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Do not be alarmed by the size of these grapes. Yes, the giants we stole them from are climbing down the beanstalk after us as we speak, but Moses has a plan! The plan is: we die. Then, years later our kids can fight the giants! Great plan, right? Wait, where are you all going?!
Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss. See our upcoming Shabbat services and programs here, and follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates. Check out Shabbat Replay on Contact Chai for more from Rabbi Deena.
Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Shlach, “Send”, in which God wants Moshe to send out some emissaries. We’ll start with a brief recap:
God tells Moshe to send one rep from each tribe to check out the land of Canaan. Moshe tells them to come back with samples of the produce as well as a report of the lands’ strengths and weaknesses. The scouts spend 40 days touring the land, then come back with some gigantic grapes and also fear of the people who live there. They tell everyone that it’s agriculturally rich, in their words “dripping with milk and honey”, but the people are big and strong and have fortified cities. Only two of the scouts, Caleb and Joshua, disagree and say that they think it will be no big deal to conquer because they have God on their side. The Israelites are terrified and spend all night crying in fear, saying they would rather go back to being slaves than face the Canaanites. God is like “ok everyone calm down wait actually no I am going to kill you all and start a new nation with just Moshe”, but Moshe talks God down from this plan, saying it would look bad on God. God agrees and compromises that this generation will all die in the desert but their descendants can enter the land, so the people head back into the desert. The people are pretty devastated to learn this punishment, and a group of them decide to enter the Land of Israel immediately, which Moshe tells them is a bad idea.Turns out Moshe was right, those people are slaughtered in battle. Now to some laws of sacrifice: if you want to bring a sacrifice you also need to bring wine and flour with it, and we get some laws about how much for each kind of livestock. We also learn the law of challah, which states that you have to give a portion of every dough you knead to the Levites, and the laws of the Sanhedrin, the sort of supreme court, who are responsible for bringing sacrifices if they err in their judgment. We also get some laws about dealing with idolatry, and then someone is found disrespecting Shabbat and is put to death. We finish with the laws of tzitzit, the fringes we are supposed to put on the corners of our garments.
Though in the parsha God’s initial reaction of wanting to kill everyone for their reaction is probably overkill, I actually think by the end of the parsha we have a really good example of logical consequences. Hear me out: the people who didn’t have faith about entering the land don’t, and those who try to do it alone find themselves unsupported. Their children, who were too young to be held responsible for this shortcoming, aren’t punished, but god does set up a series of laws, like protective fences, to help them not make the same mistakes as their parents. God gives laws about sacrifices that can only be offered in the land of Israel, which should reassure the people that God does eventually intend to let them into the land, and then closed with the laws of tztitzit, a physical reminder that we are supposed to wear everyday to keep our minds close to god. God knows that out of sight often means out of mind, so God helps protect the future generations of Israelites from losing faith or connection.
There’s actually a PG-13 story in the Talmud about this- a rabbi goes to visit a sex work, and starts lustily stripping off his clothing. But before anything else happens, his tzitzit rise up off the floor and smack him across the face. “Right!” He says to himself. “I have a spouse, I made a vow of monogamy, no sex worker visits for me!” And he redresses and leaves.
While this story might be playing for comedic effect, I want to offer a blessing to the Israelites who were young children, maybe not even yet born, when their parents generation lost faith.I hope the tzitzit, and the power of communal memory, helped them act in ways they are proud of. And to each of you, to all of us, who use all kinds of reminders to help us act like our best selves, I hope those reminders make you feel powerful, knowing that you are doing the hard work of living towards your aspirations.