Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Aliyah with conviction

A central word in this week’s parashah, sehlach lekha, is עלה go up/ascend, the root letters for the word/עליה Aliyah-going up, immigrating to Israel. 

As they approach the Land of Israel, Moshe sends out chieftains for each tribe to scout the Land: עלו זה בנגב ועליתם את ההר  – ’Go up to the arid land (negev) and then go up into the hill country’. We then read: ויתורו את הארץ ויעלו  – ‘And, they went up and scouted the land’. 

When the scouts returned with a report that demoralises the people, indicating the Land is beyond their ability to possess, Calev, the scout from the tribe of Judah, responds with conviction: עלה נעלה …כי יכול נוכל לה – ‘Let us, indeed, go up… for we, assuredly, are capable’. The other scouts repeat with resignation: לא נוכל לעלות – ‘We are not capable of going up’.

In contrast to the scouts and the people who now, once again, ask to return to Mitsrayim (the narrow place)/Egypt, Calev is described as ‘My servant who is imbued with a different spirit’. We learn that Calev will enter the Land, while the people, who, essentially, never left Mitsrayim/Egypt, will perish in the desert.

The people are very ‘mournful’ and then begin to go up toward the hill country – ויעלו אל ראש ההר. They declare: הננו ועלינו אל המקום אשר אמר ה’ חטאנו – ‘We are prepared to go up to the place of which the Lord has spoken, for we were wrong’. Remarkably, and perhaps unexpectedly, Moshe responds: אל תעלו – ‘Do not go up, for God is not in your midst and you will be routed’.

One commentator’s reading of the words of the Israelites, regarding their sudden preparedness to ‘go up’, explains Moshe’s admonition: “We are prepared to go up to the place, for God has spoken that we are wrong”. This was not the aliyah of conviction demonstrated by Calev. There is no true turn about; they will “go up” to reverse the punishment, for it was God, not they themselves, who deemed them to be wrong. Devoid of real commitment, as expressed by Moshe’s words ‘God is not in your midst”, they remain a dispirited, and therefore doomed, people.

The opening words of this parashah, calling for aliyah, are shelach lekhah – understood, literally, as ‘send yourself’.  Aliyah requires motivation from within. It is not by accident that the very last word of the canonized bible in our Jewish tradition is ויעל – ‘Go up’, connected with the following sentiment, serving as the closing statement of the Tanakh: ‘Whoever there is among you of all His people – the LORD his God be with him – let him go up.’