Shelach: Seeing and Believing

 The parsha can be seen as dealing with perceptions/  Moshe believes that intelligence, an improved picture, of the land will help in the Israelites entry.  He sends scouts, people who are perceived as the heads of Israel, men who are beyond petty motives, leaders who are not insecure. 

These scouts return with a report: Any  attempt to enter the land will be met by an overwhelmingly superior force.  It is hopeless to attempt such a resettlement.  Ordinary people look like grasshoppers to the giants that inhabit this land.  The scouts  purport to see through the eyes of the adversary

What did the scouts gain by this picture of hopelessness?  I see doctors emphasize the hopeless situation of patients. In that circumstance, I see the gain more clearly.  If you convince a person that her situation is hopeless, you have a better chance of getting her to agree to anything, any study, any desperate therapy- no matter how risky, expensive and uncomfortable.  Despair is a retailing tool.  You can sell the  desperate person anything: return to slavery, bring back coal, etc. 

Gd is angered by the lack of faith in Gd's ability to perform the seemingly impossible. It was bad enough that Moshe doubted Gd's ability to provide 40 days of meat for the people in last week's parsha  Now the people are doubting that Gd can deliver on the promise made to Abraham Isaac and Jacob, the basis of the exodus from Egypt. 

At the end of the parsha we have the commandment for Tzitzith, the fringes.  The operant word for the commandment of tzitzith, thothuru, is the same as the charge given to (the mostly ignoble )scouts: lathur.    The tzitzith commandment tells us not to follow our eyes, not to take the advice of our inclination.  To look more deeply, consider the extraordinary.  The Gd that took our ancestors out of Egypt is capable of wondrous solutions that we cannot see in advance.  

Don't settle for the solutions of the demoralized.

My friend, A. Mansfield told me that the Vilna Gaon was asked: What is the  greatest  sin?  He answered, "the greatest sin is no sin at all, it is ...."  ( and here the answer , in typical talmudic fashion, becomes somewhat unclear)  either 'atzvuth '( depression)  or ' atzluth' ( laziness) ..."because it does not allow for repentance."    The spies generated some mixture of depression ( hopelessness and helplessness about entry into the land) and laziness ( why bother, it is not by our might that we can enter the land).

The depression answer is more appealing to me.  Gd is the antithesis of hopelessness.  Acquiring hopelessness is rejecting Gd.

Don't mess with Gd.