Shlach Lecha - Life Behind Walls

Life Behind Walls Thursday, June 7th, 2007

http://www.radicaltorah.org/?cat=39 In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shelach Lecha, Moses sends scouts into Canaan, charging them to observe the land and its inhabitants and report back to the Israelites. Ten of the scouts bring back a discouraging report: “(The) people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large…We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we…We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Numbers 13:28-33) While the Torah’s portrayal of the conquest of Canaan teaches us nothing about appropriate attitudes toward indigenous peoples (as I regularly comment to aghast Torah Study students), this particular episode does offer profound psychological insights on collective fear and the ways it can impact upon our view of the world. Many commentators point out, for instance, that the spies’ negative assessment of the land and its inhabitants is based upon decidedly skewed and mistaken assumptions about what they actually saw in Canaan. According to Rashi: “How were they (the scouts) to know (the Canaanites) strength? (By looking at their cities) - were they walled or fortified? If they live in unwalled cities, they are strong and trust in their own strength. If, however, they live in fortified cities, they are fearful and insecure.” (Rashi on Numbers 13:28) A powerful rejoinder for a post 9/11 world: it is only a weak and fearful people that builds fortifications between itself and the outside world; a truly strong people doesn’t need to hide behind walls.