SHELACH LECHA 5771

Rabbi Daniela Szuster

B´nei Israel Congregation,

Costa Rica

Everything has its Moment

This week’s parashah describes the famous episode of the Meraglim, the explorers.  God ordered Moses to send a leader from each tribe to check out the land of Israel.  The purpose was to observe the cities, land and its inhabitants, in order to report back to the people, before preparing to enter the promised land.  Twelve people were sent, one from each tribe, and after forty days, they returned to the camp.
 

At first, they recounted that milk and honey flowed all over the land, and there were huge fruits such as the one they brought with them as samples.  At first, the explorers’ reports seemed positive, but soon enough, that perspective changed.   The Meraglim didn’t agree on the feasibility of settling on the land they had visited.  On the one hand, ten of them said that the cities were fortified and the inhabitants as big as giants, which made it impossible to live there.  On the other hand, two of them, Joshua and Kalev, strongly affirmed that living there was possible.
 

Two totally opposed opinions.  Who should we believe? Who were believed by the people?  The people unanimously believed the ten meraglim.  They identified with the negative and pessimistic position, instead of with the enthusiastic and positive.  Because of this decision, the people were forced to wander through the wilderness for forty years.

What is interesting is that this Shabbat’s Haftarah tells us that, before entering the land, Joshua, Moses’ successor, also chose some people to explore the land.  This time not twelve, but two.  One generation had already passed and they found themselves in the same situation:  preparing to enter the promised land.

In the book of Joshua, unlike our parashah, the two explorers gave an absolutely positive report, thus managing to organize the people and start the conquest.
 

The question that emerges from these parallel stories:  what happened between one generation and the other?  Why is it that in Moses’ times, the people couldn’t believe the positive report delivered by Joshua and Kalev, but they did believe it in Joshua’s times?  What changes occurred from one period to the other?  The population who dwelt in the land of Israel was the same, and so was the land.
 

This makes us think that the difference between both attitudes in the different periods was that the people were not prepared to accept such a big challenge just after being freed from slavery.  It meant too much effort on their part, and they were concerned by other matters.  It was just when a new generation was born, for whom having a  sovereign land mattered, that they could have a positive attitude.
 

The same happens often in our own lives. There are times when we want to get a specific job, a specific project, to achieve a change, make a dream come true, and we feel that we cannot do it, as if there was a wall between ourselves and our dreams and projects.
 

Many times, we demand from our children specific achievements, and we get frustrated when they do not fulfill them.  Like the people of Israel, we often need to take a time to reflect, mature, think, grow, and prepare for certain challenges.
 

The difference between the people in Moses’ time and that of Joshua was not the quality of the land or of its inhabitants but the people themselves. They were able to transform from immature to mature, from pessimistic to optimistic, from cowards to courageous. They just needed time. Perhaps Moses’ time was not the time to think about conquests; the idea caused them too much fright, suspicion, and anxiety. In return, Joshua’s time was the ideal moment to step forward and obtain the land they so yearned for.
 

Sometimes, there are certain things that we cannot speed up; we just have to wait, live through some processes, and let time make us wiser to face new challenges.  It is only a question of realizing when the time is right for us to face a particular future dream.  In the words of King Solomon, in the book of Kohellet: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

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Shabbat Shalom!