Jake's Speech

In my Torah portion God sends twelve spies, one from each of the tribes of Jacob or Israel into the land of Canaan to scout out the land.  The spies bring back a cluster of grapes which was so large that two men had to carry it on a frame. Ten of the spies return with the report that the natives are giants and they can't possibly win against them in a war.  Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, come back with the report that the land is perfectly fine and if they have faith in God there is nothing to be afraid of.  The rest of the Israelites, unhappy with the opinion of Joshua and Caleb, threaten to stone them, but God's presence intervened to protect them.  Because of their lack of faith in God, the ten spies died of a plague.  The punishment for the rest of the Israelites was that they would wander in the wilderness for forty extra years, until every one of the slave generation died out, except for Joshua and Caleb.

In my haftarah, those forty years have passed, and the Israelites are preparing to conquer the land of Canaan.  Two spies are sent into Jericho and the king of Jericho finds out.  They went to the home of a woman named Rehab to avoid the king's soldiers.  The king demanded that she send the men out but she led the soldiers away from her house and sent the spies in the opposite direction.  As a reward for saving the spies she was given a red string to put in her window to distinguish her from the rest of the inhabitants of Jericho.  When the Israelites came through Jericho to conquer it they destroyed everything in their path, except Rehab's house and family.

The Israeli Tourism organization uses the image of the two men carrying a single cluster of grapes on a frame in everything they produce.  Every employee has to wear a badge with that picture, every poster, every travel brochure and every advertisement carries that image.  It seems ironic to me that a deed that was performed by two of the spies who were so faithless, became immortalized like that.

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words.  But the Jewish point of view is that a text is worth much more than a thousand different interpretations. 

Israel's neighbors believed in gods they could see.  The God of the Israelites could not be seen but was known through actions and words.  It was very difficult for life-long idol worshipers to accept a God they could not see.  Even hundreds of years after the Torah, people still felt the need for a God they could see. The most obvious example is Christianity which offers its believers a human image of God.  But Joshua and Caleb were able to keep their faith in a God they couldn’t see.

Images can limit ideas.  Sometimes, for example, if you see a movie before your read the book, the images of the movie get placed in your mind so that when you read the book, they can limit your visualization of the text.  If you read the book first, however, your imagination can run wild and sometimes the images are even more creative than in the film. 

Judaism is one of the oldest western civilizations to survive as an identifiable group.  Judaism came up with the very revolutionary idea that God couldn’t be seen and that the text or words were all we needed to get to know god.  A text can be interpreted in unlimited ways but once you see a picture or image of something, it is really hard to replace it with another interpretation in your mind. Perhaps that is how the Jews have had the creative inspiration to reinvent new interpretations of the texts and therefore keep Judaism adapting to new situations.

The prohibition against images in the Torah has led to many and more varied interpretations.  Perhaps Joshua and Caleb were able to return with a positive, optimistic report because they weren’t limited by any physical images.  Instead, maybe they let their imaginations run wild so that they were able to think of lots of different possibilities for conquering the land.  And in each generation after, other leaders have appeared to reinterpret the texts of our heritage so that our people could face each new challenge presented.  

A God you can’t see is a God who gives its believers unlimited potential.  We probably will never know for sure what happened in biblical times but for two thousand years now, rabbis and scholars have come up with their own interpretations, and each new understanding reinforces the strength of the Jewish people.  As I celebrate becoming a bar mitzvah on this Sabbath day, I accept the responsibility to be part of that chain of interpretations that adds to the health and strength of my people.