What happens when conclusions are made before the investigation begins? A scientist will tell you that research is useless when the researchers decide the outcome before they conduct the experiment. They will pay attention only to data that confirm what they want to see and ignore anything that contradicts it. At best, they will waste their time. At worst, they will subvert the very purpose of investigation as they convince themselves and others of a falsehood.

That seems to be what happened in this week's Torah portion (Shelach). Moses sent out a group of twelve spies to scout out the land of Israel. But ten of the spies already knew what they wanted to find and their investigation only served to confirm their bias. They came back from their mission and reported that the land was heavily defended by giants and that it would be impossible for the Israelites to overcome them. They saw only what they wanted to see.

The text tells us:

[The spies] returned from the investigation of the land at the end of forty days. They went and came to Moses, Aaron and the entire Israelite community…
– Numbers 13:25-26

The Talmud notes the awkwardness of the phrase, "They went and came." The rabbis wonder, why does the Torah tell us that the spies left after they already had returned? The answer comes from Rabbi Yochanan. He says that the Torah here recalls the spies' departure in order to show the similarity to their return:

Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, "It compares their going to the coming back. Just as their coming back was with an evil design, so their going was with an evil design."
– B. Sotah 35a

The ten spies did not just get frightened by what they saw while they were on their reconnaissance mission. According to the rabbis of the Talmud, they set out on the mission with a determination to undermine God and Moses' plan to bring the people into the land of Israel. They kept their true intentions secret and only used the scouting mission as cover to advance their predetermined conclusion.

In science, a predetermined conclusion can be a disaster for an experiment. The scientist's time will be wasted, and so will the time of other investigators who build their experiments on the biased results of the first. The quest for knowledge will be set backwards, not forwards, and it may take a long time for the error to be corrected.

In the realm of public policy, a predetermined conclusion can be a disaster for an entire society. In the case of the scouts sent by Moses, the report of the ten spies weakened the resolve of the Israelites to enter and fight for the land of Israel. In response, God made the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years. Perhaps God knew that a lie that has been told with the support of a seemingly honest investigation takes a long time to root out.

While the use of military scouting parties in ancient Israel may seem remote from our everyday experience, the idea of using a predetermined conclusion to thwart the truth is not so distant from us. We see regularly how public policy is undermined when fact-finding missions, congressional investigations, and blue-panel inquiries are used to advance an opinion that is set as hard as stone before the examination of facts even begins.

If we naively accept whatever we are told by false investigations, we help to advance the lies and the interests of those who wish to spread them. However, if we merely reject every public inquiry and report because we believe them all to be the tools of falsehood, we will have done little better.

Remember that two of the spies spoke the truth. We have to be willing to seek out the truth even in a world where lies predominate. We always have to be on the lookout for biased interpretations that skillfully mask self-seeking intentions.

That is not an easy assignment. We have to be curious but not credulous. We have to listen with wisdom and we have to be willing to make up our own minds – not to allow others to make up our mind for us. We have to be ready to see the signs of a conclusion that was formed before the inquiry began.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Devarim: A Biblical Rashomon​
​Shelach Lecha: Getting Up Close and Personal

Before entering the land that God has promised them, the Israelites sent twelve scouts over the Jordan River to determine the wealth of the land and its fortifications. All twelve returned with reports of a land that was abundant and fertile. They found grapes, pomegranates and figs to delight the senses.

Ten of the scouts, though, gave a report that focussed on the might of the inhabitants of the land: "The people who live in the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the Anakites there. Amalekites dwell in the southern region; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country. Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan” (Numbers 13:27-29). The place, they said, was swarming with enemies.

The other two scouts, Caleb and Joshua, offered a more reassuring message about the land of Israel. They told the people, "Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it" (Numbers 13:30). But that is exactly when the first ten spies made the idea of conquering the land seem utterly impossible. They give a description that sounded more like a scene from a horror movie than a sober military assessment:It is all too easy for us to be frightened into believing that we are grasshoppers. When we do, we forget that, with faith in ourselves and devotion to our ideals, we can be powerful beyond all adversity. That is what Caleb and Joshua tried to tell the Israelites — "Have no fear … the Lord is with us" (Numbers 14:9).

These days, there are hundreds of colorful and creative tallitot from which to choose. However, the only really important parts of the tallit, from the perspective of Jewish law, are the long knotted fringes, called tzitzit, on the four corners. This week's Torah portion (Shelach Lecha) includes the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit. That passage is also the third paragraph of the Shema, traditionally recited twice each day during morning and evening worship.

