Rabbi's Message for Shabbat Shelach Lecha June 19-20, 5780

Dear Members and Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
This is a very, very, VERY special Shabbat! It brings to mind a memorable event of my childhood.
Growing up, I had the privilege of attending a Jewish summer sleep-away camp, Camp Massad, in the Laurentians near Montreal. The camp summer was structured around a variety of major events on Israeli and Jewish themes. One thrilling event each summer was Ma’pilim. The entire camp was awoken in the middle of the night, to re-enact a daring immigration into the land of Israel in the time of the British Mandate. The oldest campers acted as British border guards and police, trying to catch and imprison the younger would-be olim (immigrants). All other campers were divided into small groups, each led by a counsellor, who would try to secretly make their way into Israel. Starting in rowboats in the middle of the lake, the kids would land on shore, and traverse through a 1.5km route hiding in the forest or behind cabins and buildings. When a camper was caught and “imprisoned”, the group had to free their fellow group-member by breaking into the jail area and tagging them free. Eventually, after a 2-hour adventure, all campers arrived safely in Israel – where they were greeted with hot chocolate around a warm bonfire, and a chance to go back to bed and sleep in late the next morning.
The source of the term Ma’pilim is from this week’s parsha, Shelach Lecha. The parsha recounts the transgression of the “twelve spies” - the tribal leaders who went out to scout the land of Israel, ten of whom came back saying the land’s occupants were too mighty for the Jews to conquer. Despite the pleas of two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, to proceed boldly into the land, the Israelites panicked. They decided to go back to Egypt (!), and threatened to kill Caleb and Joshua as well as overthrow Moses and Aaron. Before this could happen, Hashem’s glory overwhelmed and silenced the people. Hashem punished the Israelites, decreeing that they would remain in the desert for forty years (until their generation died out and a new one arose), before entering the land.
In the midst of this, a group of remorseful Israelites decided to go up to Israel straightaway. Despite Moses’ warnings that they would fail, they went ahead zealously, climbing to the top of Mount Hormah – where they were slaughtered by the Canaanites and Amalekites. This group became known as the defiers – the Ma’pilim.
Why did the biblical Ma’pilim fail, where the Israelites later succeeded, in making their way successfully into Israel? Rav Yoel Bin Nun suggests that, on a practical level, the Amalekites and Canaanites had established a solid, fortified hold of the south of the land – an ancient Maginot Line, as it were. Any small force attacking directly from the south was doomed to fail. Instead, the Israelites’ eventual journey southward then to the east of Israel, led them to a less fortified position from which they could successfully attack and penetrate the land.
In the early years of the Zionist movement, Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik recast the ma’pilim, no longer as failed reactionaries, but as bold heroes and spiritual progenitors of the Zionist movement. In his 1902 poem “Metei Midbar” – The Dead of the Desert – Bialik writes:
Mighty warriors we!
The last of the slaves,
The first of the free! . . .
We and heaven’s eagles have sipped freedom at its source!
Who is lord over us? . . .
In the face of heaven and all its spite,
Here we are, ready to storm, to conquer!
And if God has withdrawn from us,
If His Ark will not move from its place--
We will conquer without Him!
(Translation from Bialik’s Hebrew by Raymond Scheindlin)
As a result of Bialik’s reframing, the Ma’pilim became a source of inspiration for the Zionists. Twenty years after Bialik, Levin Kipnis wrote “El Rosh Hahar” – “To the Top of the Mountain!” – building on the theme of Ma’pilim as exemplars of zealous determination:
To the top of the mountain! To the top of the mountain!
Who will bar the path of those saved from captivity?...
Arise brothers!... The summit is near!
We will surely see the way we have mounted!
One suddenly falls to the depths;
the first sacrifice, he will surely not be the last.
Defiantly! Defiantly! To the top of the mountain, we shall rise!
(Translation my own)
The refrain, “Ha’pilu!” recalls the defiantly bold nature of the ancient Ma’pilim in their failed quest. Set to music, this poem became a powerful song for the Zionist movement; click here to hear a recording of El Rosh Hahar as sung by Ora Zitner.
Were the Ma’pilim heroes or failures? R. Tzadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin viewed the boldness of the ma’pilim as indicative of the chutzpah that our Sages say will increase and succeed in the time of Mashiach (Talmud – Sotah 48b); the same chutzpah, perhaps, that led ideologically determined Zionists to re-establish a Jewish state in the homeland of Israel.
Nechama Leibowitz points out, however, that the Ma’pilim of Torah, unlike those of Zionist poetry, were not a trailblazing vanguard. Had they been truly foresighted and inspired, they would have championed Joshua and Caleb, and mobilized the Jewish people prior to their panic and G-d’s punishment. Instead, they reacted after the fact, when it was no longer the time, and without the people’s unity. The Torah states that the Ark of the Covenant did not go with the Ma’pilim; their quest was doomed from the start in the absense of divine support.
I find it nonetheless remarkable that the Zionist movement transformed a little-known, tragic event in the Torah to a source of steadfast inspiration. As Jews, we continually re-engage with the stories of our people, casting new light on them, drawing new knowledge and perspectives. It is our challenge, in times of distress, to ever seek meaning in the very difficulties we have faced, and to draw on the wealth of our Jewish legacy and connection to Hashem’s Torah, in order to discover meaning and inspiration for our lives.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com