Bat Kol International, Weekly Torah Nuggets
Parashat Shelach Lekha | Numbers 13:1–15:41
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise Me, and how long will they not trust Me with all the signs that I have done in their midst?” (Num. 14:11, Robert Alter translation).
As we read passages of Scripture do we not ask ourselves; “What is this saying to me, today, with the experiences that I am undergoing at this moment? And when we do this, do we on occasion despise or distrust God; do we on occasion forget or miss the signs that God has done for us in our lives?
Twelve emissaries or scouts went out to view the Promised Land, ten returned with a negative report and two reporting that the land “does indeed flow with milk and honey” (Num. 13:27). How is it that different people view things so differently. They, of course, are looking at the event from a different lens, a different heart space, a different mindset.
Dr. Edith Eva Egar, in her book The Choice*, a memoir of surviving Auschwitz, asks the question that our emissaries could have asked themselves and that we could ask ourselves in any difficult situation. She says, “Survivors don’t have time to ask, ‘Why me?’ For survivors the only relevant question is, ‘What now?’”
Reflection:
1. When I approach the possibilities of tomorrow, do I consider the difficulties or the opportunities that lie ahead?
2. What does it take to ask the question “What now”, rather than dwell on the question “Why me?”
Julien Fradette, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
*Eger, Edith Eva, The Choice, Embrace the Possible, Scribner, 2017, p. 9
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4