The first part of our parsha deals with the sin of the twelve spies who were sent to report on the Land of Israel. I would like to share a novel analysis of this episode, based on sefer Meir Panim (chap. 15). In order to understand it, we have to backtrack 2449 years to before the spies were sent to spy out the land.
When Hashem created trees on the third day of Creation, He gave a directive to the earth, a blueprint for how the trees should appear: “etz pri oseh pri,” that the tree should be one integral unit with fruit and branches having the same taste. This tree was the Etz HaChaim, the Tree of Life, whose fruit was lechem abirim, food eaten by angels – or by another name, mann. However, the earth made its own calculations: “If both the fruit and the tree taste the same, then man and beast will eat both the fruit and the tree and soon there won’t be any tree left.” As a result, the earth gave forth a different tree than Hashem had intended, a tree that was not one unit but was made up of disparate parts. The fruit tasted different from the branches. This “mutant” tree was the Etz HaDa’at, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. According to Rebbi Yehuda in the Gemara (Brachot 40a), it was a “wheat tree” (before the sin of Adam HaRishon, wheat grew on a tree, it was not a lowly grass).
Hashem then created the originally planned tree, the Etz HaChaim, and placed it and the Etz HaDa’at together in the center of Gan Eden, with the latter fenced off to prevent access. Hashem did not destroy the Etz HaDa’at, because He gives sinners a chance to do a tikkun – to repent and make amends.
On the sixth day, Hashem created Adam HaRishon, who is called the “challah of the world,” because Hashem created him by doing hafrashat challah from the earth, mixing this handful of earth with water and breathing life into this “dough” (Or HaChaim, Bereishit 2). Hashem placed Adam in the Garden to “serve and to guard,” to serve Hashem using the Etz HaChaim (the Torah), and to guard himself against the Etz HaDa’at and refrain from eating its fruit. Later, Hashem separated Adam into male (Adam) and female (Chava) and commanded them to procreate. However, Adam was tardy in performing this mitzvah. The verse states that only after they were expelled did Adam “know” Chava (Bereishit 4, 1).
Chava, worried about Adam’s negligence, tried to speed things up by giving him wine to drink to make him happy and oil to light up his face (Tehillim 104:15). Adam became drunk and fell asleep. This began a chain reaction of lashon hara that began with the snake speaking lashon hara against Hashem to Chava, saying that the reason Hashem forbade the Etz HaDa’at was that if one ate from it one would become like G-d, with the power to create worlds. This caused Chava to “eat from this tree”; that is, to take its fruit (wheat), grind it into flour, and mix it with water into a dough (the way G-d created man), resulting in a chametz bread, which Chava ate and then fed to Adam. Adam then spoke slander about Chava, Chava spoke slander against the snake. It was a slander-fest from beginning to end.
As a result of eating from this tree of disparate parts, Adam and Chava themselves became split into disparate parts, the physical and the spiritual, and were no longer the integral unit that Hashem had intended. Millenia followed in our attempt to repair this wrong, which entailed combining these parts by imbuing spirituality into the physical – taking every physical aspect of the world and elevating it to spirituality. This began with the Avot and culminated with the giving of the Torah on Har Sinai, when the world reverted to its original state. But shortly afterward, Am Yisrael sinned with the Golden Calf, essentially repeating Adam’s and Chava’s sin and upsetting the world all over again.
After Hashem forgave Am Yisrael for this sin, the twelve spies, each the head of his tribe, looked around, and what did they see? They were eating the fruit of the Etz HaChaim, mann. They were living surrounded by Clouds of Glory. The presence of Hashem rested in the Mishkan. They thought they had “arrived” and that it was impossible to improve on this idyllic situation. They mistakenly perceived that their existence in the desert was already the tikkun for Adam HaRishon’s sin.
They went on their mission with the agenda to make sure nothing would change this imagined idyllic status quo. If this had been what Hashem commanded, they would have been correct. However, Hashem specifically repeated that their purpose was to end up in Eretz Yisrael to live physical lives there, work the land, make a living, and in doing so also elevate the physical to spirituality. This is the tikkun for Adam’s sin. Living in a spiritual “bubble” as they were in the midbar was a preparation for that and not the end itself.
As a result, they repeated the debacle that was Adam’s sin and brought disaster upon us that has yet to be rectified. This is why the episode of the spies is immediately followed by the “nesachim,” the addendums required when bringing a korban olah, a burnt offering. What are these addendums? Different measures of flour, oil and wine (depending on the type of animal sacrificed) – the very components of Chava’s and Adam’s sin. This is followed by the mitzvah of hafrashat challah, to restore the status of the original “challah,” Adam, to his status before the sin. This is an eternal reminder of what Hashem requires of us in order to bring the geulah. To physically live in Eretz Yisrael and to imbue every facet of the physical with spirituality and thus realize the tikkun that will bring about the final geulah and a reset of the world to its original intended state.
Parshat HaShavua Trivia Question: Who was the mekoshesh, the man who chopped trees on Shabbat?
