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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Shlach Lecha
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Shlach Lecha
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Shlach Lecha
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The speaker discusses the parasha (Torah portion) about the spies and their different viewpoints. They also explore the contradictions in the Torah and discuss the role of military intelligence. The speaker believes that the spies did not see giants and emphasizes the importance of reporting facts without interpretation in military intelligence. Shalom Shlomo, Shalom Elisha, and hi everyone, we're at this most amazing, amazing parasha this week, one of the classics, all 54 parashat are incredible and amazing and rich and deep, but some are classics, and this is one of them, it's the one about the spies. It's a juicy parasha Elisha, it's number 37, it's relatively long, 1540 words, it only has three mitzvot, and two of them are pretty straight forward, tzitzit, to make tzitzit, and lafresh chala, to dedicate pieces of the chalab before you bake it, for the Cohen and Levi, symbolically, very straight forward, and the third one, that's the biggie, not to stray after the winds of our hearts, which is in the shema, that's a biggie, that's a really tough one, but of course the big story is the 12 spies, and the difference of opinion between them, and Elisha, I must say, I think we're going to have a lively debate. You have original viewpoints on the parasha, they're creative and innovative, and I almost always agree, but this time I kind of disagree, and I actually find that you disagree with yourself, and I do that all the time, and that's a sign of a fertile mind, but let me explain. So the Hebrew parasha, and we'll discuss that in our podcast, both of these parashat that we're discussing are from your collection, Ayeka, one in Hebrew, one in English. The Hebrew parasha begins in a startling fashion, and I quote, how do we know that somebody is maturing, when he or she begins to defend the 10 spies, the spies who sinned, and you defend them vigorously in your parasha, but I think in your English parasha, which is about words and communication, you tear a strip off them, because, and the Torah says it outright, they slandered, they libeled the country, and I agree with that. So let me make, let's back up, let's set the stage Elisha, set the stage, 12 spies are sent to spy the land of Canaan, and we don't even know who sent them, Elisha, because the Torah says in one place, God sent them, and in another place, Moshe sent them, and these are not ordinary people, these are the leaders of the tribes, these are the top of the top, these are quality people, and they come back, 10 of them come back with a story that's terrifying with giants in this country, and we seem like ants in their eyes, and they seem like giants, and there's no chance, we have no possibility. And of course, Caleb and Joshua take a different position entirely, so what's happening here? Who sent the spies, and what's going on? Right, right, so you're saying that I'm contradicting myself, but you know, even the Torah is contradicting itself, so who am I not to contradict myself? So first of all, we're here, we made it to the land of Israel, a year and about 2-3 months have passed since leaving Egypt, and we're there, and that's after taking a long, long rest at Mount Sinai, we didn't walk that much, it wasn't that bad, and we arrived, and then this really strange thing happens, when scouts are sent out to, or spies, or scouts, in Hebrew it's m'raglim, m'raglim are usually spies, but they could also be scouts, going out to scout the land, and there are a number of reasons why this is really, really odd and strange. First of all, why scout out the land, like, if they come back and say, what a disgusting place, we don't want to go there, so we're going to go somewhere else, I mean, this is Moshe, this is where, this is the promised land, that's where we're going, we're not going anywhere else, so why send spies, or scouts, that's question number one, and question number two, is who gave what instructions, just in our parasha alone, it's already very misleading, very confusing, not misleading, but confusing, because God says to Moshe, send out scouts, send out spies, He doesn't tell him for what purpose, He doesn't give them the instructions, it's Moshe who gives them the instructions, and actually sets them up for failure, not God, and then, a book later, in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moshe is going to stand before the, basically 38 years later, stand before the children of all these spies, and he's going to tell them about that great story, or the terrible story of the scouts and the spies, he's going to say something very interesting, he said, he will say, you asked me to send, you, the people, asked me to send scouts, and I thought it was a good idea, and God agreed to that idea, so, whose idea, indeed, whose idea was it? Actually, the account in Deuteronomy makes a lot more sense, and the people, out of insecurity, said, you know, let's send scouts, they can just tell us what's ahead of us, what's going to happen to us, it makes a lot more sense than in our parasha here, where, why would God want to send the scouts? However, on the other hand, I mean, contradiction, they're all over the place, on the other hand, it makes perfect sense for God to send the scouts. God wants to see if the people, children of Israel, are ready. So, send out scouts, let's listen carefully to their report, let's listen to how the people respond to their report, and this way, I, God, and you, Moses, too, you will know if the people are ready to enter the land. If they're ready, great, let's enter. If not, then what's the rush? You know, we'll wait another 38 years for this generation to die out, and their children will come in. So, the richness, I want to go back to the idea of contradiction. You're absolutely right. I mean, the two, the Roshot in the English book and the Hebrew book, totally contradict themselves. You're right, you're right. And that's the beauty of the Torah. One year we could say X, the following year we could say Y, and people who listen carefully are going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, last year you said something very, very different. And indeed, I was actually accused of that, and I remember that really, really well. I remember last year, it was around the story of the brothers selling Yosef down into Egypt, and one year we studied that they were so incredibly mean and wrong and sinful. The following year, we did a whole new teaching, that they were actually sinless. They didn't even sell Yosef, it was really the Midianites and Ishmaelites, etc. The reason why I feel that the Torah is true, is the truth, is because it can hold contradicting ideas, opposite ideas. We, as human beings, we're unable to. What do you mean? Is it this or is it that? Give us the one answer that we need. The Torah says it's both and. It's always, always both this and that, and that, and that. And there's a great joke that goes with the Rabbi who is sitting with his wife, and two, three, two, three, I can't remember, two I think, two feuding neighbors barge in, and one is saying, he did this to me, and he did that, I think it's really wrong. And the Rabbi said, wow, you're right. And the other one says, no, that's not the case, what happened was that? And the Rabbi said, oh wow, you're right. And the wife asks, how could they both be right? And the Rabbi says, wow, you're right. You two are right, exactly. So, that's the beauty of truth. Truth is both and, and, and, and. Yes, and Elisha, research on creativity. Creative people have a quality of their minds. They're able to sustain contradictions in their mind without feeling uncomfortable. And those contradictions do things that can't be true, often lead to new ideas. But, let me, let me back up a bit. The Torah is amazingly modern in many ways, in the way that it speaks to us about our life, but even about military affairs, Elisha. So, Israel Defense Forces, IDF, we have, we used to have, it used to be a separate division, then it was reorganized. The intelligence in our army has been reorganized about 200 times, and it still is. After every fiafco, it was reorganized. Exactly, each time, and it's about to have the same thing happen. So, it's now called Ma'arakh Yisuf Akravi, the system of battle intelligence. People close to me have been involved in this, and spent years doing this, in the darkness and silence. And there is one key principle, Elisha, of military intelligence, that the 10 spies violated, and that was a sin. In military terms, it's a sin, for sure. And that is, the job of military intelligence is to go out, human intelligence, not signal intelligence. We need human people, we need to go out and talk to people quietly, stealthily, and learn what the heck is going on. And we have brave people who do that, sometimes very far from our borders. And when they do, they come back and they report what they learned. The facts, they report the facts that they learned to the senior officers. And the senior officers process it, and decide what to do, and pass it on to the political leadership. But the one thing you never do in military intelligence is interpret what the meaning is. That's a crucial role, and you mention that in your English dorsha. And then contradict it in the Hebrew dorsha. You note that the word for speech is davar, dibor, and the word for slander or libel is dibah. And the difference is that dibah is when you interpret reality, and put your own spin on it. The modern term is spin. In military intelligence, you absolutely never do that. So as we know, Elisha, on October 7th, we had young ladies surveying video footage of the border, and