Self Styled Spies

ESSAY:Self-Styled Spies
Can a mission of truth be cloaked in a veil of deceit?

INSIGHTS :
A Restless Land
Where the concept of a “settlement movement” is a contradiction in terms
Doubly Small
Just because you think little of yourself, doesn’t mean that everyone else thinks little of you
Subjective Judge
What’s the verdict?
Mystical Meals
The ultimate diet

A TELLING STORY: Defining Need
The difference between the needy and the needed

Fourteen months after the Exodus, as the people of Israel were poised to enter and conquer the land promised by G-d to their ancestors, there occurred a tragic setback in the course of Jewish history.

Moses had dispatched twelve men—“all prestigious individuals, leaders of Israel”[1]—to survey the Holy Land and report back to the people on the nature of its terrain, its produce and its inhabitants. The spies brought back a most demoralizing account, causing the people to lose faith in G-d’s promise. As a result, that entire generation was deemed unfit to inherit the land, and it was decreed that they would spend the rest of their lives traversing the wilderness. Only forty years later did Moses’ successor, Joshua, lead a new generation across the Jordan River. (Joshua and Caleb were the only two of the spies to speak in praise of the land, and the only two of that generation to enter it.)

An old Chassidic saying says that a person lost in the forest was not instantaneously transported from a well-defined path into the thick of the forest. It all began with a slight deviation from the path, which led to a deviation of but several yards, which led to a deviation of many yards, and which ultimately deposited him many miles from his intended route. Life’s most tragic mistakes begin with the smallest of errors, which lead to graver errors, which are in turn compounded into mortal failings.

Where did these twelve leaders of Israel, hand-picked by Moses, go wrong? What was the initial deviation from their mission that led to their catastrophic sin?

The key is in the word “spies.” Throughout the Talmud and Midrash, the members of this ill-fated mission are referred to as “the spies” (meraglim); but there is no mention of this term in the Torah’s account of Moses’ sending them to scout the land. Instead, the term used is “surveyors” or “tourists” (tayarim): “Send men,” says G-d to Moses, “and they shall tour the land of Canaan”[2]; “And Moses sent them to tour the land”[3]; and so on throughout the account. It is only when Moses recounts the incident nearly forty years later in the book of Deuteronomy that he uses the term “spy.”[4]

Moses sent them as tourists, as a delegation charged to “see the land”[5] and report their findings to the people. It was they who reinvented their mission as the task to “spy” the land, to clandestinely appraise its strengths and weaknesses as a military target. This was completely unnecessary. G-d had promised them the land, and their victory over anyone who might challenge their right to it was assured. Their purpose was not to gather military intelligence, and certainly not to ascertain the feasibility of conquering it; it was to accord the people of Israel a view of the Holy Land which would motivate them in their new challenge to achieve the transformation from a people leading a spiritual existence in the desert[6] to a people creating a G-dly society upon the land.

Not only was spying the land unnecessary—it also cut off the self-styled spies from their source of integrity and empowerment. The law is that “A person’s agent is like the person himself”[7]; as agents of Moses they were literally extensions of his being, virtual “limbs” of the most perfect human being ever to walk the earth.[8] But the law also states that “An agent who deviates from his agency is no longer an agent.”[9] Moses was the very embodiment of truth[10]; spying—with its devious misrepresentation of oneself and one’s motives—was the very antithesis of Moses’ most basic characteristic. Having departed from the terms of their commission to pursue an activity so utterly alien to the one who sent them, they were now on their own, with nothing but their own fallible selves to fall back on.

Only Joshua and Caleb, who remained “surveyors of the land,”[11] retained their bond with Moses, ultimately achieving the purpose of their mission and leading the people of Israel to the land and life destined for them from the beginning of time.[12]

Based on an address by the Rebbe,  Shabbat Shelach 5745 (June 15, 1985)[13]

When the spies returned from their mission to the Holy Land, they reported that “it is a land that consumes its settlers.”[14]

Chassidic master Rabbi Yitzchak of Varka explained the deeper significance of this statement: the Holy Land does not tolerate those who “settle down,” content with their achievements...

Describing their feelings of inferiority when they encountered the fabled giants of Canaan, the spies said: “We were in our own eyes as locusts, and so were we in their eyes.”[15]

Said Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk: “We were in our own eyes as locusts”—fear and intimidation in the face of one’s adversaries—is bad enough; worse still is the sense that “so were we in their eyes”—concern about how one is perceived by others.

Subjective Judge

Know... before whom you are destined to give a judgment and accounting.

Ethics of the Fathers, 3:1

Said Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov: When a person comes before the supernal court to acount for his sojourn on earth, he is first asked to voice his opinion on another life. “What do you think,” he is asked, “about one who has done so and so?” After he offers his verdict, it is demonstrated to him how these deeds and circumstances parallel those of his own life. Ultimately, it is the person himself who passes judgment on his own failings and achievements.[16]

This explains the peculiar wording of the above passage of the Ethics, “before whom you are destined to give a judgment and accounting.” Is not the verdict handed down after the cross-examination of the defendant? So should not the “judgment” follow the “accounting”? And why are you destined to “give judgment” as opposed to being judged? But no judgment is ever passed on a person from above. Only after he has himself ruled on any given deed does the heavenly court make him account for a matching episode in his own life.

