Parshat Shlach: The Time for Grasshoppers Is Over

The tragedy of the Meraglim did not begin with a lie. That is part of what makes the story so frightening.

When the spies returned from Eretz Yisrael, much of what they said was factually true. The land was powerful. The cities were fortified. The inhabitants were formidable. They had seen real danger, and they reported it. But then the report changed. It became interpretation. It became fear and smelled of defeat.

The turning point comes near the end of their words:

וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם

“We were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”

Famously, the Kotzker Rebbe is said to have asked: it is bad enough that you were like grasshoppers in your own eyes — but what business is it of yours what you were in their eyes?

That question exposes the depth of the failure. The spies did not merely fear the giants. They allowed the imagined gaze of the giants to define them. They looked at themselves through the eyes of the people they were supposed to confront. Once that happened, the battle was already lost.

A person can face danger and still have courage. A nation can recognize difficulty and still move forward. But when a person begins to see himself through the contempt of his opponent, his strength collapses from within. The problem is no longer the enemy’s size. The problem is his own smallness.

This is why the report of the Meraglim was so destructive. They did not simply say, “The challenge is great.” They said, “We are small.” They did not merely describe giants. They turned the hostile eyes of others into the mirror in which they saw themselves.

That weakness led quickly to despair. If we are grasshoppers, then we cannot enter the Land: we should never have left Egypt. That is how spiritual collapse works. It begins with fear, but it ends by rewriting the entire past.

Faith does not mean there are no giants.
Faith means the giants are not the measure of who we are.

The lesson is painfully current.

The Jewish people today also live under the gaze of others. Every action is judged. Every act of self-defense is placed before the court of world opinion, often by people who showed little moral clarity when Jewish blood was spilled, Jewish families were shattered, and Jewish hostages were dragged into darkness.

Of course, we must act with morality. Torah never gives us permission to become cruel. But morality is one thing, and dependence on the approval of hostile nations is another. There is a deep difference between asking, “What does Hashem demand of us?” and asking, “How will those who hate us describe us?”

The Meraglim teach us that the second question can become poisonous.

A recent example was the uproar over Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the detained flotilla activists. These were not innocent tourists who wandered into the wrong harbor. They came as part of a deliberate political provocation, to embarrass Israel and feed the world another image of Jewish guilt. They came to shout “Free Palestine,” to portray Israel as cruel, with little concern for Jewish blood, Jewish hostages, Jewish families, and Jewish survival.

Then Ben-Gvir appeared before them with an Israeli flag. Hatikvah was played. Their chants were stopped. They were made to understand that they had not arrived in a powerless country, but in the sovereign State of Israel.

A proud nation does not collapse in shame because anti-Israel activists discovered that Israel has a flag, an anthem, and a backbone

Was it everyone’s style? No. Was it delicate? No. Could one debate the optics or the tone? Certainly. But the wave of Jewish outrage that followed was itself revealing. We were told that all decent Jews should feel embarrassed. We were told that this was shameful, disgraceful, reprehensible, “not the Jewish way.”

Well, boo hoo.

What exactly was the great moral catastrophe? They were not beaten nor tortured. They were not innocent bystanders being humiliated for no reason. They came to provoke the Jewish state, and they were forced to confront the fact that the Jewish state is not required to bow its head before them.

If they felt humiliated, cry me a river.

A proud nation does not collapse in shame because anti-Israel activists discovered that Israel has a flag, an anthem, and a backbone. A proud nation does not apologize for refusing to let hostile provocateurs turn its ports, soldiers, and sovereignty into theater for the world’s condemnation. A proud nation can insist on humane conduct and still say, without apology, that those who come to weaken us, accuse us, and deny our rights have no claim on our national self-respect.

This is not cruelty. This is not moral blindness.
This is the refusal to live as grasshoppers.

The same issue appears, in a different and more painful way, inside Israeli society itself. Since October 7, tens of thousands of reserve soldiers, including many religious men,  have left homes, wives, children, jobs, and ordinary life to carry the burden of defending the Jewish people. Families have lived with uncertainty, fear, exhaustion, grief, and absence. The country sees this. The country feels this. And the country has largely run out of patience with a situation in which so many demand to play no role in national defense while still expecting the rest of society to carry the military, economic, and emotional burden.

But here too, the deeper problem is fear.

