A Giant Leap of Faith

Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh

Parashat Sh’lach

As many of you know by now,

my parents are immigrants.

They moved from Iran to the United States

in the late 70s,

and one of my favorite stories,

about some of their first thoughts

and memories when they arrived to the states,

is something my mom shared with me once.

She said: When I first got off the plane,

and walked into the airport,

I was shocked, by how tall people were.

I kept looking around in awe of it.

It made me laugh--that that’s her first memory—

whoa, people in this country are tall.

And it makes sense, coming from Iran,

you know most Asian countries—

folks, are not so tall.

So I get it.

And then she joked, after she told this story.

“Good thing we didn’t immigrate to the Netherlands!”

(Cus, well, ya know, Dutch people are the tallest!)

And I bring this story up,

not only because I find my mom’s remarks interesting—

but because tall people, giant people, different looking people

than what the Israelites were used to--

are mentioned in this week’s Torah portion

shlach lecha, in the book of Numbers.

Right now, in the biblical narrative, we are still in the wilderness.

We’ve been trekking through the desert for awhile now,

after having left Egypt,

and now we are at the borderline of the promised land, of Israel—

And what were we told to do?

...to send in scouts, ahead of the people, to FIRST-- check out the land.

See who lives there, how do they live--

if there are trees and fruits,

and basically—learn a little about what we are getting ourselves into,

before we enter.

The word the Torah uses for scouts—

to scout the land is  וְיָתֻ֙רוּ֙

from verb תּוּר

--to seek or to explore--

And the word, תּוּר reminded me so much

of the English word: to tour, like a tourist

that I looked it up, and scholars believe

there is an unknown connection

between the Hebrew and original Greek and Old French.

It sounds the same, so cool.

So, the scouts were sent as leaders to tour, like a tourist

to go ahead of the people and scope out the land,

check it out

maybe even bring back some pictures

or rather--give the Israelites-- a picture—

of what they are in for, of what their future,

once they reached the promised land,

would look like.

In total:

12 scouts were sent.

And the result:

·       10 came back with a similar report

·       while 2 of them had a very different report.

The 10 told the people the following:

that “the land indeed flows with milk + honey”

that it’s fertile, there are fruits there

and trees and flowers, where bees give off honey.

So if you’re worried about food—don’t be, it’s a good land.

But the people who live there, that’s a another story.

They are powerful,

Their cities are large and fortified.

We even saw some of our enemy tribes there

not to mention the Anakites—giants.

At that moment, Caleb, one of the 2 scouts who reports differently

stands up and shushes the people—and says,

we can overcome this!

That is, we can enter the land and it’ll be ok.

But the 10 scouts quickly retort,

No we cannot! Those people are stronger than we are!

That country, kills its settlers—literally “devours them”

And what about those huge men of great size!

They were the Nephilim!

And the Anakites!

We looked like grasshoppers, next to them!!

and that’s probably-- how we must’ve looked to them, too!

And I suppose, you must be wondering too,

who the Anakites

and the Nehphilim are— that I am referring to.

And it’s a great question.

The rabbis are also trying to figure it out.

Because the Nephilim are mentioned in the book of Genesis

and apparently also, in the story of David and Goliath,

Goliath is considered one of them as well.

The Anakites, from the Hebrew word anak  ענק

which means: a giant or huge.

And apparently, according to Rashi,

these Anakites were so tall,

they could reach the sun!

And the Nephilim,

comes from the word to mean amazing—according to the Bekhor Shor,

because everyone who sees them is amazed by them.

And it also comes from the word nophel,

which in Hebrew means: to fall down.

The story goes that the Nephilim

are a product of divine beings

+ and the daughters of humanity.

They inherited--such a great size-- from their superhuman fathers

and that their human mothers

were unable to carry them-- for the full nine months.

And so, they were “dropped” -- at 7 months,

and were called “The dropped ones”-- Nephilim.

The bottom line is that these were unusual people,

people that the Israelites had never seen

or had seen before and were terrified of.

Something about them was unusual, new,

and different from them.

And so what happens at this point in the story?

It says:

that the entire community

broke out into loud cries—

and all of the people wept that night

and they rallied against Moses and Aaron and said:

“If only we had died in the land of Egypt

or even in this wilderness!

Why would Adonai-- want us to enter the land

only to die by the sword of these scary people,

who live there

who could attack us,

and take away our wives and children.

We’d be better off-- to go back to Egypt!

And they said to one another,

“Let us head back for Egypt.”

Ah—Jews, God bless them—I say.

It’s a crazy thing,

to know that we were once slaves in Egypt

and living unimaginably horrible lives.

I mean, we have a holiday, about this, called Passover

that comes along to remind us, of the miracles

that God brought about, via Moses,

to free us!

We thank God (!) that we are a free people,

 daily--in our prayers.

We have ritual objects,

charoset for mortar + salt water for tears that we shed

and we tell the story of our slavery ---

over and over again

to our children—

because, slavery is terrible.

