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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