Israel has learning from the mistake of the spies

Controlling Your Own Destiny: Learning from the Mistake of the Spies

What exactly was the sin of the spies? After all, they were dispatched on a reconnaissance mission and upon return reported their finding, as would be expected. However, the spies went beyond their mandate by adding editorial commentary to their findings. After explaining that the land was indeed a land of milk and honey, they continued on by claiming that the nation would not be able to go and conquer Canaan, for the inhabitants of Canaan were stronger than they. Upon hearing the report, the nation was whipped into a frenzy and began to pine for the “good old days” of Egypt. This stark display of faith caused God to determine that this generation of freed slaves would never shake off their slave mentality and would never be up to the task of conquering the Promised Land. Therefore, the conquest would have to be postponed for a generation and be led by their children, who were not handicapped by a slave mentality. 

This slave mentality was made particularly evident by the spies’ statement “we were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” Despite all the miracles God had wrought on their behalf, the trauma of slavery would not allow them to see themselves as anything but the lowest of the low.      

Fortunately, modern Israel’s existence is a repudiation of the “can’t do” slave mentality. Israeli’s mentality is well summed up by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion who exclaimed, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles. Israel’s bold strike on the Islamic state, is yet another example of modern Israeli’s “can-do” attitude, again turning the spies’ protestations of “not being able to go up” on its head. After years of failed diplomatic talks with Iran and the mullah’s dashing towards nukes, the modern Jewish state decided that unlike the generation of the Exodus, today’s Jews, must again take matters into their own hands.  

Shockingly, there are those who romanticize Jewish powerlessness as the generation of the Exodus did. Slavery is horrible, but ironically, it frees one of the responsibility of the decision making that those who are free and in power are burdened with. In his 2020 essay, A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, published in Jewish Currents, Peter Beinart argued for a binational Israel-Palestinian state to replace the modern Jewish nation state of Israel. Dan Shapiro, who had served as the US ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, referred to Beinart’s idea as “utopian nonsense.” Beinart’s call for the dissolution of the Jewish nation state echoes the infamous call of our ancestors to march back to Egypt in order to avoid the tough challenges of nation building and wielding power responsibly. Those who give lip service to Israel’s right to defend itself, but yet criticize every defensive measure Israel takes as heavy handed, don’t understand or perhaps don’t want to understand a simple reality. The reality is that their position is a recipe for Jews to return to the state of powerlessness that we lived in for 2000 years. We are well too aware of the horrors Jewish powerlessness culminated in. It should be noted that not only has Israel taken matters into its own hands, but is doing the “dirty work” for the rest of the world, as German chancellor Merz put it, by attempting to rid the world of the world’s leading sponsor of terror. 

Pirkei Avot famously asks and answers a series of questions, such as “who is truly rich” and “who is truly strong?” We can add another question, “who is truly free?  The answer is, “he who is in control of his own destiny.” Thanks to the modern Zionist movement and the brave members of the IDF we as a people continue to remain free. Our ancestors murmured “we can’t go up”, today’s Jews proclaim, “we can!”