When Fear Looks Like Common Sense | Parshas Shelach

Okay guys, paras para the whole episode with the spies raises a number of questions but also addresses a number of important issues. Before we dive into the story, there there's an important tension that we need to reconcile and that is the tension between probability versus possibility. Life is very different when we look at life through the lenses of probability versus the lenses of possibility. Not everything is probable. And even the things that are probable may have some level of improbability as well. So not everything is probable, but anything could be possible. So think about what's different in life and I'll share with you some examples soon. But think about what's different in life when we look at life through asking the question of what is possible versus what is probable. When we ask the question, what is probable? We're trying to play it safe. We're trying we're trying to protect ourselves. What are we also doing? Limiting ourselves. When we ask what is possible, we're being a little bit more dangerous. We're being a little bit more risky. But we're creating more possibilities. We're removing boundaries. More things get done. Miracles can actually take place when we ask that question. When we ask the question, what is probable? Is that coming from the nephahamus, the animal soul or the divine soul, the godly soul? case. It's coming from the animal soul. It's coming from a a perspective of I need to be realistic and protect myself from potential disappointment. When I ask what is possible, I know that from the perspective of God, anything could be possible. That's going to be the perspective of the divine soul. beneicial case. The first example that comes to mind is medical care. Because in the world of medical care, very often medical professionals like to share not just a diagnosis of here's what needs to be addressed, but a prognosis. Here is our guess of the outcomes that might take place. And especially when in in a situation where somebody is very ill, a prognosis is I mean how I I don't know what the research is. It would be interesting to see. By the way, I should have done this before the class. How often is a prognosis correct or accurate? Something tells me that it's not that accurate. It's it's a guess. It's essentially a guess. And is a medical professional, a doctor, is their job to guess where your life is going to end up based on circumstances you might not fully be in control of that's going to scare you and bring your spirits down. I'm not saying they should lie to you either. Or is the job to heal? And part of healing is hope. But it's a question of do you just look at probability or do you also look at possibility? A doctor who looks at possibility says let's keep fighting. Who knows? There might be something out there that I don't know. There might be something bigger than what what I see. Maybe bigger than what the science sees or what science at the moment knows. But maybe there's something I don't know. Maybe I don't know everything. Do you know my great-grandmother was a survivor of the famous or infamous notorious Angel of Death? Do you remember the angel of death in the what was it the 80s or the 70s something like that? It was that nurse who believed uh it was that nurse in Southern California who was going around killing geriatric patients who were ill, who were terminally ill because the quality of life is no good. And from a perspective of probability, the life is going to be short with no quality. Let's end it now. And my my great-grandmother was a survivor of the angel of death. And the probability of survival, the probability of continuing to live was low. But the possibility was there. The possibility continued. [snorts] When we focus on probability, it's just a whole different world. When it comes to I'll give you another example. means trusting in God. That's hard. Trusting in God is tough. When it comes to trusting that our financial security is going to come from God, sometimes we just don't know how that's possible. I tried everything. I barked up every tree. I just don't know what else to do. And if we're looking from the lenses of probability, well, I'm out of lanes. I'm out of pathways. It's I don't know. But when we talk about what's possible, not how we're going to get to what's possible, but what is possible, it's a whole different conversation. I I noticed I had like this epiphany recently in working with couples. I find this is this is not this is not empirical. I'm telling you this anecdot anecdotically. So you could do what you want with this. But I find that people who approach relationships strategically have a harder time, especially when they're going through a difficult time. People who are more problem solvers are going to have a harder time because you're they're so stuck on the narrow lenses of probability and sometimes you get discouraged because you don't see what's you don't see that there's a lot of probability because you're so frustrated and it's like how am I going to solve this? Problem solving is a probability thing. What is the probability of me being able to solve this given the tools I have? Well, that's a very limited way of looking at things because you probably have more tools than you actually realize. And what happens is when people switch to looking not at probability but looking at possibility, what is the possible best case scenario for a relationship? their mind is in a totally different place and they start looking at things differently and they start realizing things about themselves that support the kind of relationship they want that they didn't even realize asking the question can this happen limits oursel asking the question how can this happen I don't mean go or how could this happen I mean going forward removes boundaries removes the limits and I say this to you as an introduction to understand the whole situation of where the spies messed up. So, the Jewish people are headed toward the land of Israel. And the plan was that not too long after receiving the Torah, we're going to get into the land of Israel. We're going to go. We're It's finally there. And the Jewish people said to Moshe, to Moses, maybe we should send spies in ahead of us. Like, there's going to be a battle to that we have to fight. We have to fight the Canananites and other people occupying the land. Uh maybe we should send like spies. And God