Where Reality Ends & Perception Begins - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hashem said to spoke to moses saying send forth men and let them spy out the land of canaan that i give to the children of israel one man each from his father's tribe shall you send everyone a leader among them so let's start there send forth men princes the word is actually used it's an ashim is used in the torah in reference to people of distinction right they were princes of the tribes of israel and it was very important by the way that all the tribes were represented so that whatever happened they shared in either the reward of the punish or the punishment together and uh and in those days as opposed to ours um those leaders were actually men of character they were sadiq they were righteous men they were men of standing and of wisdom which we must remember so we can keep in mind exactly how nuanced and sophisticated this mistake was hindsight is 20 20. things were not clear even to these most righteous of men and it's so important to remember this right this rule this principle throughout all of our studies in torah and tanakh but i i find it particularly we need to apply it in the generation of the desert that we cannot judge them and if we do judge them we should only do so with favor and compassion because as i as i as i believe we're going to see and we may already know in our hearts we all have a voice of the spies somewhere within us we all have that voice deep down and some of us listen to it more and some of us listen to it less and sometimes when we're not ready that's when it really crops his head and that's why we need to be ready all the time we need to constantly immerse ourselves in torah and prepare ourselves for when that attack comes baruch okay so that's the first point of reflection and meditation that i want to make so um you know i read to you the above verse in english but if uh but i believe that there's really a grave mistake in that translation i think it's so off that it actually borders on being a mistranslation on the part of art scroll and i'm an art school fan i like the art scroll people and so i say that with humility maybe there's a reason they use that word but for the life of me i can't figure it out why they said that word but if i were translating it the verse would say send forth men if you please and let them tour the land of canaan that i give to the children of israel the word in hebrew for to spy is la ragel the word that is used however is la tour which means literally to tour right and not once the lava tore points out not once were they ever called spies and the reason is because they weren't sent to spy anything out they were sent as tourists and spies and tourists could not be more different from each other right a spy has the intention to undermine things right to subvert whereas a tourist has the intention to encounter and to observe to be a tourist to be a tourist right that's what a tourist wants to do to be a tourist to have a good time tourists are drawn to the most beautiful spots to the most impressive elements of the place that they're going to see whereas spies are looking for blemishes and weaknesses that can be exploited so the spies that were supposed to enter and depart the land as tourists not as spies and so there in the very first verse we already see the seeds that were planted which blossomed into this horrible mess right they were sent in as tourists and when they arrived somewhere along the way they became spies their eyes shifted maybe it wasn't even intentional maybe it was just a lack of focus which could happen to any of us by the way maybe they just forgot their why right the why we talk about this all the time rav destler said and i've quoted this before and i'm going to put it up as a slide because it's so important he says the greatest service of god lies in the refinement of motivation i don't know if that slide popped up i don't know if my zoom is working but that's it the greatest service of god lies in the refinement of motivation why we do what we do maybe they just forgot their why right what moses told them was their purpose it's a possibility it happens to me all the time and that's by the way is one of the reasons that i try to be so disciplined to pray regularly because i find that often it's in prayer that i'm best able to get back on track and to calibrate myself and remember why exactly it is that i'm doing whatever it is i'm doing to keep my why in line with my heart and my mind to keep myself focused anyway so when they came back and started uh offering their opinions and advice it was clear that they had become spies right they officially became spies when they started spouting their opinions on things they were not hired to bring back their perspectives and their commentaries they were on a fact-finding mission and they did not remain loyal to that mission they weren't supposed to give commentaries they were supposed to give interpretation just the facts but i've seen in my life personally personally and often in the lives of the people who turn to me for support and guidance often we are not at all conscious or aware of where reality ends and our perception of reality begins right without realizing it we we start to conflate our own narrative and our own perspective with the truth and we don't even realize that that's happening we come to believe that the way we see things are the only way that they could be seen the most objective way they can be seen and if we see any other way we're fooling ourselves right that when we share our take on things we're actually sharing things as they really are but this my friends was their fatal error because as we see they were actually totally wrong they were wrong they couldn't have been more mistaken right let's look back inside verse 27 visa prula banu they reported to him 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 right they held up the eshkol and this is its fruit but the people that dwells in the land is powerful the cities are greatly fortified and we also saw there the offspring of the giant now nahmanides points out ramban ahmadis points out that one word there is one word the word fs which means but that one word was really the point where things officially started going bad right what does that mean what does butt mean if i say to jeremy you know jeremy you are a really good friend but well that but that's where he's gonna really start listening because that's where the truth of the message lies that's where i'm going to say what i've really come to say and so the ramban explains that if they were just reporting the facts the word but would not be needed to qualify anything because the word but is always followed by a direct contradiction to the words that came right before them so in this case they were communicating to the nation that yes the land is beautiful that's true but it was out of their reach that it was because of this very beauty it was because of the very magnificence of the land itself that they simply couldn't do it god forbid that conquering the land would be impossible this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you