Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 13:16, Good Spies, Bad Spies

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 13:16, Good Spies, Bad Spies | 03.20.24

Visuals displayed throughout presentation.

- Good morning, everybody. The week, the end of this week, we celebrate Purim, and most of the focus on Purim is the very up-to-date issue that we Jews face, and that is, out of nowhere comes a slap in the face, and out of nowhere in Purim came this guy Haman who decided he wanted to get rid of the Jews, kill them all. What is interesting is that whereas most of the Persians don’t seem to have been anti-Semitic in this way, when push came to shove, there were quite a lot of them who came out of the woodwork, surprisingly so, and the other aspect of it is that if you look at the end of the Megillah of Esther, you will notice that when Esther and Mordechai institute the idea of Purim as being a basic element in Jewish practical life, the Megillah ends with a famous line that Esther and Mordechai were , that is to say, they were only accepted by the majority, not by everybody, so even in those days, there were renegade Jews, or those Jews who didn’t want to identify, much as there are today, and so, in one sense, this is an eternal problem. It never goes away. It erupts every now and again. Then it dies down.

Then it erupts again, so nothing has changed, in that sense, but the aspect of Purim that I think appeals to me most is the fact that when all is said and done, it’s a comedy. It is a comedy. You have a drunken, boozed-up king who puts on this huge big banquet and gets so many things right in trying to show off who he is and seems to not fully be in control of things and reliant almost entirely on a group of weird politicians around the inner circle, so everybody gets boozed up. He gets boozed up, and he’s drunk, and he calls his wife to come and perform a kind of a striptease in front of everybody, and she refuses, and we don’t know why she refuses. Maybe this is the first example of women’s lib, and anyway, what happens is he loses his temper, and he banishes her, or maybe he executes her. We don’t really know, and then he gets sad and lonely. He doesn’t know what to do, and his advisors advise him to have beauty contest and notice, the advisors are these young men who are zooming ‘round on the capitol having a great nightlife, and they think, you know, there’ll be plenty of pickings if he chooses who he wants, and all these young girls come into town, and they’ve got to go through a year of preparation beforehand, a year of cosmetics I mean, that sounds a little bit exaggerated unless those that came from the countryside were really cavewomen or something, and then, he has to issue a declaration, and his declaration is every man should be the boss of his own house and speak his own language, and so they were all a bunch of wusses, and the women controlled everything, which would’ve probably been a good idea, how incompetent they all were, and then, we’ve got this question of why Mordechai doesn’t want to bow down, which seems a bit exaggerated, but nevertheless, maybe there was something idolatrous.

Maybe there was something political. He’s on the right scene at the right time, and he manages to prevent a coup d'état against the state. These two guys, Bigthan and Teresh, and then, we have the strange argument that Haman puts forward. He says, “These people, these Jews, "they’re not the same as us. "They’ve got different customs, different laws. "They worship different gods. "They’re not the same,” and this is the argument that a stupid king accepts without going into it. He doesn’t even know his own country, his own people at all, and then, just as the crisis is about to happen, then, all of a sudden, Esther comes in, and she manages, through very careful manipulation, to put Haman in a position where he’s going to be relieved, and yet, before that, there’s, if you like, a dramatic break in which Haman comes in to the king one day, and the king turns to him and says, “Who is the person, "if I want to recognise somebody as being very important, "what should I do?” And this comes after he suddenly realises that Mordechai had saved him from the coup d'état previously, and he hadn’t rewarded him in any way. That’s strange too.