seeing the Hamas exercising and getting organized with their tenders, with their Toyotas, and weapons, and a bulldozer to break down the fence. And they reported all this early in the morning of October 7th. And the senior officers told them to shut up and be quiet, because it's Shabbat, and we've seen them do this before, and they have. And they put us to sleep, Elisha, by doing this exercise numerous times, only the last time it was for real. So they reported what they saw. Unlike the ten spies, and Elisha, I don't believe they saw giants. I do not believe it. Neither does the Torah. Listen, in Israel, Elisha, there are two million people, and all those two million, okay, half are women, but 600,000 are men, and these are well-trained men, well-organized now. This is a massive force. Come on. And what the ten spy saw was not eight-foot giants at all. We know that because in the book of Joshua, they begin by attacking Jericho and then move on. We did encounter giants, and we had fierce battles, but we prevailed, and we were well-organized, and the land of Canaan was tribes who fought each other, who were rivals. So this was false. It was a false interpretation of what these ten spies saw, and it was misleading, and could have been horrendous, because the people afterwards say, oh, uh-oh, we're going back to Egypt. We're going to be slaves again. That could easily have been a result of wrong military intelligence. Chet? Sin? Absolutely. Put them in jail. Try them by military trial and put them in jail. Interesting, and the following week, like next week, we have Parashat Korach, so we indeed have a major rebellion of, like, let's go back to Egypt. So it's interesting what you're saying, and obviously I can 100% agree with every word you're saying, but because we're both Jewish, I do have to argue, and suggest that you're absolutely right. Intelligence is supposed to collect information and not necessarily to interpret it. That's someone else's division to do the interpretation. Those who have a full, full picture. Let's just remember that the other two spies also gave their interpretation. They all agreed on the facts. They only disagreed on the interpretation, that 10 spies, no we can't, and 2 spies, yes we can. And the fact is that when, after Moshe told the people, you will be now, for what has happened here, you'll be wandering for another 38 years, the people say, what? No way! And they decide on their own to barge into the country and go out and claim it. And they lose miserably, they're defeated. So maybe in a sense the 10 spies were correct. We're not, we are not yet able to do it. But there's another thing. You said are there giants or not. So I'm not so sure if what I'm saying now is an argument over the facts or is it something more substantial. I'm not so sure. Let's see how it pans out. Right now they're coming from the Negev, which means they're coming from the West. And in the West, those who live in that area, in the area of Gaza of today, are the Philistines. The Philistines were giants. They came from, you know, they're like Vikings. So they were indeed giants and they were in fortified cities. And later on when they actually do come in with Joshua, they come in from the East, from Jericho. Jericho were Canaanites and the Canaanites were small people just like we were small people. And indeed the war against the Philistines, they quite easily squash the Canaanites when they come in. But they are not able to conquer the Philistines. The Philistines will take a long, long time, long time, until way into King David's rule that the Philistines are going to be marginalized eventually. David and Goliath. Goliath was indeed a giant. Right, right. So I think the place where we could be kind of like judgmental of the spies if we want to be judgmental, and I'm not so sure we want to be, but let's say if we gave ourselves the freedom to be judgmental, is when they say, you know, we look like chagavim, like grasshoppers, in our eyes and in their eyes too. And that's where we're like, what? In their eyes? Did you actually ask them, excuse me sir, what do we look like in your eyes? And the person said, oh my God, you look like grasshoppers. So clearly this is not a fact. And even though we seem like grasshoppers in our own eyes, that's certainly not a fact. We were not grasshoppers. That's a sign of anxiety, of fear, of hysteria, etc. So their sin was, you're absolutely right, their sin was just bring the clean facts, and let whoever needs to draw the conclusions from the facts do their work. You just bring the facts. You went on a fact-finding trip, bring the facts. On the other hand, I think that's what we all do every single day all the time. We look at our weather app to see what kind of weather is going to be today, and we dress accordingly. We want to know what's ahead of us. So it's all facts and interpretations are intertwined. So this Parsha, as you note, Elisha, raises a fascinating