The same idea is also implicit in another passage in our chapter of the Ethics: “Retribution is extracted from a person, with his knowledge and without his knowledge.”[17] As a person knowingly expresses his opinion on a certain matter, he is unwittingly passing judgment on himself.

What we have here is a most profound insight into the specialty of the human soul. In all of creation, nothing is loftier than the “spark of G-dliness”[18] that is the soul of man. This is reflected in the fact that man has been given the power of choice—a power he shares only with the Creator Himself.

Free choice allows him to stumble and err, but it is also what makes his potential for good infinitely greater than G-d’s more spiritual creations. So even when a soul comes to stand in judgment, implying that there are perhaps faults and failings in its past performance, no judge, be it the loftiest and most spiritual of heavenly beings, has any jurisdiction over its fate. The only power on earth or heaven that can judge man is man himself.

From an address by the Rebbe, Shevat 10, 5720 (February 8, 1960)

Mystical Meals

Rabbi Shimon would say... Three who eat at one table and speak words of Torah, it is as if they had eaten at G-d’s table.

Ethics of the Fathers, 3:3

On the surface, Rabbi Shimon’s message is simple and straightforward: utilize your mealtimes to share the wisdom of Torah. This way, the mundane activity of eating becomes a lofty and G-dly endeavor.

But surely the same applies to a single diner or to many who eat scattered about the room. Why “three who eat”? And why specifically when they eat at “one table”? On a deeper level, Rabbi Shimon is conveying the true significance of our need for food.

Hunger In Two Dimensions

The human being consists of two primary components: the physical body and the soul that gives it life and direction. The same is true of every created thing: its physicality and substance is but its outer husk. Within is a “soul,” an inner, spiritual essence and significance.

Ultimately, the soul of the entire universe is one: the drive to fulfill its Creator’s will. At creation, this unified “soul” splintered into a myriad of individual “sparks” that now form the core of every created thing.

But unlike the human soul, which exercises will and choice, all other creatures are passive containers of their purpose and utility. They depend upon man, the crown and apex of G-d’s creation, to develop and utilize them in accordance with the Creator’s design. It is man to whom the Torah, which outlines this design, has been given, and it is man who has been granted the franchise and the tools to implement it.

So the soul of man descends into the trials and trappings of physical life in order to gain access to these “sparks of holiness.” By investing itself within a physical body that will eat, clothe itself, and otherwise make use of the objects and forces of the physical universe, the soul redeems the “sparks” that they incorporate. For when man utilizes something, directly or indirectly, to serve G-d’s will, he penetrates its shell of mundanity, revealing and realizing its function within the overall purpose of existence.

This explains a most puzzling fact of life: Why is it that man derives life and sustenance from the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds? How is it that the highest form of life is dependent upon these lower tiers of creation?

But in truth, man’s need for the nutrients that his environment provides him (and the many other material resources that sustain and enhance his life) is the manner in which these elements reach fulfillment. When man makes positive use of the energy he derives from them, they become elevated to a station they could never attain on their own. They become an integral part of a conscious, willful being who elects to serve the Almighty. The meat of the beast, the grain in the bread, the water that quenches our thirst—these become the essence of an act of charity, an hour expended in the study of G-d’s wisdom, a feeling of love for G-d in prayer.

In this way, Rabbi DovBer of Mezeritch explained the verse: “The hungry and thirsty, in them does their soul wrap itself.”[19] A person desiring food may sense only his body’s hunger; but, in truth, his physical craving is the external expression of a deeper yen. “Wrapped within” is his soul’s hunger for the sparks of holiness that are the object of his mission in life.

Three At One

When a person sits to eat there are three partners to the endeavor: his body, his soul, and the food—the vital glue that keeps body and soul together as a living organism.

But if his eating is dominated by the perspective of Torah, these “three who eat” do so at a single table. Their eating is an act of unification, a revelation of the underlying oneness of creation and its connection to the One Creator.

 From an address by the Rebbe, Sivan 23, 5742 (June 19, 1982).

Defining Need

A once-wealthy chassid who had lost his entire fortune came to see Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. “If G-d has chosen to afflict me with poverty,” he wept, “I accept the Divine judgement. But how can I be reconciled with the fact that I cannot repay my debts? That I am unable to meet the dowry I promised for my daughter's upcoming marriage? Never have I reneged on my commitments. Why is the Almighty doing this to me? , Why is He causing me such terrible humiliation?

“Rebbe!” cried the chassid, “I must repay my debts! I must give what I have promised for my daughter!”

Rabbi Schneur Zalman sat with his head in his arms in a state of d'veikut (meditative attachment to G-d). In this manner he listened to the chassid's tearful pleas. After a long while, Rabbi Schneur Zalman lifted his head and said with great feeling: “You seem much preoccupied with what you need. Why aren't you as concerned over what it is that you are needed for...?”

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber