Friends - the first experience of the land of Israel was a sad and bad one. That's the way it happened in parshat shelach, when Moshe sent spies to check out the land. They came back claiming that, despite the goodness of the land, they'll never be able to conquer it. Even though everyone who complained about it died, still, even those who were not yet of age heard the bad reports, they saw the disappointment and the fear on their parent's faces. Though they eventually did enter the land, that first impression certainly planted seeds of doubt in their hearts. It must have been hard to overcome those deep-seated blues.
I watch my one-month-old daughter crying, frustrated with her slow progress in managing the challenge of eating, and I can't help but think how sad it is that her first experience of life is a negative one. But then, so much of our lives are spent attempting to overcome our initial perceptions of things. Fear often forces us to build walls, not to allow new things in - especially if it is a whole new reality that I am very much expected to embrace wholeheartedly, like the land of Israel for that generation in the desert. Are these difficulties and the accompanying sadness merely artifacts of the human condition, or is there a plan in this somewhere?
I look again at my daughter, and I reflect on the teaching of Chazal that a human is born with only a yetzer harah, an "evil" inclination. Only at bar-bat mitzvah age, does one "receive" a yetzer tov, a good inclination. Why does Hashem allow us to develop patterns that are negative before we even have the capacity to choose otherwise? Perhaps the answer is that, just as teshuva (repentance) preceded the creation of world, so too the need for teshuva, some initial sense of negativity and the accompanying sadness, precedes the capacity for that teshuva.
It seems that Hashem wants us to struggle. The very essence of life in this world is an uphill battle. Our lives are so often characterized by the stupidity of our actions, followed by our attempts to make things good, followed by…. While, there is no neatly packaged lesson at the end of this, one glimmer of guidance we can glean from the parsha is this: When you realize you have screwed up, realize that the damage is deeper than can be corrected by just doing now what you were supposed to have done in the first place. The tikkun required always involves accepting that your actions have taken you to exactly where you stand right now, and that the next step starts right here. When Israel tried to "just go right up into the land of Israel" they ignored the fact that they'd committed a grave error in not believing G-d's word in the first place, and that now what was required of them was to believe that Hashem wanted them to roam the desert for forty years.
And yet, mere acceptance of our lot cannot be the whole answer. G-r forbid that my daughter merely accept the fact that nursing is oh so hard, and give up!! Rather, the stubborn insistence demonstrated by little Avigail as well as those rebellious belated hill-stormers in the parashah is what balances the acceptance of things as they are which is the beginning of all change.
Recognition and acceptance of our situation, interwoven by a refusal to allow things to remain as they are, the latter inevitably touched by sadness, is the blue thread of our hope, the line Hashem throws us enabling the joy of constant elevation.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |