Why did they do it? How could the meraglim, the great men of their generation, the princes, the Gedolei HaDor, lose faith in Hashem and draw all the wrong conclusions about Eretz Yisrael?
Imagine, if you will, a collection of Torah's 'superstars' assembled in one place: the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, the Chofetz Chaim, Rashi, etc. They've witnessed G-d's awesome power in defeating Egypt, they've experienced daily miracles that astound the senses. Yet, they say, "We can't go into Israel - we can't make it!" It boggles the mind!
The commentators (including the Lubavitcher Rebbe) explain: These great men of Israel were living in a kind of cocoon, a bubble in the desert that was a religious paradise. They learned Torah from Moshe, ate the miraculous Mahn and drank water that sprang from a rock. Could any life be better? How could they bear to leave this rarefied spiritual environment to enter a land where they would have to engage in politics, commerce and government? How could they take their pristine souls and dirty them in the real world? This was their mind-set.
Well, the meraglim may have been well-intentioned, but they misunderstood the will of Hashem. We were never meant to live in an Ivory Tower, apart from humanity, no matter how tempting that may seem. Our task is to live in the real world, among those of flesh and blood, dealing with the mundane nitty-gritty of everyday life.
Yet, at the same time, our task, our challenge, is to bring spirituality and kedusha to every aspect of ordinary life. This is what Calev and Yehoshua implied when they summed up their report with the words, "Alo Na'aleh," - we can surely go up. They meant to say, "we can surely raise up" the physical world to a higher spiritual level.
This is why, says the Sfat Emet, Hashem ordained three mitzvot immediately after the sin of the spies. He gave us Challah, to emulate the Mahn in earthly terms; He told us to drink wine at holy events, to take the place of the water from Miriam's well; and He told us to wrap ourselves in Talit and tzitzit, mimicking the Clouds of Glory that enveloped us in the desert. In this way, all the miracles of the desert would still be with us, albeit in human form.
G-d describes the spies' mission as "V'yaturu et Eretz Canaan." Read "V'yaturu" not as to "scout" the Land, but rather "to inject Torah" (from the root "Torah") into every cause and corner of this Land.
That is the key to conquering, and keeping, Eretz Yisrael.
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Rabbi Weiss is Director of the Jewish Outreach Center in Ra?anana.
Imagine, if you will, a collection of Torah's 'superstars' assembled in one place: the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, the Chofetz Chaim, Rashi, etc. They've witnessed G-d's awesome power in defeating Egypt, they've experienced daily miracles that astound the senses. Yet, they say, "We can't go into Israel - we can't make it!" It boggles the mind!
The commentators (including the Lubavitcher Rebbe) explain: These great men of Israel were living in a kind of cocoon, a bubble in the desert that was a religious paradise. They learned Torah from Moshe, ate the miraculous Mahn and drank water that sprang from a rock. Could any life be better? How could they bear to leave this rarefied spiritual environment to enter a land where they would have to engage in politics, commerce and government? How could they take their pristine souls and dirty them in the real world? This was their mind-set.
Well, the meraglim may have been well-intentioned, but they misunderstood the will of Hashem. We were never meant to live in an Ivory Tower, apart from humanity, no matter how tempting that may seem. Our task is to live in the real world, among those of flesh and blood, dealing with the mundane nitty-gritty of everyday life.
Yet, at the same time, our task, our challenge, is to bring spirituality and kedusha to every aspect of ordinary life. This is what Calev and Yehoshua implied when they summed up their report with the words, "Alo Na'aleh," - we can surely go up. They meant to say, "we can surely raise up" the physical world to a higher spiritual level.
This is why, says the Sfat Emet, Hashem ordained three mitzvot immediately after the sin of the spies. He gave us Challah, to emulate the Mahn in earthly terms; He told us to drink wine at holy events, to take the place of the water from Miriam's well; and He told us to wrap ourselves in Talit and tzitzit, mimicking the Clouds of Glory that enveloped us in the desert. In this way, all the miracles of the desert would still be with us, albeit in human form.
G-d describes the spies' mission as "V'yaturu et Eretz Canaan." Read "V'yaturu" not as to "scout" the Land, but rather "to inject Torah" (from the root "Torah") into every cause and corner of this Land.
That is the key to conquering, and keeping, Eretz Yisrael.
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Rabbi Weiss is Director of the Jewish Outreach Center in Ra?anana.