This week’s Torah portion of Shelach begins a turning point in history.
The spies returned from their mission of scouting out the Land, and ten of them delivered an evil and false report which slandered the ‘precious land’ (Ps. 106:24) that The Al-mighty had promised to the Children of Israel.
What caused this crisis of faith? Whatever it was, the act of speaking against the Land set into motion a cycle of suffering which reverberates to this very day.
Every disparaging, anti-Israel tweet, every vacuous anti-Israel statement made by "celebs" whose arrogance is matched by their ignorance, every lie propagated by the anti-Semitic media in the name of "diversity" – all has its roots in the slander of the spies against the Land of Israel, the Land which ‘G-d’s eye is upon’ (Deut. 11:12).