In this week’s parashah, Shelach-Lecha, God tells Moses to send out twelve spies, or scouts, each from a different tribe to scout the Promised Land.  Moses does so, and tells them to go scout the land, and bring back information on the people who dwell there, the food, the land, and the cities. The scouts do as they are told, and explore the land for forty days. As the scouts return, they cut some giant fruit off a vine, and bring it back to prove that the land really does “flow with milk and honey,” a biblical metaphor meaning filled with plenty of food. But after their reports on the bountiful fruits, nice soil and good land, all of the scouts, except for two, Joshua and Caleb, begin to frighten the Israelites with the other things that they saw in the land. They explain how the land is filled with giants and large cities with powerful inhabitants. While Moses, Joshua and Caleb try to convince the Israelites that they should continue on and conquer the land, the remaining scouts only scare the Israelites more. They speak of how the land is a land that “eats up its inhabitants,” and how the Israelite spies had looked like grasshoppers in size, in the faces of these Canaanite giants. While Moses tries to convince the people that they should not be afraid, trust God’s word, and continue on, the Israelites only become more and more frightened, screaming that they should go back to the land of Egypt. Then, God appeared in the Tent of Meeting, and spoke to Moses saying: “If the Israelites do not trust me, why should I let them live, I will strike upon them and kill them all!” But Moses did not want this to happen, and he explained to God that if God killed all the Israelites, then people in other lands would hear about this, and no one would trust God anymore or believe that our God is so great and powerful: the rumor would be that God couldn’t even control some slaves. God decided not to kill the Israelites and instead, as a punishment, God sent them out to wander in the desert for forty years, one year for each day they scouted the land. Thus, the Israelites traveled the land for forty years and of all the people of that generation died. Joshua and Caleb were the only ones to survive the journey.

Trust is an important theme that is present in parashat Shelach-Lecha. One of the places trust appears is when God asked Moses to send out scouts to see the land, trusting Moses to do this, and do it correctly. In doing so, Moses does go out and do what God told him to do; send scouts to see the land. Moses and God have a very good relationship based on trust.  This is just the latest example of that trust.

 Another part of the parashah where trust appears is when Moses trusts the scouts he chooses and trusts that they will do the job correctly. Indeed, they did do the job correctly; bringing back fruit from the land, and telling them everything they had seen and heard, telling Moses exactly what he had asked them for-good and bad.

 Now, there are also places where we see mistrust in Shelach-Lecha. After the scouts came back with their information and told it to all the Israelites, the scouts had begun with good descriptions of the land, such as the fruits and soil, but then had moved on to the horrible things about it such as the powerful people and fortified cities. This showed a lack of trust in God. Worse, this had made the whole people doubt whether they should have trusted God, or whether they should continue to trust God in the future. This also affects God’s opinion on whether the Israelites really trust their God or not. Then, God decides to punish the Israelites for their lack of trust. When Moses suggests that God should not kill all of the Israelites, but instead forgive the Israelites for their mistrust, God takes Moses words, and trusts him, but does not leave the Israelites without a punishment for their unfaithful reactions to their God.  Perhaps the forty years of travel was meant to build a trusting relationship with the next generation since this generation seemed incapable of trusting God.

There is good gossip and bad gossip; gossip can be taken in many ways. It can be taken as a way of helping someone, telling things about a person, helping him or her achieves something or gains something. It can also be taken in as a horrible lie, where others spread rumors which are not totally true.  It can be harmful if gossip is told out of jealousy, hate, revenge, or just fun, it hurts that person, and many people begin to believe the lies that are spreading around. Other types of gossip occur when someone has found out something about a person, be it good or bad, and have told other people this, even though it was this person’s personal life, and has caused him or her to not be able to do or say something again.

In parashat Shelach-Lecha, gossip occurs a few times. One time we see this is where the scouts have come back to the Israelites and are giving the report of what they know. Since this is the land that God has promised to them, and they say good things about it, it is not technically considered gossip. But when the scouts begin to harshen their definition of the situation about the land, they begin to “gossip” about the land that was promised to them by God. This would be considered gossip against their land, and even if it was true, since it was bad and unpleasant things they were saying about the land that God had promised to give them, so it might also be considered talking gossip about God.

 Moses uses the threat of gossip when God decided to kill the Israelites for not trusting what God had promised them. Moses tries to convince God that this would be a mistake, and why it would be so. Moses says that if God would kill all the Israelites, others in other lands would find out, hear about it, and might even make the situation seem worse. This gossip would lead other people to believe that it is all God’s fault, and how they cannot trust God and how God is weak. Gossip would be spread through the lands, and most likely it would be changed, as gossip does, when it spreads around, making the situation seem even worse than it is. So, God made them travel forty years, and hopefully they realized the consequences of gossip, any type of gossip. Clearly God was worried about gossip too!

