Parashat Shelakh: We Can't Do It Alone

How did the two “good” spies, Yehoshua and Kalev, manage to escape the fate of the other 10? We are all constantly confronted with choices, places where we have to decide whether we are going to go along with the “10,” with the dominant culture, with our peers, with whatever the prevailing wisdom is. And our children are constantly confronted by these choices, too. How do we stand strong on those occasions where the right thing is not to follow the crowd and how do we help our children stand strong? Yehoshua and Kalev each has a strategy to teach.

Yehoshua carries God with him wherever he goes. The Torah says that Moshe, prior to sending him off on the mission, changed his name from Hoshea to Yehoshua. Rashi explains that Moshe was praying on his behalf Yah yoshiakha me’atzat meraglim. “May God save you (playing on Yehoshua’s name) from the counsel of the spies.” It isn’t that Yehoshua was a much stronger or wiser person than the others. What saved him was that he had Moshe’s divine blessing with him. He carried in his name, wherever he went, a reminder of God’s help. He didn’t do it alone. We often feel that the challenges we face in life are beyond us, but if we admit this and ask God to stay with us and help us through it, we can do more than we thought we could. Yehoshua came through because he was never alone.

We should note that here it is Moshe who prays on behalf of Yehoshua, his younger assistant. The goal is not just to feel that God assists us but to learn to spread that blessing around us, to pray that others, too, feel God’s aid and protection.

Kalev does not receive this assistance from Moshe -- sometimes in life it doesn't just come to us -- but he goes about getting it for himself, also from an older generation. When the Torah uses the singular vayavo to describe the spies’ entrance to Hevron, Rashi explains that Kalev came alone to this city of ancestors and laid himself across the graves of the patriarchs and prayed for assistance in not succumbing to the dominant spies’ plans. Once again, Kalev knew that he could not fight the battle alone. He was perhaps no stronger or wiser than the others, but there was one difference – he knew when to ask for help, he knew that this was a moment of difficulty for him and prayed for assistance.

Assistance from ancestors is not something we talk much about, but I think that many of us feel it daily, feel how we carry our deceased parents and grandparents around inside our hearts and can rely on them for wisdom, counsel, and most of all, strength to persevere. We also have our communal ancestors to rely on. Perhaps this is why we start the Amidah with them – Elokei Avraham, . . . -- because we know we need help to pray, to open our mouths and hearts, and we turn to their strength and their example to guide us as we begin. When we walk through life, too, we can at any moment tap into their strength. We can feel their blood running through our veins and know once again that we are not alone.

May God and our ancestors help each of us be strong in the face of our particular pressures.