Anyway, Haman, thinking he’s referring to him, says, “Yes. "Well, you know, should I would get that person. "I would give him the king’s clothes, "put him on the king’s horse, ride him through the streets,” and he doesn’t realise that what he’s really saying is, “I want to take over from the king,” so naturally enough, when the king sees this, he gets furious, and he says, “Right, so you do this to Mordechai,” and so the tables are turned, and then, we have this interaction with Haman and his wife Zeresh, and notice how the Megillah says “all his loved ones plus Zeresh, his wife,” as if she isn’t really a loved one, and at first, she gives them the advice to get rid of Mordechai, and then, afterwards, when she suddenly realises that he might be in trouble, then she says to him, “You’re screwed, mate. "Nothing’s going to save you,” and so that, if you like, is the historical, the humorous background to a story which is a strange story, and as everybody knows, God’s name isn’t even mentioned in the Megillah, and so theory goes 'cause God works in the background, but nevertheless, this is why it is such a happy occasion, and it’s very difficult to be happy when there’s so many horrible things going on around us, and that’s precisely why we need, in our tradition, some fun days as well as the serious days, and so I wish you all a very, very happy Purim, and try and put all the troubles and all the worries and all the anxieties about, whether you’re in America or in Israel or Britain or wherever you are in the world today, there’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty.

Let’s try and put it aside. Have a good time and be happy. Simcha, joy, is one of the primary emotions that the Torah wishes us to have. Sometimes it’s not possible; sometimes we can, so after that little introduction, let’s get back to business, so we are on Chapter 13 of Numbers, of Devarim. The parashah is called Shlach Lecha, send, send men, and last week, we finished with giving the names of these important men who are being sent, and they’re being sent into the land of Israel, and the question that I raised last week that we’re going to raise again this week is are these spies or are they not? Spies are normally considered to be not very nice people who hide in the background in disguise who then usually betray by going over to the other side sometimes, but anyway, what is the aim of these people being sent to look at the land of Israel? And therefore, I would like you to turn to Verse 17. Verse 17, sorry, Verse 16. Verse 16. These are the names. These are the names of the men, , that Moshe sent, , not to spy the land, but , like a , to go around and have a look, and , and this guy, Hoshea bin Nun, who has always been Moses’s assistant, he was the guy who led the battle against Amalek. Amalek is also associated with Purim, and he led the battle against Amalek, so right from the first year of coming out of Egypt, he was in the forefront, and now his name is being changed.

If you remember, this often happened. Avram’s name was changed from Avram to Avraham, so the He came in, and He is often an abbreviated way of adding God’s name, Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, into a name, so he became Avraham. Sarai became Sarah, with a He in at the end, God is with you, and so He, in Yehoshua, means that God is going to be with Joshua, and clearly hinting at the fact, as we learned last week, when he rushed in to defend Moses, is the heir apparent. Verse 17. Moshe, and Moshe then sent them. , again, the same word, , to tour around the land of Canaan. , and he said to them, “These are my instructions.” . We’re in the south, in the Negev. I want you to go up directly through the Negev, the quickest route. Don’t go 'round. Go straight up. , and go from the desert or the plains of the Negev up to the mountain, the mountains that we will call the mountains of Judea. , in Verse 18, and have a look at the land. My, what’s it like? I want to know the geography. , and I want to know who are the people who are living there? Are they a strong and, by implication, an armed people? Or are they relatively weak? Spread out? Are there few? Is it overpopulated?

Sorry, if it’s underpopulated. If it’s overpopulated. What’s the quality, the agricultural quality of the land that you’re going in, both in terms of agriculture and in terms of habitations? How are they living? , in Verse 19, , the that he’s living in. Is it a good land? Maybe it’s a bad land. What about the cities that he dwells amongst? Are they open, like Bedouin tents? Are they surrounded by walls? Are they armed? Are they defended? And that can be understood in different ways. It can be understood if they’re living out in the open, that means they’re not frightened, and if they’re living in cities, that means they are a bit frightened and have to protect themselves. Verse 20. Is the land fat? It is producing agriculturally good quality products? Or thin? Are there trees? Are there forests? And don’t be frightened. Be strong. And take some samples, examples of the fruit of the land. And this period of time that they’re going in was , at the beginning of the grape festival when the grapes are at their juiciest, so those were the instructions, and the instructions seem harmless enough. We’re going in. We want to know how to plan. We want to prepare in advance. We don’t want to make assumptions. We don’t want to be overconfident. We want to be well prepared and know our enemy, know what they’re up to, know what their strengths are, and know what their weaknesses are, the sort of thing you’d think would be automatic in any state at any time.

