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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