            “Do the crime, pay the time,” Nowadays, crimes might be considered shooting a man and robbing a bank, and punishments would be considered community service, jail, or a fine. Back then, crimes would be considered gossiping, practicing a foreign religion, and letting your animal hurt your neighbor. Punishments could be whipping, death, or slavery. Times have changed. But the thing that has never changed is that with every crime comes a punishment, no matter big or small. There are a few examples of crime and punishment parashat Shelach-Lecha, of wrongs being fixed. The big example is when the Israelites do not trust God. After the scouts had come back they were punished. God wanted to give them and the whole people the death penalty, but Moses believed that the crime should not be paired with that punishment, so he convinced God to forgive them, let it go, sort of. Crimes are always going to have a punishment, so God did not let the Israelites off the hook completely. Instead, God had sentenced them to travel in the desert for forty years, never to enter the Promised Land. Another example of crime and punishment in parashat Shelach-Lecha that there is when a man is caught collecting wood on the Sabbath day. According to the commandments, one was not allowed to work, or exerts energy on a certain tasks on Shabbat; it was the day of rest. This man did not follow Gods rules. Since he was caught collecting wood on Sabbath day, which was considered a crime, and since every crime has a punishment, this man, was stoned, and put to death because of his actions. For every crime, no matter what crime, there is a punishment, and you can find them everywhere you look.

In Judaism, gossip can be taken in in many different ways. There are few types of it, with bad, and disrespectful, and some with a glitch or two you can sneak through. Judaism finds gossip disrespectful, especially when it is about one’s land or people. In the 613 commandments contained in the Torah people most likely notice number 301 least; the one that says do not talk bad about another person, even if it’s true. When people talk about how difficult it is to observe Jewish law, they usually mention the difficulty of observing Shabbat or keeping kosher or other similarly detailed rituals. Yet the laws that are most difficult to keep, that are most commonly violated, are the laws regarding improper speech. This is a very important area of Jewish law; entire books have been written on the subject. It is called Lashon Hara, the evil tongue. It is forbidden to give someone a bad name, a bad reputation by what you say about them, according to Jewish law. Another form of gossip is when you are talking to a person and you call this person by a nickname that you know they would not like to be called by, even of he or she is used to it. As Rabbi Leon da Modena said, “Words are the guides to acts; the mouth makes the first move.” Although you may just be speaking, this leads to more, more lies, more people being told false things, and more fights saying bad things can lead to them. “Think before you speak.” This is very true. But with gossip, is pretty rare for someone to think first, else they might not say it! One example: a man had spoken bad gossip about his rabbi. Later on this man had realized how harsh these words really were and went to apologize. The rabbi told him to take a feather pillow, take the feathers, and throw them into the wind. The man did so, and then returned the next day to the rabbi. He asked if he was forgiven, but the rabbi simply said, “Go and fetch the feathers you threw to the wind yesterday.” “Impossible!” said the man, and then he realized no matter how bad the slanders and no matter how bad he wanted to take it back, it was impossible to take back the gossip, just as it was impossible to take back the feathers. The shock of what he said may wear away, but what he said will always be in people’s minds.

Gossip spreads fast, what we say here today is heard over there tomorrow. Once something is said, no matter how much we might want to, it is impossible to take back. The harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially: money lost can be repaid, but the harm done by speech can never be repaired. What’s odd is that even though most people do gossip, most people also deny gossiping. Why? Because they don’t want to be blamed for the pain they made others go through. Gossip, in Judaism, is considered a sin, denying someone of his or her dignity, privacy and perhaps ruining his or her name. Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. A lesson it can teach you is to choose carefully, and as well as that, everything God gives us has a lesson to teach, and we should be watchful and figure out what that lesson is. This makes you think, how often you hear gossip and how many people deny it, but still, you know it’s true. It affects everyone and can leave a mark on anybody, at any age, gender, religion, race; anyone can be hurt by gossip. It is not easy to truly understand the pain of someone unless you have gone through it personally, and maybe not all people experience it, but those who do see the obstacles they have to go through, and how their decisions affects everything, and it makes you think more about the future you want. Speech and gossip have been compared to an arrow: once the words are released, like an arrow, they cannot be recalled, the harm they do cannot be stopped, and the harm they do cannot always be predicted, for words like arrows often go astray. By “gossip,” the Torah means prattling pointlessly about people: simply uttering neutral, non-damaging facts. The Torah uses the Hebrew word rechilut—“peddling”—for gossip: buying, selling and trading worthless words wherever you go. By “Lashon Hara,” the Torah means repeating negative truths about others — the most damaging form of evil talk. And by “defamation,” the Torah means repeating negatives untruths about others — rumors, innuendo, second-hand stories. It is not good to go around telling false, or true but harmful information, but none the less once you have heard it continuing to spread the gossip. This just spreads it more, and it makes you as much of a gossiper as the person who originally said it.

All in all, no matter how gossip is said or spread, it doesn’t help anyone. Whether someone was telling the truth, or getting revenge on someone, no one is happy with the situation their in at the end. Almost everyone at one point has spread around gossip, and doing it doesn’t make the matter better, just worse. Although there are ways to get people to stop gossiping, we live in reality, and that is practically impossible, since not everyone always cooperates. So while not being able to stop gossip, staling it will do, with things like not getting involved and not spreading it around. But, once again, not everyone always listens, and unfortunately, living in the real world, we have to learn things the hard way.