Spark of Jewish Experience

“Perception” is very important. How one sets the table determines the tone, the heartbeat of the moment. There is a very important lesson one can learn from this week’s parsha, Shlach, which our Sages try to emphasize. It comes naturally to one particular individual, my fun-loving aunt.  My Aunt Tamar has a unique quality of painting a rosy picture of our home land, Israel.

She set the tone many times as she picked us up from the airport when we arrived in Israel. I’ll never forget as we were waiting at the traffic light in her car, staring at the Israeli solders guarding the area surrounding the airport, how she raved these are the best solders in the world; they protect us. Those words gave me a reassuring feeling of safety, especially after all the attacks against our people. On many occasions, she would tell my mother, ” Roza, lo ta’amini kama ha’aretz shelonu hitpate’ach”, you would not believe how our Israel has blossomed”. She was referring to the new roads, central bus station and neighborhoods that had opened up. My mother grew up in Israel in the pre-state Palestine and early statehood. My Aunt Tamar would kid with me smiling and say “maybe its not as modern and sophisticated like your America but we’re not too far behind; we have kinyons- huge shopping malls too”. If one would play some Israeli popular culture tunes as she’s talking about the cafes and restaurants it would seem like an Israeli tourist commercial. A little song and dance to go with her pitch and I’m sold. Guide me to the American neighborhoods in Israel please!!

A student of Reb Yisrael Salanter ( father of the Musar movement in Orthodox Judaism and a famed Rosh Yeshiva and Talmudist) once went to his master and told him that he was going to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. He inquired of his Rebbe what he should be careful about. Reb Yisrael told him to be careful not to transgress the prohibition of speaking Lashon HaRah [evil] about Eretz Yisrael.  Just as our ancestors’ actions set patterns for us in a positive direction (ma’aseh Avot  siman l’Banim), so too can they do in a negative direction. There was an action of our ancestors concerning Eretz Yisrael — the incident of the Spies. This incident implanted for all generations a tendency within us, that when a person goes to visit Eretz Yisrael he may wish to dwell on its shortcomings rather than on its tremendous attributes. Reb Yisroel therefore told the student “Be careful, and don’t stumble in the sin of the spies.”

However it is becoming a difficult task to see the positive light. With the advent of jet airplanes and overseas travel, we can, at a whim, hop on a plane and spend a few days in Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel]. It wasn’t always so easy. In earlier times, travelling to Israel involved a long, exhausting, and sometimes dangerous journey over land and water. In fact, to “visit” Israel at all was quite uncommon. Most people who undertook the journey did so to move there permanently. To go there for a week or ten days was unheard of.

Today, we are blessed to have such ready accessibility to our Holy Land. Sometimes, though, this blessing can be a two-edged sword. The easier it becomes to visit Israel, the more commonplace and ho-hum it becomes. Travelling to the Holy Land, which had once been seen as a holy pilgrimage and a spiritually uplifting mission which could change one’s life forever, is now weighed by potential vacationers against a trip to Florida or summer camp for the kids – “What should we do this year…” The more difficult something is, the more commitment and resolution it requires, the more meaningful it becomes. We have to be careful that in today’s global, travel-happy society, we do not lose sight of our Holy Land and its significance.

  The story of the Spies and their nation which looked a gift horse in the mouth and rejected it … the one time that they should have accepted it. Just as the momentary eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Rah-the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil-cost mankind Paradise until this day, likewise has the momentary rejection of Eretz Yisroel back at our beginning cost us 3,322 years of exile, and counting. Scary how quick decisions can be costly.

We see many examples from the Torah how important the land is and what attitude we should have towards it. A verse concerning our forefather Avraham says “And G-d said to Avraham, ‘Lift your eyes and see from the place where you are standing there. For all the land that you see, I will give to you and your children.'” [Bereshis 13:14] Before G-d showed Avraham the Land, he advised him to lift up his eyes. That is the approach that one must take when viewing the Land of Israel. It must be with ‘lifted eyes’. It requires, sometimes, an uplifted vision to see beyond the imperfections and to recognize the beauty and greatness of the Land.

