In this week’s Torah portion, Shelach, we are introduced to a fascinating turn of events. The Jews are about to enter the land of Canaan. They decide to send twelve spies to check out the land first. Moses agrees, and when the spies come back with a negative report, the Jews don’t want to continue. So G-d decides to kill off the Jews. Who can blame Him? … Yet, Moses defends the Jews.
Moses’s defense is a defense of distraction. “Don’t question the actual decision;” better bring in some other reasons to stop the harsh verdict. That is why Moses asks G-d, “What will the Egyptians say, that you took them out of Egypt and you couldn’t bring them into Israel, so you slaughtered them instead?”
What is most interesting is that the Jews do end up dying in the desert, albeit over the next 38 years. This means that Moses was not successful in his defense; all he accomplished was a slow implementation of the ruling. If that is the case, wouldn’t you say then, that Moses was actually trying to defend G-d?
If you agree, then we have to ask the obvious: Does G-d care what the Egyptians think?
The short answer is yes.
Let me explain.
The whole point of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai was so that the Jew, as a human being, could elevate him or herself to a higher spiritual state of being. We no longer would be equal to the animal, which can only be elevated to a higher spiritual level with “outside” help, such as through eating it after one recites a blessing first.
Since receiving the Torah, human beings have the ability to elevate themselves to a higher calling.
Moses argued that if G-d killed all the Jews for failing to realize this higher calling, then the Egyptians would say that the Jews would never be able to elevate themselves, as the only way for them to rise higher is by G-d saving them—or killing them.
So G-d doesn’t care what others think. He cares about His message – what others will think it is telling us – and G-d does care about is how His message is interpreted.
What you say is not as important as how it is heard.
If we tell someone that we are proud to be Jews, but we don’t do anything to show this person that we care, they may hear our words, but they see something else, and therefore they don’t even hear what we are truly saying.
Think about this.