In that week’s parsha, Shlakh-Lekha, we read about the spies sent to investigate the land of Canaan. They go forth and scout the land, and what they find there distresses them. Enemies abound; the humans are almighty, the cities are large and fortified. Even the grapes they cut down are huge: so large they have to be carried on a frame, by two grown men, as one might carry a deer. They say, “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have seemed to them.”

Hearing that report, the folks quail in fear, and rail (again) at their leaders for having brought them out of Egypt. They threaten to pelt Moses and Aaron with stones. In the midst of that wailing, God too becomes incensed, and contemplates disowning the children of Israel — but Moses argues on the Israelites’ behalf, and instead of striking them down, God decrees that none of that generation will live to see the land which they have been promised. None, that is, save Joshua and Caleb, who returned from

The Israelites have experienced two great miracles — the parting of the Sea of Reeds, and the revelation of Torah at Sinai — but, faced with the prospect of moving into a strange place where they may have to struggle for survival, they panic. They’re clearly not ready to take the leap of entering the land. And how does God reply to their fear? By threatening to wipe them off the face of the earth! Only when Moses argues, with great kavanah, that God should be merciful does God relent (with that beautiful phrase, selachti kidvarecha, “I pardon, as you have asked,” which we recite each year during Yom Kippur)…but the punishment is still harsh: the entire generation will die before the Israelites can reach the culmination of their wandering. Doesn’t that seem like a little much?

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