Two Bookends
Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov, in his classic Sefer HaParshios, makes
a quiet observation about Parshas Shelach. The parsha opens with twelve
men sent to see the Land of Israel. It closes with the mitzvah
of tzitzis — “and you shall see it, and remember all
the mitzvos of Hashem.”
The first seeing destroyed a generation. The second seeing was given
to protect every generation that followed.
What happened in between — and what connects those two bookends — is
worth a closer look.
The Kid in the Candy Store
Rabbi Joey Haber tells over a Gemara (Brachos 8a) about a
chassan. In Eretz Yisrael, when a man got engaged, people would
ask him a strange question: Is she matzah or motzei?
Meaning — found or find, and based on the verses “matzasi ishah
— I found a wife, I found good” (Mishlei 18:22)? Or “motzei
ani — I find a woman worse than death” (Koheles 7:26)?
What kind of thing is that to ask? The man just got engaged. At least
right now, you’d assume he thinks she’s great.
But the question isn’t about her. It’s about him.
You know the expression “like a kid in a candy store”? Whoever made
that up, says Rabbi Haber, obviously never took a kid to a candy store.
There is no place in the world where a kid is more miserable. You bring
him in, there’s candy everywhere, and you tell him: pick one. So he
grabs a chocolate. Then a lollipop. Then a sour. Then a sweet. Then one
that lights up. Then one that has sugar inside the sugar. He’s in agony.
The only way to make the kid happy? Put one candy in his hand and walk
him out of the store.
Matzah is past tense. I found. This is the one. I’m
done. All my seeing, all my energy, all my focus — it goes right
here.
Motzei is present tense. I’m still finding. Still
shopping. Still noticing how someone else’s wife handles things, how
someone else’s husband tells a joke. And as long as you’re in that mode
— searching, comparing, scanning the room — you’re going to be the most
miserable person alive.
Twelve Men in the Candy Store
Now think about the spies. Twelve men walked into the greatest candy
store in history — the Land flowing with milk and honey — and they
couldn’t stop comparing. The people are giants. The cities are
fortified. We looked like grasshoppers. They were in full
motzei mode: overwhelmed by everything they saw, unable to
focus on anything good. The kid in the candy store, grabbing one thing
after another and putting each one back.
And it was contagious. The whole nation caught it. They wept. They
wanted to go back to Egypt. And the decree fell — the generation would
never enter the Land.
That’s what the wrong kind of seeing does. It doesn’t just mislead
you. It takes everyone down with you.
The Fourth Honda Odyssey
Rabbi Fischel Schachter tells a story. A man once said that when he
comes up to Shamayim, he and his wife are going to end up in
the same place. Someone looked at him sideways. “Your wife is a big
tzaddeikes, and you…” The man said: No, no, no. It says
l’asid lavo, Hashem will take out the sun (Nedarim 8b) —
tzaddikim will be healed by it, and resha’im will be
punished by it. Same sun. “So we’ll be in a shopping center. For my
wife, it’ll be Gan Eden. For me, it’ll be Gehinnom.”
Rabbi Schachter could relate. One Friday afternoon in August, he had
no choice but to drive to a major mall — there was something they
legitimately had to pick up. He said: I’m staying in the car. But
staying in the car, middle of August, in a mall parking lot — that
doesn’t exactly solve the problem either. So he started creeping around
to the back of the building, past garbage compactors and tractor
trailers. Workers walked by him. Nobody stopped him. He kept going. “I
felt like I was driving into the Twilight Zone. Ribono shel
Olam, help me find a secluded place.”
And there, all the way in the back, behind a pile of old tires and up
against the rear wall, he found three Honda Odysseys parked in a neat
little row.
Now, as Rabbi Schachter pointed out, the Honda Odyssey is a very
popular vehicle in the frum community. He’s not trying to sell cars —
it’s just that you can fit a lot of kids in one. Legally.
He pulled up as number four.
Curiosity got the better of him. He walked up to the first Odyssey.
Inside — a young man, being ma’avir sedra. It was Friday
afternoon, after all. He walked to the second. A Yid heroically
fulfilling the great mitzvah of sleeping on Erev Shabbos. The third —
someone listening to a shmiras einayim shiur.
“I told the chevra: let’s get out and have a dance. They
didn’t go for it so much.”
But then he said something serious. He quoted the Ohr HaChaim
HaKadosh: if you are careful with your eyes, Hashem will lift you above
the ayin hara. You will have that secluded place of safety.
Four guys in four minivans, parked behind a wall of tires where
nobody could see them. Each one, in his own way, quietly guarding his
eyes while the rest of the world streamed through the front doors of the
mall.
The Tikkun
Right after the catastrophe of the spies — the decree, the weeping,
the doomed attempt to storm the mountain — something remarkable happens.
Hashem turns to Moshe and starts teaching the laws of offerings for when
they enter the Land. Not “if.” When. “When you come to the Land
of your settlements that I am giving you.”
The generation standing there will never walk into Eretz Yisrael.
They know it. But Hashem is teaching them — not their children,
them — the laws their children will need. The sin didn’t end
the relationship. And what they do from this point forward still
matters. A person who keeps doing the right thing, even knowing he won’t
see the finish line himself, creates the merit that carries the next
generation across it. The future runs through your children, but it
starts with what you do now.
Closing the Circle
That’s what Rabbi Kitov saw in the structure of Parshas Shelach. It
opens with the sin of looking — twelve men who scanned the Land and
couldn’t stop comparing, couldn’t stop searching, couldn’t stop seeing
the wrong things. And it closes with five quiet verses. The mitzvah of
tzitzis. A thread on the corner of your garment — you look at
it, and you remember everything.
Chazal say that whoever fulfills the mitzvah of tzitzis,
it’s as if he fulfilled the entire Torah (Rashi, Bamidbar 15:39). It’s a
shield against the pull of the eyes — against the motzei
impulse, the wandering gaze that took down a generation.
The spies walked into Eretz Yisrael and saw giants. Rabbi Schachter
drove around the back of a mall and found four Honda Odysseys.
The difference wasn’t in what was out there. It was in what they were
looking for.
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