Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Shelach 1

good evening we are learning we are on page 799 of the art scroll humash um parashat Sheila continues uh from where parashat left off and as we're gonna see the entire sephir bamid bar is a very heavy heavy book with many events that happened that are um difficult to understand and um to handle the very sad and we we read it and we say to ourselves we wish it didn't happen we wish the Jewish people would have behaved differently because it's such a pity that everything was going so well the Jewish people were with god with ananeja kavod the clouds of Glory they received the Torah they had more sharabeno and if not for those mistakes everything would go so well they would go to the land of Israel Moshe would be alive and because of um the golden calf and because of the incident with the spies as we're gonna see now and because the mistake that motion Aron made we lost our leaders we lost our Holiness the the level of Adam the first man before he sinned and we lost majority of our nation in the desert they they died as we're gonna learn in this week's Parsha and as we learned last week that the Jewish people as soon as they left harsinai they started making mistakes the mistakes are continuing in this week's parsia and we have to understand that when we speak about the mistakes of the Jewish people we're not talking about big mistakes of course they are big mistakes for the nation of God for the holy people so much is expected of them and uh on our great level chosen Nation holy people Hashem expects us to be bright clean diamonds and any little mistake we make Hashem judges us to the full extent um possible and therefore although we see Jewish people making the golden calf Jewish people complaining Jewish people running away from harsinai like little children from school and being afraid to go to Israel and um complaining about food and about their lack of trust in Hashem despite all that the Jewish people are the holiest nation that ever lived and throughout history if we would give a grade to the Jewish people we would give them 99. not a hundred of course but not the 98 either we would give them 99 out of 100 because they were so good so perfect so pure and despite all the mistakes that we're reading about uh compared to how much good we we do it's true for the nation and it's true for every individual Jew we get 99 we can't get 100 because then we will become Angels but 99 we do get so that's the attitude we should have when we read these Torah portions the Jewish people are sinning not because they're Sinners they're sinning because they're making a small tiny minute mistake and their their mistake is quickly forgiven by Hashem the Jewish people right away go back to their lofty perfect State and they continue being loyal to Hashem um and being white to the Nations so we start the Parsha page um 799 Chapter 13 Verse 1. Hashem spoke to Moshe saying send forth men if you please if you want and let them spy out the land of Canaan that I give to the children of Israel Hashem says you're about to enter the land of Israel you traveled from harsinai for a few days now you are close to the border of Israel you're ready to enter and before you enter I'm giving you a choice if you want you are allowed to send spies in and sending the spies of course as we see from the outcome was a mistake the Jewish people should have trusted Hashem and said just like Hashem offered them the Torah and they said for sure we will take so too when Hashem offered them the land of Israel the Jewish people should have said only good comes from Hashem of course we will take the land of course we will go in Hashem you want us to go in we will go in we don't need to check it out but um due to a certain bias certain uh small fault in their character the Jewish people were worried and they said let us check out the land and in their mind they were doing the right thing because they said we need to fight and we need to conquer the land in order to do it correctly we have to send the spies and find out where are their armies how many soldiers they have where are the cities map everything out and then we will fulfill the Commandment of God to the best of our ability but because there was a small floor in character and there was some fear involved um they miscalculated and they made this decision mainly not because they wanted to do the right thing but rather because they were scared and um they decided to take God on his offer and when God said if you want you can send spies the Jewish people said yes we will one man each from his father's tribe shall you send 12 people to represent the 12 tribes now we know that we have 12 tribes besides the Levites the living are not getting a portion in the land and therefore whenever we speak about conquering the land and dividing the land they are not involved instead the tribe of Yusef is divided into two Ephraim to make up the 12 tribes and because the tribe of um Levy was not sent they did not participate in this mistake each one a leader among them they didn't choose regular soldiers or even elite units they chose the leaders of the tribe not the Nasi not the princes but almost almost the prince and um they were all distinguished men heads of the children of Israel were they and of course to become the head of the Jewish people it's not like it is today that whoever advertises the most and gets the most contributions from businessmen and gives the most bribes that's the one who wins the election by the Jewish people a leader is chosen based on his character traits on his wisdom and on his real record and these actually were righteous distinguished wise man and these are their names and the 12 names are listed for each of the tribe We're Not Gonna read them I would say just say