I was attacked in middle of the night by this horrible and dangerous looking monster. It began by waking me up with a horrible noise in my ear. It then began to literally suck my blood. Had it not been Shabbat, I would have fearlessly faced it in open battle and killed it.  Instead, I went downstairs to learn; let it attack the Argentine and learn the necessary lesson.  The monster was too frightened of Debbie, and probably hid back in the same place where he had been carried into the house: Pip’s hair. It was a mosquito, but the electron microscope reveals its true horrible image.

I opened my Chumash to where the verses describe the giants who walked the land, and laughed. A tiny mosquito chased me out of bed as if it had been a giant. A mosquito can be transformed into an ugly monster, and a familiar insect can become a giant, so why not believe that the spies perceived some rather large men as giants? It’s all about perception, and, as we know, our perceptions are affected by circumstances.

I’ve been convinced that some problems were enormous, only to realize after a day that they were quite manageable. I have lost sleep over huge questions only to realize that there was a simple answer. Giant at first, mosquito at the end. The issue wasn’t that the spies saw giants, but that they were unable to adjust their perspective. People who began life as slaves, witnessed the Ten Plagues, crossed the split Sea, ate Manna and stood at Sinai, and successfully built a House for God, should have been quite skilled at changing their perspective, but when it came to overcoming their fears, they failed.

We know that this is the story of the first Tisha b’Av. All the tragedies associated with this day are giants; the destruction of the two Batei Mikdash, the defeat of Beitar etc. Perhaps we should remember that one day we will look back and not see gigantic monsters, but issues we could have managed with just a slight change in perspective.

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I was all of 16 years old, and was quite confused. I had serious questions about how people use Judaism to relate to God, and I was asked to meet once a week with public school students and answer their questions.

It was pouring that night in Santa Clara, as I sat in a car with Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an extraordinary man from a truly great family. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” I complained.

“Simcha,” Rabbi Lapin said, “One of the most important and practical lessons I can offer is that there is a difference between inconsistency and hypocrisy. A hypocrite will teach something he believes is false. Someone who teaches something he believes even while having difficulty always living according to those beliefs, is inconsistent, and definitely not a hypocrite.”

“Do you believe that it is wrong to speak negatively about others?”

“Absolutely.”

“Are there times when you speak Lishon Harah?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a hypocrite or are you inconsistent?”

Thank you, Rabbi Lapin, for a lesson I use every day of my life.

When the ten spies spoke Lishon Harah about the Land of Israel, were they hypocrites, or, simply inconsistent?

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He listened to, but did not participate in the ongoing conversations around Miriam’s Well in the days that followed their devastating punishment for their reaction to the spies. People were frustrated, depressed and angry. “I don’t want to live out the rest of my life in a tent in the desert.” “The only reason I could bear this camp was that I knew that we would soon enter the Land of Israel. Now I’m stuck.” “We never should have asked Moshe to send spies.” “He shouldn’t have listened to us!” Bitterness oozed from every word of every conversation.

He realized that there was also terrible confusion. Many people felt that they had lost everything. They had shattered their covenant with God. They were so devastated by their sense of failure that they believed that the Torah laws no longer applied.

He wanted to do something to reconnect them with whatever remained of their accomplishments, so, he decided to publicly violate the Shabbat. “And the Children of Israel were in the desert and they found a man gathering wood on the Shabbat day. Those who found him, brought him close to Moshe and Aaron and to the entire assembly, and they placed him in a guarded place for it had not been explained what they should do.” (Numbers 15:32-34)

“Those who found him,” wanted him jailed. They did not want anyone to violate their Shabbat by violating his! They did not “bring him close” for judgment; if that was their purpose, they only had to bring him to court, not to Moshe, not to Aaron, and certailnly not the entire assembly!

Something happened when they saw a man publicly breaking the Shabbat laws. They felt violated. They wanted him placed where he could not damage their Shabbat. Their response was to fight for Shabbat, for their Shabbat. Their connection with God’s laws was strong. Our “hero,” achieved his purpose.

He violated Shabbat in order to convince people that despite their terrible failures, the Torah lived. (Targum Yonatan ben Uziel 15:32) He was misguided, but also well-intentioned.

He sat in his cell, the only one in the camp, when the bars were opened and another man was violently tossed inside. (Ba’al HaTurim, Numbers 15:31) “Wow,” he thought, “I wasn’t the only one with the crazy idea!”

“Shalom Aleichem, Reb Yid,” he said as he extended his hand in greeting. “@#&*^%$!!!” was the man’s response.

“Why are you here?” he persisted.

“@#&*^%$!!!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“That’s why I’m here: I said that about G-d.”