Sadly, as we’ve seen, it isn’t always the case, so Verse 21. They went up. They , and they went 'round the land. They , for the wilderness of the Zin in the south. Lebo-hamath, all the way to go to Hamath, and there is a big argument about exactly where Hamath was because that place has different locations around the area, as do many towns that are mentioned in the Bible, and many areas have different locations in practise, and some people, as your English translation will see here, Lebo, the term Lebo, which means to come towards on the way to, some people say is the name of the place. It was called Lebo-hamath. Others would say it was called Hamath, so there is some ambiguity about that. Anyway, they Negeb. They went up from the south, and they came to Hebron. Hebron is the same place as Hebron is today. , and there they were, these people, Ahiman, Sheshai, Talmai. , the children of giants. They were very, very powerful, big guys, so the people living in Hebron were big, and, you know, give you an example of this. Imagine you’re going to Egypt, and you come into Egypt from the Mediterranean. Most of the Egyptians living in the Mediterranean area happened to be of smaller stature. As you go further down and you come towards Ethiopia, you have races there that are huge and are very, very large, or, technically, in the same place or in the same country as it was in those days, not defined as a country, but the same continent, so here you’ve got, in the land of Canaan, as it was, these strong guys with these names.

Now, we don’t know who they were. We don’t know what they were, but at the time they must have known, and besides, look at the next thing: Hebron was , built seven years, before Zoan, which is a famous Egyptian city, and again, there’s an argument as to which city that is. Is it a city near the Nile Delta? Or is it a city up near the cataracts, the place like Elephantine, which where there was a Jewish garrison 500, 600 years before the destruction of Judea, so we’re referencing things that would’ve been familiar to people in those days, so just as Hebron is familiar to us now, wherever Zoan was in Egypt, it was an ancient, ancient city, and Hebron was even more ancient. It’s worthwhile mentioning they’ve been there for a long time, but again, who these guys were, we can only speculate. Anyway, they move up in Verse 23. They come to Nahal Eshcol, to this valley of Eshcol. Now, Eshcol, in itself, is a name of a place, by the implication, and a nahal is normally the term that’s used for a river that dries up in the summer and then suddenly becomes flash full of rain in a flash flood in the rainy season, so that’s a nahal. It doesn’t always flow. There’s a nahal of Eshcol, but Eshcol also happens to mean, happened to mean a cluster, a cluster of grapes, so what came first? The name Eshcol before they took a cluster of grapes? Or the cluster of grapes that they took away?

So , sorry, , they came to Nahal Eshcol, and they cut off , a branch, and in that branch, there was this cluster of grapes, and you will know the symbol of the Israeli Tourist Office is precisely this: two men carrying a cluster of grapes on a pole between them. An , just one, but it was such a big heavy one that they needed to carry it between two people on a pole between, and they took some pomegranates, and they took some figs. Verse 24. , and again they repeat. They called it the Nahal Eshcol, because of the Eshcol B'nai Israel, which the children of Israel cut off, so Nahal Eshcol is a new name they’re giving to this place, clearly because of the Eshcol they took off, and so if you know Levi Eshcol, a prime minister of Israel, got his name when he changed it from, and I can’t remember what he changed it from. Maybe some of you will remember and let me know. Anyway, we know that Ben-Gurion was Green beforehand, and Grün, so he changed that to Ben-Gurion. in Verse 25, they came back at the end of spying the land, at the end of 40 days. Where we have we had 40 days before? Lots of 40 days in terms of the flood, in terms of the the preparations that go on, went on at different stages through the earlier parts of the Torah, through the 40 days here, which are then going to be transposed into 40 years of exile and various other 40s that keep on recurring in the Torah, which indicate that it is not literally necessarily 40, but more than a month.