that these 12 names might not even be their real names because if you notice they're not such good names they're funny names and sometimes instead of giving a real name of a person the Torah gives us his nickname that is derived from his behavior for example uh often people have two names in the Torah like Moshe is also called tuvia or he's also called a Victor and so on he has many names has a few names um why because one of them is the real name and others are given throughout his lifetime depending on his achievements and it can be for good the name can be improved or it can be for bad depending on his behavior similarly we see with Ester Ester has another name hadasa and there's a question which name came first which name was given at Birth and which name she earned as a nickname later so if we look at their names we will see that their names don't sound good they have bad connotation and that tells us that it is possible that these are not their real names but rather they were sort of called those names as to denigrate them and to say look at these people they behave like this like one of their names sounds like a camel and one of their names sounds like a weak one and some one one of the names is a horse so um that's why we're not reading the names if you're interested you can you can you can look into it and analyze the Hebrew and you will see that we don't find Jewish people ever since then being called by these names okay now verse the only two names that are worth mentioning are for the tribe over Yahoo he passed the test and for the tribe of Ephraim Jose son of noonshua Bin noon he also passed the test and gave a good report verse 16 these are the names of the men whom Moshe sent to spy out the land Moshe called Jose son of noon yehoshua so here again we see his original name was hoshea and his new name called by Moshe is yehoshua and that's how we know it this is a higher name just like avram became avraham because of his achievements he rose up just like yaakov became Israel because of his achievements so too Hosea became yehoshua a greater person verse 17. Moshe sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and he said to them Ascend here in the South the Jewish people are now at the South Eastern corner of the land of Israel and Moshi is telling them go along the entire south southern side of Israel from east to west until the Mediterranean Sea and then climb the mountain and then start going north as you go north you you see mountains and they went all the way to modern day Lebanon is and then they turned East and then they descended a long Jordan River back to the Jewish camp Verse 18 and Moshi gives them instructions see the land how is it and the people that dwells in it is it strong or weak is it few or numerous and how is the land in which it dwells now we're on page 801 is it good or is it bad and how are the cities in which it dwells in Open Cities or in fortified cities and Moshe gave them a a hint if they live in fortified cities even though seems harder to penetrate and to get them but it's a sign that they are weak and they are scared but if they live in Open Cities means they're very strong and confident verse 20 and house the land is it fertile or is it lean are there trees in it or not you shall strengthen yourself and take from the fruit of the land do we want we want to see how fertile the land is and the days were the season of the first ripe grapes which means he sent them in in the late summer early four this is again in the second um year when the Jewish people left harsinai they traveled a little bit and then Moshe sent them now actually our sages say this was summer um and they came back 40 days later on the 17th of tamus in about three weeks from now and that is why that day became a sad day in history I'm sorry they came back on Tisha that is why tushabhav became the sad day in history um now let's see what happened if you notice Moshe is giving them instructions to bring back information the mistake that they will make is that not only they brought information but they also analyzed that information they became informational analysts that was not their job and because they took upon themselves to make the decision they made a mistake and they convinced the Jewish people that they shouldn't go up and Conquer it let's see the mission begins verse 21 they ascended and spied out the land from the Wilderness of sin where the Jewish Camp was to the expanse at the approach to hamat which was all the way on the North they ascended in the South and then eventually when they made the circle around the land he arrived at Hebron surprisingly the Torah uses a singular he instead of they from which the commentators learned that only one of the spies went to Chevron to pray at the at the graves of avraham is for success um where there were the the the brothers the three brothers who were giants they still lived at that time in the land of Israel hevron had been built up seven years before so on which is a city in Egypt now the commentators say that we're not talking about the the time when Chevron was built because we know that Chevron was an ancient city from the times of avraham it already existed rather what it means that it was built seven years before so on that it was seven times better more fertile than so on they arrived at the Valley of escol the word escol means a cluster of grapes and it's called the value of the cluster of grapes because that is where they cut a Vine with one cluster of grapes and They carried it on a double pole one cluster of grapes on a double pole each pole has two people on one side and two people on the other side and They carried it with a double pole means they needed eight people to carry one cluster of grapes from the land of Israel that is how huge and Luscious the fruit was