Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild
Beit Warszawa, 28th June 2019 – There is nothing new about ‘Fake News’. There is nothing new about ‘spinning’ information to give the impression you want. There is nothing new about ‘influencing’ the outcome of a public poll.
By the time of this week’s Sidra, the people of Israel have spent around a year in the wilderness – time for the initial traumas to settle down. After the melodramatic and quite frightening events of the Plagues and the expulsion from Egypt, the flight through the Reed Sea, the encounters with Amalekites and then at Sinai with God, the catastrophe of the Golden Calf and the creation of a cultic system with a portable sanctuary and designated tribes and families to serve it and transport it, after the initial census and organisation of the people by tribes and families and by location in the camp as it moves forward, after the organisation of sanitation and the regular supply of manna almost every morning – things have settled down a bit. A system has been created, and Order.
So now it is time to look forward. They are on their way! This mysterious God who has no Name, no Image, no Form, whose servant goes into a tent, alone, to speak with him – but who has destroyed the Egyptian economy and slaughtered the Egyptian army, who has helped the Israelites defeat the marauding Amalekites and has provided them (eventually!) with water and with food – this God decides it is time to make plans for conquering the Land that God had promised to them, first through Abraham but now through Moses. Note, it is not empty, it will not be handed to them on a plate, it is clear that there are already inhabitants in the Land (and there always were, even back in Genesis Chapter 12) – but it is not the intention to stay where they are, they are merely in transition through the desert of Sinai, between Egypt and Canaan.
Oh, if only things were that simple!
It starts off calmly. In Numbers Chapter 13 God tells Moses to send twelve men, one senior representative from each tribe, to go and scout out the land. In the days before drones, or maps, or satellites, there was no substitute for someone’s eyes. The spies could check out the best route forward – water supplies, food and forage, what sort of fortifications might await them, what sort of preparations they might need to make. The men do their job thoroughly and conscientiously – they follow Moses’ instructions to go from the south to the mountains of the north, to survey the inhabitants and assess their strength, to assess the land and its fertility, and they even bring back samples of the fruits. There is only one of Moses’ instructions in verses 17-20 that they neglect, or ignore. ”Vehitchazaktem!” – ”and make yourselves strong!” We can understand this as a form of assurance: ”Be self-confident, do not let yourselves be scared.”
So they go from what is now Nahal Tzin (now the terminus of the railway line south of Dimona, in the Negev) up to the area before Chamat (probably Hama, now in Syria); they checked out Hebron and its inhabitants, and on their way back they took grapes from the Valley of Eshkol (roughly between Hebron and Beit Shemesh now). They took forty days for the trip, during which presumably Moses and Aharon and the rest sat and waited impatiently for news.
BUT – when they return, they do not make a private report (like Mr. Robert Mueller to the Attorney General Barr in America!) – no, they spoke (v.26) to Moses, and Aharon, and Everyone Else. All at the same time. They start with the good news – you know that old game, ”Would you prefer the good news or the bad news first?” – and they describe the land as being indeed very fertile. However – and here come the reservations – there are Amalekites (again) and Anakites and Hittites and Jebusites and Amorites and Canaanites and – oh my heavens, the plain, the coast, the mountains, everywhere is already taken! There is nowhere for us to go! In vain Caleb tries to urge an immediate advance – the others outnumber him. ”Lo nuchal la’alot el-ha’am”, they say, ”Ki hazak hu mimenu’;’ ”We are not able to advance up to those people – because they are stronger than we are.” And then, rather ridiculously, they add contradictory hyperbole. ”The land eats up its inhabitants – but the inhabitants are big and strong!” ”We felt we were like grasshoppers in comparison to the Nephilin – and so that is how they, too, perceived us.” They cannot even see what rubbish they are speaking.
Neither can the people, all keyed up in expectation of good news, cope with this sudden disappointment. Moses has had no time to receive the report, debrief the spies, consider their information and draft a public statement. There is no time for this. The spies have NOT strengthened themselves, they have weakened themselves – at least, ten of them have – and so it is they who now weaken the morale of the people. A small people can indeed do wonders – but only if it believes in itself. The Israelites no longer believe in themselves, they do not believe in Moses, they do not believe in God, they want to go back, they want to go to what still feels like ”home”.
Of course this is technically impossible – Egypt now is not what it was before and nobody is going to open the sea again for them to walk back through – but this is irrelevant. They are looking backwards now, not forwards. They have forgotten what God has already done for them. They have forgotten just how miserable it really was to be enslaved, to have even their baby sons taken from them and drowned. They want to pick new leaders who will lead them backwards through history. Though Joshua and Caleb try again to change their mood, and stress that with God’s help they could achieve anything, the people are so disappointed that they even threaten these two with violence.
Incidentally – We never hear what happens to the other ten spies, what political careers they make for themselves… whether they join Korach in just a few chapters’ time.
The whole thing is a mess. A total mess. Moses is frustrated, Aharon afraid, God furious. Moses has to negotiate quickly to defend the people, despite his own frustrations. He has to persuade God that killing the Israelites off now might indeed be satisfying in the short term but, longer-term, could be a public relations disaster and reduce God’s future credibility. Fortunately God lets himself be persuaded, and starts to plan longer term. I say ”fortunately”, for otherwise we would not be here today. In verse 39 Moses informs the people of God’s verdict – they will not be killed, they will be compelled to stay where they are until the adults die – where they are. They will go neither forwards nor backwards, but stay static, with no future. The people mourn, but it is too late to change the verdict, even though they try. God has lost patience with this generation.
It seems incredible, does it not, that political leaders could survey their programme for a country and come back with such a negative and self-contradictory image? That they could get things so wrong? That they could so underestimate the strength and vibrancy and vitality of the people? Or spread such fear of the Others? And that the people might choose to believe such leaders and prefer to go backwards rather than forwards, wallowing in fear and in nostalgia for the good old days, and end up staying just where they are – except that now they have been robbed of hope as well.
Thank goodness that could never happen here……. Or anywhere else, come to that…..
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild.
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