Num 13:1-15:41
The term “supply and demand” has been filling our news reports as politicians, economists, pundits and all the rest of us try to understand rocketing gasoline prices and their impact on our lives. Underneath all the verbiage, it is becoming crystal clear that global demand has (or will soon) outstrip the finite supply of fossil fuels. With fuel in short supply, fear is available in abundance!
Not so different was the Israelites’ experience in the desert wilderness - a saga of food, water and hope in short supply and fear breaking out like a contagion. Despite God’s technicolor display of might against the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the Israelites shrink in fear when faced with the unknown and unpredictable challenges ahead of them.
In this Torah portion those challenges get fleshed out with the reports of the spies Moses sends into the Land of Israel. Yes, they affirm, it is a beautiful, lush, bountiful land - a full-to- bursting supply of milk and honey! But, they caution, there are powerful tribes there too; we will be slaughtered, decimated, reduced to the size of grasshoppers. Better to go back to slavery in Egypt than attempt to occupy this so-called “promised” Land.
God’s disappointment and anger at their lack of faith almost initiates a Divine genocide, but Moses intervenes and pleads for mercy for his people. Swayed by Moses’ arguments, God decides to keep the Israelites outside the Land for a total of 40 years, long enough for the faithless generation to be replaced by their children. The new generation, God presumes, will not be cowed by fear nor ready to retreat in the face of enemies or the shortage of life’s necessities.
In this year in which we celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary of statehood, it is important to acknowledge - with awe and gratitude - the courage, the determination, the vision and the hope that fueled the builders of this new nation when life’s necessities were in short supply. The “spies” who traveled to Europe, to Morocco, to North and South America, Russia and Africa to recruit immigrants to build a new state did not mince words or paint a fairy-tale picture of life there. But they quoted Theodor Herzl’s words: “If you will it, it is no dream,” and thousands upon thousands answered the call to dream, to fight, to build a new nation on the site of God’s ancient promise to our people.
It is a grand narrative of hope defeating fear, not unblemished by mistakes and tragedies, but a narrative that can give us courage to sustain the hope, to right the wrongs, to work, always for peace and justice in the land of Israel, in America and throughout the world. Let us never be enslaved to a culture of fear nor a shortage of hope.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Judy Shanks
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