Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto’s talks are known throughout the Jewish world. They combine chassidic teachings and philosophy, along with tips for a better life. We have collected pearls from his teachings that are relevant to our daily lives. This week he comments on the Torah section of Shelach.
"Send for yourselves men... and they will spy out the land of Canaan which I am giving to the Israelites."
The spies were the princes of the Israelites. They were great Torah scholars, deeply God-fearing and possessing a sterling character. But when they returned from spying out the land, they said, "We cannot go up against the people because they are stronger than Him." They declared openly that the inhabitants of the land were stronger than God.
How could such great people talk like this? They were privileged to stand at Mount Sinai and be present at the Giving of the Torah. They heard God, and saw the Ten Plagues and the Splitting of the Reed Sea. They saw the greatest miracle in history when the sea was sundered into twelve parts! They saw the manna, Miriam's well and the clouds of glory! How could the spies go ahead and say that the nations in the land - mere flesh and blood - are stronger than God?
We can perhaps explain this according to a principle that each one of us should keep uppermost in our mind and which should accompany us in every matter we do. The Gemara in Tractate Brachot (34b) says: He who prays and makes a mistake - it is an ominous sign for him. If he is a prayer leader, it is an ominous sign for those who appointed him because a man's emissary is like him. A person who prayed and made a mistake in his prayer - it’s an ominous sign, and if he is a prayer leader who made a mistake, the whole congregation together with the prayer leader should be concerned too. He is the emissary of the whole community and if he failed in his mission and made a mistake, this is a sign that his appointment was not executed properly or with a pure heart, and there is a flaw or something not good here.
We see that being an emissary is not a simple thing and the power of those who appoint him devolves upon the emissary. If those appointing him had good and pure intentions, then the emissary also has the power to do important and good things. But if those appointing him do not have good intentions and purity of soul and thought, then there will be flaws and undesirable things occurring in the mission and the emissary’s actions.
This is what happened with the spies. God sent them to spy on the Land of Israel and the Israelites commanded the spies to spy on the land of Israel. There was a difference between God’s mission and Moses’s mission and the Israelites’ mission. God's mission was a pure and holy mission to calm the hearts of the Israelites by carrying out the normal practice of inspecting the potential battleground before going to war. Moses’s decision was also holy, to do espionage in preparation for a holy and pure mission. But the Israelites’ decision to spy out the Land of Israel had serious flaws.
Since the Israelites appointed the spies to spy out the land, they instilled in the spies a negative power and an evil inclination to go and make numerous mistakes. If the spies had gone on Moses’s or God’s mission, they would have been successful. But since they went on the Israelites’ mission, which contained serious flaws, the mission was tainted and became crooked. Despite all the spies’ holiness and purity, they failed and brought back an evil report of the land, and in the process, utterly corrupted themselves to the nethermost levels. In contrast, Yehoshua ben Nun who went to fulfill Moses’s mission returned in perfect condition, and Caleb ben Yefuna who went on God’s mission, returned likewise.
There is here an important foundation for life. A person in his private life should feel he is God’s emissary to rectify the world in God’s kingship. Whatever he does, he should say that he is God’s emissary, and then he will have success and God’s supporting hand. Everything he turns to, he will have the skills and will succeed in accomplishing what he set out to do. But a person who is focused on carrying out his own mission in This World because of his personal interests or other motivations, his mission is not perfect and it will not succeed. Whatever a person does in his life, he should keep in mind that he is doing it to honor God, that he is a God’s holy and pure emissary, and then he will have success and blessing in everything he does.
It is told about one of the great rabbis, a distinguished head of a yeshiva, that he promised one of his students that he would come to his son's wedding. The time of the wedding came, but the head of the yeshiva couldn’t come. He called one of the rabbis in his yeshiva and told him to go to the wedding in his place. The rabbi went instead of the head of the yeshiva to the wedding and stayed the entire time until it was over. The students were surprised and asked him, "Why did the rabbi stay so late?" He replied: "I am an emissary of a great rabbi and since a person’s emissary is like him, I was privileged to be like my great rabbi for a few hours. I want to spend more time here in order to feel more like our great rabbi! I feel a great flow of spirituality because a person’s emissary is like him."
If we would live in the world with the feeling and understanding that we are God's emissaries - we would have God’s support and success in everything we do. If our lives are based on our personal lusts or desires and thoughts, if we live only for the day and for the moment, we will not have God’s power backing us. The spies failed because of their wrong intentions. Instead of seeing themselves as God’s emissaries, they saw themselves as the emissaries of the Israelites.
May we merit to perfectly fulfill our mission in the world.
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel