Rabbi's Corner

Once there was a wise man sitting at the entrance to his village.  A traveler approached and asked him, " I am looking to move from my home and relocate here in your village.  What kind of people live here?"  The wise man replied by asking, "What kind of people live where you currently live?"  The traveler replied, "They are mean, rude, and cruel."  The wise man responded, "The same kind of people live in this village."  After some time another traveler approached the wise man and asked the very same question about the residents of the wise man's village.  And once again, the wise man inquired as to what kind of people lived in this traveler's village.  His reply was, "The people of the village in which I live are courteous, polite, and kind." The wise man replied,"You will find the same kind of people here as well." The point of the story is that one can find both good and evil in every village.  A person will only notice that upon which they are focusing.

In this week's parashah, Parashat Shelach, we find that ten of the leaders of the twelve tribes return from their "scouting mission" speaking very negatively about the Land of Kena'an.  The Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) tells us that when the twelve spies were sent out on their mission (a mission that would last forty days), they intended to locate only the evil that could be found in the Land.  Only Calev and Yehoshuah reported that regardless of anything bad that had been found, Hashem would insure that the B'nei Yisrael were successful in the conquest of the Land.  The other ten spies chose to concentrate their reports only on the negative aspects they discovered completely ignoring the Land's best features.  The Torah tells us: "Like the number of days you spied out the Land --- forty days --- a day for a year, a day for a year, shall you carry your sins --- forty years --- and you shall know you strayed from me." (Bemidbar 14:34)  Thus it was that the B'nei Yisrael's entry into the Land promised to them by HaShem was delayed for forty years.

What is the lesson to be learned here?  Simply this: there is good and bad everywhere, in every place and in every person.  We must do all we can do to overcome our tendency to concentrate only on the bad by finding and emphasizing the positive in every place we find ourselves and with everyone with whom we come into contact.  It is only in this way that we will remember that each of us has been created B'Tzelem Elohim (in the Image of G-d) and has been placed in this world created by Hashem to glorify H-m.