Shelah Lekha (Numbers 13:1-15:41) and Haftarah (Joshua 2:1-24): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
24
Shelah Lekha (Numbers 13:1-15:41) and Haftarah (Joshua 2:1-24): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Overview
Shelah Lekha (Numbers 13:1-15:41) and Haftarah (Joshua 2:1-24): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary shows teens in their own language how Torah addresses the issues in their world. The conversational tone is inviting and dignified, concise and substantial, direct and informative. Each pamphlet includes a general introduction, two model divrei Torah on the weekly Torah portion, and one model davar Torah on the weekly Haftarah portion. Jewish learning--for young people and adults--will never be the same.
The complete set of weekly portions is available in Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin's book The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS, 2017).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780827614222 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Jewish Publication Society |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2018 |
| Series: | JPS Study Bible |
| Pages: | 24 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin serves as the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida. He is the author of Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for the best religion book published in the United States, and The Gods Are Broken: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham (JPS, 2013).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Torah
Shelah Lekha: Numbers 13:1–15:41
Moses, responding to God's command, sends spies into the Land of Israel to determine what the land is like, to see if it's conquerable or not. The twelve spies (one from each tribe) come back with discouraging reports about the inhabitants of the land, and about the land itself. When they hear the spies' report, the Israelites weep, bemoaning their fate and wishing that they could return to Egypt. Finally, two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, attempt to silence the Israelites. Yes, they admit, the land is scary, but they think it's conquerable.
Because of the negativity of that "generation of the wilderness," God condemns them all to die — with the exception of Joshua and Caleb — before they can enter the land.
To continue the constant theme of rebellion in Numbers, a man gathers wood on the Sabbath and is condemned to death. The parashah ends with God's commandment that the Israelites should wear fringes (tzitzit) on the corners of their garments, "to recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them."
Summary
• Moses sends spies into the Land of Israel and asks them to find out something about the inhabitants there, the kinds of towns they live in, what the soil is like, and what kinds of fruit grow there. (13:1–24)
• The spies return with frightening news about the nature of the land and its inhabitants. They report that the people of the land are very powerful and that the cities are large and fortified. One spy, Caleb, sees things a little differently than the others. While the situation in the land is intimidating, he says, the Israelites will surely be able to conquer it. (13:25–33)
• The people are demoralized by the spies' reports, and they become afraid of what God has in store for them. They turn against Moses and say that they want to go back to Egypt. At that moment, God determines that the wilderness generation should die off before the people could enter the land. Moses argues with God over this death sentence, appealing to God's conscience and ego, saying that if God were to do this the peoples of the world would say that God was incapable of bringing the People of Israel into the land. (14:1–25)
• God instructs the Israelites to make fringes on the corners of their garments (tzitzit). To this day, Jews wear tzitzit on the corners of the tallit and often on the corners of their undergarments as well. (15:37–41)
The Big Ideas
• God needs us to discover things on our own. This is why the portion begins with the words shelah lekha — literally, send the men to spy on the land "for your own sake." It would not have been enough for God to simply describe the Promised Land to Moses. God needed Moses and the people to directly experience the land so that they could understand the challenges that lay ahead. Faith in God alone would not have been sufficient. Since God is not going to tell you what to do in life, you will often need to rely on your own experience in order to make mature decisions.
• The majority opinion is not always right. The majority of the spies believed that it was impossible to conquer the Land of Israel; a tiny minority (Joshua and Caleb) believed quite the opposite. They advocated for their opinion, and they won; the people would push on into the wilderness and conquer the land. Many of the great things in world history have not happened because the majority was in favor of them; it often takes a creative minority of people to convince others to expand their vision.
• Arguing with God is an essential Jewish way of relating to God, even if it is not always successful. The tradition of arguing with God goes all the way back to Abraham, who argued with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18). There is also the incident of the Golden Calf (Exod. 32:9.), when Moses appeals to God's sense of justice: it would be cruel for God to kill the people off in the wilderness. And now here Moses appeals to God's ego: if God didn't bring the people into the land, others would say that God was weak. Moses not only speaks to God; he tries to appeal to God and calls God to account.
