Giants In The Land
D’var Torah for
Parashat Sh’lach L’cha (Numbers 13:1—15:41)
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
“Adonai spoke to Moses
saying, ‘Send out for yourself men who will scout the Land of Canaan, which I
am giving to the children of Israel.’”)
Some scholars wonder if the Exodus from Egypt ever really
happened. They bring whatever
archeological finds have been unearthed in the last couple of decades as
evidence that there’s simply no proof for any of it. No plagues, no Death of the Firstborn; no Parting
of the Sea and no Passover to celebrate.
It’s all a figment of our imagination.
But there’s imagination and there’s imagination. There’s the kind of imagination that scares
you half to death, where evil is distinct and ever-present and about to pounce
on you, gaining strength with each piece of you that it consumes.
This kind of imagination is false. It conjures terror of things that might
happen, but that probably won’t. It
evokes two reactions in us: We become
numb to our fears, floating from one disaster to another, trying to survive as
best we can. Or else we turn with
violence and hatred to it, in useless effort to conquer or at least subdue the
evil that we imagine around us.
But then there’s another kind of imagination, the kind that
begins where our knowledge ends, and continues by a series of logical
procedures. Dmitry Mendeleev, the creator
of the periodic table, was able to correct past errors and also predict the
discovery of new elements. He wasn’t a
prophet—at least not in the common sense of the word. He was a seer, however, a person who saw
fundamental laws when no one else did.
He didn’t see dead people; he saw the elements of life and understood
them as such, as logical procedures and processes that recur cyclically in the
universe. And he had faith that history
would prove him right.
Seeing things as they truly are is critical to our
survival. We gauge the forces around us
and, using our power to envision and imagine, construct our response to the
reality we face.
This kind of constructive imagination leads us to
discovery. Many of the old science
fiction stories we used to read—before they started making movies of fantasy
characters—were not only surprisingly correct about the future they predicted,
but actually led us on to take the dreams they envisaged and make them real. Think Ray Bradbury and Jules Verne, or a
handful others who didn’t follow Hollywood formulas but rather created new
realities based on the ones they observed around themselves.
We fear what we don’t know.
That’s axiomatic. The dark, as
much as it beckons, is also rife with danger, with creatures we can only
imagine.
That’s how the twelve spies sent out by Moses to scout out
the land of Canaan saw the Promised Land.
It was enticingly rich and luscious.
The fruit they cut as evidence and brought to Moses and Israel—grapes,
figs and pomegranates—are, and always were, pregnant symbols, representing the
potency of life embedded in this land.
But there were also giants in the land, they reported. Mythical, evil, iron-clad nations that would
just as easily kill off this startup nation, Israel, as squash a bug.
A bug. That’s how ten
of those twelve spies saw themselves—and, moreover, imagined that was exactly
how the natives of that land, the Cyclops, the Gogs and Magogs, monsters of all
sorts and kinds, saw them, too.
Their terror was infectious.
Like a disease, it took hold of the people and debilitated them. Suddenly, that’s all they could see.
In its first season, the current TV hit series, Modern
Family, had an episode in which its characters had to face their fears. Maybe that’s how the creators of the show
hoped to make us sympathize with their characters: By understanding what they feared and,
hopefully, by learning from how they
resolved their fears.
Would that we could all resolve such conflicts in our lives
in half an hour!
The Israelites learned their lesson from the story of the 12
spies. Only it took them 40 years.
40 years to shake off the fears and learn to size reality up
in a more rational way. 40 years of
trial-and-error, of finding their way in the wilderness, led on by more than
just the light of the sun and stars—though these did provide points of
orientation. 40 years of discovery of an
unwavering truth, of learning how to use it as much as how to be guided by it. In a way, the Israelites went beyond
imagination, beyond all that can be learned or known, into a new realm called Faith.
The details may be somewhat different, but there must have
been an Exodus. There must have been a
moment in the eternal span of time and space that a people emerged out of the
ordinary flow of uncaring, unknowing nature and declared that there was a
constant law that prevailed throughout the universe. This people discerned a giant force, wielded
by some giant existence beyond existence, yet one that was not to be feared,
but rather embraced.
Moreover, this people recognized not only the great forces
outside itself, but also its own strength.
They recognized and declared that that they—and all human beings—are endowed
with a kind of imagination that does not terrorize, overpower or debilitate,
but rather empowers and enables. It’s
faith, a light within that guides you from the wildernesses of ignorance and
fear to a place where the force of life flows abundant and powerful.
Maybe there are giants out there, but that’s not the lesson
we must take from this week’s Torah portion.
Rather, it is to use our minds in measuring, calculating and planning
our route into the future.
We may be infinitesimally small in the larger picture of the
universe. But love and education rather
than fear and superstition—these should be our guidelines as we move from one
situation into another. That and the faith
that these rules will indeed provide a constant and steady foundation for our steps.
It is this combination of knowledge, imagination and faith
has led our people to many places, always onward toward the Promised Land.
There may be no archeological evidence for this, but it is
true nonetheless.
© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman
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