Anyway, we don’t know the numbers that were used at the time in the near and ancient Middle East because there were so many different ones and different variations. Verse 26. , and they went, and they came back. They went to Moses and Aaron, and all the people are gathered 'round eager to hear , in the wilderness of Haran, and, of course, that takes us back to where they were originally located when they went out, so they now come back, and they give their report, and the question is what kind of report are they going to give? They came back. Verse 26. And they came with their report. They . They show them the fruit of the land. And in Verse 27, they started recounting their experience. , and they said, We went to the land which you had sent us to go and look at. And it’s true. It is flowing with milk and honey. It’s very productive. It’s a wonderful place. Here’s the fruit, and now, in Verse 29, comes the but. But. The people are strong, who live in the land. And the cities are very well fortified. And not only that, but we also saw the children of the giants there, and now, something strange and relevant. Amalek is blocking our way through the south, so they’re in the south.

The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, they live in the mountain area, and the Canaanites are down by the sea and by the river Jordan, so we’ve got three divisions here, interesting divisions. There’s the Amalekites. There are the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites. Hittites come from Turkey, originally, and the Canaanites who are down by the sea. Now, down by the sea, by the Jordan, that sounds a bit like the Philistines or like the Phoenicians. Very strange because we had thought Canaanites were Judea and Samaria, but according to this, they weren’t. They were somewhere down by the coastal plain, so okay for them to claim Tel Aviv; not okay for them to claim Jerusalem. Anyway, what they’re saying is they are very strong. There are many of them. We’ve already had to fight Amalek once. Now we might have to fight Amalek a second time to get through to the Hittites and the Jebusites and everybody there. When the people heard that, they were clearly disturbed, very, very disturbed. And they were an uproar. Wow, we can’t do this. There are too many. There are a whole lot of them. They’re surrounding us on all from the north and the south and the east and the west and all the anti-Semites, every else in the world. We can’t do it. What are we going to do? They said Kalev turned to the people and said, “Don’t worry. ” We can go. We can win. “We can overcome. ” We can if we want to.“

It’s a matter of whether you want to, whether you’re prepared to fight, or whether you’re not prepared to fight and want to give up. It’s all to do with morale. But the others who came up, the others, they said, ” , we can’t do it. “ They’re more in numbers. "There’s so many of them. "They’re stronger,” so here you have the two different reports: the majority report, which says we can’t, the minority report, which says we can. 32, so it seems that the sin or the crime was that in Verse 20:32, . literally means to speak, but it was also used here to mean lies, wrong information. The English translation in the Sefaria says to spread calumnies. That’s a fancy way of saying it, but anyway, so they brought back misinformation about the place they’d been, and they spoke to the children of Israel, and they said, “ "The place that we went through "to go through and to examine "is . "It’s a land that eats up its inhabitants. "It devours people who settle there.” Now, what does that mean? You can take that in one of two lines. You can say that it’s a place where the settlers are, people living there are so powerful, they have so much access to food and for provisions that that makes them strong, and , all the people that we saw there on , they’re big people. They’re strong people, so on the other hand, normally, when you say , a land that consumes its population, you would mean to mean that it devours the population, which is one of the translation that’s given here, and if it devours the population, that means the population can’t be very strong. Must be weak.

Maybe they’re suffering, which contradicts the evidence that there’s plenty to eat and plenty to do, so whatever it is they’re saying is negative, so instead of being positive, it is negative. Negative from the point of view of the children of Israel, but positive about the Canaanites and whoever they met up there, and not only that, not only are they all their citizens are strong, but Nephilim. They’re the Nephilim there, and if you remember, in Genesis, when we talked about the Nephilim, and we talked about fallen angels, and I just talked about them having the possibility of simply meaning a group of people who might indeed have been descended from earlier forms of humans because in memory, in folk memory, there will have been these memories of earlier forms of humanity that existed before Homo sapiens came along, Neanderthals, for example, so maybe it was that. the produce of intermarriage with the Nephilim, but clearly, we’re not talking about fallen angels around here, so Nephilim should not be translated as fallen angels. And we felt in relation to them like grasshoppers. We felt so small. We felt there’s no way we can overcome them. And we were in their eyes. Yeah? How did they know?

