This week's parsha begins with G-d telling Moshe to send men who "will explore the Land of Canaan which I am giving to the Children of Israel." The parsha ends with the passage we recite every morning and evening in the Shema: "they shall make for themselves tzitzit (fringes) on the corners of their garments…This shall be tzitzit for you, and when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the L-rd to perform them, and you shall not explore after your hearts and after your eyes after which you are going astray."
Why does the same word for "explore" (v'yaturu/lo taturo) occur in the opening and closing verses of the parsha?
Rashi comments on the latter verse: "The heart and the eyes are 'spies' for the body, and they act as the body's agents in sinning. The eye sees, the heart desires and the body carries out the sins." The fringes of the tzitzit surrounding us on all four sides are a visual reminder of G-d's presence everywhere.
In this week's parsha, twelve men are sent to explore the Land of Israel. Ten of the explorers (the commentators call them meraglim—spies) reject the report that that G-d promised to take them to a land "flowing with milk and honey." They cannot take it on trust. They want to check out the land with their own eyes and decide for themselves. They see exactly what they want to see: a land governed by natural laws, where people live and die (there are many funerals); a beautiful land, but one that goes against all the laws of nature (the produce and the people are unnaturally large.) They wrongly conclude that they will not be able to conquer the land. "We were in our own eyes as grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes."
The sin of the spies is a failure of faith. They allow themselves to be misled by the external appearance of the natural world into a colossal failure of nerve, despite all the promises given by G-d that He would bring them to the land. They then conduct an ingenious operation of public opinion manipulation, using skillfully chosen words to implant in the people's minds a vision of the impossibility of achieving their natural destiny. The people should have focused their vision on that which is beyond nature -- the miracles that had been performed for them. This should have given them the faith that G-d has the power to fulfill His promises.
Faith does not depend upon what the eyes see. We declare our faith wrapped in the tallit (prayer shawl), clutching the tzitzit by our hearts, closing our eyes to the visual world around us and covering them with our hand: "Shema Yisrael, HaShem is our G-d!"
The tzitzit are the remedy for faulty and sinful vision.
Being a parent demands this kind of faith. Each of our children represents a promise from G-d. Only we, as parents, can see each of our children's potential. We need to focus on the vision we have for our children and not be swayed by competing attempts to distract us and confuse our hearts. It is up to us as parents to recognize that with G-d's help, all is possible for our children.
Excerpted from an article by Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Greenbaum. Read it in its entirety at http://www.azamra.org/Parshah/SHELACH.htm.
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