Shelach - Grasshopper Hearts, Giant Lies

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This is my Bar Mitzvah Parsha.

Maybe that’s why the story of the Miraglim hits harder.

It's personal.

Read it and watch me bleed.

How could the Miraglim speak Lashon Hara about the land? They were big people, respected people. Where did that come from?

Lashon Hara is a reflection of what kind of person you are.

It's not just the words themselves; it's about the person you become, the life you embrace.

Language as Culture

Rabbi Matis Weinberg writes in his 'Frameworks' that language is a essential part of culture.

Each language has within it not just words, but a way the words are spoken that adds context and feeling.

A native will speak the language with more context than a foreigner does.

Even if the foreigner speaks the language fluently, they will not have fully embraced the nuance of the culture.

The bad speech itself should be called Lashon Ra. This simply means bad speech.

But that's not the words we use.

Lashon Hara connotes a sense of being part of a type of culture.

It is the language of a group that subscribes to a way of feeling and thinking that is bursting at its seams with badness.

It is the ‘Language of Evil.’

This is what you embrace when you speak Lashon Hara.

Like saying "finna" on the South Side or "fuhgeddaboudit" in New York.

Using certain words, in certain ways tags you as a card-carrying member of a community, a culture.

Speaking Lashon Hara tags you as a member of the culture of evil, born of fear, a feeder of hate and rage, and resentment sitting on a slow boil ready to spill over any moment.

Frame of Evil

So what frame of mind were the Miraglim in that they embraced this culture of evil?

These were holy people, who gave it all up in a fit of rage and invective, spewing venom like a red spitting cobra.

Psychology has long understood the chain of emotions that lead to anger, rage, resentment, and embracing a worldview of hate.

I believe the Torah teaches this to us in this story.

It answers the question “What would cause one to speak the language of evil.”

Pain or perceived threat triggers fear.

Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to rage.

Unresolved anger evolves into hatred.

Hate is born from ignorance and perception of threat rather than reality.

And resentment is the low simmering rage that fuels every villain’s plan real or imagined, allowing for the worst atrocities and acts perpetrated on our fellow man.

It is the justification for Lashon Hara.

What is Lashon Hara but the spreading of a perceived threat narrative as if one can control and manage the world around him?

What triggers the fear of pain is anxiety that something bad will happen.

And with that, we are back to the source, the kernel of everything.

Bitachon.

Bitachon Is Always And Only The Answer

Shaar Habitachon teaches that one who trusts Hashem has Menuchas Hanefesh, inner calm, and peace of mind.

This means no anxiety.

Anxiety is the fabrication of a mind that thinks it still has control in this world and still thinks that there are others with power aside from Hashem who is the Kol Yachol.

Without Bitachon, anxiety is rampant, and the threat of things going wrong or the potential to cause pain abounds.

Without Bitachon the chain reaction begins.

Anxiety and stress leads to fear, however unreal, fear leads to anger, anger to rage, hate, and resentment.

Resentment fills you like septic shock and infects every fiber of your being.

Anxiety then turns you into a beast, an alien being, divorced from reality in a world that cannot exist alongside Hashem.

Evil itself can only manifest itself where there is resentment.

Evil is the intended change effected by a bad actor who believes the world has wronged him in some way and must take matters into his own hands.

His mind is so corrupted by a perceived threat, and obsessed with what he believes was stolen from him, that he justifies everything.

He stops at nothing to get his way. Narcissism at its most pernicious.

Gaivah, haughtiness, self-preservation, or more often self-aggrandizement seize him like a parasite that burst forth from the abyss, changing and morphing him.

A culture of evil develops around him, like the nazis, or the communists, forming a mob of seething raging hateful people.

And the language they speak drips with venom and bile.

All this is because he has forgotten that Hashem is the one in control.

The minute he took that for himself, Hashem took His hashgacha away, allowing him to tumble down this dark spiral.

When you embrace Bitachon, and let Hashem in, you prevent this whole circuit from starting.

A friend of mine use to say. “you know the saying quit while you’re ahead? Well, its ok to quit while you’re behind too.”

Even if you slip, you can still stop.

How do we know the Miraglim lost their Bitachon?

The spies fell down this dark hole in their interaction with the giants.

The pasuk states. “And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of ῾Anaq who come of the Nefilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

Upon their retelling, they admitted, "In our own sight we looked like grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."

The Miraglim were fearful and viewed themselves as small.

They forgot that there is nothing bigger than Hashem.

And when they saw themselves that way, weak and frozen in fear, it caused others to see them that way.

The seed that morphed and evolved into Dibas Haaretz.

They lost their Bitachon, and they became small, and they dragged Klal Yisroel down with them.

Speaking Lashon Hara.

This was not born at that moment. The Miraglim brought this fear and anxiety with them.

They added it themselves.

Seforno teaches that "the giants viewed them like grasshoppers, or even less significant. They did not bother to harm us as they did not think we represented a threat to them."

They were not even a threat at all.

The giants would have left them alone. But these Miraglim let their irrational fear take over, and guide their actions.

They forgot that Hashem is bigger than giants.

Nice vort, but we are not done.

This next bit is the part that will get me in trouble.

If you are not ready to face hard truths, stop reading here.

Take the dvar above and move on with your life. Say it at your Shabbos table then forget it ever happened.

What comes next should be behind a paywall but I'm living on the edge today. Time to take some risks on my birthday.