Moshe gets the okay from God and God says send spies according to what you think is necessary. If you think it's necessary to send spies, go. If it if it's not necessary, let me put it that way. It's not required. If it's going to make you feel more excited about the land, then do it. Go for it. Moshe picks 12 spies. Each one is the leader of one of the tribes. So these were 12 um extraordinary people, not just regular, you know, 12 leaders to go and scout the land. They go and scout the land and they're going around. They're looking around. They see people that are stronger than them, that are more equipped than them. They're intimidated by the size of the people because there's giants there. They're intimidated by the nature of the land, the fruit was huge. They come back and they share a negative report on the land. And they intimidate an entire nation. into believing maybe we can't go to the land of Israel. They saw it. We didn't see it. They said it's scary. I I I want to say this just parathetically. I I'm always fascinated how it was only 10 out of 12 spy only. It was 10 out of 12 spies who came back with a negative report. Yahushua and Khalif of the two righteous people. And I find it fascinating how 10 people based on their subjective report had the ability to indoctrinate and fearmonger 3 million Jews minus Moses Aaron and and Kivan Yeshua and maybe some others. But there were roughly three million Jewish people fearmongered by the report of 10 people. I I don't know. There's something interesting about that. There's just something interesting about how fast news travels. Was there a real reason to be afraid? By the way, I mean, if God said, "You are going to go to that land and I'm going to help you fight those battles and and this is the whole purpose of like of you becoming a people from the days of Abraham. It's the whole purpose for which I've created the world." Knowing that that's like this had to happen. And it's an important part of of of like the trajectory of existence. Does it actually make sense that we have a reason to be afraid? I mean, not really. Historically, it made no sense. Theologically, it made no sense. But that's what fear does. Fear gets you to stop thinking. When we're afraid, we don't think. Like we were talking about before, if we were able to somehow put that fear aside, even temporarily, we could just think, we could see life for what it is, we could see reality for what it is. But somehow these people got fearmongered into into making um bad decisions. God was angry at at the Jewish people. God was angry at the spies. We were we eventually did toua and were forgiven, but unfortunately punished. Uh, okay. You could call it a punishment. There's different ways of looking at it. But you know how long they were in the land of Israel for as they were going in giving their negative report? 40 days. So God said, "You're going to stay in the desert for another 40 years." Corresponding to the 40 days that they were gone. And you know what happened in those 40 years? Other than Khaliv, Yeshua, and Mosh, even Even Moshe. Yeah. Other than Khaliv and Yeshua, which were the two last two spies that were good, everybody died out. So, nobody got to go to the land of Israel. One way to look at it is it's a punishment like, you know, another way to look at it is just that's life. You didn't want to go to Israel. You got exactly what you wanted. So the next generation will go to Israel. The way looks like at it is you weren't ready to go to Israel. And not only were you not ready to go to Israel, the world was not ready for you to go to Israel. You think you're wandering a desert going around in circles, but you're actually doing is bringing life to a dry place. Of course, there's going to be God, divine divinity in the land of Israel. But God needs to be everywhere. And if you can't have God out of Israel, you think you're going to have God in Israel, show that God is everywhere, not just in Israel, then get to the land of Israel. And until we could prove that, which was 40 years later, only then were we actually welcomed into the land of Israel or welcomed. We had to whatever battle our way through it, which is the book of Joshua, right after the book of Deuteronomy. Let's zone in exactly into the the dialogue that takes place. So 10 out of spy 10 out of 12 spies come back with a negative report. Before they even shared the negative report. So here's what happens. This is interesting. They started off just saying facts, subjective facts, if that makes any sense. um skewed facts, but they were facts. They weren't sharing the full truth. They didn't before they even said the land was bad. We can't go. They just shared what they saw or at least part of what they saw. We saw the Amalachites. We saw other potential enemies. We saw giants. Look at the fruit. At this point, they just said things that were true, which by the way, if you want to lie, you have to tell the truth as well. Otherwise, nobody's going to believe the lie, right? So they started saying things that were true. Before they even, if you look at in the Torah, before they even start overtly saying things that were negative, Khal gets up. He silences them trying to give Moshe an opportunity to speak. And he says, "We can go up to the land. We can." And I'll tell you what's fascinating. two things. Number one, okay, we'll get to the second thing, too. But, but here's what I find fascinating. Khalif didn't actually defend the position. The spies get up. They start gradually depicting a picture of an intimidating land, but all they said was facts. At this point, Yeshua silences them and says, "We can go to the land." Well, who said you couldn't, right? And then they got into their whole debate, their whole dialogue, really a debate. No, we can't. It's too intimidating. Yes, we can. And that's when Moses panicked and prayed to God. But what's interesting is the spies, if you look in the text of the Torah, the spies, the negative spies, the bad spies, the evil spies, shared a compelling reason as to why they can't go into the land. It's intimidating. It's scary. There's giants. We were like grasshoppers in their eyes. They're going to devour us. >> [sighs and gasps] >> What's Khal's response? We can go to the land. Well, can you explain why? Can you explain how? Can you defend your position? He didn't. He didn't defend his position. He said it more uh factually. I I want to almost