62 | JUNE 15 • 2023
O
ne of the most
powerful addresses
I ever heard was
given by the Lubavitcher
Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem
Mendel Schneerson, on this
week’s parshah:
the story of the
spies. For me,
it was nothing
less than life-
changing.
He asked
the obvious
questions. How
could 10 of the
spies have come back with
a demoralizing, defeatist
report? How could they say,
we cannot win, the people
are stronger than us, their
cities are well fortified,
they are giants and we are
grasshoppers?
They had seen with their
own eyes how God had
sent a series of plagues
that brought Egypt, the
strongest and longest-lived
of all the empires of the
ancient world, to its knees.
They had seen the Egyptian
army with its cutting-edge
military technology, the
horse-drawn chariot, drown
in the Reed Sea while the
Israelites passed through it
on dry land. Egypt was far
stronger than the Canaanites,
Perrizites, Jebusites and
other minor kingdoms that
they would have to confront
in conquering the land. Nor
was this an ancient memory.
It had happened not much
more than a year before.
What is more, they
already knew that, far from
being giants confronting
grasshoppers, the people
of the land were terrified
of the Israelites. They had
said so themselves in the
course of singing the Song at
the Sea: “The peoples have
heard; they tremble; Pangs
have seized the inhabitants
of Philistia. Now are the
chiefs of Edom dismayed;
Trembling seizes the leaders
of Moab; All the inhabitants
of Canaan have melted
away. Terror and dread fall
upon them; Because of the
greatness of your arm, they
are still as a stone.” (Ex.
15:14-16)
The people of the land
were afraid of the Israelites.
Why then were the spies
afraid of them?
What is more, continued
the Rebbe, the spies were not
people plucked at random
from among the population.
The Torah states that they
were “all of them men who
were heads of the people of
Israel.” They were leaders.
They were not people given
lightly to fear.
The questions are
straightforward, but the
answer the Rebbe gave was
utterly unexpected. “The
spies were not afraid of
failure,” he said. “They were
afraid of success.”
What was their situation
now? They were eating
manna from heaven. They
were drinking water from a
miraculous well. They were
surrounded by Clouds of
Glory. They were camped
around the Sanctuary. They
were in continuous contact
with the Shechinah. Never
had a people lived so close
to God.
What would be their
situation if they entered the
land? They would have to
fight battles, maintain an
army, create an economy,
farm the land, worry about
whether there would be
enough rain to produce
a crop, and all the other
thousand distractions that
come from living in the
world. What would happen
to their closeness to God?
They would be preoccupied
with mundane and material
pursuits. Here they could
spend their entire lives
learning Torah, lit by the
radiance of the Divine. There
they would be no more than
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
Two Kinds
of Fear