Our tradition calls it the worst!

All we wanted,

was to be free

so that we could to serve Adonai,

that deeper voice that we hear inside our souls

that guides us through life, through wildneress,

That voice of God

that helps us make our OWN decisions in life.

That helps us decide for ourselves:

·       WHO we want to be in this world

·       How we want to eat, to sleep, to work, to think.

And here we are, 5 steps away from entering the land

that Adonai promised us—

and we are so terrified of what the 10 scouts reported

that we are willing to go back to jail.

Wait—no, it’s not jail.

It’s slavery. The worst.

And God,

God is so upset with us,

so hurt

so unbelievably shocked

that we forgot our level of faith

in Him/Her/Them

that God’s response, is guess what—

you won’t be going in after all.

In fact, I am going to wait, for this entire generation of faithless people

to die out, through a plague!

And then, only then, will I allow your children, to enter the land--

But you people—you are unworthy.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein isn’t surprised at all

about the Israelites response to want to go back

or God’s punishment.

He says simply--

They had a lack of faith, these 10 scouts.

(not to mention the rest of the Israelites who followed suit)

They didn’t achieve their faith by working on it.

Rather, they attained it by witnessing

the wondrous miracles

that Hashem had performed for them

(w the plagues in Egypt)

So that their level of emunah, of faith,

was limited

to what they actually BEHELD,

and nothing more.

In other words,

·       they knew that God was stronger than Pharaoh.

·       But they didn’t think

that God also had power over these giants,

these Nephilim + Anakites

+ and the other tribal enemies—that the scouts reported of…

They didn’t have faith,

that there is more to life,

than the possibilities we see --with our human eyes.

And that is the lesson of today.

We are too, in the wilderness, right now.

I believe, life generally is a journey

through the wilderness,

but especially now, 

with the future so unknown,

in this pandemic,

and with everything in our news today.

The future is hard to see—to scout

will we ever dine at restaurants again?

Go to Giants games? Concerts? Burning Man?

But see, everything that is difficult

for us to imagine

moving forward,

part of the reason-- that everything is so dark in our future,

is because we are stuck

with our knowledge of the past--of Egypt. 

But now here in the wilderness,

is the time for dreams--

When Joseph was in jail, he dreamt dreams.

Martin Luther King Jr-- oh God,

what beautiful dreams he has for us still--

Dreams, that especially in these recent weeks, 

we’ve come to remember how far we are from achieving

and how much harder we must continue to work--

to attain.

You see, if there is anything that we have learned,

from this week’s parasha, 

about what life will be like

once we enter our promised land--

is that it’s going to be NOTHING like the Garden of Eden.

Our future is not paradise + perfection.

There will be problems.

And not just any problems,

but problems we’ve never seen before.

Problems, pandemics, GIANT issues—

we didn’t know could exist or were possible.

And we are being asked, by God,

to have a little faith.

And part of what it means-- to have faith

is to accept the fact that we are human-- 

and as humans, we can’t always know what tomorrow will bring. 

Faith means trusting and believing

and seeing --that just as quickly as a bad pandemic,

can arise out of nowhere,

so too there can also arise, a miracle.

But if we continue to scout,

to look ahead towards our future,

through the eyes of our past, 

we will miss

the new possibilities

that we could find there…

Because the thing is:

that fear is real.

And fear of the unknown

and fear of what is unfamiliar

has the capacity to distort-- reality.

But what’s familiar-- is not always what’s right.

You know, in this very parasha

we find the prayer we read on the High Holy Days,

Adonai El Rachum v’chanun

God of mercy and compassion

because when God wants to wipe out

the entire generation of the Israelites,

for their fear + lack of faith 

in God’s future plans for us…

Moses pleads, Oh God of mercy and compassion--don’t!

Because it doesn’t have to be this way.

An entire generation of people, doesn’t need to die out,

for change to happen.

For things to be different.

In fact, also related to the High Holy Days 

another meaning I found for the Hebrew word for SCOUTS:  תּוּר 

is to turn -- to make a turn about the country, for example.

AND, perhaps-- to turn from our old ways, teshuvah, -shuv.

You see, no one person,

---or an entire generation of people, for that matter--

should have to die, 

for change to take place.

It is our fear

of the unfamiliar territory in which we find ourselves,

just because it looks different than what we are used to—

it is this old + ancient mentality,

that must die, within us.

In that way, it is akin to the very act of tashlich, 

we throw out the pieces of bread,

the pieces of us that no longer serve us,

so that we can walk into the new year,

the new land,

fearlessly

and with fresh eyes.

Sometimes,

you need to let go of who you are,

in order to discover the person

you have the potential to become.

And sometimes, the hardest thing of all--

is to have to faith in the unfamiliar,

and allow your eyes to be opened

to new things, to GIANT things,

that you never even could dream-- was possible.