http://www.beliefnet.com

Spies Like Us?

Reading the Bible with Catholic pilgrims in Israel helped me get a new
perspective on an old story.

By Haim Watzman
One hot summer day thousands of years ago, Moses sent 12 men to spy out
the land of Canaan. One hot summer day in 2005, a group of Jews and
Catholics gathered in Jerusalem to discuss the meaning of the story of
that ancient and fateful summer day.

Several times a year, I have an opportunity to discuss stories from the
Bible with Christians. My synagogue community, Kehilat Yedidya, is
unusual among Orthodox synagogues in occasionally hosting Christian
groups for Friday night services and dinner. This time the customary
dinner table discussion of the section of the Torah-the Five Books of
Moses-read in synagogue that week continued when the Catholics
returned to Yedidya ("Kehilat" means "community") after our
Saturday morning services.
The Catholics who visited Yedidya last month had come to Israel to
study the Gospel of Mark in the framework of a program called Ecce
Homo, conducted in a convent in Jerusalem's Old City.

Such ecumenical discussions of Bible stories can be both rewarding and
frustrating. Jews and Christians share the text of the Old Testament,
but come from different reading traditions. It's impossible to say
that there's a hard and fast rule, and each such discussion contains
its share of surprises. But in general, in my experience, there are two
major distinctions.

First, of course, we each read the stories against the background of
our own religion's history, theology, and spiritual concerns.

Christians are often focused on issues of faith and belief, whereas
Jews tend to be more focused on actions. Second, Jews who have engaged
in serious study of biblical and rabbinic texts are trained to do what
literary scholars call "close readings." We are trained to pay
attention to word usages, syntactical structures, and parallels between
the text we are studying and other texts. We also read the texts along
with a battery of traditional and modern commentators. Christians often
find such readings too technical, even boring, and prefer to take a
broader view of the narrative.

The differences can sometimes mean that each group is baffled, and
sometimes annoyed, by the way the other group reads the text. But, with
some patience and experience, such discussions can often enrich each
side, by allowing it to see the story from a different perspective.

The story of the spies (Numbers, chapters 13 and 14) is a good one for
illustrating these differences, because on the surface the story seems
to be one of simple equivalencies-faith brings divine reward and lack
of faith brings divine retribution. But, like all Bible stories, it is
much more complex and ambiguous than it seems at first reading. The
discussion that took place in Kehilat Yedidya last month is worth
considering, because it illustrates these different ways of reading and
understanding a scriptural text.

At the beginning of chapter 13, God tells Moses to send one leader from
each of the 12 tribes to "spy out the land of Canaan,." Moses appoints
12 spies and instructs them: "Go up this way by the south, and go up
into the high land: and see the country, what it is; and the people who
dwell in it, whether they are strong or weak, few or many; and what the
land is that they dwell in, whether it is good or bad; and what cities
they dwell in, whether in tens, or in strongholds; and what the land
is, whether fat or lean, whether there are trees in it or not" (Num.
13:17-20).

When the spies return, they stand before Moses and Aaron and the people
of Israel and report: "We came to the land where thou dist send us,
and indeed it flows with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.
But the people are strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are
fortified, and very great" (Num. 13:27-28). They report that here are
giants in the land, and each part is populated by a different people.
Their conclusion is that the Israelites cannot conquer the land.

Caleb, the scout representing the tribe of Judah, disagrees with his
fellow spies, and calls on the Israelites to go immediately to conquer
the land. But the other spies continue with what the text calls their
"evil report." As a result, the Children of Israel panic and tell
Moses they'd rather go back to Egypt than see their wives and
children slaughtered by the Canaanites. Caleb, joined by Joshua, the
scout from the tribe of Ephraim, rend their clothes and try to persuade
the people to trust in God and set out to conquer the land, but the
congregation says the two dissidents ought to be stoned to death.

The "glory of the Lord" then appears in the Tent of Meeting before
the children of Israel, and God, angry at the refusal of the Israelites
to set out and enter the Promised Land, threatens to punish them. Moses
asks for forgiveness for the people and succeeds in revoking the
severest punishments, but God declares that the current generation that
came out of Egypt will not enter the land, with the exception of Caleb
and Joshua. The children of Israel will wander the wilderness for 40
years until a new generation is born and matures, and only that younger
generation will take possession of land (Num 14:10-45).

We gathered in Yedidya's second-floor sanctuary. The sun blazed in
from the clear glass window set over the carved wood holy ark at the
front of the hall, much as it must have blazed over the Israelites
gathered around the Ark of the Covenant that summer day in the
wilderness, eight days' march from the Promised Land. According to
tradition, it was high summer the day the spies returned to tell Moses
and the tribes that the territory Moses was leading them to was
populated with giants, a forbidding land that devoured its own
inhabitants. After a brief initial presentation, we broke into small
groups, and I found myself sitting on a bench in a corner of the
sanctuary in company with Catholics from three continents.

The guests had read the text, but right from the start of our
conversation it was clear that they were not at all familiar with the
story.

"It's not part of our liturgy," noted Peter Kaufman, who teaches
religion in a Catholic boys' school in Melbourne, Australia. He and
his daughter, Naomi, had been my family's guests for dinner the
previous night, after the group attended our Friday night Sabbath
services. During that previous conversation he had explained to me that
the reason the Ecce Homo group had taken the Gospel of Mark as its text
for the month was that this, the most narrative of the four accounts of
Jesus' life, is the one quoted in Catholic church services.

