Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:09] Thank you all the listeners who sent messages wishing me well on the upcoming year of the Parasha podcast. I truly appreciate it.
[00:00:19] Do you remember what I said in last week's episode? That some weeks I don't get started till it's 10:00 clock at night? Well, I think this week I'm beating that because it's just about 11:30 and I'm sitting down to record an episode, God willing.
[00:00:37] But when you set out to do something good, you know, we don't, you know, we don't really do anything. It's. We do our part. But Hashem gives you the Siyat d' Shema gives you the heavenly help to achieve those goals. So thank God. I think, Hashem, God has given me something to say to share with the Practical Parasha podcast family.
[00:01:02] So here we go. And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, or you'd like to reach out to wish me, mazel tov. You were thinking about it last week, but you just didn't have the time, or maybe you were a little bit, you know, reserved. So I'm giving you the encouragement now. Send me email, say hello. I do my best to return all emails. Sometimes it takes me a little bit more time, but I'm pretty good. It's rabbi shlomo kon kohnmail.com this week's Parsha is Parshas Shalach.
[00:01:39] Now, just to give a quick overview of the parsha. The Parsha primarily deals with the story of the Maraglim, the story of the spies.
[00:01:49] Now, the story of the Miraglim begins with the Jewish people coming to Moshe Rabbeinu, to Moses and requesting of him to send spies into the land of Israel to reconnoiter to do observation on the land. On these nations that are living in the land of Israel. Right now, the Jews are in the wilderness and they know shortly they are going to enter into the land. And so they asked Moshe Rabbein, we want to send in spies. We want to know what's going on.
[00:02:18] But the commentaries explain that the Jewish people, when they asked for spies to send it into the land of Israel, they didn't send it. They didn't want these spies, you know, to really see what's going on. They had their doubts in Hashem. That's what the seed of the asking was from.
[00:02:39] And there's a lot to talk about here, actually, I've talked about in other years, the fact that Moshe asked Hashem and Hashem agreed that they could send in the spies.
[00:02:52] But that's not something we're going to focus on right now.
[00:02:55] So the Jewish people send these 12 spies into the land of Israel to see what's going on.
[00:03:02] 10 of the 12 spies go bad. They go rogue.
[00:03:08] And for different reasons that are given. These men were great people, but they had calculations. They thought it would be better for the Jewish people to stay in the desert and not have to go into the land. And there's a lot of explanation about why they thought that they knew better, but they were wrong. And from that aired belief, it caused them to have a denial in Hashem. And they make this plan up after they go into the land of Israel, and they see different things. They devise a plan to come back and slander the land of Israel. And when they come back, they cause a mass hysteria. They tell the Jewish people what they, uh, observe with their agenda.
[00:03:49] The different things that they have seen in Eretz Yisrael, in the land of Israel, which Hashem put there to help them. They twist it around, to perverse it and to say that, you know, to show it in a bad light.
[00:04:04] And the Jewish people, they accept the slander in the land of Israel. And they cry and they come to Moshe, Rabbeinu, to Moses, and say, why you bring us here?
[00:04:15] And they say, get us a new leader so we can go back to Mitsrayim. We want to go back to Egypt to be slaves again. Can you imagine that? That they caused this sensation, this mayhem that, ah, the Jewish people believe. Then they come to Moshe. We want to go back to be slaves. Give us a new leader to take us back.
[00:04:34] And the Parsha goes into detail about this back and forth, this hysteria that happened.
[00:04:42] Now the Jewish people cry. But unfortunately they cried.
[00:04:47] It was a, uh, crying in vain.
[00:04:49] And the Talmud tells us that because the Jewish people cried on that night, the night that the spies came back into the camp has become m a night of crying for the Jewish people. That was Tisha Baav, the ninth of Av, which many tragedies occurred to the Jewish nation, primarily the Beis Hamikdash. The two temples were destroyed on that day.
[00:05:15] Now Hashem's anger is, you know, is kindled against the Jewish people.
[00:05:23] And now the Jewish people have this threat of extermination upon them. Hashem is angry with the Jewish nation that they're ungrateful. Hashem took them out of the Land of Egypt. And now they're complaining to go back to Mitzrayim. They believe the slander of the spies.
[00:05:36] Moshe Rabbeinu pleads for his nation and saves the Jewish people. But as a punishment for this generation who accepted this, you know, this report from these spies, Hashem decrees that the entire generation will not merit to enter the land of Israel.
[00:05:58] That originally the Jewish people were supposed to go straight from Egypt directly into Eretz Yisrael, into Israel, Israel to conquer the land. But now, due to their sin of the spies, and the commentary also explained that it has to do with the golden calf as well, that that happened beforehand. But now I guess the level was full. They reached their quota of, uh, sins. And Hashem decrees on that generation that that whole generation will die out over the course of 40 years. And only then, after 40 years of being in the desert, when the entire generation, it passes on, will they go into Eretz Yisrael.
[00:06:43] And now just the two other spies. We said there was 10, 12 spies.
[00:06:47] We said there was 12 spies. 10 of them went bad. Yeshua, Joshua and Caleb. Caleb stayed good and actually tried to convince the Jewish people not to accept the decree. And. And they were the ones that went into the land of Israel with that new generation.
[00:07:02] The Parsha continues with the Mitzvah of Nisachim, these libations that Hashem gives to Jewish people that when they come into the land of Israel, they will have this mitzvah to bring these wine libations with their sacrifices.
[00:07:20] Additionally, the Parsha also gives us the Mitzvah of Challah. There's a commandment of the Torah to separate a portion of dough and give it to the Kohen. This is a mitzvah also, which is dependent on the Jewish people entering into the land of Israel.
[00:07:34] Finally, the Parsha finishes off with different atonements for intentional idol worship, unintentional idol worship, and the story of the Shabbos, desecrator in the wilderness in the desert, and the mitzvah of Tzitzis, the commandment to wear Tzitzis, which is the tassels, the special tassels we have on a four cornered garment.
[00:07:59] And that is in this week's Parsha.
[00:08:02] The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the Parsha.
[00:08:08] So as I mentioned, the Parsha, a good portion of it deals with the story of the Maraglim. And this observation that I want to share with with you today is not necessarily such a deep observation, but I think it's Something which is very, very practical and useful for ourselves and something which I feel connected to in my own way and therefore I wanted to share it.
[00:08:32] We see how the Maraglim despise. They devise this plan and they come into the camp and they start talking about the land of Israel in a negative way way.
[00:08:44] And you see as you read through the verses in this storyline of how it's happening in real time, there's a buildup.
[00:08:54] And they were very smart people and very conniving people, these spies that these. They were leaders of the Jewish people.
[00:09:01] And they made a buildup of how they made this picture in the people's minds, in the Jewish people's imagination.
[00:09:13] They said there's giants. They said they're not able to capture it. They said that people are dying there, there's plagues there. And they built it. They built and built and built until they caused mass hysteria.
[00:09:30] There was. People were going crazy, they were crying, they were wailing. And that's how the Parsha, the Parasha, tells us this.
[00:09:38] And as the story progresses, you see that Yeshua uh and Moshe Rabbeinu, the leaders of the Jewish people, they see what's happening and they're trying to calm the people down, to placate them, to tell them this is not true.
[00:09:54] But they're not able to. The mayhem, the here on fire mentality has taken hold.
[00:10:02] They're not able to talk sense into the people and what happens next. The Jewish people accept it.
[00:10:11] They're punished. And they realize too late. Because on the next, you know, shortly after the story, after it happens and Hashem's anger is kindled and Moshe Rabbeinu davens to save them. The Jewish people realize what a tragic mistake they have made.
[00:10:29] And in fact, it seems like there were some people of the nation that tried to enter into the land. There were certain parts of Jewish nation that tried to enter after Hashem uh had decreed for the people that they would have to wander for 40 years in the desert. They said, no, we're going to go in. We can go in. And they were struck down.
[00:10:48] So I think the very. This is an observation which I, you know, I saw in this week's Parsha. And I'm thinking, just maybe my own thought is that the reason why the Maraglim were successful at what they did was because they caused this hysteria.
[00:11:07] They caused people to react without thinking.
[00:11:11] And because they were able to do that, whatever they said was able to go into them. And whatever Moshe Rabbeinu and Yeshua uh Joshua and Moses, the leaders of the Jewish nation, tried to do to calm them down, would not work because everyone was going crazy, everyone was hysterical.
[00:11:32] I think the lesson here is very, very clear.
[00:11:35] We all have stressful situations to deal with. We all have decisions to make, and we all are going to deal with crises that come up in our lives.
[00:11:45] It's m going to happen.
[00:11:47] The question is, how do we deal with those situations?
[00:11:53] Do we run around with our hair on fire and say everything is a crisis?