Our hero started banging his cup against the jail bars. “Let me out! I don’t belong in the same cell as this man. I was well-intentioned! Help! How could you put us both into the same jail cell?”

He fell to the ground, sobbing. He could not believe that people thought of him as no better than his cell mate. He was so upset that the jailer asked Moshe to send a psychiatrist to calm the prisoner. Moshe sent a rabbi, Yonatan ben Uziel, rather than a doctor.

“Rabbi! Rabbi! I don’t belong here with a sinner. I’m a Tzaddik! I sinned with only good intentions!”

Rabbi ben Uziel smiled. Even the flames that extended up from around his head seemed to offer warmth and understanding. “We know exactly why you did what you did. Your intentions were different, but your actions were just as evil. Why did you not choose a different way to prove your point? Why did you not ask your rabbi for advice? Why did you make such a major decision on your own?”

He didn’t know how to answer Rabbi ben Uziel.

The great rabbi reached out and held the man’s hands in his own. “You took a terrible risk. You played with the laws of Shabbat. It is especially when you play with fire that everything must be consistent between your actions and intentions. Just look at what happened to the ten spies.”

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“Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb son of Jephunneh, of the spies of the land, tore their clothes.” (Numbers 14:6) Whose clothes did they tear? The Kotzker explains that they torn the clothes of high position off the backs of the other spies. The first step is to expose the Emperor’s New Clothes. We often fall into the trap of measuring others by their externals and Joshua and Caleb wanted to expose the other spies for what they really were.

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Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics is a psychologist, not an economist. He was lecturing to a group of Israeli air force flight instructors on the conventional wisdom of behavior modification and its application to the psychology of flight training. Kahenman drove home the point that rewarding positive behavior works but punishing mistakes does not. One of his students interrupted, voicing an opinion that would lead Kahenman to an epiphany and guide his research for decades.

“I’ve often praised people warmly for beautifully executed maneuvers, and the next time they always do worse,” the flight instructor said. “And I’ve creamed at people for badly executed maneuvers, and by and large the next time they improve. Don’t tell me that reward works and punishment doesn’t work. My experience contradicts it.” The other flight instructors agreed.

To Kahenman the flight instructors’ experiences rang true. On the other hand, Kahenman believed in the animal experiments that demonstrated that reward works better than punishment. He ruminated on this apparent paradox. And then it struck him: the screaming preceded the improvement, but contrary to appearances it did not cause it.

How can that be? The answer lies in a phenomenon called regression toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one.

Here’s how it works: The student pilots all had a certain personal ability to fly fighter planes. Raising their skill level involved many factors and required extensive practice, so although their skill was slowly improving, the change wouldn’t be noticeable from one maneuver to the next. Whether the instructor complimented the student or yelled, the next maneuver was going to be closer to his average skill. If the previous maneuver was spectacular, the following flight would seem worse. If the maneuver was terrible, the next flight would, as closer to average, seem better.

The responses of God, Moshe, Calev and Joshua to the Ten Spies and the reaction of the people, make me reflect on what was the intended effect of each response. The people had fluctuated between the greatness of Revelation and the construction of the Mishkan and the low points of all their complaints, especially their response to the spies’ report. Some people immediately tried to regain their former heights and simply went forward on their own, only to be quickly defeated.

The people had never found their mean, their balance point, or, their “average.”

Perhaps that is why the portion concludes with Tzitzit: They are intended to be “Balancers” between our highest and lowest points. They serve to remind us of our greatness especially when we have fallen, and when we surge upward, we recall that they are “garments,” external, still to be internalized.

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Ever since I saw my father zt’l washing his Tzitzit, I have washed my own. Please understand; my siblings and I would battle each other for the merit of serving our parents and cleaning for them. The only things we were willing to just stand back and observe was my father preparing my mother’s Shabbat candles and his loading the car for one of our long trips from Toronto to Baltimore with all the items we carried downstairs: He was magically able to fit everything into the trunk. It was unbearable to stand and watch either of our parents wash a dish or load the dishwasher. So, the second I saw my father standing over the sink and scrubbing his Tzitzit, I ran to do it for him, but he wouldn’t let me. It was his way of honoring and beautifying the Mitzvah. He told me that keeping his Tzitzit clean was part of fulfilling the concept of “Beautiful Tzitzit.” “Why would I allow someone else to do it for me?” I got the message and have been washing my Tzitzit ever since.

I rejoiced when Neatzit were invented; comfortable cotton Tzitzit that can go in the washing machine. I only use threads that I spun many years ago, so I untie the strings from my new Tzitzit and tie my strings, of which I have no more. I have to be very careful with the strings. No problem: There are pockets on each corner in which to stuff the strings so they don’t get tangled up. You can put them in the washing machine and they come out beautifully…at least in theory.