Our leader Moshe went through painstaking experiences to ensure that his successor would be ready to deal with such problems.

Many of us are familiar with the teaching of our Rabbis that the letter Yud that was added to the name Hoshea came from the name of our first Matriarch. Sarah originally was called Sarai. Moshe took the Yud that was dropped from her name and gave it to Hoshea. Moshe anticipated that Yehoshua would need tremendous strength and assertiveness to stand up against the other spies in defending the Land and the plan to inhabit it. Moshe felt that because of his personality traits, Hoshea did not have the resolve necessary to stand up and fight. That is why he had to give him the new name including the letter Yud.

But still, what does the Yud from Sarai have to do with protecting Hoshea?   If there was one personality in Tanach who had strength to stand up to adversity and know how to fight ill influences, that was our Matriarch Sarah. When she saw that there was a Yishmael growing up with her son Yitzchak and she saw that this person would provide the wrong type of influence for her son, she knew what type of action was necessary. She insisted, “Send this lady out of my house with her son, into the desert!” When Avraham questioned her how he could act so cruelly, G-d told him, “All that Sarai tells you, listen to her” [Bereshis 21:12]. That took a tremendous strength. But a mother knew what was right for her child. She knew that so-called compassion now would end in cruelty. What was required over here was to say emphatically, “I am sorry. I will not have my son ruined!” Yehoshua also required that. There were 10 people, great and worthy leaders. It would be necessary to stand-up to the Gedolei HaDor-people who are considered the heads of the generation, in effect. Where does one get that strength? One gets it from what Sarah our Matriarch had. Sarah was the Torah prototype when it came to standing up to the wrong crowd. The YUD represent the strength of personality that will be needed by Yehoshua.

There are many tests we encounter comparing the land of Israel and its people, our brothers, to other lands and nations of the world. Our thought and perception of Israel can be ruined by those notions.  That negativity is similar to Yehoshua encountering the ten spies. We need the YUD to stand up and fight the influence, the materialistic influence for that matter, against those seductions. We need the YUD to stop those who dissuade us from visiting, because of safety reasons, or to a higher extent, make pilgrimage to the holy land.

There was a study which found Israeli citizens who were on the lower part of the income chart, needed less to live and were satisfied with what they had more then any other citizens in the world.

The Gerrer Rebbe wrote back and told his Chassidim, “The only Houses of Worship in Tel Aviv are synagogues! Other cities have churches and mosques, but Tel Aviv is holy — it has only synagogues!” This is the “lift your eyes” that G-d said to Avraham — to see that Tel Aviv has its holiness and not to dwell upon the imperfections.

We see more examples how careful one should be with people associated with the land. Yaacov our forefather was afraid of Eisav because perhaps his good deeds might prevail over his. What were his good deeds?  Eisav honored his parents in a tremendous way. Secondly, he lived in Israel.

The Talmud saw the Land of Israel as a supreme religious value that under certain circumstances allowed Jews to reacquire and purchase land in the Land of Israel from non-Jews even on the Shabbat. It promoted the concept of “yishuv Eretz Yisrael” – the settlement and upbuilding of the Land of Israel as a religious obligation and a supreme value in Judaism and Jewish life.

 

I was anxiously anticipating arriving at the old neighborhood, Floranteen, of where my grandparents lived. It has been twenty years since I visited; my grandparents have long since left this world. As I was coming nearer I could smell the scent of the sandy industrial neighborhood causing millions of memories of my childhood visits.

On one such memory, we were sitting, mom, Aunt Tamar and my grandparents, on the porch of my grandparents house, on a shabbat afternoon. where my aunt convinced me to eat a fruit; it was a peach. She said Israel has the best peaches in the world.

Today, my life style has changed. I had to give up  the Haagen-Dazs /pizza diet which I was a mainstay for the past gazillion years, because of health reasons.  Eating more fruits and vegetables is now a necessity. Being exposed to natures candy a lot more, I must admit, my Aunt Tamar was right. Israeli peaches are the best I have ever tasted. Perhaps the background music on the Israeli tourist commercial can stop. I’m sold on the land of Israel……HOW SWEET IT IS.