[00:11:57] Do we, you know, do we. Are we hysterical when anything, you know, doesn't work out the way we want it to work out?
[00:12:06] These are questions we need to ask ourselves and especially for those of us who are in positions of leadership. And leadership doesn't mean you're a CEO of a company. A person who is a father, a mother, um, someone who people look up to that's already a leader. It's not just someone who's running an organization for those people for sure as well. But the point is, how do we, as leaders, as parents, as mentors, react to a situation?
[00:12:34] Do we react by throwing up our hands and running around with our hair on fire?
[00:12:40] Because when we do that, it just causes everyone else to do the same.
[00:12:46] It doesn't cause us to be productive to deal with the situation.
[00:12:50] And I think this is just a powerful thought from the Oroglim. If, when we have a crisis, when we have a moment, don't be hysterical. Now, sometimes it's hard to hold certain people have. That's their natural tendency to react in certain ways.
[00:13:09] But the point is, we need to work in ourselves to make sure that the reactions we give for the situations that arise and the crises and the challenges are proportional.
[00:13:21] It is the correct, you know, sometimes being hysterical is the, uh, right response, right? When a building is really on fire, God forbid, a person needs to maybe be a little hysterical to get people to get out of the building to save their lives. But when there's small things or crises or, uh, events that are not of that, you know, level, we have to react in an appropriate way. Because if we don't, we just lose our mind and we're not able to speak. You know, it affects everyone else around us. It affects the, uh, environment.
[00:13:51] It affects how people are going to deal with the situation. People are not going to deal with it. So that, I feel like, is a very powerful lesson we see from the Miraglim. This is my own thought. Just the observation from the verses in the, in the Torah, from the story, how it plays out.
[00:14:06] Look for Yourself. I wanna. I'm giving some homework to all of you. The Practical Parsha podcast family.
[00:14:14] Open the Chumash to this week's Parsha to Parsha Shalach and look at the back and forth of the verses. Tell me if you agree, uh, with what I see. Do you see the same thing? If you do, you could send me an email. If you don't, you could also send me email.
[00:14:31] But I believe just the reading of the verse, the pshat of the Pasig, fits into this idea. And that's how the maraglim were able to cause the Jewish people to make such a grave mistake, which they realized afterwards what they had done. Because that's what happens with hysteria as well. Once, you know, you calm down, whenever that may be, you realize, what was I doing?
[00:14:55] And sometimes the mistakes, they can't be fixed.
[00:15:00] That's what happened with the Jewish people. The mistake that they made from that hysteria caused them to not go into the land and spend 40 years in the desert.
[00:15:10] The second idea I want to share with you today also has to deal with the story of the spies, but more specifically has to do with Caliph. Now, Kaleb and Yeshua, uh, were the two spies that stayed true to the mission.
[00:15:25] They were tzadikim, they were righteous individuals, and they tried their best to prevent this fiasco from happening. And Yeshua and Caleb dealt with it in different ways.
[00:15:38] Kaleb specifically, he actually, the Torah says he got up to speak against the maraglim when they were giving this slanderous report. And the pasuk reads as vayas koleh v' amemesha vayamir olo nale vir sheno esoki yah nuka Allah kalaib silenced the people towards Moshe and said, we shall surely ascend and conquer it, for we can surely do it.
[00:16:11] We see. It's very interesting. In the beginning of the Pasuk, you know, when this mayhem is going on, Khaleev, he silenced the people.
[00:16:20] How did he get their attention? How did he get, you know, control of the crowd, that everyone started to listen to him? And another question is that, why was it Caliph specifically that spoke up? Why didn't Yeshua, uh, Joshua also speak up to try to quell this rebellion, to quell the report of the spies?
[00:16:43] Why only Caliph?
[00:16:45] There's a very powerful lesson that we see from this.
[00:16:49] Tariza brings down that the reason why it was Calaif number one was because if Yeshua would have spoken up, they would have said to him, oh, you want to go into the land of Israel, because you want to be the leader, you're power hungry. You have a bias.
[00:17:09] So people knew that Yeshua was, uh, the disciple of Moshe Rabbeinu and he would take over. So they'll say to him, ah, they'll just wipe away his claim. They're not going to listen to him. Secondly, for the other question that we mentioned, how did Khaleev get the attention of the people? Rashi explains that Khaleev got the attention of the people because he started off in a way that the people thought he was going to speak against Moshe. He said, is this all that Moshe Rabbeinu has done for us? And then said, you know, then he went into a positive speech.
