The Garden Was There. Not Eden – Parashat Shelach
Ran Oron
The Jewish people have been in the desert for almost two years. Opposite them is the promised land. Waiting. Twelve scouts set out on Moses’ mission to explore the land beyond the Jordan River. The nation eagerly awaits their return.
Forty days passed. The scouts return. They stand in front of the people, ten of them describing horrors that await the Jews . They hold very little faith and most have many doubts and fears. Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh return full of confidence and faith in the righteousness of the way. For the people it is a moment of great disappointment. A festive day becomes one of fear.
Where do we go from here?
Moses thinks to himself, God said to me “You shall send people.” Rashi says He meant “I do not command you. If you wish to, send.” This was meant to be a mission of messengers, not a spying mission. How did it become a story about spies even though the word spy does not appear at all in the parasha?
Where did we go wrong?
To spy, Rashi says, is related to gossiping: “Don’t go gossiping. I say because all messengers who spread calumnies and tellers of slander go to their neighbor’s houses to spy what they see or what they hear is bad… That’s why I say that the language of a gossip is the language of spying, the hebrew letter Kaf of merachel (he who gossips in Hebrew) is interchangeable with the letter Gimel of meragel (he who spies in Hebrew), because all the letters come from one place and alternate with each other.”
Shaliach, a messenger, in the Hebrew language is from the same root as the word malach, an angel. Both words are derived from the ancient root Lamed. Aleph. Kaf. which means ‘to message’. Melacha (craft) is the only other word in Hebrew that this ancient root appears in. A messenger, therefore, is a person who does his work faithfully. Truthful to the truth and to his heart.
The spies spoke first, “Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying the land that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settellers.” They gossiped about the land. They sinned. Joshua and Caleb tell the opposite story. Faithful to his mission, Caleb addresses the anxious people directly, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” He is optimistic. Confident. Sure.
His appeal to the nation does not help. The people are full of doubts, scared. Complaining and shouting. Their doubts in God and lack of faith in His path make the day a day of mourning for generations to come. It was the first Tisha B’av. “And they wept that night – it was Tisha B’av,” says Rabbi Yochanan. God is angry – as we see in the Taanit, “You wept tears of gratuitousness, and I shall set you weeping for generations.”
This is the turning point of the journey. The punishment is severe. The short journey from Egypt to Canaan turned overnight into forty tedious years of wandering in the desert. The right to enter the “promised land” is lost to the generation that came out of Egypt. Only the two faithful messengers will be allowed to enter the land as gratitude for their faith. Their conduct is a hint that the moment of destruction can become the moment of rebuilding, “Out of those longings and yearnings, the day of Tisha B’Av will become a day of joy and happiness for us in the future.” Rabbi Yochanan comforts again. On that day, a new generation was born, one that will enter through the gates of the “promised land.” Joshua will lead them, Caleb will settle in Hebron.
The road to the “promised land” is long, time is lost. Generation after generation. The journey may never end. Yet the land is always there, waiting. Conquest, settlement, exile and more exile. Holocaust and revival. The Hebrew language is reborn, it is the foundation of the newly born state.
It feels like a state of emergency here and now. External enemies, religious extremism, corruption, deep division. “The garden was there. Not Eden” wrote the poet Aryeh Sivan in his poem “Is it Different in Hebrew” Speak to them Caleb, you are also a messenger. For the last two years we, the people here in the “promised land” have been trying to find our way.
Where do we go from here?
“I ask you to pay attention to the words ‘they needed’ (nizkekou in Hebrew)” says the poet to Caleb and the nation.” The need and longing for the other – if they are at the right temperature, and only if they are at the right temperature – creates a process that slowly distills (mezakek in Hebrew) the slag, and at the end creates, like in the flask of a desperate alchemist, a soft layer, a layer of tenderness.“
For a heartbroken but still breathing nation, a layer of tenderness is an existential foundation. Distillation is the choice between rejecting the words of a spy or devoting to the faith of a messenger. Then and now Joshua and Caleb’s confident and almost defiant optimism is here to guide us. Through creative and faithful melacha (craft) we will rebuild the land again to reach its promise and Eden will bloom in our garden.
Written by Ran Oron is an Israeli architect who has lived in NY for over 20 years.
