This week Israel feels a bit like the stock market.   The overall trend is always up, it’s certainly the best investment over time, but in the short term its unpredictable and there sure are ups and downs.  Though I am no expert, this seems to have been an unprecedented year in Israeli politics – a right wing party and an Arab party in the most diverse israeli coalition yet, highlighting Israel as both a Jewish country and a democracy, -offers some hope for a peaceful future.   But alas, this week the government seems to be dissolving, and more elections are surely not a positive thing for Israel.   (I remember 3 years ago at the Israeli Embassy Chanukah party I asked why the food was lower quality and more sparse than in previous years, their answer was that all the elections that year were so costly they sapped everyone’s budget.  In contrast, this year’s Israeli Embassy Yom Haatzmaut gathering was the largest and most lavish of the last few years.)

This week’s Torah portion, Shelach, is of course the parsha to teach us about perspective on Israel.  The story of the meraglim, the 10 spies who came back with a bad report about the Land of Israel, is a lesson for all time.  The Mishnah tells us that the spies returned and gave their bad report on Tisha B’av, the ninth of Av, now the saddest day in the Jewish calendar.   Not having the faith and courage to enter the land was the seminal exile from which all exiles come.  The later tragedies in Jewish history, the destruction of the Temples and subsequent dispersions, find their roots in our parsha, with the first rejection of Israel by the Jewish people.

I mentioned in my sermon this past shabbat, that the juxtaposition of the complainers in the desert who craved the good food they thought they had in Egypt, with the narrative of the spies, teaches us that just as the past in Egypt was not utopian so too the future of the Jewish people in the land can not be expected to be either.   For the Jewish people in the desert, as today, living securely in the land will not be an open miracle, it will be an experience of ups and downs, of sacrifice, and of reality.   Certainly God guides us with a velvet hand from behind the curtain, but as the Talmud says, (Berachot 5a), “Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai stated: The Holy One gave Israel three precious gifts, all of which were given only by means of suffering: Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World-to-Come.”  To acquire something truly, is to acquire it with work and sweat and perhaps suffering.   It is this that the spies could not fathom.

Several young people from our community have recently sacrificed the fun American college experience to work hard in the Israeli Army, and one young Kesher member from several decades ago, who we still remember in our communal Yizkor, gave his life fighting for Israel.  We are no meraglim who expect Israel on a Divine platter, this time around the Jewish people have worked very hard for the land. No doubt despite the ups and downs it is this era which will merit a peaceful, just, and redemptive Israel.