Israel’s historical responsibility is to face “giants.”

Rabbi Moshe Pitchon

After their exodus from Egypt and experiences at Mount Sinai, the people of Israel arrived at Kadesh (located southwest of today’s kibbutz Sedeh Boqer in the Negev desert). Chapters 13 and 14 of the Book of Bamidbar (Numbers) tell us that there God gave the command:

'Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel;

After 40 days the scouts returned with somewhat discouraging reports:

...the people that dwell in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified and very great; and moreover, we saw the children of Anak there.

“All we know about 'Anak' is that he was large and strong, an exemplar of the well-nourished and well-trained urban “men of name”- a giant in the eyes of peasants.”

Robert B. Coote: The Bible's First History....

Based on the different competing explanations in the TaNaKh itself, the history of the peoples of the area, and the archaeological data, scholars have questioned the historicity of the Scriptural story.

The arguments of modern research, without being conclusive, are refreshing. From a theological point of view, it is inconceivable that the God of Israel would want the destruction of a single life, much more so of whole nations, including innocent children. From a moral point of view, it is equally inconceivable that the “children of Israel” would be intoxicated by an ISIL’s type drive urging them to engage in genocidal destruction and cruelty. Or, a Hamas-type of disregard for innocent populations to evict Israel from their midst.

The true objective of the story of the “spies” in Numbers 13 is Israel and the problem of faith. Israel must do what is demanded from her, not merely what is humanly reasonable. In the Numbers story, Israel’s historical responsibility is to face “giants.”

Tellingly, this story generated during Israel’s birth period has been premonitory. After hundreds of years of exile, new generations have gradually come back to the land of their ancestors. They returned not as conquering foreigners unified in a single entity. They came as individuals and groups, gradually transforming the land so its inhabitants would be allowed to move closer to the realization of their potential.

The present State of Israel probably mirrors closely what happened at the time of Israel’s beginnings in the Land of Israel. There was a process of transformation, which in all possibilities included, like today, bloody localized confrontations between a culture that glorifies death and Israel’s culture, with its optimistic outlook on life and its concern for all life, human life in particular.

The book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) opens by describing how Moses gathered the Israelites on the plains of Moab after conquering the Jordan’s east bank.

Standing near Mount Nebo, Moses recounted the events of the past to the new cohort of Israelites approaching the Promised Land.

This generation was quite different from the one that had left Egypt. They had no firsthand experience with the Exodus or the desert tribulations.

Moses’s account of the previous events centers on the missed opportunities and the repercussions of fear and disobedience.

Not surprisingly, this section of the Torah is read before Tisha B’Av, the annual commemoration of a multitude of calamities in Jewish history, most notably the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem.

The causes of the destruction of the Temples—traditionally linked to baseless hatred and the people’s internal corruption—parallel the spiritual mistakes that Moses warned about in Devarim (literally, “remarks”).

The message of Moses here is clear. Building a stable and hopeful future requires facing communal failings and honestly recounting Israel’s past. The whole book of Devarim is dedicated to setting the groundwork for this human project.

Devarim is profoundly worried that social inequality and idolatry are undermining societal unity, so it revises the previous rules in Shemot (Exodus) to provide more rights to the poor and women.

Probably no other book of the Torah would be more relevant, addressing the Jewish people’s present current situation and speaking to a generation that had not witnessed the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and the consistent rejection of those who cannot see history other than as a zero-sum dynamic and cannot turn failures into the kind of meaning on which the future is built.

'Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel;

After 40 days the scouts returned with somewhat discouraging reports:

...the people that dwell in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified and very great; and moreover, we saw the children of Anak there.

“All we know about 'Anak' is that he was large and strong, an exemplar of the well-nourished and well-trained urban “men of name”- a giant in the eyes of peasants.”

Robert B. Coote: The Bible's First History....