Shelach, June 22, 2006

Jail is a place we’re locked in projective reality and not knowing. A place without choices. The spies are projecting; they speak lushan hora (gossip) about the Land and put the Land down. The key phrase is, “We can’t do it.” They report that it’s a land that eats its inhabitants. It’s very difficult to live there. They didn’t see it’s essence; they saw the outside, the garment. This is like the bedecken (veiling ceremony at a wedding). To gaze is tsis, gazing to see the essence.

The spies were tourists. They had a failure of faith in themselves, and therefore a failure of faith in G*d.

It wasn’t bad they got scared and saw the wrong thing. They were confused. The bad thing was that they didn’t admit it. We daven away our confusion; we daven from our confusion. Joshua didn’t daven because he had complete faith in HaShem. The one person who davened was Caleb, because he was confused.

The word erev means evening, confusion. The tree in Gan Eden was the Tree of the Confusion of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When men see each other’s walls, they always get scared. Men always compare. Men won’t come to davening because they’re scared of being on the wrong page of the siddur. When you feel small, you have to decide what to do with it. One thing is to get big. The spies brought back large fruit. You can make everyone else small, make them scared.

When you feel confused, pray in order to clarify.

True and establish: morning

True and faith: evening, because it’s dark.

Caleb doesn’t argue-he just states his case. Argumentative people are defensive.

Bold Silence: Yeshua, Tamara, Miriam. There is no meshiach (redeemer) without the Bold Silence. 38 years in the desert is Bold Silence: not one word is spoken about this period.

Moshe doesn’t argue with Korach.

A lynch mob is ten scared men. The first minion was Joseph’s brothers.

The smaller they feel, the larger they act. If you argue, they’ll kill you. So Caleb doesn’t argue. If you get them to pray, open their hearts, get them to admit they’re afraid, and they will turn into a minion. Caleb was the only one who could admit he was confused and was the only one who could Pray. Joshua followed Moshe without wavering, so he was not confused.

When you look at tsistis, you should see mitzvote, 613 knots. The garment has four corners, representing the corners or winds of the world, all the strands of reality. So it all turns into the Oneness of G*d. If you’re in a position of compromising strands of reality, you take them off so they won’t hit you in the face. Tsitsis are garments of faith – confusing strands have an essence of Oneness, non-projective sight.

We think everyone is against us, so we argue about everything, but it doesn’t give us legitimacy.

We were like grasshoppers n their eyes. This defines projective reality; we create it.

Courage is quiet, it’s not defensiveness. Tamar stays calm in spite of being called a whore. Tamar represents inner nobility. David had the malchut inside. These women who practiced Bold Silence were not victims.

The truth was that the Canaanites were scared of the Hebrews; we were not like grasshoppers in their eyes; we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.

Rachav is spreading a view of compassion on how to affect the world without arguing nd shooting. This is transformative. Shooting the enemy is not transformative.

When you see another man’s walls don’t get scared—it means they’re afraid. The women are teaching real courage.

G*d won’t save us from ourselves. We need to bring shalom to the world. Non-cooperation is love dedicated to the self and to the other.

This is the line of the Meshiach: Tamar, Ruth, Netzeveh. Rachav’s love transforms the spies.

Sotah: the husband will bring his money to the Kohane or he will bring his wife. It’s a litmus test of a control issue.

Every man who would come to witness the sotah being condemned for being out of control was out of control, so they gave up wine, which makes people out of control. Her degradation was uncovering her hair; guilty women never came.

Miriam sees herself too small to talk to Moshe.

Gossip is enjoying the downfall of others. When we can see ourselves in the story, it’s a story of teshuva. If you say these are the heroes and these are the villains, you turn it into a morality tale. Right and wrong, no one listening. If you villainize the spies, you miss the point. At every point we fail, at every stop in the desert.

We don’t read the story like Aesop’s fables, a morality tale. We read the stories to find ourselves.

AISH KODESH PAGE 109.

Moses turned wrath into compassion, as we can see in three conflicts:

1. He wanted to kill the Egyptian who was beating up the Hebrew.

2. The Egyptians wanted to kill him.

3. The Shepherds wanted to kill Tziporah because of watering the flock. In this last conflict, Moses watered the flocks of the men shepherds. This caused a healing of the conflict. Kissinger said that if people leave the battlefield humiliated, the war will continue, a good example being World War Two being a continuation of World War One.

The Meshiach has to know how to turn anger into compassion.

How can the Aish Kodesh teach this in the Warsaw Ghetto?

The grave is the womb.

The men all die in the desert—the men are resistant to change. The women enter Eretz Yisroel.

Courage is turning wrath into compassion. The womb is the perfect balance between right and left hand. First it nurtures and protects, and then it expels.

The upside down nun is a Jew standing on his head. A nun is a pictogram of a person standing bent over. Nun is humble, final nun is straight and tall, faithful. (Aish Kodesh page 110).

When he has what he needs, he is humble, but when he is beaten down, he is upside down (see page 109).

There is a bird that’s still free even in a cage, the drawr. If you have Shabbos, you’re still free.

Joseph says, “Hate got me in prison, love must get me out.”

Don’t trust natural paths, false hopes – Nazis offered blue cards for jobs to people who would inform. The Aish Kodesh refused to leave the Warsaw Ghetto because this would encourage people to believe that it was possible to do the right thing with the Nazis and be saved. The main battle is not with evil; it’s with discouragement.

Jericho: taking down the walls of masculine fear. Rechav lives in those walls and can look out. She wants to get out. In one of those Torah ironies, she marries Joshua.

A good wall is a cell membrane – it lets nutrients in and toxins out.