It is incredible how this week's Parsha tells the story of this week in Israel. Well, kind of, at least with some poetic license.
This week’s parsha is about the story of the spies.
The Jewish people left Egypt. A year later, after receiving the Torah and spending a year in Mount Sinai region, they were poised to enter Israel, the ‘Promised Land’.
Twelve spies were sent to spy out the land and bring back a report.
The report they brought back was confusing.
On the one hand, the land is very good, yielding unnaturally large and luscious fruits. They brought some samples of this extraordinary, blessed fruit.
On the other hand, the formidable might and power of the land’s inhabitants make it impossible to conquer with the kind of army that we have.
Oh, another thing they said. People are dying a lot in that country.
Ten of the twelve spies summed up their visit with a dire prognosis.
Going to live in Israel is an unrealistic dream. It is not achievable and certainly not sustainable.
Most of the Jewish people joined in a mass demonstration against Moshe’s plan of going up to conquer Israel. They cried and complained and stated their unwillingness to go to Israel.
They were so wrong, continues the narrative in the Torah.
The people dying was actually a miraculous decoy that Hashem had planted in the land. Hashem planned it this way so that everyone was so busy tending to their dead that the spies stayed ‘under the radar’ and went unnoticed.
How ungrateful. A miracle G-d made to help them, was used against G-d so to speak by portraying the land as being a land not conducive for life.
Truth be told, from a purely natural perspective, the spies’ assessment was correct. The sheer military might of the inhabitants of the land was indeed stronger than that of the Jewish army.
However, these were people who had seen G-d take them out of Egypt, split the sea, rain down miraculous Manna food should have known better. They should have recognized that if G-d tells them to conquer the land, they will be successful even if supernatural G-dly intervention is needed.
Their fear and their subsequent doomsday mindset, led them to make an irreversible mistake.
As the Torah relates:
All the Israelites except for the tribe of Levi complained against Moses and Aaron, and the entire congregation of judges said, "If only we had died in Egypt, or if only we had died in this desert.
Why is God taking us to this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be spoils of war. Is it not better for us to return to Egypt?"
The men said to each other, "Let us appoint a new leader and return to Egypt! And let us worship a new god, and return to the religion of Egypt!" (The women, however, did not rebel).
Hashem gave them their wish. They indeed died in the desert during the next forty years. Only their children who were not yet twenty years of age, entered Israel at the end of the forty years.
Today we have a people of Israel who is rectifying this mistake.
Millions of Jews are reversing the behavior of our ancestors who didn’t appreciate Israel and therefore lost the right to go to Israel, today the Jewish People is in love with Hashems promised land of Israel.
They are full of faith, optimism and a steely resolve that Eretz Yisrael is the most blessed place in the world for a Jew.
The Rebbe told us over and over again, even as scud missiles were aimed at us by Sadam Hussein, and even after the missiles started flying, that the Torah promises that this is the Land upon which G-d places His eyes ‘from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.’
This description of Hashem’s intense supervision and attention to the land of Israel and those who dwell therein, is the eternal word of G-d.
Today, unlike the Jews back then in the desert, we are standing firm and strong in our faith and confidence in Hashem’s promise. And we are witnessing Hashem’s protection and blessings in ways that are simply incredible and miraculous.
It is inspiring beyond, to see how Jewish people are clamoring to get back to Israel. They are waiting in Cyprus, in Rome, in Bangkok and various other central locations, to fly back into Israel.
The flights to Israel are called ‘rescue flights’. Being ‘stuck’ outside Israel they feel ‘stranded’ and await to be ‘rescued’ and taken to Israel.
What a blessedly faith-filled nation Am Yisrael is!
Rather than looking at Israel like the spies did, as an undesirable place, the Jewish people are streaming into Israel in whatever way possible.
Even though, we all know that living in Israel last week has been challenging.
My daughter sends pictures of our grandchildren every time they enter the protected cellar in their central Israel apartment. Some nights it was 2-3 times. Literally they were jetlagged from being woken up and running up and down the steps to the common ‘mamad’ – saferoom.
At the same time the miracles that are taking place in Israel are of biblical proportion.
Click here to read the story of the missile that hit Soroka Hospital causing major damage but not taking any lives. Just ten hours earlier they had finished evacuating the ward that was hit, into the hospital’s basement.
The ominous predictions that the analysts had about the tens of thousands of fatalities if Iran was attacked, was miraculously averted. The extent of the miracles we have witnessed just in the last week, are a thick book waiting to be written.
Click here for a Torah perspective on operation ‘Rising Lion’.
I talk to many people and am mindful of the fact that some are a bit panicky and pessimistic. It is understandable and natural. We are living in scary times.
The way it seems to me is that there are ‘two Israel’s’.
And it is up to each of us to create the mindset and choose in which Israel you will inhabit.
There is the Israel of anxiety, danger, pessimism and apologetics.
Many news channels and media outlets will be very glad to help you with the scary, bad, anxiety-generating news.
And there is the blessed and holy and miraculous G-dly land. The land of promise, promised by G-d to the Jewish people. A land of luscious opportunity and daily almost predictable miracles and G-dly attention.
A land where you feel Jewish history and imagine Jewish destiny in the hill, valleys, cities and settlements.
We each have an important choice to make.
Which ‘Israel’ do we live ‘in’ and ‘with’.
Do we want to cry and wail like the spies 3,000 plus years ago?
Or do we want to embrace with appreciation, joy and exuberance, the gift that G-d has given us.
The holy land of Israel.
Let us being to imagine how we are getting closer and closer to the coming of Mashiach.
At that time we will all live in Israel. We will have a Bet Hamkidash in Jerusalem and there will be world peace for eternity.
I can’t wait. It’s high time to end this cycle of war and destruction.
Let us do our bit to hasten Mashiach’s coming and send power and might to our people. Wherever you are, wherever you live, we need to bolster and strengthen our G-dly protection.
We do this by adding in Torah and Mitzvahs. Especially the Mitzvah of Tefilin, and the mitzvah of lighting Shabbat Candles.
Click here for Shabbat candle lighting times around the world.
And most importantly let us adopt for ourselves, and spread contagiously to others, an optimistic faith-filled approach to Almighty’s Promised Land.
Be proud of yourself if you live in Israel.
Send messages of solidarity and funds to support your relatives who live in Israel.
Start rejoicing and expressing gratitude for the miracles that have happened and in advance for that that are poised to happen!
Dear Hashem, we had to spend forty years in the desert because we showed our distaste for the land. Surely, now that we, Your chosen people are showing our steadfast commitment and appreciation for Your gift, we should be blessed with the immediate redemption and the mass return to Eretz Israel.
As the Prophet says in G-d’s name ‘They (referring to our entire nation) will come to Zion with joy’.
Shabbat Shalom – a peaceful Shabbat and a joyous Shabbat
Rabbi Yosef Kantor
CLICK HERE FOR SHORT VIDEO OF INSPIRATION