deep issue about the meaning and use of words. And you make the point in your Rashaal quote here, what would our journalism look like if we insisted on precise speech as much as possible? What would our lives look like if we insisted on a conscious distinction between speech, and interpretation? This is so important these days, and it's a theme that comes out of the story of the spies, because so much of what we get in the media is not facts and not journalism, it's not deba, and that is opinion, which is spun, with spinning of everything to add someone's meaning and interpretation to it. I think this is crucial because we're in deep trouble because the truth is getting lost. Somewhere in there, there is truth, and we've lost respect for truth, and some people believe there is no such thing as truth, and indeed there is. I think this is a key point coming out of this Parsha, the role of words. If I might just add, so my whole life has been spent spinning words, Elisha, millions of words, books, articles, blogs, and I'm still doing it, and seem unable to stop. And the question is, I often think about this, is there real meaning to words? Have I really done anything? Compared to people who are engineers and build things and build rockets and planes and cars, and you name it. But there is importance of words in Judaism, as you mentioned. We are people of words. We are people of the book. The book is a collection of words, and the book we gave to the world, the Torah, has changed the world completely and fostered two other great religions. Words are important. Words create reality. God created the world with words. I'm writing a column for a magazine about anti-Semitism and what the world owes the Jews because of these wonderful words we gave to the world. And we created Christianity, it came out of Judaism, out of the Bible. Look what they've done to us. And the same with Muslims. We didn't join them, so they decided we're the enemy. Look what the Muslims are doing to the Jews. A terrible instance of ingratitude. We encountered this, my wife and I, on a short trip to the United States. We visited a shul on Shavuot near Boston, suburban Boston. There was a car parked in the parking lot of the shul, and it looked a bit strange, and it had been there for a while, and the police came. The Jewish people in America, and all over the world now, have a great deal of fear, Elisha. This is so darned unjust, because it continues to happen throughout history, and instead of the world owing us gratitude, the world gives us hate and hatred, and it isn't right. Yes, yes. First of all, you're right. It isn't right, and it's really very upsetting. You make many, many, many points in what you just said now, and one thing I want to illuminate is that there are indeed two kinds of speech here. There are probably more, but I want to just highlight two specific kinds of speech. One of them is the speech that we can call blah, blah, blah, when we talk and interpret, and it's just absolutely meaningless. Now, it may feel meaningful for us at that moment, but it comes from a very superficial place. For example, gossip about stars, about famous people. There's something about it which is really juicy and interesting. It feels really important, but it's so not important. It's hot air, it's fluff, and it's a part in us that can get engaged in these discussions and arguments, even not gossip about famous people, but just about politics. People talk politics all the time now, and even that is mostly just hot air. It's like one ego arguing with another ego, and the mind does such a brilliant job of making us feel like we're talking about the truth, nothing more than just an ego versus ego kind of conversation. I have a small example of that, Alicia. The governor of Michigan is named Gretchen Whitmer. She's a brilliant woman. I think she'd be president of the United States, has done a great job as governor, made major changes. She gave a state of the state speech that governor always gives, and it was a speech full of content and vision and ideas. Do you know what they wrote about? What she was wearing. What she was wearing. They didn't think what she was wearing was really appropriate. This happens all the time that we talk about the trivial with famous people rather than the meaning, the substance. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Then on the other hand, I don't know exactly what you said, but I'm going to look it up. It sounds really interesting. We know when we deliver a speech or we say something, we know right after, wow, this was spot on. This was right on. This was not blah, blah, blah. This was not fluff. This was, we touched on a raw truth, something very profound, very significant, very meaningful. We all feel, we can feel in our body, we can feel the difference between fluff talk and profound and accurate speech. Maybe that's part of the problem here that we're so easy to say, yes I can, no I can't. Wait a second. This thing is much deeper than you think. It's not, do I have the right arms and ammunition? Are we inside of ourselves? Are we connected to the Great Spirit? Are we connected to God? Are we connected to the Almighty? Because if we are, then the Almighty will be within us and we'll have the power to do it. It looks like the two scouts, Caleb Ben-Yifoun and Joshua Ben-Nun, were connected and therefore their speech seemed to carry more weight. And the fact is that the people eventually, not eventually, but at the end of the parasha, before the end of the parasha, do indeed storm. Yes, we can. It failed miserably. But nevertheless, the speech of the two spies had an impact. And I think we can all see for ourselves when we're listening to someone, a friend, listening to a professor in a class, listening to a politician, we can really feel when our core is being touched. And if we feel that our core is being touched, then that person right now spoke the truth. If what is being touched is our outer layers, our outer garments, for example, if it evokes anger, if it evokes resentment, if it evokes a need for revenge, that is very low speech and it addresses, it resonates with a very poor level of consciousness. A very poor and shallow part of our being. Agreed, Alisha. And you know, it's true. Couples separate and they separate not because of anger. They separate because of indifference. In other words, a lack of feeling. Because anger is an emotion. There is some connection even if it's anger. But indifference is cold. So you're absolutely right. And let me give an example of a meaningful argument about a truth. And I wasn't even there, but I heard about it. So Alisha, you teach a class on prophets and you taught a class on Sunday night. And this was an unusual class. Sharona reported to me. I was indolent. I stayed home, watched the football game. And Sharona came back and reported on this amazing class. And someone asked you, what would the prophets say today if they were to come back and look at the situation in Israel and the world? What would the prophets say? And you pointed out, I think, rightly, they would say the same thing. They would say there's a terrible injustice, there's poverty, that people are hungry, they're not educated, we're not treating the poor correctly, there's too much poverty, there's inequality, the wealthy are ignorant and uncaring, all those things. And some people didn't like what you said. Although I think it's absolutely obvious. That's the message of the prophets. And much of our problems, I can make this case, I won't right now, much of our problem in the world and the chaos arises from the fact that we created massive wealth and massive poverty and huge gap between the two. And the migrants are coming to where there's the wealth. And naturally they would. That's what a person does. We Jews did it all the time throughout history. So yes, you're right. When you touched on a really core issue, it arouses deep feelings. We understand what's meaningful and what is just trivial. Yes, that was a very intense class which was great. I hope all those in the class are going to come back next week. But you're right, we can often say the things that people want to hear. That's one way of reaching out to people. Another way of reaching out to people is to try and really speak to the truth as best as we can. And we never know if we're speaking the truth with a capital T. We can only know the thing in retrospect. In retrospect, not only did what we say pan out, but I think more importantly, if it resonated very, very deeply, then it was the truth. If it didn't resonate deeply, it doesn't mean it's not the truth, but at least the way it was conveyed, it was not conveyed as truth. Exactly. And I sometimes counsel young people, and not so young people, who are searching for something, and I tell them to look deep inside themselves and find what makes you angry, what makes you protest injustice, what do you really, really care about, to try to help people find the true meaning and their true destiny in life. And we're so rarely alone and able to think about it that it's very hard for young people to truly discover that. And we make them make life choices so early before they really have discovered themselves. This is especially true in America. I think it's highly positive. Our young people go to the army for several years, and they really learn about themselves. I learned about myself. I got to the army pretty late. I learned a lot of things about myself that were very helpful and very helpful later. But at least I want to raise a point, and we have just a few minutes, about the role of language. We're talking about language, which is especially important in shlachtacha. And I found an interesting piece of research. There's a famous linguist named Noam Chomsky, the son of William Chomsky, who was a Hebrew scholar. And Noam Chomsky, I'm afraid, is an anti-Zionist and