Did they hear them having a conversation, as some rabbis want to say in the midrash, they overheard a conversation, or they just projecting how they felt. They felt inadequate because they were only judging by size. They weren’t judging by anything else, so that was their repeated statement time again. So far, only Kalev has stood up to them, but time and time again, they say, “We can’t do it. "They’re too strong. We’re giving up.” Verse Chapter 14, so the morale has been shattered. And the whole community started crying. And they wept through the night, and what happens? They then turn on poor old Moses and Aaron. Verse 2. Everybody, not just the Erev Rav, the minority, but it seems like everybody. And the whole of the congregation, the whole of the Jewish people said, “ We should have died in Egypt, "or , or in the wilderness.”

In Verse 3. You’ve brought us to this land to fall by the sword, and I can imagine at this particular moment there are quite a lot of people in Israel who might well be saying, “Why did we take all the trouble to come to Israel "to be murdered and to be killed and to be raped? "We’d have been better off staying where? "In Ukraine, or frankly, even, "in Europe or in America, if it comes to that. ” Our children and our wives “will be carried off into captivity. ” Let’s go back to Egypt,“ and not only that, in Verse 4, one man said to his neighbour, ” Let’s change the government “ and go back to Egypt,” and once again, poor old Moshe and Aharon, , they fell on their faces in despair. Falling on your face sometimes can be an act of worship. Here, it’s in despair. They felt helpless in the face of the children of Israel. This was a crushing blow. They were leading them out in the hope of getting somewhere nice, coming out of slavery, and now, the first serious sign of trouble, everybody wants to go back. This is a serious problem of morale. Verse 6. Now, Yehoshua bin Nun and Kalev bin Jephunneh, the two of them coming together amongst those who toured the land, they ripped their clothes, the sign of mourning.

This is where the custom we have of ripping one’s clothes symbolically in a case when we lose a close relative. They went into a state of mourning. They said to the children of Israel, “ It’s a wonderful place. "We can make a go of it.” “ If God is on our side, "and we deserve it, , "he will bring us into this land, .” “It’s a land flowing with milk and honey.” This is part of the divine plan. Verse 9. “ Don’t rebel against God.” Clearly, this has been the divine message so far. This has been the message that carried you out of slavery towards the land of Canaan. Don’t rebel. Don’t be frightened of the people who are there. We’ll eat them for lunch. They’re our bread. Their shadow has disappeared from them. That’s to say they are frightened. They are insecure. They may look good. They may be in big cities, but that’s because they’re frightened of what’s on the outside. Look at it from another point of view. If God’s with us, if we feel confident, , don’t fear them, but the people weren’t ready or prepared to listen to the message. in Verse 10, and the whole of the community said, “ Let’s stone them. Let’s kill them.”

They actually claimed, it says . Look at the wording there. All the congregation said, “Stone the lot of them. "Stone Moses and Aaron.” And all of a sudden, something supernatural happens. The cloud of God appears over the tabernacle, and everybody is waiting for some response. Verse 11, still in Chapter 14. And God turns to Moses, and rather like when there was the rebellion we spoke about last week over the food, now he says, “ "How long will these people provoke me? ” And why don’t they trust me? “Why don’t they trust me "with all the amazing things that have happened so far? ” I will smite them with a plague, “and I will dispossess them, disown them, ” and you, Moses, “ , I’ll turn you into a great nation "the way I promised Abraham. "If Abraham could do it, you can do it.” Verse 13. To which Moshe said to God, “ If Egypt were to hear” “that you took these people out of Egypt from them,” “and they will then turn to the people.” Not sure which people. “ They will turn 'round "to the people in Egypt and elsewhere. ” In this people, “and they will have heard, ” that apparently, “eye to eye, you appeared,” and this is on Mount Sinai where everybody was talking about the revelation, “and your clouds has been with them. "You’ve gone before them with a cloud by day "and a pillar of fire by night, "and you’ve taken them out, "and you’ve been involved with them and supported them. "Then they , "if you now slaughter the lot of them, "what are they going to say about you? ” They will have heard your reputation, “God, as being so powerful "to destroy the Egyptians and to bring them out. "What will they say? "They say you couldn’t do it. You’re a faker.”