The leaders of Haredi society have been afraid to engage in a serious, honest conversation with the army and the government about how Haredim can participate in national service while remaining fully faithful to Torah, mitzvos, kashrus, tefillah, and their own religious standards. Everyone knows that there are thousands of young men who are not truly learning full-time. Everyone knows that the Haredi community is growing rapidly and will be an increasingly large part of Israel’s future. Everyone knows that something must change.

Yet the conversation is often trapped in old fears: if we enter the army, we will be destroyed; if we participate, our children will be pulled away; if we compromise at all, everything will collapse. These fears may have roots in real concerns, but fear cannot be allowed to become the permanent policy of a growing part of the Jewish people.

This is not a call to empty the batei midrash. A Jewish state should have room for genuine talmidei chachamim whose lives are fully dedicated to Torah. Their learning is precious, and it is part of the strength of Klal Yisrael. But that cannot justify a system in which everyone is treated as if he is learning day and night, when everyone knows that many are not. Courage and vision would mean building serious frameworks for those who are not full-time scholars — frameworks that allow them to serve the nation without being asked to abandon who they are.

It is a question of will. It is a question of leadership. It is a question of whether we are capable of thinking larger than the fears of the past.

This too is part of the failure of the Meraglim. They saw danger and concluded that the future was impossible. They took a real concern and turned it into paralysis. But Jewish leadership cannot be built on paralysis. It must be built on faith, responsibility, and courage.

This is especially important in our generation

For many centuries, the Jew in Golus often had no choice but to keep his head down. He lived under foreign rule, dependent on the goodwill of others, often tolerated but rarely secure. The instinct to be careful, quiet, and cautious was not cowardice. Often, it was survival.

But we are not living in that same historical moment.

We have not yet reached the final redemption. Mashiach has not yet come. The world is still broken, Jewish suffering has not disappeared, and we still await the day when Hashem’s presence will be fully revealed. But neither are we the powerless Jew of the dark galus. Hashem has granted us the unbelievable privilege of living in a time of Jewish return, Jewish sovereignty, Jewish defense, and Jewish rebuilding. We have the State of Israel. We have a strong army. We have a flourishing world of Torah. We have seen Jewish life rise again and return to its Land with strength, creativity, courage, and faith.

That is what I have called the Isaac Covenant: the stage of Jewish history in which we are no longer merely surviving as wandering strangers, but beginning to live again as a rooted people in our Land. Yitzchak Avinu does not wander in the same way as Yaakov. He digs wells. He plants. He remains in the Land. He represents the covenant of rootedness, continuity, and strength within Eretz Yisrael.

That covenant brings responsibility. It demands that we stop thinking like fugitives when Hashem has given us the tools of nationhood. It demands that we stop apologizing for existing, stop apologizing for defending ourselves, and stop apologizing for having a flag, an army, and a country.

No, this does not mean triumphalism. It does not mean that every policy is correct or that every leader is beyond criticism. It does not mean that Jewish power is automatically holy. Power must be guided by Torah, by wisdom, by restraint, and by moral seriousness.

But it does mean that Jewish weakness is not a virtue. Fear is not humility. Self-erasure is not morality. And the habit of seeing ourselves through the contempt of others is not the Jewish way.

Against the collapse of the Meraglim stood Calev. He did not deny the facts. He did not pretend there were no giants. He said:

עָלֹה נַעֲלֶה וְיָרַשְׁנוּ אֹתָהּ כִּי יָכוֹל נוּכַל לָהּ

“We shall surely go up and inherit it, for we can surely do it.”

Calev did not speak the language of fantasy. He spoke the language of faith. Faith does not mean that there are no giants. Faith means that the giants are not the measure of who we are.

The Jewish people need morality, but we also need pride. We need compassion, but we also need courage. We need to care deeply about what Hashem demands of us, but we must stop trembling before the eyes of those who despise us.

A Jew may not be cruel. But a Jew may stand tall. A Jewish state may not abandon its conscience. But it also may not abandon its backbone.

The time for grasshoppers is over

We are not yet at the end of history. We still await the final redemption. But Hashem has brought us into a new chapter, and we must have the courage to live in it. We must act with dignity, strength, and faith. We must defend Jewish life without apology. We must honor those who carry the burden. We must demand responsibility from all parts of the nation. And above all, we must stop asking, “How are we in their eyes?”

The only eyes that can define us are the eyes of Hashem.

