Sh'lah L'kha: That little voice in the back of your head.

Picture this: you’re out drinking with your friends, just having a great time. You’re not wasted yet - just happy, enjoying a nice buzz while finishing off a drink. The server comes around to see if everybody wants another round and now you have a decision to make. Of course everybody’s got work the next day, but having such a good time, you all decide not to call it a night just yet. Then you hear that faintest of voices in the back of your head:

“You know exactly what is going to happen if you have that next drink - your ass is gonna pull itself into work with a crazy hangover, cause this won’t be the last one.”

Of course you ignore it, because you’re out with your boys, having a grand old time. Inevitably, too many beers later, you find yourself waking up to a jarring alarm, nursing a splitting headache, stomach churning, body aching, and you think to yourself, “I swear, I’m NEVER going to do that again, and this time I really mean it.”

It’s in human nature to forget mistakes of the past and fall into the same patterns and habits time and time again. The Jewish people do just this again in Parsha Sh'lah L'kha. Right as the Jews reach the Promised Land, God tells Moses to appoint one scout from each tribe to go on ahead and get the lowdown on how things are looking in the new country. Part of what happens is that Moses gives one of them a new name of Joshua, appointing him a kind of lieutenant because he knows Joshua will eventually be the one to take care of business. Moses wants the scouts to find out EVERYTHING about the new land: how hard it looks to get in there, what kind of stuff grows there, how the farming looks etc .

The scouts find some tough times lie ahead - or at least what they perceive to be tough times. They find heavily fortified cities that look (to some of them) to be as impenetrable as CD wrappers. Sometimes you just don’t buy the CD because opening it is going to be such a damn pain - that’s how these dudes felt. One of the other things they do when they’re out scouting is to bring back some fruits to show everyone what grows there, and they come back with a cluster of grapes, figs, and pomegranates. Nowadays in America, it’d probably be easier to come back with some grape fruit snacks, Fig Newtons, and Pom Juice, but if you rolled up in Eretz Yisrael, you could probably grab all those goodies just as easily today.

Then the scouts come back to Moses, Aaron, and all the other Jews to report on what they saw. Unfortunately, all but two of the scouts start talking some major smack about what is going on in Canaan. They tell everyone that the land is awesome, truly flowing with milk and honey, filling everyone with that feeling kind of like when you see the Vegas skyline on the horizon. But then they smack all those dreams down, telling everyone that the land is inhabited by actual giants. Imagine someone telling you that you’re supposed to be moving into a place where giants live; it might be just a little bit intimidating. One of the scouts tells Moses that it ain’t no thang and that they’ll be able to overcome any obstacle, because they’ve got God in their back court, but most of the scouts just start bitching about how awful and impossible it would be to go in there.

After hearing this, the people start bitching too, even asking, “Why couldn’t God have just let us DIE in the desert instead of make our sorry asses come all this way to get killed by frickin' giants” Remember that killer hangover from before? Ever had a hangover so bad you totally wished God would just kill you then? That’s how the Jews were feeling at the time. What the Jews didn’t realize though was that they were slipping back into that old habit of not having faith in God. They truly thought that God couldn’t provide for them the land he promised, even though he showed them miracle after miracle. They doubted the upcoming miracle that would give them the Promised Land and in doing so doomed themselves to having to wait a generation before they could go in. Having just passed the 40^th anniversary of the Six-Day War, it’s interesting to me that even in biblical times the Jews were going to have to overcome incredible military odds to have a home in Israel; these days it doesn’t seem like much has changed.

All the sorrow could have been avoided though if they’d just shown a little faith and believed that God was gonna take care of business. If they’d heard the little voice in the back of their heads that said, “Don’t slip back into that same old pattern,” they wouldn't have had to wait for it. Just like if you listen to that little voice while you’re drinking, you won’t have to wait for the hangover to pass.

-- Written by "The Curly Jew"*

*Posted with permission by Dr. Dreidel