Shelach Lecha, Wild Things and Faith
“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed
their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible
claws.” (Maurice Sendak, Where the
Wild Things Are)
And ten of the spies sent by Moses to scout the land report:
“The land that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are men of
great size; we saw the giants and the children of giants, and we looked like
grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Numbers
13:32-33)
Max, the hero of Sendak’s book, overcomes his fears, and in
particular his anger, by imagining that he is their ruler, that he is their
master. Imagination is a powerful
tool. Within it we discover the secret
of our success. Within it are the sparks
of creativity. This is exactly the
wisdom of Judaism’s insights about the yetzer hara, often translated as the
evil inclination. Within this we
discover, for example, desire and drive.
These traits can lead us toward passion, commitment and love, or lust.
They can move us toward invention and achievement on the one hand, or jealousy
and vengeance on the other. The
creative spirit hovers between these extremes.
We learn as well that imagination can conspire against us,
creating fear in our hearts. That is
part of the lesson of Maurice Sendak’s brilliant book. The line between fear and hope is thin. It is also the lesson of this week’s
portion. It is hard to believe that there
were in fact giants who ruled the land of Israel. The evidence of this truth are the Torah’s words:
we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves.
Faith is about how we perceive ourselves. Ten of the spies lacked faith in their assigned
task and in their ability to achieve their destined goal. This is why the people are condemned to
wander for forty years before returning to this crossroad once again.
Only Joshua and Caleb believed that the people would
succeed. They scouted the same land and
saw the same sights and yet they returned with a message of hope. Curiously the details of their report are not
found in the Torah. We only read: “Caleb
hushed the people before Moses and said, ‘Let us by all means go up, and we
shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.’” (Numbers 13:
30) Perhaps they, like Max, mastered
their emotions, summoned their faith and overcame their fears. Perhaps the men of the land were indeed
giants, but Joshua and Caleb nonetheless did not see themselves as
grasshoppers.
Although Hebrew offers the term emunah for faith, the
tradition more often uses yirah and in particular yirat hashamayim. This phrase can be translated as fear of
heaven or as I prefer, awe. Yet the lesson
remains. Fear and awe are near to one another. Faith is a matter of how we regard heaven, of
what we believe our relationship is to God, of how we imagine ourselves in
regard to the Almighty.
It is true God is a giant by comparison. And yet this does not mean we must see
ourselves as puny grasshoppers.
Fear, and faith, are a matter of how we see ourselves.