Parshas Beha’aloscha: Bringing Kedusha Home

There is a striking shift in Sefer Bamidbar.

For much of the beginning of the sefer, everything appears ordered, dignified, and full of promise. Klal Yisrael has left Mitzrayim, received the Torah at Har Sinai, survived the debacle of the Golden Calf, and built the Mishkan. Each shevet has been counted and has taken its place around the Mishkan with its own flag and renewed sense of purpose. The Leviim are counted and prepared for their sacred role. The trumpets sound, the camp begins to travel, and the nation seems ready to move forward toward its future in Eretz Yisrael.

Then come the upside-down nuns, framing the familiar words of “Vayehi Binsoa Ha’Aron,” and suddenly the tone changes. The journey that had begun with such promise starts to unravel. The people complain. They grumble. They long for the watermelons and onions they imagine enjoying in the “good old days” of Mitzrayim. Moshe Rabbeinu reaches a point of anguish and cries out that he can no longer carry the burden alone. The people gorge themselves on quail, and many die. Soon afterward comes the painful episode of Miriam, followed in the next parsha by the tragedy of the Meraglim.

What happened?

On the surface, the complaints are about food, discomfort, and the hardships of travel. But the Torah often asks us to listen beneath the surface. When complaints become constant, there is usually something deeper taking place. The words people use are not always the whole story. Sometimes the frustration we hear is only the outer layer of a more painful sense of loss.

One of the major transitions taking place in these parshios is the replacement of the Bechoros by the Leviim. The Torah states this explicitly in Parshas Beha’aloscha:

כִּי לִי כׇל־בְּכוֹר בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה בְּיוֹם הַכֹּתִי כׇל־בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם הִקְדַּשְׁתִּי אֹתָם לִי׃
וָאֶקַּח אֶת־הַלְוִיִּם תַּחַת כׇּל־בְּכוֹר בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל׃

“For every firstborn among Bnei Yisrael is Mine, among man and animal; on the day I struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, I sanctified them to Me. And I took the Leviim in place of every firstborn among Bnei Yisrael.”

Originally, the Bechoros carried a special kedusha. They were sanctified at the time of Yetzias Mitzrayim, when Hashem struck the firstborn of Egypt and spared the firstborn of Klal Yisrael. Before the Mishkan was established, the Bechoros were associated with bringing korbanos and serving Hashem in a unique way. They were, in a sense, the spiritual representatives within each family.

That model is very significant. Kedusha was not meant to be limited to one central institution or to one special group. Every family was meant to have within it a representative of holiness. Every home was meant to include someone who embodied a higher calling. The sacred was not meant to live only in a distant sanctuary. It was meant to be woven into family life itself.

But then came the Eigel HaZahav.

Rashi explains that the Bechoros had originally belonged to Hashem, but “טעו בעגל” — they erred with the Eigel. At the moment of crisis, when Moshe Rabbeinu called out, “Mi LaHashem Elai — whoever is for Hashem, come to me,” it was Shevet Levi that stepped forward. The Bechoros, who had been entrusted with a special spiritual role, did not rise to the moment in the same way. From that point onward, the Leviim took their place.

The Sforno adds a powerful layer. He explains that the firstborn of Mitzrayim were struck because they were the most honored members of society. They were the ones others looked up to, and therefore the responsibility of the nation rested upon them. They should have protested. They should have led. They should have used their stature to resist evil.

Although Am Yisrael had also sunk to the forty-ninth level of tumah, to the point that the angels famously wondered why they were more worthy of being saved than the Egyptians, the Bechoros of Klal Yisrael were nevertheless spared and sanctified. But that sanctity came with responsibility. According to the Sforno, they were initially made holy in a way that would have removed them from ordinary work entirely, much like the firstborn animal is restricted from ordinary use. At the same time, Hashem commanded that they be redeemed, allowing them to return to ordinary life.

In other words, the Bechor is redeemed, but not simply ordinary. He is padui, redeemed, and yet still marked by kedusha. He returns to the world of family life, business, and daily human activity, but he is meant to carry a memory of holiness into that world. His kedusha is not erased. It is transformed into a mission.

This is a remarkable idea. The original ideal was not that the holy person should be detached from the family. It was that every family should have holiness within it. Every home should contain someone whose life reminds the family that a Jewish home is not merely a private household. It is a place where Hashem’s presence can dwell.

