October 7 and the Unforgivable Sin of the Spies
Whenever horrible things happen to Israel, many Jews will search for the reason; which sin did we commit that led to this catastrophe? It is a form of spiritual physics in which every reaction is the result of an equal and opposite action. But God’s ways are mysterious. In our imperfect world, the righteous often suffer while the wicked prosper. Serving God is its own reward and not intended as a foolproof recipe for success.
Attempting to decipher the divine equation of reward and punishment is fraught with difficulties. I was always troubled by those who justified the Holocaust by saying it led to the establishment of the state of Israel. I love Israel more than anything in my life except for my wife and children, but I would leave tomorrow if it meant bringing back some of the precious souls killed by the Nazis.
Also, the practice of adding and subtracting sins to explain suffering necessarily leads to ascribing sins to those who suffered. Recently, a friend attempted to do these in connection with the October 7 attacks. My friend pointed out that the revelers at the October 7 Supernova festival in Re’im were dancing in front of a large golden statue of Buddha. My friend hinted that they were guilty of worshiping a Golden Calf. In the Bible, we learn that 3,000 of the Children of Israel were killed by the Tribe of Levi for participating in public idolatry.
I responded harshly, shutting him down before he could go further. I had heard similar accusations in 2001 when a Palestinian terrorist blew himself up while standing in a line of young people waiting to enter the Dolphinarium discotheque on the beachfront in Tel Aviv. The attack took place on Friday night when the nightclub was especially busy, killing 21 Israelis, 16 of whom were teenagers.
I was visiting a rabbi when a religious man stated that the attack happened because the young people were violating Shabbat. The rabbi answered him sharply, saying, “If you danced on Shabbat like those teens danced on Shabbat, the Moshiach (Messiah) would already be here.”
Indeed, I recently learned that the victims of October 7 do not require the ritual cleansing with water that is performed before burial. They are considered spiritually pure since they died kiddush Hashem (in the sanctification of God’s name) as they were killed simply because they were Jews.
Israel is not just mourning the deaths of over 1,200 Jews. We are mourning the deaths of over 1,200 tzadikim (righteous Jews). So I reject any attempt to place a shadow of blame on any of the victims. So when a friend began to talk about the large golden statue of Buddha at Re’im, I shut him down immediately.
Nonetheless, I wanted to make sense of the massacre. My God is the God of justice. Where was He on the horrible day?
I was reminded that the Talmud (Berachot 32a) discussed the sin of the Golden Calf. It describes how Moses argued with God to spare the Jews, reminding Him that He ordered the Jews to take all the gold and silver before leaving Egypt.
“What did you expect them to do with all the gold?” Moses asked, implying that God was partially to blame. God acknowledged partial culpability and forgave the Jews for the horrendous sin of idolatry. At this point, the Jews were again on track to travel directly to the Promised Land.
But then the Children of Israel demanded that spies, princes from each tribe, tour the land before they entered. After spending forty days in Israel, the leaders of the tribes reported back to the nation, slandering the land. For this sin, from listening to and giving theory tacit acquiescence, the entire generation was guilty and judged to die in the desert. Rather than enter the land directly, they wandered for forty years, one year for every day the spies spent in the land.
Israel was forgiven for the sin of idolatry but rejecting the land is unforgivable.
After 2,000 years of praying and pining to return to our ancestral homeland, the Jews are still guilty of rejecting the Promised Land. And not just once.
When Israel signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, they agreed to carve out large swaths of the Biblical heartland. While this was touted as a process that would culminate in peace, the man sitting across the table was Yasser Arafat, a long-time terrorist with Jewish blood on his hands. Only the willingly culpable would believe this sham. The Oslo process has resulted in the spilling of more Jewish blood and the creation of a terrorist state in the heart of Israel.
And in 2005, one day after the Ninth of Av, IDF soldiers forcibly removed 11,000 Jews from their homes in Gush Katif. This resulted in untold thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli cities. The current war is the direct result of the expulsion from Gush Katif.
Like the sin of the spies, both of these actions were carried out by the leaders forcing their agenda on the nation. And like the sin of the spies, the leaders’ base and godless agenda has led to the deaths of far too many Jews.
It should be remembered that the ten princes, all of them powerful and influential men, were countered by Caleb’s simple call, “Let us go up.” Caleb was one of the spies but he went directly to Hebron to visit with the holy Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Joshua also rejected the slanderous claims of Moses, fortified by his connection with Moses.
While university presidents and their acolytes deny that a call for Jewish genocide is antisemitism, and deny that the Hamas slogan “From the river to the sea” is a call to annihilate Israel in an unrestrained series of October 7s, so many “simple people” quake in fear, remembering just 80 years ago when these calls rang out in German as the world turned its back.
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