Numbers Cycle 6 Sh'lah Leha

Sh'lah

Expanding Our Perspective

by Chava Lion

In Sh’lah we learn an important lesson: Wherever we go we take ourselves with us. Our minds come along. And our minds are not simple at all. In fact they are each an intricate web of insights, fears, facts, faces of friends, of enemies, of giants maybe.  In our minds we hold a vivid distinct exquisite and dangerous inter-weaving of dreams and experiences. So much so it’s a miracle if we can ever find any equanimity at all.

 

Clear vision is therefore the struggle in Sh’lah.  It is our struggle. Look at ourselves today.  We in 2013 carry the terrors of our ancestors as well as their faith. We carry their joy as well as a memory of bright lives cut short and universal pain.  If we go anywhere we take these memories with us.  The question becomes how do we see clearly despite our very humanity?  How do we act on clear vision?

 In Sh’lah  Moshe sends spies with the intention to check-out the Promised Land.  This makes sense. Before going anywhere the people want to scout it first (Rashi).  This is more than simply an expedition though. Sh’lah leha we read.  Send yourself some men (Rashi).

It reminds me of the words spoken to Avraham: Leh leha. This line is often translated: Go unto yourself. Avraham is taking more than Sarah with him when he leaves his homeland. He’s taking everything in and on his mind. And with patience he still goes far.

Whether we are doing the traveling therefore or sending others to do the traveling we must take ourselves along.  In Sh’lah  Moshe sends the spies but they bring him along metaphorically. They think about him. They think about what he said. They consider what Moshe might want to hear upon their return. As Nahmanides says, perhaps they feel they are meant to return with plans for a future attack. So they bring reports of giants and powerful cities. They are then reprimanded for being false.  But, as Nahmanides points out, Moses himself says in Deuteronomy (9:1-2): You are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater than your great cities with walls sky high and a people great and tall, the Anakites (giants). Therefore, why would Moses punish them for a false report if he himself gives the same report later?

This is why: The report is not the one that will help the people to right behavior in the moment. Moshe is looking for something else. Look at it this way. Before he even sends the scouts God tells him it’s a land of milk and honey. So then, why send them? If he already knows, why send people to validate the word of God?

The objective of Moshe (we see) is not really to know the land but something greater. It’s to see how well he can sh’lah leha …send himself within these men, create a community of spirit and vision that rises above individual perspective. For this to happen though his men have to really be chieftains in the noblest sense, seeing beyond their own fears. The people as well need to be heightened to listen to the reports of the spies and refrain from panicking.  The people do panic though.

Then, upset by the panic,  God makes the decree of the forty years wandering. The spies and the people have demonstrated their inability to even approach a great communal vision beyond the physical world. They fall so short that only the next generation may enter the Promised Land. Equanimity (we learn) takes time and work.

As for myself, I’d like to share a story. I was at a local grocery store today. As I was putting up a flyer this is what I saw: A poster with the words Israel Kills. There was a photo of a blond girl at the center of it. She had stood in front of an Israeli tank in 2003 trying to protect a Palestinian home. And she was killed by the tank. A dentist in town is Jewish and this is the photo of his niece. I am sure he put it up. He doesn’t like Israel. Still, in this small town with a tiny Jewish community think of the antisemitism a poster like that can ferment.

My reaction was guttural. I wanted to rip it down.  I wanted to cover it with my flyer. I knew that I was seeing monsters. These monsters though weren’t Israelis. They were Nazis. The attack felt similar. I didn’t want to act in response to monsters of the past. I wanted to act with a clean and clear perspective away from all fear and anger.

I walked into the store to talk to the manager.  I was many men and women that moment. I was sending myself into a situation because of my personal vision of a poster, because of the emotions that it ignited in me, because of my perspective, one that may take generations to soften. Certainly a lot more than forty years

.

In Torah it comes off as a punishment that we need to wait to get to the Promised Land. The real punishment though is that we must wait to get out of our own mind forged manacles.  I don’t know how close I was to enlightenment when I informed the manager…an acquaintance…that there was an anti-Semitic poster on the wall of his store.  I don’t know if I was being objective. Something had to be done though. Perhaps tonight when no one is looking I will finally go and rip that poster off the wall.  Perhaps I won't. Maybe that’s the true balanced action. I don’t know.

 In Torah,  Avraham and Moshe show us how to move beyond the scars in our minds and get closer to divine consciousness, right behavior and a community perspective that merges rather than separates us.  They show us the importance of patience and time. They show us how important it is to try…and try whatever the challenges…to clear our minds of those meddlesome giants so we can walk in God’s ways. May we all work to follow their lead.