After the Eigel, however, that model changed. The Bechoros lost their role, and the Leviim were chosen in their place.

This may help us understand the emotional undercurrent of Sefer Bamidbar. The Bechoros did not merely lose an honor; they lost a mission. A role that had once belonged inside every family was now transferred to one shevet. Avodas Hashem became more centralized. The Mishkan stood at the center, and the Leviim surrounded it as its guardians and servants.

Of course, this was necessary. After the failure of the Eigel, Klal Yisrael needed structure, boundaries, and a more protected form of avodah. But something was also lost. The ideal had been that every home should contain its own point of kedusha, its own living reminder that Jewish life is meant to be elevated from within.

Perhaps this is part of what lies beneath the grumbling in Beha’aloscha. The people complain about this and about that, but underneath there is a deeper discomfort. They are struggling with displacement. They are struggling with a new reality in which some have been moved aside, others elevated, and the original dream has been diminished.

The tragedy is that instead of asking, “What did we lose, and how can we grow from it?” they asked, “Why were we pushed away?” Instead of reflecting on what led to the change, they complained about the change itself.

That mistake is painfully human. When we lose a position, an opportunity, a role, or a sense of importance, our first instinct is often to focus on the pain of displacement. We wonder why someone else was chosen. We feel overlooked. We feel the sting of no longer being needed in the same way. But the deeper question is not only, “Why did this happen to me?” The deeper question is, “What is Hashem asking of me now?”

The story of the Bechoros and Leviim is not only about ancient roles in the desert. It is about the ongoing challenge of bringing kedusha into real life. The formal centers of holiness are essential: the shul, the beis midrash, the yeshiva, the places where Torah and tefillah are protected and nurtured. But they were never meant to replace the Jewish home.

The sacred was not meant to live only in a distant sanctuary. It was meant to be woven into family life itself

The home remains the place where kedusha is tested most honestly. It is in the home that patience is practiced. It is in the home that children learn what matters. It is in the home that Shabbos is felt, not merely observed. It is in the home that Torah becomes tone, warmth, discipline, language, and memory. A person may be inspired in shul, but the question is whether that inspiration comes home with him.

This is one of the beautiful messages that emerges from the idea of the Bechoros. They represented kedusha inside the family circle. They symbolized the possibility that every Jewish home could have someone who carries the mission, someone who reminds the family that life is meant to be lifted.

In a broader sense, that responsibility does not belong only to a literal firstborn. Every person can become that presence in a home. Every parent, child, sibling, or grandparent can be the one who brings more patience, more Torah, more dignity, more emunah, and more sensitivity into the family.

Moshe Rabbeinu expresses this ideal powerfully later in the parsha. When Eldad and Meidad prophesy in the camp, Yehoshua is disturbed. But Moshe responds, “Would that the entire people of Hashem could be prophets.” Moshe does not want holiness to remain limited to the few. His dream is that the spirit of Hashem should rest upon everyone.

That is the ultimate vision: not a Judaism where kedusha is confined to official spaces and official people, but a Judaism where the presence of Hashem is felt throughout the camp, and especially in the home.

A few parshiyot earlier, in the vision of a blessed future of Parshas Bechukosai, the Torah described this dream with the words:

וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי בְּתוֹכְכֶם — “I will walk among you.”

Walking together is not about reaching a destination. It is like taking a stroll after the chulent. It is about closeness, companionship, and a life in which Hashem is not distant, but present.

That remains our avodah.

The Mishkan stood in the middle of the camp. But the goal was always that its light should reach every home

We may not have the Mishkan today. We may not have the Leviim singing in the Beis Hamikdash. We may not fully understand how the roles of Leviim and Bechoros will be restored in the future. But we do know this: the dream of kedusha in the home has never disappeared.

A Jewish home can be a place of holiness. A Shabbos table can be a place of avodah. A conversation can be a place of Torah. A parent’s patience, a child’s respect, a word of encouragement, a moment of restraint — these too are ways of bringing Hashem into the camp.

The journey of Klal Yisrael in the midbar reminds us that spiritual greatness is not only measured by what happens at the center. It is also measured by what happens around it, in the tents, in the families, and in the ordinary spaces of life.

The Mishkan stood in the middle of the camp.

But the goal was always that its light should reach every home.

 

Printed in the Jewish Press  and the Queens Jewish Link, June 5, 2026