Of spies and prostitutes

Parshas Shelach Lecha begins with the tragic story of twelve spies who go to scout out (latur – לתור) Eretz Canaan for the Jewish people in the desert. We know it didn’t end well as they came back with the most terrifying reports that turned the will of the desert dwellers into jelly.

The sedra likewise ends with the prohibition of scouting out (ולא תתורו) with one’s eyes and heart in search of sin and corruption. As the spies of the body, the eyes and heart go out looking for some action (אשר אתם זנים אחריהם), each according to it’s nature. The eyes seek physical pleasures, in particular those derived from intimacy, while the heart steers the intellect towards a theology that will allow the indulgence that the body longs for.

It is no coincidence that the Hebrew word for prostitute is zonah, from the same root as zonim. In rabbinic colloquy, znus is the word for promiscuity. Whereas intimacy between man and wife is holy of holies, unchecked promiscuity is vanity of vanities, empty and corrupt.

There’s a strange law in the Torah (Deut 23:19) that the prostitute’s fee and the payment for a dog may not be used for sacrificial purposes. God doesn’t want the money earned by prostitution, neither does He want money given in exchange for a dog. We could readily understand the former, but why the latter? What’s so bad about buying a dog? How is it similar to buying personal services?

Well they do have something in common – both can be a solution for a person who wants the pleasures of a relationship without putting in the effort to build a real, lasting relationship, and I think this is the key to understanding the law, and the sin of the spies.

Sacrifices to God are prescribed precisely for the purpose of bringing man close to God, and they represent the idea that a person has to quite literally sacrifice himself in order to do this. The prostitute’s fee is the antithesis of the kind of closeness that we seek. Someone once quipped that you don’t pay the prostitute to be with you…you pay her to leave you when you’re done. That sums it up.

When we indulge in pleasures with no commitment, we take ourselves as far away from holiness as possible. When we seek the joys of love and intimacy without the hard work, we lower ourselves and cease to be worthy of real relationships.

So perhaps this was what brought about the tragedy of the spies. As representatives of the Jewish people, they went to scout out the potential of Canaan as a land of free opportunity. Was it possible to enjoy the goodness of life without effort? They wanted to continue living as they had become used to in Egypt, where they received as much as they needed for free. Instead they found a land flowing with milk and honey but that required sweat, blood and tears to realise it’s potential. That wasn’t what they bargained for and so they came back with their damning report.

Yehoshua and Caleb, of the twelve, saw things differently: tova ha’aretz me’od me’od. Why not just tov? Because they wanted to echo God’s own celebration of the completed Creation on the sixth day – vehineh tov me’od (Genesis 1:31). The Ramban explains that this means that God saw it as mostly good, and that this was the greatest cause for celebration! The fact that there remained an element of Evil makes it possible to fully reveal and appreciate Good.

In a deeper sense, chaza’l say that me’od is the yetzer hara – the evil inclination, for the only way for man to truly reach God is to engage in struggle with his inclination.

If we seek real love, we need to be prepared to work for it.