(For many years, Reform prayerbooks omitted the verses that refer to tzitzit, ostensibly because most Reform Jews did not wear a tallit. In recent decades, wearing the tallit has become common in Reform congregations and the most recent Reform prayerbook, Mishkan T'filah, restores the passage as an option in the morning service.)

I never paid much attention to the actual method for wrapping and knotting the strands of the tzitzit until, about three years ago, when one of the tzitzit broke on my favorite tallit. I purchased a set of tzitzit strings (available from most Jewish book stores) and taught myself how to tie them. 

According to the tradition followed by most Ashkenazic Jews, there are four sets of wrappings separated by five pairs of knots on each tzitzit. There are seven wrappings between the first set of knots, eight wrappings between the next set, eleven between the next set, and thirteen between the last. It looks like this:

There are many interpretations of the number of windings between the knots. All depend on gematria, interpretations that are based on the numeric values of the Hebrew letters. The seven and eight windings in the first two sets add up to fifteen, which is the numeric value of yud-hey, the first two letters of God's holiest name. The second two letters are vav-hey, which have the combined value of eleven. The first three sets of windings are said to spell out God's name: yud-hey-vav-hey. The fourth set, of 13 windings, has the value of the word echad, which means "one." Each of the four tzitzit spells out "Adonai Echad," "The Lord is One."

There is also gematria that shows how the tzitzit correspond to the mitzvot, the 613 commandments given in the Torah. The word "tzitzit" itself has the numeric value of 600 (when spelled with two yuds). Add to that, the eight strands and the five knots on each tzitzit and, presto, you have the number 613. Wearing a tallit symbolizes acceptance of the obligation to do mitzvot. 

The connection between the tzitzit and the mitzvot is not incidental. In a passage from this week's Torah portion, we read, "Adonai told Moses, 'Tell the Israelites to make tzitzit on the corners of their garments in every generation…They shall look at it and remember all of Adonai's mitzvot and do them'" (Numbers 15:38-39).  

When a Jew puts on a tallit to pray in the morning, he or she recites a blessing that acknowledges the commandment "to wrap oneself in tzitzit." Metaphorically, we wrap ourselves  in the mitzvot. The mitzvot are not just orders issued to us from above. Rather, they are the spiritual clothes that we wear. They protect us, adorn us, and reflect the inner beauty of our souls with the outer beauty of our actions.

We also recite a verse before putting on the tallit that declares that "God…is clothed in splendor and majesty, wrapped in light as a garment, unfolding the heavens like a curtain" (Psalm 104:1-2). God also wears a tallit, a garment of light that represents the heavens. 

Today, when I put on my tallit, I think about my grandfather. I also remember how the tallit recalls a partnership with God that makes us and our actions central to the order of the cosmos. I think about how, when we perform mitzvot, we are doing our joyful part in creating the world of our dreams—a dream that we dream together with God.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Shelach Lecha: Getting Up Close and Personal
Yoga and Judaism: The Yoke's on You
Joy and Obligation

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses sent out spies to check out the people who lived in the land of Canaan. Ten of the spies returned with a report that the Canaanites were giants.  They said that Israel would never be able to conquer them. The spies’ report spread fear among the Israelites, and resulted in God’s decision to have them wander in the wilderness for another forty years. 

This week's haftarah reading, from the book of Joshua, tells a parallel story in which things are turned around. It is Israel’s enemies, the people of Jericho, who are scared to death. The spies whom Joshua sent to check them out return to say that the land is already as good as conquered because the people who live there are already trembling in fear of the Israelites.

In both stories, the spies’ reports do not say nearly as much about the military capacity of the enemy (what you would expect spies to report!) as they do about the emotional state of each side in relation to the other. Those who are confident are presumed to prevail and those who are fearful are presumed to fail. Perceptions become reality.

One of the major differences between the story in the Torah and the story in the haftarah is that, in the latter, the spies made personal contact with Rachav, a member of the enemy city. They got up close to see the full extent of the enemy they faced. In the Torah story, the spies merely looked at the Canaanites from a distance and made no personal connection. From a distance the Canaanites looked like giants. Would they have looked differently if the spies had gone right up and engaged them in conversation? 

Fear is a natural and normal response to a threat. That's why we are programed instinctively to fear things that are strange to us. However, fear that is automatic and unquestioning can be destructive. The two stories we read this week—the story of the fearful spies and the story of the confident spies—can be understood as a challenge to confront the things that make us fearful. We are urged to get close enough to the things we perceive as threatening to see their true nature. When we do this, we may discover that the things that scare us actually are as weak and unthreatening as were the cowering people of Jericho.