My strings never stay in the pocket. So, I decided to use a lingerie bag. Didn’t work. I tie them up with a rubber band, but they still get all tangled. The final straw was when I took my Tzitzit out of the washing machine and they were rusty brown; dirtier than when I put them to wash. It seems that a water main broke and colored the water and my Tzitzit.

I mentioned my problem to a friend and he suggested that I should not be using the washing machine; “If the point is to act as did your father; you should still be washing them by hand!”

He got it wrong! The point is not to act as did my father, but to be actively involved in beautifying my Tzitzit, something I learned from my father. However, I still have to wonder whether using the washing machine is the same as washing by hand. It’s not enough to spend extra money buying the “best” Tzitzit; we have to actively make them beautiful, including the way we wash them.

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“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars,” observed Augustine in the fifth century, “ and they pass themselves without wondering.”

Moses sent out the spies to, “Ascend here in the south, and climb the mountain. See the Land – how is it? And the people that dwells in it. And how is the Land in which it dwells – is it good or is it bad? Is it fertile or is it lean? Are there trees in it or not.” (Numbers 13:17-20) Moses sent the spies to wonder at the mountains, the rivers, and the trees. They went to observe and wonder about everything except themselves. They even wondered about other people, but of themselves, they said, “We were like grasshoppers in our eyes!” (13:33) No wonder they failed.

We study Torah and wonder at it depth and breadth. We are astounded by its wisdom and insight. We rejoice in our part in the infinite process of discovery. Yet, we seem to be so busy in wonder of Torah that we “pass ourselves without wondering.”

People complain that they are ignorant. They see themselves “like grasshoppers in our eyes.” They focus on our insignificance when compared to the Sages of the Talmud, or Rashi, or Maimonides, or the Vilna Gaon.

So, the portion of the spies ends with the Mitzvah of Tzitzit, Garments of Light. The Torah wants us to see our inner light in all its beauty and magnificence, and wonder over our potential and promise. To wonder about ourselves is to wonder about Torah.

When we are able to wonder about ourselves and connect that to our wonder over Torah, and the mountains, and the ocean and the stars, our lives will become truly wondrous. We must study Torah and observe the Mitzvot with a sense of wonder about ourselves. We will find ourselves enwrapped in Garments of Light.

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Teresa of Avila mentions in her dramatic autobiography that her prayers were continuously interrupted by the Devil and her serious thought was replaced by nonsense. (Me too) She also endowed Satan with bad temper and false humility. At one point Satan visited her, and Teresa described him vividly:

“A great flame seemed to issue from his body, which was intensely bright and cast no shadow. He said to me in a dreadful voice that I had indeed escaped his clutches, but that he would capture me still.”

Seems to me that there ain’t no one more in the Devil’s clutches than someone convinced that she has escaped!

I have difficulty picturing the ten spies admitting, while sinning, that they made their disheartening proclamations about the Land of Israel because they were in the clutches of the Devil. Perhaps if Teresa’s description of a great flame and dreadful voice was accurate, they would have had more of a chance to escape his clutches.

No, my personal devil, whom I have named Rembrandt (different story), does not appear with flames, nor speak in a dreadful voice. He usually presents himself as quite a reasonable, handsome, friendly, and non-threatening fellow. I don’t know how he does it, but even when I have lost my temper and know that I’m not in total control, I will hear him say, “You have escaped my clutches! Ha!”

It’s not the Teresa’s fiery Devil that scares me. It’s the calm, oleaginous, supportive devil who terrifies me! As long as we picture the Devil, or Satan, as did Teresa, we will never learn how to protect ourselves.

I see the key to dealing with the suave devil in Tzitzit…

To Be Continued

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My wife and I met a couple we haven’t seen in more than fourteen years. We, all, were truly happy to see each other, but fourteen years is a huge gap, especially when both couples have been through so much. How do you connect after so many years? How can you quickly review twelve children, six weddings, celebrations, births, deaths, illnesses, and major life events? Children-in-law alone would have consumed hours of conversation.

Then, of course, we were all wary of what should not be discussed. Our joy was tempered by necessary sensitivity to the others’ experiences.

The best the four of us could so was, “You look great. You haven’t aged. Let’s get together. Where do you daven?”

Too bad, because Debbie and I were thrilled to see these friends and didn’t want them to think (not that we have ever been so accused) that we were being polite.

I have a solution: Secret Handshakes.

They say that Freemasons used to recognize each other by scratching each other’s palms while shaking hands. I suggest that we develop an entire system of secret handshakes to identify topics to be avoided, less than forthcoming answers, and the level of desire to reconnect.

