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Moses instructs the scouts (or in Hebrew "spies") to go first to the Negev and then proceed up into the hill country. The scouts are to determine the quality of the land, the strength of the people inhabiting the land, and whether or not these inhabitants live in fortified cities or out in the open. Moses also asks the scouts to bring back samples of the native fruits. The scouts return after forty days. They carry a cluster of grapes so large that it takes two men to lift it. They also bring back figs and pomegranates. The scouts report that the land is indeed very good and describe it as flowing with milk and honey. But they also report that the people who inhabit the land are giants, who live in well-fortified cities. One spy, Caleb, dissents and shouts above the others: "Let us by all means go up…ki yachol nuchal lah, for we shall surely overcome it." (Numbers 13:30) The ten spies retort that conquest is impossible: "We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them." (Numbers 13:33).
Despite Joshua and Caleb's calls for courage, the Israelite people give up, and for this they are punished with forty more years of wandering in the wilderness until a new, confident generation would arise. (Numbers 14: 26–35) Thus the first biblical spy story.
The most powerful words in the parashat for me are those of Caleb: Ki yachol nuchal lah, "For we shall surely overcome it." These words can also be translated as "We Shall Overcome," the title of the signature song of the American Civil Rights Movement. That song reminded those involved in the struggle that they were not grasshoppers but human beings, capable of changing their own destiny, able to attract friends and allies to their cause, empowered to change age-old discrimination.
These words were phrased differently by Theodor Herzl when he stated, "If you will it, it is no dream." Zionist organizers and pioneers, farmers and fighters, Israeli youth and statesmen, immigrants from one hundred countries, and refugees from the Holocaust: None of them saw themselves as grasshoppers. They had a collective confidence—a sense that they could "surely overcome it." The modern State of Israel remains one of the most remarkable achievements of the human spirit.
At BAJC, we are preparing for our Annual Meeting on July 6 at which we will reflect on the past year and look forward to the next. This year much was accomplished. Our membership coffee klatches and subsequent Board retreat have generated a lot of positive ideas. In the coming fiscal year, we will be faced with some apparent obstacles – the economy, a search for a spiritual leader, the size of our building, enhancing our religious school. But, I am confident that we will meet each challenge by repeating Caleb's words, Ki yachol nuchal lah, "For we shall surely overcome it," because these words have the power to help us achieve more that we thought we could.
These words express faith that we are not grasshoppers but human beings created in God's image and that God is with us in our struggles to continuously improve as individuals and as nations. They also remind us that in our personal and communal struggles, we can draw on divine energy to lift us higher than we thought we could ever go. Ki yachol nuchal lah.
B’shalom,
Marty
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