I write these words from far away, though my heart is at home. Like so many Israelis, I find myself unexpectedly stranded – stuck in New York because the skies above Israel are closed, because missiles rain down, because a nation that loves life is under attack by those who worship death.
Every fiber of my being longs to be there, too: to stand on our soil, to share the burden, to hold my loved ones close, and to contribute to communal and national efforts to help those in need.
This week’s Torah portion, “Shelach,” tells the story of a people who looked at that same land – and saw either promise or defeat. Moses sends 12 leaders, one from each tribe, to scout the Land of Israel before the people cross into it. They see a land overflowing with abundance: “We came to the land... it indeed flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” But instead of rejoicing, 10 of the spies see only giants, fortified cities, and unbeatable enemies. They return with fear in their voices, infecting the camp with doubt: “We cannot go up against the people, for they are stronger than us” (Numbers 13:31).
Then come the words that still echo painfully through Jewish history: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes” (verse 33). They had not yet fought a single battle, but they had already lost the war within themselves.
However, among these leaders stand two dissenting voices: Caleb and Joshua. They see the same giants, the same cities, the same daunting terrain – but their eyes are fixed on a greater truth. “The land we passed through is very, very good... do not fear the people of the land... their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them” (14:7–9).
Israel's present moment reflected in the Torah
READING THESE verses this week, from an ocean away, I cannot help but see our present moment reflected in their ancient footsteps. Israel today faces enemies no less determined to keep us from our land – Iran’s missiles, terror proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, the cruel targeting of our civilians in their homes, schools, and synagogues. And yet, in the midst of all this, Israel’s pilots fly missions so daring they rewrite the rules of air warfare. The Mossad reaches into enemy capitals, unraveling plots before they can mature. Iron Dome soldiers stand guard so rockets meant to destroy fall harmlessly into fields and deserts.
We are a people of remarkable might and power – yet we know, as the prophet Zechariah reminds us: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). Our truest strength has never been our weapons alone but the spirit that animates us – the courage to hope, the faith to keep going, and the unity that binds us in our darkest hours.
This is not the vision of grasshoppers. This is the vision of Caleb and Joshua, reborn in our own days.
Our sages teach in the Talmud (Tractate Sotah 34b) that when the spies planned their negative report, Caleb slipped away to Hebron. He went alone to pray at the graves of the patriarchs and matriarchs: “My fathers, pray for me, that I not be swayed by my fellow spies.”
Caleb knew that courage is not born only on the battlefield – it is forged in the quiet places of the soul, where a person remembers who he, where he comes from, and whose mission he carries. I think of our young pilots, our undercover agents, our mothers and fathers who tuck their children into bed in bomb shelters – they, too, carry in their hearts the silent prayers of generations: “May I stand firm; may I not falter.”
THE TRAGEDY of “Shelach” is not only that the spies were afraid. It is that they convinced an entire generation that their fear was wisdom. In response, God decrees that they will wander for 40 years – until a new generation, raised on desert hardships but with eyes unclouded by slave fear, will be ready to enter the land with faith.
How many generations of Jews have walked this same cycle – fear, loss, wandering – and then, against all odds, return and rebirth? Our enemies have not vanished since the days of Canaanite giants; they have merely changed names and weapons. Yet here we stand – and stand we must.
But “Shelach” does not end only with the spies’ failure and the nation’s punishment. As Rabbi Tali Adler so beautifully teaches, it poses an even deeper question: What do you do when the story you believed in changes so dramatically that you barely recognize it anymore?
After the spies’ disastrous report, God tells the people that they will not enter the Promised Land – only their children will. For this generation, the dream seems dead. And yet, when Moshe tells them not to go up and fight, a stubborn, defiant group – the ma’apilim – tries to force the old story back into place by storming the mountain anyway. They fail, badly wounded and driven back, because they cannot accept that the narrative has shifted.
Others, like the man who gathers wood on Shabbat right afterward, abandon the story altogether – a public defiance that says: If the promise is broken, then the covenant is meaningless.
But most do something radical in the quietness: They keep walking forward. They accept the devastating truth that they will not see the Land, yet they still gather manna, build the Mishkan (Tabernacle), observe Shabbat, and raise children who will one day enter the Land they themselves will never touch.
As Tali Adler writes: “This is the path of the wilderness that our ancestors bequeathed us. It is a path of faith that says: I will not pretend that the world has not changed, but I will also not say that this change means the story is over... And still I will walk forward in the desert, and teach it to my children. And somehow, step after step, and word after word, together, we will create a world where the story’s promise is true.”
THIS, TOO, feels achingly real this week. So much of Israel’s story looks different than we dreamed: hostages still in Gaza, constant missiles, the agony of burying those who have fallen in this latest conflict. The skies are closed; our hearts are wide open and raw. I sit here in New York, exiled by circumstance, longing for home – but I recognize that while totally unexpected, this charged moment in history – that is so unlike anything that has come before – is our only way forward.
The 10 spies teach us what happens when fear rules the heart. The ma’apilim teach us of the danger of forcing reality to revive an old fantasy. The lone man gathering sticks shows us the temptation to give up altogether. But the unnamed generation, wandering for 40 years while planting seeds they will never harvest, teaches us how to live when the story is messier than we imagined.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote: “Optimism is the belief that things will get better; hope is the belief that together we can make them better.” Israel today does not live on optimism alone. We live on hope – gritty, stubborn, wilderness-walking hope. We can all choose to be descendants of Caleb: eyes wide open to the giants, yet choosing to say, “The land is very, very good.”
May we have the faith to keep walking forward, even when the story changes. May we find strength in one another and in our ancestors’ footsteps across the desert. And may we soon merit skies that are clear, borders that are safe, and a homecoming for every heart that longs for Zion.
Shabbat shalom – from far away, with a heart always at home.
With gratitude to Rabbi Tali Adler for her insights, which shaped part of this reflection.