In this week's parasha, Shelach-Lecha (Num. 13:1-15:41), a leadership team of 12 spies, each one a chieftain of the 12 tribes of Israel, is summoned by Moses into the Promised Land to determine the quality of the land, its soil, its produce, its cities and towns, and its inhabitants.
The spies agree: The land flows with milk and honey. The fruit is rich and plump and abundant. The towns, however, are fortified and the people are armed and dangerous. There are even giants living there!
Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, insist that the Israelites have the "right stuff" to overcome the obstacles and inherit the land.
The other ten, however, fixate on their negative appraisal, which leads to the Israelites spreading the bad report so that the people panic and insist that going back to Egypt would be better than trying to enter the Promised Land.
It's a disastrous moment in the Jewish Story, one that leads God to punish the people with 40 years of wandering in the wilderness until the entire faithless generation dies out and only Joshua, Caleb, and the young will enter the Promised Land.
Look at Numbers 13:33, in which the ten disheartened spies say, in part, "We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we must have appeared to them [our enemies]."
What a terrible appraisal! And how human, to conclude from their own negative self-image that everyone else saw them as weak and powerless too. But we do this all the time, don't we? Extrapolate from our own views of ourselves how we think others see us? Low self-esteem can be so destructive in relationships, adolescent development, and in our abilities to rise to our fullest potential.
I am eager to hear your comments about what it means to see ourselves as grasshoppers. How does it hurt us, and how can we overcome this tendency?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jonathan Blake
Interesting to read what wikipedia has to say about grasshoppers, just to note some facts that would otherwise not be known to me.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I like this better: http://www.bugfacts.net/grasshopper.php
It tells me that grasshoppers can live in any climate, eat earths bounty not other creatures, have many eyes, no ears but hear, uses legs to walk, to eat and to make music, has 3 stages of life, and sheds skin many times to grow, and has wings as an adult. mmmm, now how is this like us or not so much? We can adapt to an environment and live, we can find food from the earth and not eat others, we can hear not just by ears, we can use our arms, hands and legs to help ourselves as well as make a melodious sound, and by continually reaching outside ourselves (shedding skin), we grow. Then even fly. Today, I am liking getting to know the grasshopper better. What a unique creature.
-jaira
Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth, says Torah. Why? Was he falsely humble? Of course not. He knew he had powers, mighty powers to be sure. But he felt that anyone else, had they gotten such powers from God, would be at least as good as he is.
ReplyDeleteA Jew must be humble, on the one hand, but must be extremely proud for being Jewish and his heritage. Every Jew is the son of the heavenly father, for which he ought be most grateful.
This is the lesson of Mount Sinai, is it not? A Jew is a mountain, but musn't therefore flaunt himself and pretend he's a Mount Everest.