Shelach
Shelach lecha is famous for the opening passage containing a description of the 12 spies entering the land of Israel. But it continues with those ubiquitous complaints about life in the desert from the children of Israel. It talks of sacrifice and a man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath who is stoned to death. It ends with what is now the third paragraph of the Shema – the command to make fringes in the corners of garments.
How to Get Up in the Morning - Larry Tabick
Larry Tabick is the rabbi of Shir Hayim, Hampstead Reform Jewish Community, husband to Jackie Tabick, father of three lovely Tabicks, and author of a modest little book of poems and pics entitled Growing Into Your Soul (2005).
I find it very difficult to get out of bed in the morning. I guess the world is divided into two groups: night people and morning people. I am most definitely a night person.
Night people have found it easier since electric lighting, but the underlying psychological problem is as old as humanity itself. Essentially, it is: how can we persuade ourselves to do what we know is right? I know I should jump up out of bed and get on with things, but I don't really want to. The bed is so warm and comfy. This is a trivial example, but we all recognize the problem. How do we act to our highest moral standards when doing so seems to be against our self-interests?
Rabbi Gedalyah of Lunietz (d. 1785) was a disciple of the Ba'al Shem Tov (18th century Chassidic master), among others, and a tzaddik (righteous person) and preacher in his own right. He suggested an answer, based, he says, on Moses' instructions to the twelve spies in parashat Shelach-lecha. Moses tells them: 'Go up this way into the Negev and then go up into the hill country.' (Numbers 13:17)
R. Gedalyah (quoted in Tzeror HaHayyim (1913), p. 10) points out that NeGeV contains the same Hebrew letters as the root GaNaV, to steal, and suggests a method he calls 'stealing from the yetzer ha-ra', the inclination towards evil. His recommendation for getting up in the morning is to consider, as you lie there in the warm, what things you are going to buy or what bodily pleasures you can indulge in when you get up. Then get up, but go pray and study first. In this way, he says, your inclination towards evil will encourage you to get up, and then you can do the right thing. You go into the Negev, 'stealing' from your selfish side, using its energy, so that you can 'go up into the hill country,' that is, ascend in your service of God. In other words, the key to doing the right thing may be to convince yourself that doing it really is in your self-interest.
This is a risky strategy. We could easily give in to our selfish side, and neglect the higher values we support, but our inclination towards evil is as much a part of us as our nobler, spiritual selves. If we are self-aware and honest, we struggle with it constantly. We also know that we should be doing the right thing because it is right, not because we stand to gain from it, but sometimes recognising that we do gain may be a good staging post towards disinterested goodness. As R. Judah in the name of Rav says (Talmud Pesachim 50b & elsewhere), 'A person should always be occupied with Torah and good deeds, even if not for their own sake, for out of acting not for their own sake there comes acting for their own sake.' And I say, any reasonable strategy that will help us do the right thing in the end has got to be good.