Grown-up love: Rewriting the story of the spies in our time

Have you seen them?

The thousands of Israelis returning home by boat, by special flights, kissing the soil of a land at war?

Have you heard them?

Tens of thousands, despite sleepless nights in bomb shelters and the ever-present anxiety of where the next rocket might fall, proclaiming with quiet certainty: “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Have you watched them?

Hundreds of Israelis, of every size, shape, color, religious stripe and political persuasion, dancing in public shelters as sirens wail and rockets whistle overhead.

Proud to be part of their people.

Proud to be citizens of their land.

Have you seen the fighter pilots — those who fasten their helmets and soar halfway across the world, carrying with them the burden and the strength of their people’s long, tumultuous, but unwavering story of agency and hope?

Have you heard the secular news anchor, offering thanks for open miracles in 2025, breaking into a song of praise to God on national television?

Have you seen them?

And have you read about their ancestors — the Israelites of the wilderness?

Have you heard their voices cry out that Egypt’s work camps were better than the unknowns of the Promised Land? (Numbers 14:4)

Have you watched them weep, yearning for the familiarity of slavery, begging for anything but the terrifying task of freedom? Because freedom is indeed terrifying. (Numbers 14:1)

Have you seen those nomads, shunning their identity, retreating from their destiny — too afraid to become an independent people in a sovereign land? (Numbers 13:31)

Did you hear them call themselves grasshoppers; small, insignificant, stripped of faith not only in God, but in themselves? (Numbers 13:33)

Did you see them then?

Do you see us now?

Between then and now, we have had to grow up.

And growing up means learning to live with ambivalence.

Learning to move through the complexity and confusion of reality without being paralyzed by fear or cradled by dependency.

This is indeed a land of milk and honey (Numbers 13:27)

But it is also, at times, a land that devours its inhabitants. (Numbers 13:32)

A land bursting with life, rich in the fruit of meaning and purpose — and yet shadowed by the giants of arrogance, self-righteousness, and conceit who threaten its unravelling. (Numbers 13:28)

A land encircled by enemies yet shielded by fortresses of iron (domes) and the quiet strength of God’s army. (Numbers 13:28)

A land of war and of peace, of laughter and of tears.

Of visceral pain and bittersweet joy.

A tapestry of contradiction, an arena of ambivalence.

And the question we must ask:

Can we live with the ambivalence?

Can we grow up enough to understand that authentic life consists of the “good” and the “bad” (Numbers 13:19); the honey and the sting; the fruit and its thick, unyielding peel. Will we have the courage to see the good as well as the bad? (Numbers 13:20)

Can we carry the responsibility of inhabiting this land?

Seeing it for what it is, for what it could become, and for what we still dream it to be?

Can we mature into a covenantal relationship with God?

One that does not wait for the perfect ending,

But chooses to act, to build, to fight, in the messy, multifaceted human reality?

Can we fall in love with our people and our land?

And, like in any mature love, come to cherish not just the beauty but the flaws, not despite them, but because of them?

Can we walk in the footsteps of Caleb and Joshua,

Holding all this dissonance; all this contradiction, and still say:

“הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר עָבַרְנוּ בָהּ לָתוּר אֹתָהּ–טוֹבָה הָאָרֶץ, מְאֹד מְאֹד”

The land we traversed — it is an exceedingly good land. (Numbers 14:7)

After so many years in the wilderness of exile,

After a long arc through the corridors of history

This is our moment.

To hold, all at once, our fear, our hope, our pain, and our pride;

To carry the failures of the past and the dreams of the future,
To be the custodians of hope and the bearers of responsibility,

And to say, with unwavering resolve:

“יָכוֹל נוּכַל!” (במדבר י”ג: ל’)

We will prevail.