[00:17:46] But that first moment, he was able to grab their attention by speaking to them in the way that they would understand and listen.
[00:17:55] There's a very powerful lesson we see from these two questions and answers in this whole episode that when it comes to dealing with people, you have to be smart and you have to use strategy when trying to influence another person. Ultimately, everybody makes their own decisions of what they want to do and what they don't want to do. But when we deal with other people, when we communicate, we have to be smart about how we communicate. When people talk to us and give us ideas or complain to us, we need to, uh, you know, we have to hear them out.
[00:18:32] And sometimes even if we disagree with what they say, we have to do it in a smart way, maybe validate them first.
[00:18:41] Um, there's different techniques, listening to people, empathizing with people, and knowing how to talk to people. And that's why Khalil was the one who had that job to speak up to the Jewish people, to try to convince them to not go along with his plan, because he wasn't the right person. He didn't have that bias that Yeshua had that people would say that because he didn't have any position of leadership, you know, lined up for him when he went into the land of Israel. And additionally, he knew how to do it in a way that he got the people's attention to give himself the best shot of him being listened to. So when we talk to other people, when, when we deal with others, we have to remember this as well. Um, and especially when it comes to people with ideas that maybe we don't, we disagree with, we always need to validate people. We have to hear them out. And then we could try to communicate in the best way possible to give over our message that it should be heard. This is a very important idea. We see from this week's Parasha. The last thought I want to share with you for this week's episode is in regard to the mitzvos which Hashem, uh, gives us in this week's parasha of the Nisachim, the libations, these special wine libations which are poured onto the mizbeach, onto the altar for specific sacrifices, and the mitzvah of Challah. There's a mitzvah that when a person takes dough and makes bread, he has to take a portion of that dough and give it to the kohen, and he would. That's how the kohanim were sustained. Now, it's interesting that these two mitzvahs which the Torah gives us in this week's Parasha number one, it's after the story of the miraglim, after the story of the spies and the subsequent punishment of the Jewish people, where they're going to be punished for 40 years in the desert.
[00:20:41] Right after that, we have the mitzvah of the libations and the mitzvah of challah.
[00:20:48] What's the connection?
[00:20:51] Now, the Ramban Nachmanides explains that these two mitzvahs are given specifically after the story of the miraglim where the Jewish people made a fatal mistake that cost them 40 years in the desert. And that whole generation not entering the land of Israel to teach them that you're still going to go into the land, because the mitzvah of Nisachim, of the libations, and the mitzvah of Challah are mitzvahs which are only obligated upon the people. Once the Jewish nation enters into the land of Israel, they were only going to become obligated in these mitzvahs once they entered into the land as a nation, as a people, only then would it apply.
[00:21:35] So what was God telling them?
[00:21:38] He was telling them, don't lose hope. Don't think now that I punished you that you're not going to land to get into the land of Israel. You're going to spend 40 years in the desert, and the whole generation is going to die.
[00:21:53] So they were thinking to themselves, so maybe we're never going to go in now. We lost our opportunity. We're done.
[00:22:02] We're not going to go in. Our children are not going to go in. And that's it. We're finished. Hashem was telling them, even though they deserve the punishment that they got and that they would not enter into the land of Israel, but they would enter, their children would enter. And after 40 years. That's what happened. The Jewish people went into Israel.
[00:22:23] And the lesson for us is, is that even if we have to punish someone or we have to, you know, we have to be strong with someone. We have to deal with the situation. We need a discipline.
[00:22:40] We have to remember to do it in a way where people aren't going to lose hope, to not go overboard, to be proportionate and to always let people know, whether it be our children, whether it be, you know, obviously we're not punishing our friends, but the point is, if we have to be strong with people, sometimes to always do it in a way where there's, you know, it's attached to that love or that softness. People should never feel that you're giving up on them, that there's no hope, that, you know, they're never going to. They're not worth anything.
[00:23:20] We have to be very careful with the way we have, you know, the way that we're strong with people, the way that we discipline with people, because we never want a person to give up. That's the worst thing that a person can do, to give up hope.
[00:23:36] And that's what Hashem was telling the Jewish people in this week's Parsha.
[00:23:41] They made this mistake, horrible mistake.
[00:23:47] But there's still hope.
[00:23:50] Their children will. You know, the promise that Hashem made is still going to happen, wasn't for them at this time, but their children will enter the land and the people will continue.
[00:24:00] That's a very beautiful thought we see from this week's Parasha. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomokon Koh nmail.com have a great day.
