Parashat Shelach Lecha

The sin of the spies was a corruption of perspective. They saw the Land of Israel from the outside, through danger, fear, and utility, and thereby succeeded in distancing the heart of the people from the Land that is its very life. And the repair for this sin is a corresponding remedy: to speak of its glory, its splendor, its holiness, and its honor. To remind ourselves and the world that the Land of Israel is not merely a refuge from enemies, and not merely a comfortable or uncomfortable place to live, but the place to which we yearn and from which we grow. One who understands the value of the Land does not threaten to leave it when things are hard, and does not measure it only according to the comfort of life, but knows that it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. The repair for the sin of the spies is to know how to look at reality through truer lenses – ones that see the good and magnify it, rather than the opposite.