handle with care!
What exactly is up with this weeks parsha?
Try to think of the top 5 most annoying thing your older sibling/bully/ annoying friend. etc etc etc ever did to u. I am sure that one of the top 5 by most of u is very simillar to the following description (remember i am NOT very good at telling stories). U just finished eating at a very large and satisfying bbq, ur r absolutely stuffed and have room only for one more thing….ICECREAM! problem is the only ice cream around is dairy, now unless ur dutch there really isn’t much u can do. u already come to terms with the fact that u won’t be getting your ice cream, and after calling g-d a big big meanie (r”l) ur ready to move on with your life, and……in steps the aforementioned annoying person and says as follows, “i heard u want some ice cream but ur fleishik, now i know i can’t actually give u some, but if u want i can come and show u some, i’ll even let u watch me eat it if u want”, isn’t that nice of him? NO!!!!! that is mean, annoying, and quite frankly SD (slap deserving……laugh now, but in a couple of months “SD” is gonna be the hottest slang word!!!). To summarize our story, the last thing u want when u want something (go back to the beginning of that sentence and read it again) is to see that thing dangled in front of your face without having the ability to actually get it!
The very religious amongst u might understand what i am getting at, the less religious r waiting for me to crack some corny joke, and the the unaffiliated are probably out eating ice cream by now. So what exactly does this have to do with this weeks parsha? EVERYTHING!
Moshe is begging to get into eretz yisroel, he is making a last ditch effort, giving it all he’s got, and how does hashem , the merciful, react? he doesn’t let him in, but…………… he lets him see the land. HUH?????????????? that (at face value of course) is the worst thing hashem could have done to moshe!!!!!! if he isn’t gonna let him in, don’t TEASE him!!!!!! what in the world is going on? what is the point of letting moshe se the land?????????
The answer to this question lays in a very simple yesod, a yesod which solves so many mix ups and misunderstandings in our wonderful world of olam hasheker.
There r 2 apposing….um……. THINGS (couldn’t think of a better word) in our world, RUCHNIYUS and GASHMIYUS, some of us have cravings for gashmiyus while others (apparently ppl like this do indeed exist) crave ruchniyus. Now (and later as well), when u crave something which is physical it is an impure craving, an animalistic urge, the exact urge we were sent down here to battle, and your whole intent is to render yoursel satisfied, and therefore if things don’t work out the way u wanted them to, u will be left totally unsatisfied, disappointed and even angry. However, when u crave something spiritual (this is what i’m told) ur not simply trying to satisfy some itch, ur trying to GROW , ur trying to raise your spiritual level to the next, the exact growth which we were put down here for, and therefore if u end up falling a bit short oF your goal ur not totally disappointed, u might be a bit annoyed that u didn’t fully achieve your goal, however ur still very happy that u managed to grow even a bit, to step up to the next rung even if the step was a baby step.
Moshe’s “ta’ava” to go into israel was obviously not a gashmy one (if u disagree with me……… don’t forget to send my regards to gehenom when u get there), it was purely a ruchny one, he felt (and this is true, sadly enough for all u america, and other places, dwellers) that going into israel would help him reach an even higher spiritual level, that is why he wanted it so badly, hashem understood this, and therefore after deciding that moshe would not be granted a visa (for whatever reason) he still wanted to allow him to at least see it, to at least allow him to grow as much as possible. For moshe it wasn’t a TEASE, for moshe it was a TREAT! he was thankful to hashem for allowing him to at least see it.
To end off (FINALLY!) if we wanna see if what we are striving (or starving) for is right or wrong, all we have to do is the “moshe test”, if we only get a part of what we were hoping to get and we r totally devastated we r obviously not heading in the right direction, but on the other hand if we end up happy with what we have, and thankful for the opportunity hashem gave us to grow even a bit……..we just might have a chance.