The first handshake upon meeting should be measured by number of fingers used: A strong grip would mean, “I really am happy to see you.” Four fingers would convey, “I’m slightly hesitant.” A single finger touch would mean, “Let’s be polite for a few moments and quickly say goodbye for another fourteen years.”

The system will require that both parties hold hands through the entire conversation: “How are the kids?” can be answered with a sharp nail dug into the other’s palm while offering the proper “Wonderful!” A poke will indicate a topic to be avoided. “How are you feeling? I heard you were ill,” will evoke a bone-shattering squeeze. Political queries will require alternating between left and right hands.

We will have to develop an entire language of handshakes that will be required study upon becoming an adult, but, do not lose hope; it can be done!

I suspect that Caleb and Joshua developed a secret handshake to communicate while they were traveling with the other spies. We know that the ten bad guys had their hands full carrying produce of the Land back to the desert. Clearly, Caleb and Joshua wanted to keep their hands free for their secret handshake.

Moshe called his assistant to the side just before he began his mission, “Hosea, I’m adding a letter to your name so that God will protect you from the influence of the Meraglim (spies). Your new name is Joshua. Bye!”

The newly named Joshua looked carefully at his companions. He wanted to know if they were all dangerous, or, if at least one was well-intended. All twelve were considered great people. Caleb and Joshua were perceived as the least accomplished of the twelve. Joshua was looking for a hint from any of others for a partner.

His awesome master, Moshe, had chosen all twelve because of their greatness, and yet, he sensed that something wasn’t kosher. If Moshe could not tell, how could Joshua the student be able to determine whether he had a supportive partner?

“They ascended in the south and HE arrived at Hebron.” (Numbers 13:22) The change from plural to singular implies that only one of them went to Hebron. It was Caleb; he went there to pray at the tomb of the Patriarchs for the strength to resist the conspiracy of his comrades. (Rashi, based on Sotah 34b)

Caleb’s private trip was his secret handshake with Joshua, who was already protected by his new name. “Hey, Caleb! Where are you going?” “I gotta see the Cave of Machpelah,” he answered.

Caleb did not need to travel to Hebron to pray; he went in order to signal to Joshua that the two of them would now have to spy on the spies. At that moment, Caleb and Joshua became partners. They would draw strength from one another.

Caleb immediately understood the significance of Joshua’s new name; the other spies did not. He realized that Joshua would be able to sense the secret handshake, and that, the future leader of Israel, would learn how to pick up on the subtle signals people send. Joshua was waiting for God to save him from the influence of the Meraglim. Moshe could have prayed for his student, he didn’t need to change Hosea’s name. The master wanted the student to become an entirely new person. Joshua picked up on that signal as well, and thus knew that his salvation would not be passive. He was waiting for just that signal.

Even at the moment when, “Moses and Aaron fell on their faces,” “Joshua son of Nun, and Caleb son of Jephunneh, spoke to the entire assembly.” (Verses 5-7) The nation needed signal-senders and signal-readers to lead them into the Land.

Perhaps we do not need secret handshakes as much as enhanced awareness of signals sent and received. We can become signal-senders like Caleb, and signal-readers such as Joshua.

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Ever since Babel we have been wondering about ladders and towers that reach the heavens. The first ladder to heaven didn’t turn out very well. The next one, in Jacob’s dream was awesome, but it was only a dream. The actual ladder does not appear until this week’s portion, smack in the middle of a disaster:

“We shall surely ascend!”(Numbers 13:30) “Even were Moshe to command us to build ladders to heaven, we could do it!” (Rashi)

What a moment to speak about our ability to build a ladder to heaven! (Guilty!!!) Would these people, complaining and crying, be any better than those who worked on the Tower of Babel? These people were as confused as anyone since God’s response to Babel. Did Caleb believe that they were capable of repairing one of the most disastrous sins in history?

Yes, Caleb believed that this moment, when everyone was caught up in fear and sin was the perfect moment for them to build Jacob’s ladder.

A person who can catch himself while in the passion of sin and redirect that passion toward God; he can achieve the spectacular. Caleb presented the people with an opportunity for greatness beyond anything they had achieved, including Revelation and building the Mishkan!

That one moment of passionate rebellion against God was an opportunity to build their ladder, Jacob’s ladder, and repair the sin of the Tower of Babel.

Caleb saw the opportunity for greatness, not despite the sin, but in the sin itself!

Imagine what we could accomplish if we used Caleb’s approach with ourselves. What would happen if husbands and wives understood that the moments of passionate arguments are opportunities to build ladders to heaven? How much would change if we responded to children who are labeled “troublemakers” with Caleb’s approach! I think we would succeed in building Jacob’s ladder in real life, not a dream.

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