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