Shelach Lecha
“And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried: and the people wept that night” Numbers 14:1
In parashat Shelach Lecha we encounter one of those seminal moments of the children of Israel’s sojourn in the desert. Moses has sent twelve men to scout out the Land of Israel ahead of the Children of Israel’s imminent entry into the land. Ten of the twelve return with a damaging report of oversized fruit and oversized people.
The Children of Israel believe these reports, though one can imagine Caleb and Joshua jumping up and down in the background waving their hands and trying to shout them down. But whatever the acrobatics of the two who presented a positive report of a land flowing with milk and honey, the people believe the negative portrayal. In response, they cry through the night.
The day that the scouts come back is the eve of Tishah b’Av, the Ninth of Av — the saddest day in the Jewish calendar — and the night they cry is Tishah b’Av itself. In a famous midrash, God makes the statement: “You are currently crying over nothing — you wait and see in the generations to come — I will give you something to cry about” (Bemidbar Rabbah 16:20).
Now here is the awesome thing: all commentators agree that no women were among those weeping and begging to not go into the land. The women, we are told, “have a love for the Land”. Therefore, the men of that generation aged between 20 and 60 were punished not only by having to wander the desert aimlessly for the next 38 years (along with everyone else); they were further punished by getting exactly what they asked for — they do not enter the land.
In every rebellion and tantrum the children of Israel have while in the desert, acts that are products of despair and a lack of faith, not once do the women participate. Conversely, no women were punished. The women stood on the threshold of the Promised Land, mothers and grandmothers, hand in hand, with their children and grandchildren, awaiting to be part of a reward not a punishment.
Those women carried with them not just the experiences of slavery, leaving Egypt and the wilderness; they carried with them an unwavering belief in God and a love of the Land.
REBBETZIN ILANA EPSTEIN