podcast #18 Shlach Lecha

In this podcast, they discuss the ambiguity of the story of the spies in the Bible and the importance of truth. They explore the idea that speech can create reality and how our attitude and words shape our perception of the world. They also touch on the power of words in dementia patients and the responsibility we have in choosing our words carefully. The discussion concludes with the suggestion that if our words cause pain, they may not be the truth, and that we should strive to speak words that bring life and positivity. So, shalom, shalom everyone. Podcast number 18. 18, good number. It is a good number. It's a good number, that's right. Chai. Chai. Chai. Podcast Chai. On an incredible, incredible parasha. Very dramatic parasha. Parashat Shelach Lecha. The spies and this incredible story. And shlomo, shalom. Shalom Lecha. This is an amazing parasha. Because it's full of ambiguity, Lecha. And people love mysteries. You buy books of mysteries. What's the story here with the spies? They were deceptive, telling lies, telling the truth. Did Moshe send them? Did God send them? Did the people send them? What's the story here? It's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. All these great questions. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's not really clear who gave the order, as we say in Hebrew. Only because in the book of Deuteronomy, they recount, Moshe recounts the story of the spies as he's standing before a whole new generation about to enter the Promised Land and tells them about the story of the spies. And he, so let's make some order here. Let's put things in order. Here in our parasha, in the book of Numbers, it sounds like God instructed Moshe to gather 12 leaders, one from each tribe, and go out to scout the land. Moshe then gives them instructions, which God did not instruct. And he asked them to bring information, which is what they did. This may have been not such a great idea. But then, in the book of Deuteronomy, when the story is told again, Moshe says that the people, the children of Israel, they asked, as they approached the Negev desert, they asked to send the spies, the scouts, to scout the land, to bring in some information. And Moshe thought it was a good idea, and sent them on their way. And the rest is history. So, the second story makes a lot more sense, because why would God, why on earth would God send scouts? Like, what, if they didn't like the land, they would say, Ah, Moshe, let's look for another place. This is way too scary. So, you're right, it's very ambiguous, it's not really clear. Sure, and a major question for me is, were the 10 spies who were the pessimists, were they telling the truth? Or, were the other two, Kalev and Yofaneh, and Joshua, were they kind of telling the truth? Where does the truth lie here? And you say something really insightful in your drashah, and I'm going to read this passage, because there's a lot of wisdom. You write that, about truth, I think our lives would be much easier, clearer, more serene, and the burden lighter if we stuck to the truth. Because the truth is simple and unvarnished. I don't pretend to do so myself yet, when and if I do, you will know, because I will be mostly silent. So, Elisha, I have a personal question. I myself am not a truth-teller. I'm a cheerleader. I have four kids, 17 grandchildren, and two wonderful little great-granddaughters. And when they do a drawing, Elisha, when my grandchildren do a drawing, I tell them that it is wonderful and beautiful, even if it's not. I am a cheerleader. I have a wonderful daughter-in-law, whom I dearly love, and she is a truth-teller. She tells her kids as it is. She has absolute credibility. And she really dislikes cheerleading. What the heck, Elisha? What do we do in this world? Tell the truth and maybe injure people? Be a cheerleader, and then we have no respect for the truth and no credibility? And you yourself are ambiguous because you say that when and if I do tell the truth, I will be silent. So, you tell the truth in your head, balerb, as they say, and then sometimes not speak it? Why? So, I think the idea of being silent is not that I'll keep the truth to myself. If I knew what the truth was. But rather, silent because on the most part, we don't really know what the truth is. And there are some beautiful anecdotes that the sages actually put forth vis-à-vis the truth. For example, there's one of the biggest disputes between Shammai and Hillel around the beauty of the bride. According to Halakha, which we know follows the house of Hillel, when you come to a wedding, you have to say to the bride, you are absolutely beautiful. You're gorgeous. You're beautiful. But Shammai says, what do you mean? What if she isn't? What? Lie? Maybe be quiet and not say anything. And Hillel says, No, you've got to say the bride is beautiful. Now, does Hillel recommend lying? Not at all. I think Hillel is kind of telling us the bride is beautiful. Period. If you don't see it, then you don't see the truth. But go ahead, you're going to say. Yes, because you solve the dilemma in this dress shop. A little later on, you say four amazing words. Speech can create reality. If you look at the bride, really look at the bride, and you say that the bride is beautiful, the bride becomes beautiful. Speech can create reality. Right. Right. Right. And so, right. That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of the same idea, the same truth, if you like, since we're