anti-Israel on the far left. But his contribution to linguistics was a new approach toward thinking and reasoning as connected to words. And along comes another MIT scholar, Evelina Fedorenko, recently, who did 15 years of research using brain scans, and she finds we don't need language to think, Alicia. We think, but we don't do it through words. And I have a problem with that, because I think in words. And until I frame a thought in words, I don't really understand it. And I've been doing that for my whole career. What's your take on this? Are words part of reasoning, or just communication? That's a great, great point, and a great question. I studied the philosophy of Eugene Gendlin, who invented the whole idea of focusing and spelled sense. And he headed the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, and then went on and had another PhD in psychology. I would, or he would argue that the words are really both. Words are a highly, highly evolved form of symbolism. Words are symbols, and so words can at best point towards the truth. However, we also know that if we can say a certain word, a person could be really triggered. So they have incredible, incredible power. They carry incredible power. So in my humble opinion, words can at the same time be just blah, blah, blah. It doesn't really mean nothing. And just like people today, in today's world, I don't understand how they do it. But they have the television on, while they're just hanging out at home. And the television is on news, obviously. It's like yacking away. And they are doing their thing in the living room. I've been preparing dinner, tidying up the house, whatever it is they're doing. And the news anchor is like talking in the background. And it just really means that the news anchor is saying nothing of importance. It's just noise, noise, noise, and that's what language and words have deteriorated into. Now you can go to a psychologist and seek deep, you want to change something deep in yourself. You want to go through a transformation. And Eugene Gendlin's biggest gift here is that how can we use words? Because that's all we have. All we have is words. We can have emotions, but we express them in words. We have emotions, of course. But how come sometimes we can express certain words and our pain really is alleviated. And it may even be, if we're really lucky, the pain is gone. Like wow! And all because we communicated with words. And yet at other times we could use words, maybe even the same words exactly, and nothing happens. Nothing happens. At best we're going to say, oh wow, that was really interesting what I just said now. But nothing deep inside changes. And his idea is that the words, if they are connected to the bodily sensation, to the actual felt sense of the body, then they carry weight. And then they're really transformative. If they don't carry the body forward, if they don't carry the felt sense, if they don't resonate, it's all about resonating. If they don't resonate with our body, then it's just blah, blah, blah, and it won't do anything. At best it might sound intelligent or interesting. But for something, when someone talks out of a place of focusing, i.e. resonating with felt sense in the body, usually the other side really gets it. Like, oh, I see, now I get what you tried to tell me. What you tried to say to me, as Don McLean wrote in his beautiful song, Vincent. And I think the same thing is true for ourselves. We can go to the therapist and talk and talk and talk, and nothing happens. And if we're really connected to our felt sense in our bodies, we talk, usually much slower, usually much quieter, and boom, huge things change and happen. And these are words and these are words. So words can really do both. Indeed. I think it was Yehuda Amichai who said that there is an 11th Debar, 11th Commandment, cause no pain in your words. And we cause terrible pain with words. And we can cause terrible joy, amazing joy as well. But cause no pain. I think we should give credit to the Buddhist world. I think it's a Buddhist idea. It's like, please don't do harm or something like that. Do no harm. That's the Google mantra, which unfortunately they have ignored totally. Oh, that's the Google mantra? Yes, do no harm. Oh, wow. Wow. I know you so much these days. It rings hollow. Indeed. So we do have to end. So I just want to wish Shlomo. Shlomo and Sharona are always hopping from one Simcha to another. They have a lot of grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren, so they're blessed with a lot of Simchas. And this Shabbat, we're starting actually on Friday and well into Shabbat. We're going to celebrate Shlomo and Sharona's granddaughters, Bat Mitzvah. She's this amazing, amazing young woman. And it's going to be a huge celebration. So mazal tov, Shlomo. Todah Abba. Thank you. And Shabbat Shalom to everyone. Shabbat Shalom. And watch your words. Yes.
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