SHLACH LECHA
Shlach Lecha, Send! (Numbers 13-15) is the story of a failed spiritual quest by the people and the terrible consequences of their lack of courage. This is the famous story of the scouts who were sent to scout out the land before the Hebrew invasion. I discuss this at length below.
Chapter 15 is a jarring change in the narrative, reiterating that when you bring an animal sacrifice, you must also include flour oil and wine; humans and the divine do not live by meat alone. The law of sacrifices also applies to Israelites and alien residents (15:14,15,29). Then there is the case of the demand by YHVH to stone a man caught gathering firewood on Shabbat (15:32-36). Lastly, there’s the commandment to wear tzitzit with a blue string (15: 37:40).
The scouts as a failed spiritual test
Trust in the divine
The absence of any tribal memory of Canaan
How can we remind ourselves of the divine everyday?
Here’s the myth of the scouts. The parsha begins with the assignment of the task of scouting the land of Canaan. They leave the encampment towards the land, and ten of the 12 scouts are completely frightened by the giants they encounter. They conclude that the Israelites cannot conquer the land. Only Joshua, the eventual conqueror, and Caleb, from the tribe of Judah, advocate for trusting in YHVH’s promise and power, and thus moving forward with the conquest. Caleb’s pro invasion stance is important because David is from the tribe of Judah and the editors were proponents of the rule of the house of David.
The people harken to the words of the ten scouts and bemoan their fate saying “If only we had died in the land of Egypt. Or in the wilderness…Let’s appoint a chief and go back to Egypt.” (14:3-4).
YHVH gets angry and tells Moses that he will strike them all with an epidemic and then raise a new people for Moses to lead (14:12). Moses calms him down, recycling the argument that it will look bad to the people of the world and hurt YHVH’s reputation. This is the same argument he has used before with the Golden Calf episode (Exodus 31:11-14). YHVH calms down but still resolves to have the adults all die in the wilderness (14:29) after wandering for forty years. He then kills the ten scouts who persuaded the people to not continue to Canaan (14:37).
The people then repent, say they will go up to Canaan, but Moses says it is too late, it won’t work. Some of them proceed anyway without YHVH, Moses and the ark of the covenant. The result is predictable; they are crushed. (14:45).
My view is that the scouts were sent on a certain kind of spiritual quest; this wasn’t simply a question of a catalog of the state of the land of Canaan, even though the text presents it as a straightforward scouting expedition. What supports this interpretation that it is a spiritual quest?
Our first hint is that the scouts are gone for exactly forty days (13:25). This is the same time period that Moses spent on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34;28), Elijah in his vision fast after he flees from Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 19:8), the same time a certain Jewish shaman from the Galilee engaged in his own quest (Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).
Second, the structure of spiritual initiations always involves some kind of separation, a liminal or intermediate period where the initiate is tested, and then a return to the community with a gift for the community. The story perfectly conforms with this structure. The scouts leave with the assignment to bring back some typical fruit (this is the gift) (13:23)
However, the scouts bring back the fruit in an effort to fake success at their mission. They failed to actually assess the strength of the people and then lied about it. They report “The people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified, very big.” (13:28), only they have no way to know if this is true because they didn’t go far enough into the land to find out. Simply put, they got scared by the giants; “we were like grasshoppers in our eyes” (13:33) and decided the best course of action was to bring back something so they looked good.
The scouts gave into their fear rather than face it. In all the deep spiritual work I’ve done, there is always a point of fear where it feels like there is no way for me to succeed, I’m going to die and all I want to do is quit. And not just me; I’ve never met anyone for whom this isn’t true. We must find some way through the fear.
We can fail our spiritual quests in one of at least two ways. One way is by not engaging in them. Volunteering to be totally alone without any food for 2-4 days—that’s not a vacation even if you are using vacation time to go. Sitting in silence for a week is not like sitting on the beach. How many of us have shied away from the challenges life has offered us? If that’s you, find a suitable challenge and go do it. Big or small. One vision fast I participate in the woman pitched her tent within sight of the house—but it was a much bigger stretch for her than it was for those of us who followed instructions and placed ourselves deeper into the wilderness.
Another way we can fail a quest is by not seeing it through and not bringing back any kind of boon or gift. In our scouts’ case, they gave into their fear and did not find the way through it. The way through involves trust, and we’ll discuss this more shortly. Our scouts gave up and returned to base camp rather than face their fears. I know this one intimately. I was given a great spiritual gift in the mid 90’s and my effort to bring forth that gift to the world has waxed and mostly waned since then. All with good reason, of course, and at least I have persevered, which is more than we can say for our ancestors.
Have you shied away from suitable spiritual challenges? If so, find a suitable one and go do it. Are there challenges where you have stopped or are stuck in the middle? Gifts you haven’t managed to quite bring back? Find ways to reengage in the process.
Trust in the process is a possible key to having the courage to continue and boy, I struggle with trust which is why I am highlighting it. Our ancestors simply lacked that trust. Joshua and Caleb, knowing that their plea wouldn’t work, tore their clothes (a sign of mourning) and begged the people: “the land through which we passed to scout it: the land is very, very good. If YHVH desires us, then He’ll bring us to this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Just don’t revolt against YHVH. And you, don’t fear the people of the land because they are our bread. Their protection has turned from them, while YHVH is with us. Don’t fear them.” (14:6-9).