• All Jews can be holy. In the past, God had commanded certain ritual garments for only the priests to wear. But now it is different. By commanding the Israelite people to wear fringes (tzitzit) on their garments, God is helping to bring about the day when Israel will truly be a "nation of priests."
Divrei Torah
Who Are You Calling a Grasshopper?
It must have been very frightening: Here you have a group of newly freed slaves, people who have not been accustomed to traveling away from their homes in Egypt, thrust into the wilderness and then about to enter an alien land, the Land of Israel, with its big, strong people and fortified cities. We can imagine their awe, wonder, and fear — sort of like what happens when you live in the suburbs, or the country, and you go to the big city for the first time. It's overwhelming. You want to turn around and run home.
That's what it's like for the spies who go into the Land of Israel. Everything there is big — the cities, the fruit (it took two men to carry a cluster of grapes, which has become the logo of Israel's Ministry of Tourism), and especially the people. The spies report that the people of the land are giants, descended from the Nephilim, a mythical tribe of giants (see Gen. 6:1). And then, they say something quite telling: "We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them" (13:33).
What's wrong with what they just said? Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, a great Hasidic teacher, taught: "You are certainly permitted to say that you feel like a grasshopper in your own eyes. But what right do you have to imagine how you appear to someone else? To them, you might have appeared as angels."
Whoever we are, however old we are, wherever we are in life: when we are overwhelmed, we tend to think little of ourselves and to imagine that other people think little of us as well. (Girls, often more than boys, imagine themselves to be "grasshoppers." So do kids with physical disabilities, and LGBT kids.) In fact, often that perception is simply wrong. Sometimes it's all a drama that we are playing out in our heads.
Imagine if the Israelites had listened to the spies. They would have overthrown Moses and Aaron, headed back to Egypt, and either have become slaves once again or been killed. The Torah would have been, at most, not quite four books long — if it had even come to exist at all. The Israelites would have been like any number of almost-forgotten ancient peoples.
The spies were wrong to think of themselves as grasshoppers. Their lack of confidence and self-esteem, not to mention their lack of faith, could have had grave consequences for the community. Our self-perception influences our own actions and the way others see us.
Ironically, just a little later in Numbers, King Balak of Moab is terrified of the Israelites! (22:2). So, who was right — Balak, or the spies? As Dr. Erica Brown teaches: "Why not go with the more encouraging perception? Maybe when others believe that we are strong and beautiful and talented, we will train ourselves to hear them. And maybe, just maybe, when someone else feels small and disempowered, we can help them find their inner giant."
Tear Down That Wall!
Things are not always the way they seem. That's one of the great themes of this Torah portion. People think they are grasshoppers — puny and weak — and, in fact, the opposite might be the case. A majority opinion — "we can't conquer the land, so let's go back to Egypt!" — is overturned. And a people who longed for freedom blows it and is condemned to die in the wilderness without being allowed to enter the Land of Israel.
Consider how the spies must interpret the data that they bring back from their mission into the land. Moses asks them: "Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? ... Are the towns they live in open or fortified?" (13:18–19). The assumption must have been: if the towns are fortified, then the people must be strong.
Rashi, the great medieval commentator, says that it was quite the opposite. He imagines Moses saying to the spies: "If the people live in unwalled towns, they are strong enough to rely on their own might, but if they live in fortified cities, they are weak."
Rashi's comment is interesting and provocative. Do you think it is true that countries with the largest armies, or the largest percentage of people serving in the army, are the least secure? We do have to admit that some countries, like Israel, have good reason to be heavily armed, having fought five major wars and several smaller ones in less than seventy years of existence.
Consider, too, those huge apartment buildings or condo developments that have multiple layers of security. Are they secure — at least, in the minds of the people who live there? Contrast that to people who live in rural areas, where there is a much lower crime rate. In those areas, you might find that people never lock their doors. Sometimes, they've even lost the keys to their homes!