talking about truth here, is that indeed, it's all in the eye of the beholder. All of it. So, what is truth? If it's in the eye of the beholder, then whatever we say, that becomes indeed our truth. And Hillel, going back to the bride story, Hillel is telling us beauty, beautifying, especially the bride on her special day, that's the truth. It has nothing to do with does she look like the women in the magazines? Does she look like a supermodel? That's totally irrelevant. That's not where beauty lies. Beauty lies in a whole different domain. So, if you don't see a bride on her wedding day as a beautiful being, there's a real problem with you. Absolutely. Shifting direction a little bit, Elisa, I was struck by something that I looked up in preparing for our podcast. So, 3,000 years ago, we have the spies who come back and bring information, and maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. They report seeing Anakim, giants, but when Yahshua meets the Bnei Yisrael across the Jordan, they go to Jericho, they find a bunch of scared scaredy-cats inside the wall, and there are no giants at all. So, were they lying? Were they telling the truth? What's the deal? What's the deal with it? I was astonished to look up something. 3,000 years after the spies come back with I believe were true reports, they reported what they saw. October 5th, 1973, that's almost 50 years ago. You remember that well, and so do I. Never will forget it. And we have spies in Egypt. This is well known. And this just came out now, and the archives were released 50 years later. And the spies in Egypt informed the head of military intelligence, head of the army intelligence, the Egyptians are going to attack tomorrow. And he takes this piece of information, Elisha, and he sits on it. He doesn't show it to the government, to anybody. He doesn't show it to the Chief of Staff. He doesn't show it to the Prime Minister. And 2 p.m. on October 6th, the Egyptians attack, and we are not ready. Had we had those precious 24 hours, we could have mobilized the troops and been a lot, a lot more ready. So, you have a report of spies. In this case, not acted on with terrible, terrible consequences, and we're feeling the consequences to this day. Truth is important in military intelligence and in life. But you need to act on it. Right. And it was a complicated situation in the sense that it was what we all came to call the conception. There was a conception following the Six-Day War that we're invincible, and that the Arabs don't stand a chance, and they're not going to start a new war. So, we, our mind was already made up. So, even when they did hear the news, the report from the spies in Egypt, the mind could not see it as truth, but rather as hysteria. As hysteria, for example. And that's a difficult one. It's not easy to mobilize a whole country on Yom Kippur. To mobilize a country, that means you have to cancel the fast on the holiest day of the year. And everybody believes we're invincible, so why would the government if the government did call up the reserve army and a war would have been averted? This government could have been accused to this very day for betraying the Jewish value of Yom Kippur because of hysteria, because of someone's fanaticism. There would be consequences to that, too. So, it's easy for us today, in retrospect, to, we know now what the truth was, we know now what should have really happened, but at the time I don't envy Golda Meir sitting here with the spies in the story. When they come back with their report, and you say correctly, their report on what they saw. Their sin, by the way, their downfall was when they gave an interpretation and they said we can't, we don't stand a chance. That's already their interpretation. But their actual factual report was correct. So, what do you do? Do you say, oh wow, you're right, we're really not prepared for this. So, here's where I think the sin is. Two of our sons, maybe three, were involved in military intelligence in field units, out in the field for years in career army. Their job was to gather information, facts, and not interpret or process, bring back the facts. And the people in charge of policy and strategy, they process it. They make decisions. The spies that were sent, the 12 spies, they were not ordinary run-of-the-mill soldiers. They were leaders. They were head of tribes. So their job was to gather information, but as leaders it was also their job to set policy. And the policy that 10 of them set was very dark and pessimistic. And we know, in hindsight, was wrong. And something interesting happened the other day, Elisha, on Saturday night, that is relevant to this Parsha. It's amazing how the Torah is so up-to-date, 3,000 years later. Elisha, our young soccer players, under 19, under 20, beat Brazil. Are you aware of this? Beat Brazil in the last minutes of injury time with a goal, Elisha, by Turjaman, that was from the movies. You can't believe it when you see this. He zigzags and manages to evade two defenders and puts the ball in the net. 3-2. Israel over Brazil. Who would believe it? I stopped watching, Elisha, because I thought it was too painful to watch Brazil beat us. And I turn on the television later and won. What's the story here? What's it related to the Parsha? The secret of these young men, apart from their wonderful young men, is the coach. The name of the coach is Ofer Hayim, former soccer player, long-time coach, Graham. And he instilled in them belief. He was a cheerleader, Elisha. He didn't tell them the truth. Listen, you guys, you can't stand a chance against Brazil because they're already making millions of dollars in Europe, these young men. Do your best and we'll try to lose by a couple of goals. From the beginning, they believed. And that's what led them. They were known as a team who never gave up. And they won several games in the last minutes. So, belief. This is a story of belief. The two of the Spies who came back, they saw the same thing, they said, believe. You have to believe. We can do it. And as you said, speech creates reality. And Ofer Hayim instilled belief in these young men and that belief turned into reality. There's a life lesson here. Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. It's a great example. That's a beautiful analogy with our young soccer team. And so, it teaches us also something else about how speech creates reality. It's not just because when you say something, it becomes fact. That's somewhat obvious, although we don't often live accordingly, but it's easy to fathom. But we also know that the way our body responds to reality changes with our attitude. So, if we adopt a certain positive attitude, a go-for-it kind of attitude, our reality will be a positive and go-for-it attitude. That also sounds pretty simple. Most of us don't live that way most of our lives. So, it's a huge lesson to learn. There's a whole branch of psychology, Alicia, called positive psychology. And it's simply about that. By being positive and optimistic, we really do make our bodies healthier, rather than being pessimistic or being realistic. Optimism is healthy. Right. And it brings up a question. Is there such a thing as being realistic? There's no realistic. Realistic is it follows your attitude. Whatever your attitude is, reality will follow that. And there's a beautiful in the Gemara, in the Talmud, there's a beautiful idea of it suggests that evil God cannot stop someone who has a strong will. And if that someone has a strong will to do evil, God will give him that go-ahead. If a person has a strong will to do good, God will give him the power to perform that too. I want to go back to what you said about speech and reality. Alicia, I'm a fanatic in listening to podcasts. And one of my favorite podcasts is BBC. And they have a program called Crowd Science. And it's really neat. People call in questions that they have. Popular questions about things in science. And then they bring real answers from real scientists. And just a few moments ago, I finished listening to Monday's Crowd Science. And it was about Dementia and Memory and Speech. And the finding that they brought was fascinating. And there's a lesson here for us, I think, related to people. And there are so many, and growing numbers, of people with Dementia and Alzheimer's. In Dementia, of all sorts, we initially lose memory. We lose the ability to recall things, even what happened yesterday, what we had for breakfast. And our speech remains. People with Dementia, and you may know this from counseling, people with Dementia don't recall, but they're still able to speak. And apparently the reason is we used to think that speech is in the left part of our brain. And it turns out that speech is controlled by the whole brain, and a whole network of connected pieces. Because speech is so crucial to human beings, it's the basis of our society, how we communicate. And it's pervasive in the brain. So even when part of the brain is damaged, other parts can take over and we can still speak. At some point in Dementia, people with Dementia lose, often lose the ability to speak. And then when we speak to them and they can't respond, we stop speaking to them. And that's a mistake. That's a mistake it turns out. Because it turns out that they do hear us, most of them, they do understand, and they have an internal conversation, they have internal speech. They are speaking to themselves and processing what we're saying in their minds, but they physically can't speak it out in spoken words. Because of the Dementia, that physical part is not there, but the brain is still talking to itself. And I think there's a real lesson here for people who are elderly, that whatever their ability to respond, we need to continue to talk to them. I had a close friend who had brain damage to her husband, and she played music and spoke to him every single day for a very long time. And she's pretty sure that he was listening, that he was able to hear. Yeah, that's very interesting. That's very interesting and very powerful. Especially in Jewish tradition, we've mentioned that a few times already, that speech is the cornerstone of creation. And the world was created through speech. It has so much power. And we just read last week's parasha with Nuriam's speech about Moshe and about his Kushite wife and how the speech got her into real trouble with leprosy, etc. Speech is powerful, creates reality, and we have to take full responsibility for our speech. And then if I can add to what you just said now, when a person is with dementia, to continue talking to the person and talking lovingly, talking with encouragement, talking positively and not in any demeaning fashion. Absolutely. For me personally, Elisha, I'm a creature of words as an educator. So I write articles and books and speak words. I have a group tomorrow coming from China to learn about innovation in Israel. And words are crucial to me because until I can speak the words, I don't