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By Rabbi Shoime Lindenbaum
שלח לך אנשים ויתרו את ארץ כנען (פרק יג פסוק ב)
Our Parsha begins with the מרגלים (spies) scouting out ארץ ישראל (Israel) before the Jews entered to conquer it. They came back with a terrible report about the land which resulted in the Jews’ losing faith that Hashem will give them the land and ended with the infamous decree that the Jews will stay in the desert for the next 40 years. Rashi tells us that this story comes immediately after the story of Miriam speaking לשון הרע (slander) about her brother because the מרגלים should have learned a lesson from her not to speak badly. Many ask that there is a big difference between Miriam’s sin and that of the מרגלים? She spoke badly about another person whereas they were speaking about a land. How should they have known to draw a parallel from her? R’ Aharon Leib Shteinman answers that the lesson to be learned from Miriam is that one should always view things in a positive way. When someone speaks לשון הרע it begins with them viewing others in a bad light. Only by focusing on the faults of others and highlighting the negatives can someone end up speaking לשון הרע. The מרגלים should have learned from Miriam how to stop the sin at it’s root by focusing only on the positive and then they never would have developed a negative report about ארץ ישראל.
וימצאו איש מקושש עצים ביום השבת (פרק טו פסוק לב)
Towards the end of the Parsha the Torah relates how someone desecrated Shabbos and afterwards was killed for it. Tosfos in מסכת בבא בתרא קיט: quotes a מדרש that he had totally pure intentions. The מדרש explains that after the Jews were informed that their generation would not enter ארץ ישראל they assumed that they were no longer obligated in the מצוות. To prove that the severity of the מצוות is still alive and well this individual violated Shabbos and got killed for it. The מהרש”א asks, how could he violate Shabbos just to prove that it still exists? He answers that we have a rule by Shabbos that one who does a מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה (Shabbos violation for a purpose other than the normally intended one) is פטור (exempt from punishment). Therefore, because the man did not intend to violate Shabbos for the regular purpose, but rather for the atypical purpose of proving it’s severity to the Jews, he was legally exempt from punishment. Although he was killed, that was because it’s impossible for a human court to ascertain his true intentions in the violation, but as far as his obligation to Hashem, he was exempt.
