Parshas Shelach (5778)
The Torah tells us that right before Moses sent the Twelve Spies to investigate the Land of Israel, he changed the name of one of the spies.
As we read in this week’s Torah portion, Parshas Shelach: "Moses called Hoshea son of Nun 'Joshua' " (see Numbers 13:16). Rashi quotes a Midrash which states that the reason why the extra letter yud was added to Joshua's name was in order to form the name of G-d at the beginning of his name. Moses prayed that G-d would protect his faithful servant Joshua from being involved in the evil conspiracy of the rest of the spies.
Another Midrash teaches that the extra yud that was added on to Joshua's name was taken from our matriarch Sarah. The Torah tells us that her original name was Sarai, but then the yud was replaced with the letter hei and her name became Sarah. That letter yud had nowhere to go for a couple of hundred years until it was added onto Joshua's name to protect him from the spies' wicked scheme.
What is the meaning of all this strange letter-changing, and why did Moses only pray for Joshua not to sin with the spies, when he could have prayed for all the other spies not to sin as well?
Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik ZTâ€L explains as follows: Joshua, Moses' faithful servant, had always been involved in community work. His whole life was dedicated to the Jewish people. The Talmud tells us that every night, after all the students left the Beis Midrash (study hall), Joshua would remain behind to clean up and arrange the benches for the next day's studying. Moses was afraid that Joshua, being as community-minded as he was, would be unable to take a stand, and break away from the evil conspiracy of the other spies. His sense of individuality hadn't been developed enough for that, because he had always focused on the needs and betterment of the larger community rather than on his own spiritual needs.
Sarah, the first Jewish woman - on the other hand - had always led a relatively private, spiritual life until she and Abraham were charged by G-d with a mission to spread the ideas of ethical monotheism and G-d's Divine providence to the rest of the world. At that point, G-d changed their names to reflect their new responsibilities. Sarah's name was changed from Sarai to Sarah.
What's in a name? …. More than we think! The name of a person represents the essence of that person - who he really is and what his potential is. The Mystics write that when parents choose a Hebrew name for their child, that name is divinely inspired. The name, representing the essence of the child, is being put into the mouths of the parents. Pretty spooky stuff, isn't it?
Names mean a lot in Judaism, especially in Jewish Mysticism. That's why when a Jewish person is on his deathbed, G-d forbid, we bring together a quorum of ten Jews, and we change his Hebrew name. This is said to help because the Heavenly decree was intended for “Mosheâ€, and now his name is “Chaimâ€. So, when G-d changes Sarah's name, it doesn't just mean that she has to throw out all her old stationary. It means that her role and purpose in this world have taken on a new dimension.
Now all that's left is to figure out why G-d removed the letter yud from Sarah’s name and replaced it with a hei.
The Talmud states that G-d created this world with the letter hei and the next world with the letter yud. The yud is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it is the only letter whose lowest point doesn't reach the bottom of the line. Thus, the yud represents an elevated, spiritual existence where one is involved in one's own special relationship with G-d. That is the nature of the World to Come.
This world, however, is represented by the letter hei, which has within it both a yud and a daled. The daled, which has a numerical value of four, corresponds to the physical world - the four corners of the earth. Our job in this world is to bring the yud, representing G-dliness and spirituality, into the daled of the physical, mundane world. This fusion of daled and yud forms the hei, which reflects the nature and ultimate purpose of this world.
Until now, Sarah was called Sarai with a yud. She had been living her own spiritual life. G-d then replaced the yud with a hei to make her name Sarah. She was now charged with the task that her descendants, all of us, now have - to bring the message of G-d and His Torah into this world and to use the beautiful lessons of the Torah to bring meaning and significance into our physical lives.
Moses took the now abandoned yud of Sarah's name - the part of the soul that wraps itself up in other-worldly, spiritual pursuits far removed from this world - and added it to Joshua's name (it was formerly Hoshea, now Yehoshua) to give him the strength to make the right decision. He had to be able to “take a stand†- to express the individual, spiritual side of himself and break away from the rest of the community of spies. Without that extra prayer and name-changing from Moses, Joshua – more than any of the other spies - might have gone along with the crowd, so to speak, considering that until now he had always lived a totally selfless life, negating his own feelings and interests, and living only for the larger community.
We all live with this internal conflict of personal growth and spiritual development on the one hand, and family and community development on the other hand. Ultimately, of course, there is no conflict because our main purpose here on earth is to fuse both those goals into one. But there are times when they do present a challenge. I could list a thousand examples of this - but I'll just mention one that comes to mind:
Imagine that you’re a long-standing member of a group of friends that meets every week for dinner and shmoozing. You've developed strong bonds with all the members of the close-knit group. But over time, you've come to realize that the types of conversations that take place over dinner are not really what you’re interested in hearing. You've begun studying Torah and have learned about Loshon Hara - the sin of talking gossip and denigrating your fellow man. Much of the table talk revolves around what this or that neighbor did, or about the jerk you bumped into at the health club. You don't want to hear this stuff anymore.
What do you do? Do you continue as is, so as not to lose this close-knit bond with your friends? Or do you take a stand for what is in your best spiritual interests? Of course, the right thing to do is to tactfully mention to your friends that the conversations sometimes go too far. You might make waves, and even some enemies, by taking such an unpopular stand. But it's the right thing to do.
Joshua also took an unpopular stand – placing himself at odds with the rest of the spies and the greater Jewish community - for what he believed to be in his (and G-d’s) spiritual best interests. There's a delicate balance that we must find in our lives, to enable us to react properly to all the diverse situations that come up.
May G-d give all of us the strength to always do the right thing.
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