Miryam's Space

…it’s how small we tell ourselves we are in comparison. We live in challenging times, the truth is for sale – Lies are peddled today for profit or power. And fear is the emotion that sells. And fear becomes hate.

This week’s portion is Sh’lach, meaning “send” and begins with the choosing and sending of scouts to tour the Promised land. This venture will end in catastrophe. The scouts famously bring back giant fruit, they have to carry it between poles it’s so big, and explain that there be giants there and even mythical creatures, Nephilim who fell from the sky. 10 of the 12 scouts send out words -slanders Yotziu dibat ha-aretz some are true, some false, to intentionally create terror. They lie to try to convince the people they have only one option”, they explain – to go back to Egypt, the real land of milk and honey., the land will eat us!

וַיֹּצִ֜יאוּ דִּבַּ֤ת הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ … אֶ֣רֶץ אֹכֶ֤לֶת יוֹשְׁבֶ֙יהָ֙ הִ֔וא

וַנְּהִ֤י בְעֵינֵ֙ינוּ֙ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֔ים וְכֵ֥ן הָיִ֖ינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶֽם׃

we were in our eyes like grasshoppers,
and thus were we in their eyes!

What’s so wrong with feeling overwhelmed, feeling inadequate, or like a grasshopper in your own eyes? And what’s the a subtle lie in the verse –we cannot know how we appear in someone else’s eyes! Perhaps these are the most damaging lies -the ones we tell to ourselves -about ourselves! “I’m not good enough, I am worthless” . According to Sforno, the Israelites thought G8d hated them for their sins, and so were bringing them to die. Perhaps these former slaves have internalized the hateful words of their brutal slave masters.

So how can we counter these feelings? How remember we are children of the Divine, and how hold on to the moments of clarity and inspiration?

A song from proverbs 3 Ira Levin

When you need more than your own understanding, lean on the power of love

The wisdom you’ll hold is worth ten times the gold that some sell their souls for in vain

and a Peace that surpasses every thrill on this plane

is heard when your soul calls your name.

When you experience a calling, when you’re true to that – your soul calls your name – To abandon that calling is another thing the spies were guilty of. The Israelites should have known that G8d was with them: they lived the miracles: redemption at the sea and revelation at Sinai. What a gift!. What do you do with that inspiration? You want to hold it, to let it guide your life. In Sh’lach instead, words inspire fear, and fear leads to violence. Soon the whole community threatened to pelt Joshua and Caleb with stones (Numbers 14:10)

a. acting from fear

b. by mixing lies with truth

c. by forgetting that God had been with them, redeeming them against all the odds

d. by belittling themselves

violence and chaos errupt. A few verses later, the scouts have worked the people up to a mob that plans to stone Joshua and Caleb.

June is Pride month, where the LGBTQ+ community declare, we are in the Divine image, God is with us, we have heard our soul call our names. Before covid, while I was still teaching full time at Brookdale, the campus one night went on full security alert – a suicide had occurred and the person trans.n I had another trans student who was homeless when their parents kicked them out on the street. The suicide ideation rate is upwards of 50%-80%, it is a matter of life and death.

U’vacharta b’chayim, choose Life, Deuteronomy pleads.

How can we remember in this crazy world that G8d is with us?

Perhaps. That’s what our tradition is for (show talit)

A story: Tainted wheat

There once was a Queen, beloved by her people. One day her chief advisor, Menachem approached her with a very worried expression.

What’s wrong, the Queen asked? Your majesty, it’s the wheat. It has been infected with a mold – it has spread to every field in the kingdom.

The subjects will have no choice to eat bread made from this wheat or they will starve, but when they eat it, they will lose their minds, they will see visions, they will not what is real and what is imagined.

Don’t we have an emergency reserve stored up” asked the Queen. Yes, replied Menachem, enough to feed one person.

What should the Queen do? Feed herself, and watch all her subjects go insane?

Menachem, You shall eat the wheat. But your majesty, you will not know what is right or wrong. Ah yes, but I will look to you Menachem, and you shall give me a sign, and I will know when I am veering from the right path.

What is that symbol, you ask.

When the whole world’s gone insane, our tradition brings us back to center.

The tzitzit reminds us like a string around our fingers. The last verses of this weeks reading is about these reminders.  When we see them we are reminded we live in a crazy world, and there is a deeper truth.

And don’t mess with grasshoppers, when they face drought the transform into….locusts – together they are a force to contend with!