The people’s response? “And all the congregation said to batter then with stones.” (14:10). The people literally wanted to shoot the messenger who was highlighting their lack of trust in the divine. YHVH of course, is enraged “How long will this people reject me and how long will they not trust in me, with all the signs that I’ve done among them? (14:11) After all, these were the people who were literally, rather than just metaphorically, at Sinai. What more could they possibly want? (not that getting angry helps at all in inculcating trust). If we read this as myth rather than history, the story is a testimony to how truly difficult it is to trust in the divine.
The consequences of this lack of trust is literally to be condemned to die in the wilderness, never reaching the Promised Land. “I [YHVH] swear that all these people who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness and who have tested me ten times now and haven’t listened to my voice won’t see the land that I swore to their fathers.” (14:22-23). It turns out that even then repenting after this condemnation doesn’t help, as we see in the people who are killed when they invade without Moses. (14:45). Sometimes timing matters.
Trust is difficult. Under what circumstances do you trust more, and when do you trust less? When do you feel the divine presence more and when do you feel it less? How much of this is impacted by being in the more than human world?
There’s no mention of any ancestral connection to the land of Israel when the scouts are sent or when they report back. We’re not told why the land needs to be scouted, nor is there any reference to any historical memory about the land—it is as if it is virgin territory to the Israelites. This is despite the fact that the scouts go from the Negev to Hevron. Abraham lived in Hevron, Sarah lived and died in Hevron and the patriarchs and matriarchs were all buried at the cave at Machpelah, which is in Hevron. Hevron is one of the prime places that would be associated with the patriarchs and matriarchs, but it feels almost as if there’s no connection other than YHVH between the people of Genesis and the multitude that left Egypt and are in the wilderness. Indeed, Egypt, the land of slavery, is their home. That’s what they testify to when they are scared and want to return to a safe place.
We can contrast this with our historical relationship with the land of Israel post the destruction of the second temple. The vast majority of Jews have lived outside of the land of Israel from the time of the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE until the ingathering of people after the establishment of the state of Israel, but the land shaped our sacred calendar, filled our prayers, shaped the discussion of laws in terms of the difference between being in the land and outside of it. When Herzl, a thoroughly assimilated Jew, suggested Uganda as a potential homeland for the Jewish people at the Zionist Congress in 1903, the delegates, most of whom were ideologically committed non observant Jews, rejected the suggestion out of hand. They all dreamed of a return to our ancestral homeland, not someplace new without roots.
Yet I think that today we are more like our ancestors in the wilderness than we are our ancestors at the Zionist Congress. The land of Israel has become the state of Israel with political policies that some of us find highly offensive. The state is not the unifying dream that the land once was. Combine this with our tendencies to move, our contemporary disconnection from the more than human world which we treat as an inert thing to exploit and voila, many of us find ourselves rootless.
We’ve talked about being rooted before when we’ve raised questions about lineage and discussed family and national roots. Here I want to ask about ecosystem and land roots. One of the great ironic mysteries of my life is that for as Jewish as I feel, I completely don’t feel at home in a Mediterranean climate and I don’t feel at home in the desert. When I lived in New Mexico and was in social work school, I spent hours in the national forest next to the trailer in which I lived praying about what would feel like home and where I would go next. I live in what’s called a Continental climate for a reason.
What kind of land, if any, calls to you? How strong is that call? What kind of land or ecosystems don’t feel like home? If you can’t answer these questions, spend time outside asking yourself, the trees, the birds, the grasses, what would feel like home?
We’re given a very clear explanation of why we are supposed to wear tzitit, ritual fringes (or what my daughter calls tampon strings). “And you shall have the fringe so you will see it and bring to mind all of YHVH’s commandments and will do them, and you will not go around after your heart and after your eyes, because you whore after them. So you will bring to mind and do all my commandments and you will be holy to your God.” (15:39-40)
I’m not a halachic Jew, so I’m not much interested in following all of the commandments (and I certainly wouldn’t stone someone for gathering wood on Shabbat as happens a few verses earlier). But the idea of something that would keep the divine present in front of me seems very powerful to me. The psalmist says “Shiviti YHVH l’negdi tamid, I set YHVH before me aways (Psalms 16:8). That is a goal of spiritual practice, for sure. Right now I do this through my morning spiritual practice to which I am very dedicated. But I wonder why I don’t wear tzitzit or a kippah.
How do you remind yourself to stay on a spiritual path? How do you bring yourself back when you catch yourself wandering away? Bonus question: How is your practice connected to the more than human world?
QUESTIONS
Have you shied away from suitable spiritual challenges? If so, find a suitable one and go do it. Are there challenges where you have stopped or are stuck in the middle? Gifts you haven’t managed to quite bring back? Find ways to reengage in the process
Trust is difficult. Under what circumstances do you trust more, and when do you trust less? When do you feel the divine presence more and when do you feel it less? How much of this is impacted by being in the more than human world?
What kind of land, if any, calls to you? How strong is that call? What kind of land or ecosystems don’t feel like home? If you can’t answer these questions, spend time outside asking yourself, the trees, the birds, the grasses, what would feel like home?
How do you remind yourself to stay on a spiritual path? How do you bring yourself back when you catch yourself wandering away? Bonus question: How is your practice connected to the more than human world?