Verse 16. “You simply weren’t able to bring them out. "You are a limited God "to this land which you swore to give them, "and you slaughtered them in the wilderness,” so interesting. I’m worried about what other people will say, what other people will say about you, God. You’re supposed to be strong and powerful. You are tested by what you manage to achieve, which is a very interesting argument. Is it a rational argument? No, not really because in the same way that you can turn around and say that God has enabled us, as Jews, to survive for longer than almost any other people in an identifiable tradition and an identifiable way of life, and yet, at the same time, you’ve allowed us to be slaughtered and killed and raped and murdered, a Holocaust and all these things. There is no way, in a sense, to make God rational, to treat God as we humans treat ourselves. We have, in a way, to look at God not only as a spiritual experience, which some people have and some people don’t have, but also, as a symbol, and now, therefore, Moses says, “If you now destroy the children of Israel, "you will have no status, no status as the God,” but, you know, the straight answer is if your experience of God is a spiritual one, and it’s not based on whether we succeed or whether we don’t succeed, well, that shouldn’t make any difference, but given the nature of human beings and given how we today are so influenced what public opinion is and what the Internet says and what social networks say, he is, in a sense, saying, “Listen, you better pay attention.”

Now, it doesn’t mean to say you have to listen to them, but you have to pay attention. Verse 18. Surely your whole point is… Sorry, Verse 17. “ Now, please, "may your quality of forbearance "become the dominant feature.” Verse 19. “ You’re slow to get anger. "You can’t easily be provoked,” and again these are qualities that we say of God, but they’re also qualities that we say of ourselves that we wish to emulate. Slow to anger, full of kindness, forgiving sins and mistakes and not holding things against you and visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generation because this is not what we should be doing. “ Please forgive, ” the sin of this people “ because of your great kindness, ” and you’ve forgiven “and carried the people this far out of Egypt.” God says, “I forgive you as you have asked,” and those of you familiar with the liturgy on the day of atonement will know that this phrase keeps on recurring. Just one thing about Verse 18. Remember in Verse 18, we said in the 10 Commandments, , visiting the sins of the fathers to the first generation, the next, and the third generation to those who hate me, but forgiving those who accept me.

This is an adaption of adaptation of that phrase, and what I said about that phrase is that phrase does not mean what it seems to mean, that God actually punishes future generations for past generations. Doesn’t mean that at all. It just means that there are consequences that what one generation, then, how it influences the next generation and how one group of parents influence their children in contrast to another group of parents, but basically, what we are saying here is that however bad the sin or the crime or whatever it is, God forgives, and he doesn’t hold it from one generation to the next to the third generation. That’s just consequence, not punishment. Punishment, we have a principle in the Book of Deuteronomy we will come to that sons don’t die for their fathers, and fathers don’t die for their sons, so anyway, God says, “I am forgiving you.” Verse 21, but at this particular moment, the presence of God, “ I am God, ” and I fill the earth, “and if people don’t want to accept me, "then I need time "for them to come 'round. ” All those people “that saw everything that happened in Egypt "and when we came into the wilderness.” “And they have provoked me 10 times. ” They didn’t listen to my voice. “They keep on rebelling against me. ” 23. They will not see the land.“

