

be strong.

*

The men spy out the land

they are brave

they are strong

they pass mighty nations

they pass wild nations

they capture the land’s fruit

they bring it back

they show it to their brethren.

 

ii

But they say:

the people of the land

are stronger than we are,

our nation cannot conquer them.

*

Joshua and Caleb,

two of the spies,

argue with the others:

God is with us,

they say;

there is nothing to frighten us.

But it is too late.

The other spies have already wreaked panic,

the other spies have already wreaked doubt,

the people doubt God.

And God

nearly leaves the people over this.

 

iii

In God’s command

in Moses’ word

the spies find bravery

the spies find strength

they find their potential

but they do not find God.

So they lose everything.

 

 _____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

Who decides who belongs?

for Parshat Shelach

 

i

Moses sends spies into the Land.

These spies see the Children of the Giant there.

They see the fierce people of Amalek.

They say: we were like grasshoppers… in the eyes of those people.

*
They report back to their own people that the Land is too dangerous  to enter.

And the people agree.

 

ii

God is angry with this rejection of the Land.                                                 

But the people soon realize what they are giving up. And Moses prays for the people’s forgiveness.

God says: I will forgive the people, I will take them into the Land in the end.

*

Then God speaks of Laws the people must keep when they come to the Land.

They will be Laws for the citizen and for the immigrant alike.

 

iii

The frightened spies, and the frightened people, think the nations in the Land decide who comes there.

But God says: that is not so.

The immigrant is as much of the Land as the citizen is.

See, God says: I give them all the same Laws.

*
Because it is not for people do decide who belongs in the Land, and who does not.

Only God decides such things.

 

_______

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

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Please pray for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, a one-year-old who needs a bone marrow transplant, and get your cheek swabbed today.

 

________

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The Law is Like Settling a Country

i
The people fear to enter the Land. They have sent spies into it and these spies report back that the Land is unconquerable, that the Land is dangerous, that its people are altogether dangerous.

*
Here is a kind of apostasy. The people have rejected the Land and they have declared that a task will be impossible, though God will be with them.

God condemns that generation to die in the Desert.

ii
After the condemnation, God gives a kind of reassurance. God commands Laws that the people must follow once they (or, now, their children who will live) will settle in the Land.

You will not come there, God implies: but the nation will come there. And there, the nation will follow Law.

iii
To reassure the people that the nation will settle the Land, God describes Law.

This is a great statement about the meaning of the Law.

God's reassurance makes Law part-and-parcel with erecting a country.

Law moves beyond mere obedience, and becomes a way of creating a system of life.

*
Law changes from simple obedience into productive action.

Law becomes a way that God calls upon us to let Him help us build a world.

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