In contrast, Jews return to the story each year as part of the annual
cycle of Torah-reading in the Sabbath morning services.

"For us, this is more than just another installment in Torah," I
told the guests. "In many ways this is the turning point of the story
of the Exodus. Because up to this point, the former slaves are meant to
proceed to full redemption. When the spies set out, the Israelites are
a week away from Canaan. They've escaped Egypt, crossed the Red Sea,
received the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and they are about to enter the land
that God has promised them for their own. After the spies return, the
story has changed. Except for Joshua and Caleb, none of those who left
Egypt will enter the land. They will die in the desert. It is a
disaster of cosmic proportions. According to the Sages, the spies
returned on the ninth of the month of Av, and their sin made that day a
day of calamity for the Jews for all time. It would be the day that
both the First and Second Temples were destroyed. On the Jewish
calendar it is a major fast day."

"Isn't it primarily a failure of faith?" asked Father Patrick
MacManus from Dublin as he thumbed through a well-worn Bible to the
page where the story appears. The grandfatherly priest was clearly
perplexed by the story. "After seeing all the wonders and miracles in
Egypt and at Sinai, how could they have doubted that God was with them?
Why did they even need to send the spies? They should have had the
faith to go straight ahead into Canaan."

"But perhaps it was clear to God from the beginning that the former
slaves could not enter the Promised Land," I said. "The Jewish
commentators are split on this issue. Some say that this was a crisis
that made God change His original plan for the Israelites. Others say
that God planned the 40-year wait from the start. After all, we're
told in the book of Exodus that God deliberately does not lead the
Children of Israel by the shortest route to Canaan, along the
Mediterranean coast, specifically because He knows that they will be
frightened and turn back when they encounter combat in the land of the
Philistines."

"Perhaps the whole point of sending the spies was to demonstrate to
the Israelites that they were not ready to enter the land. Perhaps it
was meant to be a lesson for them." The suggestion came from Sister
Euphrasia Nasipwoni Simati of Kenya, who was dressed in a bright
green-and-black robe and turban.

I liked Sister Euphrasia's idea. It got away from viewing the story
simply as a failure of faith. Certainly some language in the story
gives support for such a reading: "And the Lord said to Moses, How
long will this people provoke me? And how long will it before they
believe me, for all the signs which I have performed among them?"
(Num. 13:11). But, I pointed out to the others, God endorses the
spies' mission. The commentators differ about whether God approved of
sending the spies or merely acquiesced reluctantly to an initiative by
Moses and the people. But while God demands faith, he doesn't demand
blind faith. Sending spies to check out the land is certainly a
natural, even a wise thing to do. And on the face of it, at least, the
spies do as they are told. They spend 40 days in Canaan and their
report points out both the promise of the land and the difficulty they
see in conquering it.

"I think the problem is that they wanted to conquer the land instead
of trying to live there together with the Canaanites," said Sister
Patricia Anne Ryan, also from Australia. "It's like the situation
today, where the Israelis and the Palestinians need to learn to live
together." But the rest of us agreed that, whatever our opinions
about the current conflict, the story in the Bible is unambiguous on
this point. It might be uncomfortable for the peace activists among us,
but God says clearly that the Israelites are to conquer the land of
Canaan from its existing inhabitants.

The problem is not in the details of the report but in the conclusions,
I proposed. Look closely at the language. The spies speak unanimously
when they report what they saw, in chapter 13: 25-29. We hear an
individual voice only in verse 30, where Caleb says: Let us go up at
once an possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." But
Caleb's is a minority report. In the following verse we hear the
conclusion of the majority: "We are not able to go up against the
people, for they are stronger than we."

"We have two opposite conclusions based on the same facts, from
people who saw the land together. It seems to be a problem of
perception, not of faith," I argued. "Look at 13:33: 'and we were
in our own sight as grasshoppers,' the majority says, comparing
themselves to the inhabitants of Canaan, whom they portray as giants. I
had that experience in the army with my commanders. At first I'd have
this perception that they were taller than me. Later, when I got to
know them better, I'd realize we were actually the same height."

"If their faith had been stronger, they wouldn't have seen it that
way," Father Patrick said, shaking his head.

"If they could have all just lived together..." Sister Patricia
sighed.

By the end of the discussion, I was struck by how the story of the
spies could serve as a metaphor for our own interaction. As a religious
Jew living in Israel, I see the land as mine. I see the Old Testament
as mine, also, the story of the spiritual history and religious
experience of my people. I know the text intimately, as I know the
land-the placement of each boulder on each hill, the paths that lead
or circumvent each road, the source of each river. But visitors can
often see the larger lay of the land in a way that the natives
sometimes miss.

One of the concepts that Jews use in understanding Bible stories is
tikkun, which means "repair" or "mending." In some Bible
stories, characters repeat actions or relive situations that were
performed or lived in an unsuccessful way by earlier characters, and in
so doing "repair" the evil effects of the previous failure. In this
light, the Catholic-Jewish dialogue that took place at Kehilat Yedidya
last month is a tikkun of the story of the spies, for it has resulted
in good rather than in evil reports.




Haim Watzman is the author of 'Company C: An American's Life as a
Citizen-Soldier in Israel' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).