They don’t deserve to see the land. They’re not prepared to fight for it. They won’t get it. Only if you’re prepared to fight for something will you get it. Waiting other people to give it to you, waiting for other people to agree with you will not work. You have to fight for what you want. "They will not see land. ” All those who have mistrusted me, “who want to rebel against me, they’re not. "For , my servant Kalev, ” 24, because he had a different spirit.“ He was a man of guts, of spirit. ” He was loyal to me. “ I will bring him ” to the land “ which are coming, ” , and his children will inherit it.“ Doesn’t mention Yehoshua here, but, of course, we know that Yehoshua will be, but meanwhile, , "The Amalekites and the Canaanites "are now in the Emek.” Oh, not down by the sea, but what? Emek Yisrael, somewhere up there, but they’re there. “ Tomorrow turn 'round "and go back towards the wilderness of the Red Sea.” You guys are not going forward. And God says to Moses and Aaron, in Verse 26, “ How long do I have to put up "with this group of people who have no confidence? ” Who are complaining “against me all the time? ” Complaints. “ They’re not happy. "You’re not happy? Too bad. ” Say to them.“ Verse 28. As God says, as God says to you, Just as you said to me, "You don’t want to go in? "You’re not going in? ” In this wilderness, “ your carcasses will fall. "You will die here. "All those of you, from 20 years upwards, ” they complained about me, .

In Verse 30. “You will not come into the land. "Place I chose to put you there. ” Only, “only these two guys are going to go in. ” and your children, “ who you said, ”'Oh, they’ll all be killed,’ “ They’re the ones, this new generation, "a new generation "will know the land "that you have rejected, ” and your carcasses will die.“ "And those will roam in the wilderness "for 40 years,” “ , they will, in a sense, "have to take responsibility for your prostitution, "your faceless faithlessness ” until you all die in the wilderness, “and , for the number of days ” that you toured the land “ for 40 days, ” day for a year, day for a year.“ "You will be stuck for 40 years , "and you will realise what it is not to trust me.” Verse 35. “I am God. "I have spoken, and this is what I’m going to do.” This is where I’m going to stop for today. I look at this, and one part of me says, “Golly, that’s not very nice of God. "Why are you punishing? Why is this God the angry God?” And in one sense, you know, I can understand how Christians like to say, “Our God is an angry God and their God is the God of love,” but the fact of the matter is it says loving God much more than it says fearing God when it comes to the Torah, but nevertheless, I see this not so much as a criticism of God as a criticism of ourselves.

This is who we are. We are humans. We are easily swayed. We are easily led off the tracks. We lose our spirit. We get depressed. We make the wrong decisions, and this is another way of saying don’t make the wrong decisions. Have confidence. Be positive. Look at the good side of life, and that’s what God wants of you. Doesn’t want you to be a lot of wimps and always wants you to have your hand held ‘cause life isn’t like that, and so that’s where I will stop sharing, and I will turn to the questions.

Q&A and Comments

Question and answer number one.

Q: Shelly’s asking me, and this is still about the opening when I talked about Purim, “Couldn’t the people who don’t support Esther and Mordechai be people who didn’t think they were religious enough and didn’t have the right to add on a holiday and make new laws, customs instead of assimilationist Jews?” A: Well, Shelly, that’s a very good question, and a lot of people argue, a lot of commentaries argue that the reason that this crisis came was because so many Jews were assimilating into Persian society and were not that committed, and so that might well be those people, but, on the other hand, I just think about the fact that if you go through the Talmud, you constantly see arguments, disagreements going on all the time. Whereas their disagreements were primarily disagreements, if you like, from within, not from without, but yes, indeed, there were disagreements between the community of Babylon and the community of the land of Israel. 'Course, we don’t know exactly what dates these were. People like to say they know the dates, but we don’t, and it’s possible that this took place before King Cyrus allowed the Jews to go back, except, of course, if we’re talking about Persia, that’s after King Cyrus, so it’d have to be a bit later, but it’s an interesting speculation, and you make a good point.

