Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Of Grapes, Giants and Grasshoppers

A Texan was being shown around a vast ranch in Australia. The proud Texan refused to be impressed, believing everything back home was better. He said to his host: “This whole spread would be just a teensy little corner of my place back home.” When shown a huge herd of cattle, he said: “This is nice, but it’s just a fraction of my herd back in Texas.” Just then a kangaroo came up from behind the Texan. The startled Texan said, “What in tarnation is that?” His Australian host responded, “You don’t have grasshoppers out in Texas?”

 In this week’s parashah, Shelakh Lekha, the scouts, sent to Canaan, the Promised Land, return with a single cluster of grapes that is so massive that it had to be borne by 2 grown men on a carrying frame. Indeed, a promising prospect of what lay before them. However, upon showing this land’s bounteous produce to the people, the scouts say:

But, it’s useless, for the land’s inhabitants are powerful..they are giants, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we were in their sight.

These people never entered the promised land. Their observation provides the reason: When one sees oneself as a grasshopper, can one be seen any differently by another?

According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself…Scientists, using the “in here-out there” distinction, have discovered that the…distinction may not exist!

What is “out there” apparently depends, in a rigorous mathematical sense as well as philosophical one, upon what we decide “in here”.

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

What we see says as much about ourselves as that which we see. The Canaanites were giants in-as-much as the Israelites were grasshoppers. The last word said to the scouts before they departed to explore the promised land was והתחזקתם, make yourselves strong/have courage. A land of promise requires perceived possibility not self-imposed limitations.

Our parashah begins with the words shelach lekha – literally “send to yourself”. The scouts sent to search out the land in a sense were searching out themselves, and came up wanting. The land remained a promise to be fulfilled but not for them. The 40 days of exploring Canaan that provided a report of impossibility led to their 40 years of wandering in a wasteland with no more than a memory of bountiful grapes that exceeded the size of a grasshopper.