say, okay, excuse the expression because it's not really what I mean, what I'm almost like dogmatically, assertively, we can go to the land. The spies gave a reason why they can't why didn't Khalib defend his position. Why didn't he explain why we can go to the land? They explained why we couldn't go to the land. Khalv just asserted that we can without explaining why. You know what the reason is? Cuz from Kle's world view, especially as that good spy, it doesn't really make a difference what the reason is. It's really not relevant. If God told us we can go to the land, if God told us we are destined to be in this land, if he promised it to Abraham at this point, maybe 500 years prior, not not that much prior, and if this was the vision for which God had created the world in the first place, and God literally told us we can go to the land and it was us who decided that we need to scout it out first. Well, can we go to the land or can we not? We can. So, does the reason as to why it's logical for us to get to that land really matter? No. That just creates more doubt. Does trying to justify the probability of things actually help? No. What helps is opening the window of possibility. The says this quite distinctly. The hakadesh horitz of the 1500s. He was a cabalist and and wrote an ethical work called the and the acronym of is the he writes that the whole purpose of the spies was to go to the land and conclude that there's only one way to get into this land through God in a subnatural manner. That's the only way we're getting into the land of Israel. That was supposed to be their conclusion. Moshe handpicked these spies knowing that they are the people most likely to come to that conclusion based on their spiritual stature. They failed. You know why they failed? They asked the wrong questions. They asked they they had the wrong stance to life. They had a stance of what is the probability of this working as opposed to let's look for windows of possibility. [snorts] You want to put it differently. You know where the Torah references them as spies? It doesn't. Moshe never appointed spies. He appointed scouts. That's what it says in the Torah. A spy is more strategic. Let's see if this is probable and we'll figure out how to do. A scout is there to just report information and their intention was to create or was supposed to be to create a window of possibility. There's a teaching based on this from a rabbi known as the kesh. Thees was the of the pronouncing this right the this was in Poland he was a holocaust I believe he was a holocaust survivor I'm pretty sure he survived the holocaust and he wrote a book called the age about faith I mean hearing faith from him is his teachings are simple I don't mean easy I mean simple like they talk straight to the heart but when you understand the context of whom it's coming from it means a lot the age writes that we derive from here that there's times in our lives as Jews that we have to believe and we're put in a corner where we need to believe even if we can't always make sense of that faith. When we could make sense of our faith, it's deep and it's meaningful and and that's an important thing to do sometimes. And when we can't always make sense of our faith, then our faith has to run deeper than sense. Has to run through the soul. It has to be much deeper than that. That's where possibility comes in, not probability. You know what Khaliv's cue was? Khaliv's listening to the spies describing the land. And again, at this point, they didn't give a negative report yet. They didn't give a negative opinion yet. They didn't yet say, "We're not going into the land. We can't." By the time Khaliv silenced them, Khive said, "We can go into the land." Well, they never said they can't yet. They just gave a depiction of what they saw. What was Khal's cue? Khaliv was a good listener. So, when you read the para, I I want you to look out for this subtle difference because this is this could be life-changing. Moshe sends the spies to give a report about the people and the land and its fruits. Right? What are the people like? Just given objective information and describe what its produce is like. The purpose was to get us excited for the land. Whatever. The spies get back and they start describing the produce. And then the people Khaliv is listening. He says, "I this is going in the wrong direction." They didn't even say anything bad yet, but he knew it was going in the wrong direction. He silenced them. Why? Because they prioritized food before people. I I don't mean just literally, but figuratively as well. The produce is the outcome of what people produce, of how hard people work. And they were there to figure out people and then the reward that that comes with. And these people, these spies were focused on the reward and seeing people as a means to get there. And if reward of the outcome, the produce is what's taking up more space in their mind. That's a very dense way of looking at life. Man, it's a very limited, narrow space to look at life. He knew it was going in the wrong way, in the wrong direction. He knew that they must be focused. But put it this way. When we ask the question, "What's in it for me?" In life, we're more likely to assess probability. We're most likely to play it safe. We're most likely to ask, "Well, is it worth it? And how worth it is it?" When we ask the question, is this meaningful? Not just what what is in it for me? People oriented, not just produce oriented. [snorts] We're willing to take a little bit more risk. We're willing to play things a little bit more dangerously. We're willing to consider not just probability, but possibility. Khaliv saw that they were considering the reward, the outcome, the personal benefit. They're going to limit themselves to probability. They're going to end up playing it safe. And we're not here to play it safe. We're here to do what God needs us to do. I I see this in relationships all the time. When a couple feels when one spouse feels almost used by the other spouse, do you like me or do you like what I give to you? They end up being a lot more careful in the relationship. Yet when a relationship is focused on each other and what you gain from that is an outcome of that but treated as secondary, you're willing to take more risks. You're willing to consider what's more possible. The relationship has more possibility to it. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to