Q: “How could Moshe tell the spies to take grapes? Wouldn’t that be stealing, even though God promised them the land? Midrashically, Abraham didn’t like Lot’s shepherds"letting the flocks graze anywhere where God promised Abraham the land,"and Lot seemed to be his heir.” A: Well, that’s an excellent point, an excellent point. I suppose you could say it was theft. I suppose you might argue that they felt that they had Moses’ approval to do it. It was a necessary means to an end, but nevertheless, that’s a good point, again, so you’re on a roll, Shelly.

“ Hi. ” Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik was Levi Eshcol’s name.“ Thank you. Ah, Skolnik. Shkolnik. Shkolnik. Eshcol, so very similar. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Ah, it’s good to have you around for that information. Thank you. Arlene. Thank you again, Levi Shkolnik. That’s the second one. Thank you very much, Arlene, for getting back to me on that. Shelly: "In Verse 28, "the word for is used , "not . "The usual word for but must mean something.” Well, also means zero. It’s quite true, but, but it could also mean you lot are . You’re a bunch of zeros.

Q: Shelly, again: “Where is your Yehoshua in Verse 30 when Kalev is telling the other spies they can conquer land?” A: Well, as you all have seen as we went on, he isn’t mentioned there, but he’s mentioned twice afterwards, so why was he left out there? Possibly because Joshua already has the imprimatur of Moses, so you expect him to say something. Kalev is remarkable. Although he’s supposed to be related to Miriam, nevertheless, he’s not somebody, he’s more in akin with the rest of the other spies, so to speak, and the other tourists rather than he is members of the family, so that’s possibly why, but it’s speculation.

Richard says, “I’ve heard a teaching that 10 for a minyan "comes from these passages in Numbers, "but it says the whole community, not just 10. "Community, therefore, could mean all, not 10.” No, because it’s talking about , this community, and is, if you like, a specific word that is used instead of , so because it’s an unusual word that isn’t normally used, that’s why they use that as the basis for the minyan. “Avraham, et cetera, Hebron. "Did they not remember this?” That’s an excellent point, Stan. Maybe they’d forgotten it, and maybe it was buried in history, or maybe they, as they were dead, this wasn’t, if you like, much help in telling, indicating to them whether they would have an easy job conquering the land or not.

Q: Philip says, “Is there a difference between in the ? is exclusively the congregation of Israel?” A: Well, yes, that’s right, and that goes back to the question of the minyan. You’ve got , which is the community used several times, used in the previously. You’ve got . You’ve got . You’ve got different ways, many words, of using them in different contexts differently to make a special point, so in one sense, the is when you are united, and could be when you’re not united, but that, again, is one of the various midrashim, and there are plenty of other explanations.

Carla, “Thank you for explaining Purim.” Faith Friedman. “Story sounds like a guide for Jews "to sense they are a people "and have to stand up for themselves "as a minority in a strange land. "No God, Bible, or priest, "just as a people and a nation of itself.” Yes, I think that is a valid point, except, of course, God does play an important part because running through this is that you need morale. You need a spiritual dimension as well as a physical dimension, so physically, nationally, this is absolutely right. On the other hand, the fact that God is not mentioned in the Megillah might indicate that we have to take steps.

Now, it’s interesting that when Mordechai turns ‘round to Esther and says to Esther, “Look, I want you to go to the king,” and she says, “I can’t. "I haven’t been called for 30 days, "and if I go without being invited, "and if he doesn’t give me his golden sceptre, "he’s going to kill me. "That’s the end of my life.” Mordechai turns around and says, “Listen, , "if you keep quiet, this moment.” “The Jews will be saved "from some other place, some other how.” Now, is that a reference to God, as some people say? Or is it saying, you know, “If not you, we’ll find somebody else. "If you’re not going to support us, "if America won’t support us, "we’ll find somebody else to support us,” so don’t give up hope. Don’t rely totally on just one source of salvation.

Thank you, and that ends it for today, so happy Purim, everybody, and hope to see you next week.