really understand things. So for me, reality occurs when I am able to frame the reality in terms of language. Until that happens, things seem to me to be very, very foggy. That may be personal, but maybe not. Maybe other people too frame reality in terms of how they define it in words, in tangible words. I think you just touched on a deeply spiritual, I'll use the word, truth. The power of words to solidify reality. At any given moment, there are infinite possibilities of reality. And one of the ways of reality choosing one path over another is when we give it words and we choose a certain word over another possible word. And the minute we choose a certain word, we are solidifying you call it, foggy, or something like that. I think the reason why it's foggy is not just because it's like not just because we're in a haze, but rather because that's exactly what it's like. Before you say the word, reality could take many different directions right now. I.e., it's foggy. Moshe goes into the mist, where G-d is. G-d is in the mist. Lots of possibilities there. Once we choose a certain word, sentence, we solidify reality. Now it can no longer be infinite options. It'll be the option that we just solidified. That's indeed the power of speech. In Hebrew, the word for word is teyvah. It's like the ark of Noah. There's a flood, a sea, and there's one object floating on the sea. It's called a teyvah. So a word is just like a teyvah. It's like in all the infinite possibilities, one word is chosen and it becomes the floating reality out of many other possible realities who become obsolete. So Elisha, we're living in, I think, a really dangerous time because the world is flooded with words. It used to be that words were created by newspapers and journalists and people whom we had credibility in. Today, in Channel One, the official radio, they broadcast little slogans incessantly. Raka utot mitavot. Only the facts speak on their program. It's not exactly true because they have very firm opinions and a lot of opinions, not just fact. But again, getting back to the question we opened with, Elisha, the crucial importance of truth and the incredible harm, suffering, and pain that you can cause by telling the truth, like to the bride. She's really not very good looking. What do we do with this, Elisha, the respect for truth, the crucial importance of truth, and refraining from causing pain to other people when we tell them the truth? So then maybe that goes back to what we said earlier, that if it causes pain, is it indeed the truth? Meaning, we think it's the truth, and we have to say it because we want to be brutally honest, but there's a question mark here. If it causes pain to someone, I'm a firm believer that God stands for goodness. You know, God is benevolent and good, and when things are not good, it's mostly because we are unable to see the goodness. So, when we see a bride, if she's Beit Hillel, or St. Bethjamine, she is beautiful. It's unfortunate that you don't see it. It's unfortunate that you think the truth is she's not. But you are the problem here, not the bride. So, what if whenever we say something bad, evil, hurtful, what if we took it as an axiom, that that is probably not true. And only when we find a way to word something which gives more life force, gives a boost of energy, turns everything into goodness, that is a signal that we've spoken the truth. That's a good solution. I'm going to remember that. But it's related to something else. We just have to be really careful from flattery. If we knowingly lie, for the sake of flattery, or for the sake of whatever, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about if we say good words, but we don't really mean it, we're not telling the truth. Absolutely true. Last Friday, I sadly had to attend a funeral relative of Sharona's cousin. It was very sad. At burial grounds, often the burial place has a sign Chesed Ve'emet. Which I think captures the dilemma that we're talking about. Chesed Ve'emet comes from Jacob, Yaakov, who asks his son Yosef to please take me back to be buried not in Egypt, but to be buried in the Holy Land. And he does this asking it out of truth, promise, but also out of love. Love and kindness. Chesed Ve'emet. Why in a burial ground? Why in a cemetery? Because with the dead, you deal with them in truth, but also in loving kindness in the final act. And this, what you said just captures it. You have truth as a core value, but always accompanied by Chesed, by loving kindness. Truth alone can be a terrible sword. Lack of truth of course is much worse. Truth and loving kindness together, that seems to be the approach. I wish more of us would recall that. Yes. And my own take away from our conversation today is that is that indeed, what counts as truth? If something is hurtful, even though some people may say, yes, but that was the truth. Was it indeed the truth? I'm really wondering about that, and I'm going to have to think about that further because my own internal jury is still out on that one. Wise words, and I'm going to refer that to my own internal jury as well in future. Thank you for that. So, thank you all for listening, and we hope you have a wonderful week with a lot of good positive, a lot of positivity, and a lot of life-enhancing words that we can say to ourselves as well as to one another. And as usual, let us know what you think. We're really, really curious. So, Shlomo, Todah Ravah. Todah Ravah. Shabbat Shalom, everyone. Shabbat Shalom.