and of the pomegranates they took one pomegranate and you needed one person to carry this huge pomegranate the size of a few watermelons and of the figs they took also one fig and one person carried one fig on his shoulder now verse 25 they returned from spying out the land at the end of 40 days they went and came to motion to Aaron and to the entire assembly of the children of Israel to the Wilderness of paranet Kadesh and brought back the report to them and the entire assembly and they showed them the fruit of the land what should have been a happy occasion turned into a great disaster verse 27 they reported to him to Moshe and said we arrived at the land to which you sent us and indeed it flows with milk and honey and this is its fruit now on page 803 so far sounds good but verse 28. the bot comes but the people that dwells in the land is powerful these cities are fortified and very great and we also saw there The Offspring of the Giant and amalek dwells in the area of the South the hittite and the evus side and the Amorite dwells on the mountain and the Canaanite dwells by the Sea and on the bank of the Jordan so far it sounds like they're just giving the information but because of the word but the first word that they used which in Hebrew mean is ephes FS means zero it's nothing whatever we said until now whatever good we said it it uh indeed it flows with milk and honey this is its beautiful fruit FS it's nothing it's zero it means nothing compared to what we're about to tell you so right away they put a frame around what they're about to say and the frame is not good and they're telling the people prepare for the negative news and therefore everything they say from then on is to be interpreted negatively by people the people that dwells in the land is powerful they're stronger than you the cities are fortified you're not going to be able to penetrate the walls and they're very great they're very big cities you're not going to be able to conquer them and we saw the Giants there they're stronger than you and amalek remember I'm a leg they attacked you when you came out of Egypt they're still there and they will attack you again beware and the the four nations that they mentioned trying to scare them and Khalif recognizing that their report is going the wrong direction tries to reassure the people kalev silence the people toward Moshe and said we shall surely Ascend and Conquer it for we can surely do it so far don't look at their words as a decision look at them just as information and I'm telling you we can do it verse 31 but Caleb is shouted down but the man who had ascended with him said we cannot ascend to that people for it is too strong for us they brought forth to the children of Israel an evil report on the land that they spied out saying the land through which we have passed to spite out is a land that devours its inhabitants it's not healthy land and the people that we saw in it were huge sounds like a contradiction and that's what happens when the person is biased when a person is closed-minded he's only thinking about one side of the story his side because he has fear or any other bias she will contradict himself and not even notice on one hand they say this land is a bad land you cannot survive there it's not healthy people die there and in the next sentence they say the people that we saw in it were huge and healthy and Powerful how do you reconcile it so I would say just say that in fact both of these are true the land that they went through they saw people dying left and right but this was not a normal occasion it was specifically as preparation for Jewish people coming into the land Hashem sent a plague and people were dying and the inhabitants were mourning and bearing their dead in order that they should notice the spies and in order that all their righteous people should pass away so that they no longer have any spiritual protection but again because of their biased they didn't notice how is it possible that people are dying and at the same time we see everyone robust healthy and Powerful something is not right and they should realize oh must be Hashem is helping us he's already killing them verse 33 they continue their evil report there we saw the Nephilim which is another name for Giants the sons of the Giant from among the Nephilim we were like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we were in their eyes and here they reveal their own weakness they say we were like grasshoppers in our eyes we were so scared when looking at them that we looked at ourselves as nobody there was the problem when a Jew considers himself a grasshopper that's when he allows himself to sin that's when he forgets about Hashem and gives up now chapter 14. people panic and complain against motion Aaron the entire assembly raised up and issued its voice the people wept that night all the children of Israel murmured against motion aharon and the entire assembly said to them if only we had died in the land of Egypt or in the wilderness why is Hashem bringing us to this land to die by the sword our wives and children will be taken captive is it not better for us to return to Egypt the fear and the panic took hold of them and they wished they were dead so much so that they said to one another let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt here they have Clouds Of Glory they have the pillar of fire and cloud in front of them they have hashem's presence they have the mishkan aharon and they want to run back to Egypt after all the Miracles the plagues and the splitting of the sea that they witnessed recently and the Revelation at Sinai fear causes them to forget everything verse 5 motion iron fell on their faces in prayer before the entire Congregation of the Assembly of the children of Israel now page 805. Joshua son of noon and kale