In this week’s Torah portion, parashat Sh’lach L’cha, a group of scouts are sent out to do some reconnaissance for the Jewish People, to see with their own eyes what the Promised Land looks like; to explore, in Moses’s words, “what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the land in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (Numbers 13:18-20)

Twelve spies go out and return with their findings. Ten of them offer a rather pessimistic report. They bring back—as instructed—some of the fruit, a cluster of grapes so gigantic that two men are required to carry it. But while they admit that the land indeed flows with “milk and honey,” it also contains formidable foes. As they put it: “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” And then they add something peculiar: “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size… and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Numbers 13:33)

The Rabbis of the midrash imagine God’s reaction to such a statement as follows: “I take no objection to your saying ‘we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves,’ but I take offense when you say, ‘so we must have looked to them.’  How do you know how I made you look to them?  Perhaps you appeared to them as angels?” (Numbers Rabbah 16:11)

So much of our experience of the world is a matter of perception. How we see the world and how we imagine that others see us is far from objective. One of the lessons of this week’s Torah portion is this important truth: while so much of the world really does flow with milk and honey, we too often focus on the challenges and the darkness, the threats and the worries. While certainly not encouraging us to be pollyannaish, our parasha reminds us to look for the silver linings, the opportunities amidst the challenges. It asks us to imagine what might be in a more hopeful fashion. And then, perhaps most importantly, our tradition asks us to imagine what we can do to help make that hopeful vision a reality for ourselves, our community, and our world.

Let us never see ourselves as grasshoppers but rather as God’s partners in making the world a better place. Nothing could be bigger, more gigantic than that.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Yoshi