פרשת שלח
This week’s Parsha tells the tragic tail of the spies who entered into the land of Israel with the intent to return with a negative report about the land. As a result of this ungrateful conduct which the Jewish people displayed, they were sentenced to wandering in the desert for forty years until they could have another chance to enter the land with Joshua. I believe it needs to be understood how the Jews, who were on such a high level after receiving the Torah, could have performed such a heinous crime of not believing in God that the land was a good one and that they would be successful in their conquest to enter it.
The Meshech Chochma offers a very interesting explanation. He begins by asserting that the Jewish people had very strong reason to believe that they would not be victorious in their military efforts to take over the land. We know that Eldad and Medad correctly prophesized that Moshe was going to die in the desert and Joshua would eventually lead them into the Land. So they thought to themselves, “How can we enter into the land filled with these massive titans without the merit of Moshe Rabenu. Our merit is certainly not enough”. Kalev tried to convince them that this was not so and that each and every Jew had enough merits to enter the land without Moshe and that indeed, Moshe himself only derived his incredibly meritorious status by virtue of the fact that he was the leader of the Jewish people and his powers were nothing more than the collective strength of the Jews’ merits. But they did not listen to Kalev, insisting that they could never possess the merit it would take to enter into the land.
At first glance, the spies’ claim seems to come from a place of extreme humility! The spies even viewed themselves as mere grasshoppers in the eyes of the nations. We know that humility is the primary trait one needs in order to be successful in serving God. In the language of the Ramban, humility is better then any other trait. Moshe Rabenu himself was known as the most humble of all men. Why then were the spies and the Jews punished so severely?
The answer is clear. Humility does not mean an inaccurate assessment of one’s talents and gifts. For one to not recognize the blessing that Hashem has bestowed upon him is not humility, it is sheer stupidity. In fact, not recognizing one’s own positive traits, or worse denying that they exist can lead one to transgress very grave sins, because it belittles his self-worth and makes him feel like for someone as small as him, it is okay to sin because God doesn’t expect any more from him. This type of attitude is what the Jews were displaying when they sinned with the spies. They were not being humble, they were denying the incredible status that each and every Jew received at Har Sinai with the giving of the Torah.
The Seforno expounds on this point and takes it one level further. The Seforno quotes the verse in which the Jews say, “Hashem hates us and that is why he brought us out of Egypt to obliterate us in the desert”. He explains that the Jews knew that there were those amongst them who had worshipped idols back in Egypt. The Seforno explains that the Jews believed that they had transgressed such serious crimes, that there was no way Hashem would let them go into the land of Israel. They felt so low and so ashamed of their sins that they couldn’t fathom that Hashem would actually give them a land of their own. So they figured that Hashem must have brought them out of the land of Egypt so that he could punish them for their heinous crimes against Him.
However they were mistaken on one fundamental point. For though it is true that a Jew who has sinned must be extremely humble in all of his ways, and extremely ashamed of his wayward actions as the Rambam says explicitly in Chapter 2 of the laws of Teshuva, they neglected to contemplate the other Rambam in Chapter seven in which the Rambam explains in great detail how if a person does Teshuva properly, Hashem’s mercy is great and He will accept him back as if the person never sinned. Hashem’s love for us is so powerful, that if we repent sincerely, He will act as if nothing happened and will treat us as if we never did anything wrong.
There is also a very uplifting message in all that we have said. Although humility is the primary trait which one needs to serve God, this humility should not lead a person to believe that he is unworthy of any grace and cause him depression and injure his self-confidence, rather it should have the exact opposite effect. When a person truly believes that all of his strengths come from Hashem, he is no longer bound by his own personal limitations, but rather can begin to reach for incredible heights because he has a limitless power behind him which is not his own, but instead is coming directly from God! On the other hand, if a person may have had setbacks, although he should certainly feel remorse about them, he should feel confident that he has the ability to return to Hashem and that God is waiting for him with open arms when he does.
It comes out a very interesting thing. A person can be very humble, yet strive for very lofty heights and feel confident that he will reach them with the grace of God, knowing with certainty that Hashem is the only source of his success. Moshe Rabenu was the most humble of all men, yet he had a great self-confidence. When it came time to approach Pharaoh, and Moshe took all seventy of the elders with him, on his way to Pharaoh’s palace, they all slipped away one by one fearing for their lives. Yet only Moshe remained at the entrance to the palace, feeling calm and confident that it was only God who could aid him on his mission. Avraham Avinu, who claimed about himself, “I am ashes and dust”, was able to defy the entire world’s beliefs and stand up for what he believed in, even though he was threatened with certain death for those beliefs. King David, who claimed, “I am not a man, but rather a worm”, was also the only one who stood up to fight Goliath, showing absolutely no fear and demonstrating to the entire world that it was only God who allows us to succeed in any endeavor. Later in his life, David lost his wife and his children at the hand of Amalek, yet didn’t fall into the throws of depression and anguish, but rather continued on bravely, feeling confident that God was surely just. From all these examples, we see clearly that humility does not mean denying one’s talents, but rather recognizing their source and paying full tribute to that source by not fostering any feeling of self-aggrandizement.
May Hashem help us all to feel true humility and use all of our strengths to serve Him!