You probably know people who are always putting up "walls." They are defensive and have a snappy comeback or put-down of other people. They are bullies who are often picking fights with others. Often it turns out that those people really aren't that secure; they have all sorts of fears.
Do we need to build all the walls in our lives? If the wall is to hide our psychological insecurity or pessimism, maybe the answer is no. The economic historian David Landes writes: "In this world, the optimists have it — not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success."
President Ronald Reagan famously said to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, "Tear down that wall!" He was speaking of the physical Berlin Wall, but likewise of the psychological iron curtain of insecurity and mistrust between East and West. We too need to take down walls, move forward, and be optimistic!
Connections
• When have you felt discouraged and small? What helped you overcome those feelings?
• Have you ever been afraid of something that might happen in the future? What have you been afraid of? What helped you conquer your fears?
• Have you helped someone overcome his or her fears of failure? How did you do it? Were you successful?
• What do you think is the best way to get over a fear of failure?
• Who are some people from world history who have been afraid of failure? What were the results? What can we learn from their stories?
• When have you chosen not to go along with the majority, and went along with the minority instead? Who are some figures in world history who have done that?
CHAPTER 2The Haftarah
Shelah Lekha: Joshua 2:1–24
Everyone loves a good spy story, and this week's Torah portion gives us one of the best — the story of the spies who scout out the Land of Israel in order to see what kind of land it is. They bring back devastating reports to Moses, and those reports have devastating consequences.
Years later, as this week's haftarah tell us, it's time to actually conquer the land, and Joshua sends spies to Jericho to prepare the conquest. But this story ends on a much happier note than the earlier one. The spies in the Torah story show no faith at all; they don't believe that the land can be conquered. They lose faith in themselves, and in God. But in the haftarah, Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, shows great faith in herself, and even in God. She hides the spies, then helps them escape, and she is spared by Joshua when the conquest occurs.
It just goes to show: sometimes you can't predict who is going to win in the faith department. Let's hear it for Rahab!
The Greatest Prostitute in the Bible
There are many prostitutes in the Hebrew Bible. But the nicest one in the entire Bible has to be Rahab, the prostitute in this haftarah. And why? Her efforts helped guarantee the success of the Israelite conquest of the Land of Israel. By the way, she was supposed to have been gorgeous. According to the Talmud: "There have been four women of surpassing beauty in the world: Sarah, Rahab, Abigail [one of King David's wives], and Esther." (Of course, how they knew that is anyone's guess!)
Rahab lives in Jericho, and she shelters a group of Israelite spies who have secretly entered the land in order to make plans to invade and conquer it. The spies hide on her roof, and, when the king of Jericho comes to find them, Rahab warns them and they are able to escape by climbing down a rope that she hangs out the window. The men are safe to continue their mission. In the words of Bible scholar Tikvah Frymer-Kensky: "Rahab is proactive, smart, tricky and unafraid to disobey and deceive the king."
Rahab knows that when the People of Israel conquer the land, there is going to be widespread destruction. She brings her entire family into her home, and she ties a cord of crimson thread in the window, so that their lives will be spared.
Where have we heard this story before? It happened during the Exodus from Egypt. Remember how the Israelites took a little bit of blood and sprinkled it on their doorposts, in order to protect themselves from the final plague that would kill the firstborn children? Back then, the red blood would ward off the Angel of Death; here, the cord of crimson thread would ward off the human forces of death.
The Rahab story should remind us of something else. We have seen her kind of trickery before, in the story of Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives who saved Israelite infants in Egypt (Exodus 1:17). They were also deceptive, but with a sacred purpose. Yes, Rahab acted deceptively, but with the purpose of saving life.
Rahab lived in Jericho, which is right on the border of the Land of Israel. And she lived in a house right next to the wall of Jericho, which means that she lived at the edge of Jericho.
Rahab lived "on the edge"— in more ways than one. She rose above her social class, and she showed great courage.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Shelah Lekha (Numbers 13:1–15:41) Haftarah (Joshua 2:1–24): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary"
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Copyright © 2018 Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
General Introduction Shelah-Lekha: Torah Commentary Shelah-Lekha: Haftarah Commentary