Shlaj Lejá 5776 - English

By Rabbi Daniel A. Kripper

Beth Israel - Aruba.

Robert Dilts, one of the great investigators of Neurolinguistics Programming, affirms that beliefs are a very powerful force in our behavior.  It has been empirically proven that if someone believes he can do something, he will.  And if he thinks it is impossible to do so, nothing in the world will convince him he can.  We all have beliefs that serve us as resources and others that condition and limit us.  Like Stephen Covey said, “The way in which we see things is the origin of the way in which we think.”

A revealing chapter in the Torah dealing with the crucial consequences of the belief system is the known episode of the spies (Numbers, Chapter 13).  The children of Israel were in the desert, slowly approaching the land of Canaan, the Promised Land.  In the midst of all the uncertainty and the fear of the future, Moses ordered a mission of reconnaissance made up of twelve conspicuous representatives of the tribes.  

They had to traverse the country, observe the characteristics and attributes of the land and the people that lived there.  Finally, after forty days the heads of the tribes return to the Hebrew camp carrying fruits that reflected the goodness of the earth.  However, most of the delegation protested against the possibilities of an eventual conquest.  In their own words, the land was inhabited by “giants” and “we were in our own sight as locusts, and so we were in their sight.”

This report brought on, as expected, a tremendous discouragement in the people and despondency and pessimism in their ranks.  The critical point was when the entire plan, the vision and the possibility of fulfilling their goal were questioned.  Against this general view, although they recognized the difficulties of the endeavor, two explorers urged the people to not collapse and to continue their ascending march.

This episode from thousands of years ago dramatically illustrates the power of faith, ideals and inner persuasion.  Hesitation and paralyzing negativism from the explorers and the people in general were nothing but a symptom of the mentality shaped by the pharaohs through centuries of slavery and oppression in Egypt. 

Should this trembling reaction and what a Biblical commentator called the “locuts complex” surprise us when considering the magnitude of the challenge they faced?

I think it is highly symbolic that this Parashah concludes with the commandment of tzitzit, of making fringes on the edges of garments and placing a blue cord over the fringes (Num. 15:37-41).

The basis of this precept is to strengthen our positive beliefs and our mission sense, stressing once again the importance of observance, remembrance and fulfillment.  

Rabbi Daniel Kripper

Beth Israel Aruba