From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 2:29 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Shelach, 5764






                                                 The Hills are Alive

                       By Rabbi Joshua (musically known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

 
Parshas Shelach begins with the episode of the spies. Rashi, in the beginning of the  parsha, asks why this episode is mentioned in the Torah directly after the episode of Miriam and Aharon speaking disparagingly of Moshe, which appears at the end of the previous parsha, Beha'aloscha. He answers that Miriam was punished with tzora'as for speaking that way, and the spies saw it, and still did not learn a lesson. Instead, they went ahead and scouted the land with the intention of producing an evil report, and, in the end, did just that. This comment of Rashi is difficult to understand. What analogy is there between speaking disparagingly about Moshe, and speaking disparagingly of the Holy Land? After all, Moshe was a human being, who can be hurt by evil talk, while Eretz Yisroel, no matter how holy it is, is still merely a body of land - sticks and  stones - that cannot feel and cannot be hurt by the comments of others. What, then, were the spies supposed to derive from the entire incident of Miriam and Aharon speaking ill of Moshe, that should have deterred them from speaking ill of the land?

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, in his commentary Oznayim LeTorah, offers two answers to this commonly asked question. Each of these answers, as we will see, is insufficient in itself, but, when taken together, I believe that they provide us with an important insight into the nature of the sin of the spies. First, says Rabbi Sorotzkin - as did the Netziv before him, in his Ha'amek Davar to parshas Beha'aloscha - Moshe, in his humility, did not react to the comments of Miriam and Aharon about him. In a sense, then, he was acting as an inanimate piece of land. Still, even though Moshe did not react to the remarks made about him, Miriam - as we read in the Torah explicitly - and Aharon - as the midrash points out - were both punished for expressing these remarks. So, too, the spies should have learned from this incident that they should not speak against the Holy Land, even though it consisted of inanimate sticks and stones that could not react to any talk against them. This answer, of course, fails to take into consideration the fact that Moshe, despite his silence, was still, in the final analysis, a human being with feelings, and, thus, the analogy to the Holy Land is still not fully understood.

The second answer offered by Rabbi Sorotzkin is that, actually, the Holy Land is not merely sticks and stones, but has a certain ' ruach chayim,' or life force, of its own, and is analogous to a human being, to some degree. Rabbi Sorotzkin marshals evidence to this assertion from a number of Biblical and midrashic sources. For example, the Torah tells us that  the land must be allowed to rest every seventh year, just as humans must rest every seventh day. If this shemittah year is not observed properly, then the people will be exiled, and the land will be 'appeased ' for those shemittos (Vayikra 26:34). Moreover, if the people do not observe the laws of the Torah in general, and thereby pollute the land, the land will vomit them out (Vayikra 18:25). These sources, however, only show that there is an organic connection between the observance of the laws of the Torah and the performance of the land for them. They do not prove that the land actually has a 'personality,' such that one should not speak disparagingly about it. However, I once heard a remarkable insight into a certain comment in Rashi, which is itself based on a midrash, which does provide proof to this notion.


In parshas Chukas, commenting on the verse, "And the outpouring of the valleys (ve- eshed ha-necholim) when it veered to dwell at Ar, and leaned against the border of Moav" (Bamidbar 21:15). Rashi cites the Midrash Tanchuma, which says that the blood of the Amorites had been spilled at that location. They had been hiding in the caves, waiting to kill the Israelites when they arrived. However, when that moment arrived, the two sets of mountains, that were close to each other, converged, and the projections in one mountain entered into the caves of the other, thus killing the Amorites who were hiding in them. The resulting blood flowed into the valley, and the Israelites were not aware of the miracle until the well of Miriam descended into the valley and brought it up for them to see. Rav Yochanan Zweig, Rosh Yeshiva of the Talmudic University of Florida in Miami Beach, noted the way that Rashi describes the miracle of the killing of the Amorites. Once Israel came to pass through the valley, Rashi says, the mountain of the Land of Israel trembled like a slave woman who goes out to greet her mistress and came close to the mountain of Moav. At that time, the projections entered into the caves and killed the Amorites. The image of the moving mountain of Eretz Yisroel, explained Rav Yochanan, reflects the nature of Eretz Yisroel in general - a land that has life to it, and responds to the needs of the Jewish people, when they are loyal to it and to the Torah.

Following Rabbi Zweig's observation, we can understand the comment of Rabbi Sorotzkin in explaining the sin of the spies, who did not refrain from speaking against the land even after they saw the consequences of the disparaging remarks about Moshe that were made by Miriam and Aharon. The land, like Moshe, actually did have a certain personality to it, that reflected the soul of the Jewish people. This analogy is in turn better understood when we reflect on the nature of Moshe, as the most humble of all men. Moshe's humility did not consist in a lack of self-awareness, or self-value, but in a lack of self-interest. He was completely subservient to the task assigned to him by God, which was to serve as His agent in teaching the Torah to the nation, and leading them into the Holy Land, which is the optimum location for the fulfillment of all the Torah's laws. Perhaps, then, the lesson that the spies should have learned from the incident of Miriam and Aharon was that if they were punished for speaking against Moshe, a human being who totally subordinated himself to the task of leading his nation into the Holy Land, then certainly they should not speak against the land itself, which was the object of Moshe's mission.     



Please address all correspondence to the author (Rabbi Hoffman) with the following address - JoshHoff @ AOL.com.

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