From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 3:02 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Shelach, 5766




                                                                
                                              Truth or Consequences
                           
                  By Rabbi Joshua (commercially known as The Hoffer) Hoffman



  In the aftermath of the sin of the spies, having heard that the entire generation would die in the wilderness, and only the coming generation would enter the land, we are told, "and the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning. And went up to the top of the mountain, saying, ‘we are here, and will go up to the place which the Lord has promised, for we have sinned’" (Bamidbar 14:39-40). A group of people, lamenting their fate and expressing apparent regret over what they had done when they accepted the evil report of the spies, attempted to enter Eretz Yisroel.  Moshe told them not to go against the word of God, but they did not listen, and they were swiftly wiped out by the Amaleikim and the Cana'anim who dwelled on the mountain that they had ascended. Many commentators, both medieval and modern, were bothered by God’s failure to accept their repentance, which appeared to be sincere. Rav Yehudah Shaviv, in his commentary Misinai Ba, points out that many basic elements of repentance seem to exist here, including regret over the past, confession of the sin, and a desire to correct the sin. After all, didn't the sin of the spies consist of a rejection of 'the coveted land,' of Eretz Yisroel that had been promised by God ? Now that this group of people, the 'ma'apilim,' or ‘intransigent ones,’ was willing to fight for the land, didn't they correct the wrong that was done by the spies and the people who accepted their evil report about the land ? Why, then, were they killed ?


  Rabbi Shaviv cites Ramban, who, in his commentary to Devorim (1:15), explains that even though the nation now regretted what it had done, repentance alone is not effective enough to rescind a divine decree once it has been issued, and especially when the decree is accompanied by a divine oath, as it was here. The ma'apilim, then, were not allowed to enter the land, even though they made a supreme effort to  repent and correct the wrong that had been done. Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl, in his sichos to parshas Shelach, however, takes a different approach. He writes that, in fact, the ma'apilim did not truly repent. The sin of the spies, and, in their wake, the rest of the nation, was not simply a rejection of Eretz Yisroel as a value in itself, but a rejection of  Eretz Yisroel as promised to them by God. When they rejected the land in this context, God suspended the fulfillment of His promise until the next generation. When the people insisted on fighting for the land, their emphasis was on the land itself, rather than on fulfilling God's word in regard to the land. At this point, God's word was that they could not enter the land. By insisting on fighting for it anyway, they were rejecting God's word, just as they had rejected it when they accepted the evil report of the spies. Therefore, they did not have divine protection against the local inhabitants, and were wiped out by them. The land, in other words, did not have significance per se, as the ma'apilim thought, but only as a way of carrying out God's will in this world. Once it was God's will that they should not enter the land, the effort to enter it, in itself, constituted a further rebellion against Him, for which the ma'apilim were punished.


  In support of Rav Nebenzahl's approach, we can perhaps mention the fact that according to one opinion in the midrash, Zelaphchad was one of the ma'apilim. This opinion may have been merely based on a tradition, but the context of the midrash lends itself more to suggest that there was some discernable connection between what we know about Zelaphchad and what we know about the ma'apilim that led to the conclusion that he was part of that group. Perhaps the idea is that the ma'apilim exhibited a great love for the land, but they did not pass that love through the prism of what God's purpose for the land was. The daughters of Zelaphchad repaired that mistake by coming to Moshe and Aharon and asking what the halacha did, in fact, say in regard to their father's rights in the land. They presented their claim, but patiently waited for Moshe to tell them what God had determined for them. Unlike their father, who tried to capture the land against God's will, they surrendered to God's will in regard to their fate in the land. I believe, however, that there is another dimension to the sin of the spies and the nation which moved God to decide not to accept the repentance of the ma'apilim, and necessitated the people's being in the wilderness for the duration of the forty year period that was decreed upon them.


  Rabbeinu Bachya Ibn Pekudah, in his Duties of the Heart, writes that people make a mistake when they think that they have free will over every act that they do. Rather, a person has freedom to enter on a certain path in life. Once that path has been chosen, however, a certain process of causation has been started, and in order to change that process, it is not sufficient to change just one act. Thus, if a person makes certain decisions that set him off on a path of sin, he cannot merely repent for specific actions, but must change his entire path in life. This process of change can take a long time, depending on how far along the path the person has gone. In the case of the spies, then, the people, by accepting the evil report on the land, had left the path of reliance on God that Moshe had painstakingly been leading them to, and demonstrated that they did not trust Him. We have, in fact, noted, in the past, based on a comment of Rashi in this week's parsha as expanded upon by the Shem MiShmuel and others, that the sin of the spies was really the culmination of a process that had begun with the sin of the golden calf. The formula of one year in the wilderness for each day of the spies' excursion in Eretz Yisroel, says Rashi, takes into account the time the nation spent in the wilderness after the sin of the golden calf. This only makes sense if there is some connection between the two sins, and this connection is a lack of trust in God. To change that path of distrust in God, it was not sufficient to say, merely, that they would now rely on God and the promises He had made to the people. The consequences of their decision to rely on the spies rather than on God indicated that they were on a path that needed forty years to correct, and that one single act could no longer correct their wrong.



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

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