RABBI YONI LIPSCHITZ

Parshat Shelach

Mizrachi Shul represented by Rabbi Yoni Lipschitz

Panic and fear broke out among Bnei Yisrael. The Talmud (Taanis 29a) teaches that the night that the spies came back from their mission and brought the whole nation to raise their voice and weep, was the night of Tisha B’Av. That night, says the Talmud, G-d said: “You are weeping for no reason, but I will establish this night as a night of weeping for generations.”

The 9^th of Av in the Jewish calendar has been a day of Jewish tragedy throughout history. In the year 1313 BCE, the 12 spies sent by Moshe returned with negative reports. On the 9^th of AV in 423 BCE was the destruction of the first Beit Hamigdash and on the very same day in 69 CE the destruction of the second.

In 133 CE, Jewish rebels were brutally butchered in the final battle at Betar. In 1492, in Spain, Queen Isabella and her husband Ferdinand ordered that the Jews be banished from that country. The edict of expulsion was signed on March 31, 1492.

On this day in 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, effectively catapulting the First World War into motion.

What exactly was the sin of the spies that caused such an effect? The root cause of the sin of the spies is the very same root cause of all our troubles today.

When the spies entered the Land of Israel they got caught up and distracted by the physical reality which they saw in the land, but they failed to remember that Hashem took them out of Egypt and provided for their every need and will continue to do so. Only two of the spies remembered this.

Rabbi Shimshon Pincus provides interesting perspective on the baseless crying; the psychology of the human being is that we take the good things that happen in our lives for granted but when things don’t go according to our plans, we get angry and blame others or Hashem.