Shelach: Impossible

Shelach: Impossible

Gd punishes the  Israelites because they don't believe that they will be able to conquer the Promised Land.  They are outnumbered and the  enemy is stronger, and all that may be true, but they should have believed that they would prevail, because otherwise, Gd's promise would not be kept. 

I just returned from Poland.  There I met the children who participated in the rescue of my parents from the vicious Nazis (and their collaborators),  It was impossible for my parents to survive.  Therr enemy was too strong, too organized, too mechanized, too powerful, too cruel,  To survive, they had to live like rodents, in a hole in the ground ( I was in the remnant of the hole).  To survive, people had to risk their lives to help them.   To survive they had to turn to Gd, the master of the impossible, the idea that makes anything , even outrageous wishes, possible

Sometimes, belief is all you've got.  In those circumstances, it is best to believe.  Giving in to your perception of an impossible reality is death... and I am never born. Thinking an event impossible is hubris, it is excessive belief in a model of reality, it is a lack of vision

The haftorah talks about Rachav of Jericho hiding the pair of spies sent by Joshua in the flax.  My parents hid in the haystack on the Stych farm. 

Rachav hid the Israelite spies because she knew that the Israelites would be victorious.  She wanted to be on the winning side.  When the Nazis were systematically exterminating the Jews of Poland, they knew that they had lost the war against the USSR.  They were retreating.  But The Poles did not know how the war would end.  All they knew was that their land would be  subjugated to one side or the other. 

Given enough time, even the most improbable events will always happen ( Black Swan). It can be a grievous error to believe  in the overwhelming  probabilities.  

Fortune favors the brave,  Gd favors the desperate.  And vice versa.