A Quick Thought On Shelach

-This post was originally published on http://thoughts4mysoul.wordpress.com/

This Shabbat was Parshat Shelach, which is best known for the stories of the spies. While reviewing the parsha withoutkids, my husband read to them the often less spoken about story of the man who desecrated Shabbat by gathering wood. He was warned by two witnesses that he should stop his trangression and ignored them. He received the death sentence.  When my husbadn read the My First Parsha book version of the story, my eldest piped up that he had learned that the man did it so that everyone would know that the laws of Shabbat were serious.My husband had never heard this Midrash and was a bit surprised…after all, that would mean that this man deliberately set out to get the death penalty.

Upon further research, I discovered that this is one of those interesting stories on which there is definite disagreement. There is a Midrash that states that the man was worried that the Israelites, having just been denied entry into the Holy Land on account of the spies, would think that they need not keep any mitzvot until they were in the Promised Land and would therefore be lax. In this particular Midrash’s opinion, it was l’shaim sh’mayim (for the sake of Heaven). However, the Midrash Says, the book I was using for reference, specifically mentions that this is a highly contested Midrash.  The other book I looked into, The Weekly Midrash, discusses the other opinion – how great a rasha, wicked one, this man was.

These two Midrashim are startling contrasts to each other. So where, I wonder, does that leave me. How am I to pass on the emes of the Midrash with such a contrast of opinions. Perhaps from these two Midrashim one can learn two lessons. One is about judging others. We can never really know a person’s motives just by watching their actions. The second is that one person may very-well have two motivations. Perhaps this many worried that the others would come to sin because he believed it a bit himself. Perhaps he felt lost and disillusioned by the disheartening words of the Spies, perhaps he felt that they did not really have G-d’s forgiveness and would not get the land. He set out to desecrate the Shabbat like a stubborn child who breaks all the rules hoping to be caught so that Mom and Dad will prove their love by punishing them, by setting limits on them. Perhaps this man broke Shabbat because he was uncertain but, all the time, hoped that he would (and did) receiver proof that his actions really did matter.