We cannot

Thoughts on the spies and their bitter evidence

For reasons we do not know, God tells Moshe to send spies to scout out the land. It goes terribly - they come back with a panicked report and send the nation into a frenzy. Having concluded that it would be impossible to defeat the terrifying people that live there, the people decide that the only real choice is to turn around and go back to Egypt.

What’s surprising is that the result was not surprising to Moshe. According to Rashi, Moshe anticipates that this will happen, or at least that it might. With this in mind, he changes the name of his student Hoshea to Yehoshua, adding a letter of God’s name and praying “may God save you from the counsel of the spies.”

Moshe knows that most of the scouts have already decided, before they even left, that they do not wish to enter the land. With that in mind, they will look for a pretense not to enter, and they will try to convince whomever among them is undecided that they should do the same. Yehoshua is not of their mindset. But he could be. Moshe prays that Yehoshua will have God’s help in resisting.

Calev, the scout representing the tribe of Yehuda, also is not of the same mindset as the other scouts. Who knows? Maybe he was, and then he saw the land and changed his mind. He was not fortunate enough to receive Moshe’s prayer (had Moshe given up on him?) but he made his way to the graves of his ancestors to pray that he not be seduced by his comrades’ counsel. It is remarkable that he arrived at this conclusion on his own.

After 40 days, the scouts return and present their report. It contains plenty of incontrovertible facts - the people are mighty, the cities are fortified, there are giants there, and lots of funerals. But the report also contains not-facts: “we cannot go up against this nation. They are stronger than God.” This is their core message. We cannot. Let’s turn around and go back.

Let’s assume that the ten scouts on one side and Yehoshua/Calev on the other represent something important. The ten scouts are trying to protect us from something that they think will be too difficult. Rather than face the challenge and fail, they encourage us toward avoiding the challenge entirely. Yehoshua/Calev, infused with the dynamic examples of Avraham and Sarah, Yitzhak and Rivkah, Ya’akov and Leah and Moshe, want us to move forward. They are aware of the magnitude of the challenge but they encourage us to face it. They have trust - in us, in the ancestors, in the mission. They know the blood of the ancestors flows in our veins, too, and it is therefore within our power to let it move us forward.

There certainly is a time when we need the ten scouts and their sense of caution. Some challenges are too formidable, and reckless optimism will bring pain and disappointment. But when they assert their voice at the wrong time, then the system grinds to a halt. The path gets overcrowded. A huge mess spreads across multiple generations like a pile-up, everyone crashing into each other because forward movement has been halted. The ten scouts win the day with their hysteria, and a door closes.

Amidst this pile-up, with grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren in close quarters and without the opportunity to move forward, an opportunity for transmission opens. These elders who refused to leap can share their wisdom and experience with their children and grandchildren. Their hard-fought and hard-won wisdom of failure is a profound gift. They teach the essential consequences of not-leaping and not-reaching. They teach the bitter consequences of listening to the cannots.

This reading does not simply mean “go for it!” It offers a subtler challenge to identify when the cannots are telling the truth and when they are speaking from their own fear. And it challenges us to identify when the “yes we cans” are lemmings and when they are bridges to holy places.