This next part hits very close to home, like a baseball bat to the brain.

The Miraglim Today

There is a very special sefer called Kol HaTor. It was written by the Talmud of the Vilna Gaon Rav Hillel Rivlin of Shklov.

Like many uncomfortable truths, this Sefer was left to fade into obscurity.

No one learning it, no one remembering it was even there.

The Sefer Kol Hator discusses the end times, and how the world will look in the days preceding Moshiach.

And there he writes something earth-shattering.

Don't kill the messenger, I am just sharing the Vilna Gaon’s Torah.

He says that the leaders of the Jewish people in that generation will be just like the Miraglim from the Midbar.

They will have the same failings, and the Nisyonos will follow the same patterns.

You need to understand the Miraglim were big people.

Not clowns or lowlifes. Big people, but distracted.

Distracted by fear.

Living lives according to Torah, but without Bitachon.

It is not my place to point the finger at anyone. But there are easy tells that this failure has taken over our Frum world.

Schools don't teach Bitachon today.

Many don’t live with it burned in their hearts and minds like a brand that can never be erased.

Like they did before the war when the simplest yid had Emunah and Bitachon.

There were issues then, but the tribalism and fear in our community today have risen to sickening levels.

We laugh at liberals for all their infighting, for eating their own, yet we do the same.

When we happen upon a Yid who lives, dresses, and looks slightly different than us instead of embracing a fellow Neshama we shut them out. Mishugoyim, Shkatzim.

Spewing vitriol like “He’s off the D, don't talk to him ever". Yes, treat him like a leper.

Saying “we need to be responsible and not let them spend time together” when the kid started wearing sweatshirts on Shabbos afternoon, even though he’s more emotionally healthy and has a better relationship with his parents than many wearing a black hat.

I’m not saying don’t be careful, but the visceral reaction, the fear that bubbles up, spreads like a toxic mold over everything we hold dear.

Schools don't accept, and camps kick out based on a tale whispered in secret, a gossip, a slander. All because of fear.

Fearful leaders, terrified to make a stand to actually lead, because like the Miraglim they have no Bitachon.

If Chazal were around today, asking their questions, they would have been kicked out and ostracized along with the rest of the shattered neshamos out there.

There is no room for people unafraid to be close to Hashem.

We are terrified of exposure to technology and in our fear, we miss the fact that it is everywhere.

Like the network of sewage pipes flowing beneath the city carrying waste not away, but towards every home.

And we keep our head in the sand, pretending like it’s just going to go away.

“Oh my gosh, Rachmana Litzlan, that’ll never happen to my frum son”

This is not to say everyone is like this. But there is enough to keep the river of refuse flowing.

it is not only the Frum with this issue. Every community in the Jewish world has people like this.

The goyish world has tons of these.

The entire world is awash in the stench of tribalism and fear-based living.

But you would expect our community to have a little more guts.

A little more trust in the One Above to guide us through this swamp of a world.

Alas, no, we are Miralgim.

And afraid, and so self-absorbed that we would let our entire nation implode with anger and rage.

We did it then.

We are doing it now.

It is sad.

It is what is keeping Moshiach at bay.

Why isn’t Bitachon taught in schools?

Whatever the reasons they give you, the real answer is that fear is the only life we know.

If Bitachon were mainstreamed, we wouldn't live in fear anymore.

And a population that doesn’t fear is difficult to control.

I don't think it is a conspiracy . More that it’s a testament to the destructive nature of having no Bitachon.

Lashon Hara - A Perfect Tool

Lashon Hara is the brilliant tool used to accomplish this.

Many discuss the reasoning behind Lashon Hara. There is no real physical benefit.

So why is it so prevelant?

Perhaps, it is this.

Lashon Hara is the mechanism to spread the virus of fear and anger, and remove Bitachon from the community.

Like a fungal spore spreading in a forest, like spike proteins on SARS-CoV-2.

So for you the Gibor what does this mean?

To start, do not waste your time calling those people out who keep fear-based living going.

You have bigger things to do.

But you do need to seek out rabbanim, mentors, and chaveirim who live by the word of Hashem.

How do you find them in this cesspool wasteland of rotted fear and fetid rage?

Find the ones who aren't afraid.

Who don’t spend their time going after other people, shutting them down, even in righteous fury.

So many so-called role models going after anyone or anything different.

I saw a grown man yell at a teenager who was on his lawn. I know the guy, I know the teen. I know the context.

The grown man is petrified of a kid who dares be himself, a kid who while struggling may be more open and closer to Hashem than the guy and his lawn.

It is a sham and a facade.

Many leaders have become rage-filled Bitachon-less creatures.

Their Torah has degraded from an Elixir of Life and has become a fatal deadly poison.

There is so much more to say on this, and I will if they don't get me first.

I am not afraid anymore. I have Hashem who carries and guides me.

Even when I fall He is there. He wants me and you and all of us to let go of the fear and live.

Maybe for the first time.

Seek those who do not speak Lashon Hara and spend their days in the culture of evil.

Learn to embrace those that seem other. Do it properly, with healthy doses of Bitachon.

Learn to not be so afraid of your own shadow, and maybe you’ll see Hashem there, laughing behind the curtain.

And then maybe you join Him and play this delightful game He made for us.

May the Almighty burn fearless trust into your heart and bones.

This was a doozy. Needed to be said. Now tell it to someone who needs to hear it.