21 Jun BEWARE THE MARKETING

Parashat Shelah is famous for

the story of the meragelim,

the spies. Moshe Rabbenu

sent twelve men, one from

each tribe, to scout the Land

of Israel and report their

findings. When they

returned, ten spies frightened the people. They

acknowledged the special quality of the land

and its fruit, but then they spoke of the large,

powerful armies of the nations in the land, and

of the fortified cities which would be impossible

to conquer. The other two, Kalev and

Yehoshua, tried to convince the people that they

had nothing to fear, that Hashem would help

them capture the land. The people listened to the

ten spies, and decided they did not want to enter

the Land of Israel. Hashem was very angry, and

decreed that the entire generation would perish

in the desert. The ten spies who frightened the

people were killed immediately by a plague.

Yehoshua and Kalev survived, and ultimately

entered the Land of Israel forty years later.

When reading this story, we are struck by one

very simple question: What did the spies do

wrong? Moshe specifically asked them to

survey the land, to see what kind of people live

there, and whether their cities were open or

fortified with walls. It appears that they did

exactly what Moshe had asked them to do!

Actually, this question is even stronger. In the

Book of Devarim (chapter 9), Moshe Rabbenu

himself tells the people the exact same thing that

the spies had told them. Speaking to Beneh

Yisrael shortly before his death, Moshe

informed the people that the nations they would

encounter in Eretz Yisrael were very strong, and

their cities with fortified with walls that

extended “to the heavens.” Why was it ok for

Moshe to frighten the people, but not for the

scouts? I remember once speaking to somebody

and asking whether he was still learning with a

havruta (study partner) with whom he had been

learning. He answered, “With him? Nech!” I’m

not sure exactly what “nech” means, but all it

took was for him to say “nech” instead of “no”

for me to understand what he was getting at.

Without saying anything untrue, and without

even giving me any concrete information, this

fellow was expressing that he did not think very

highly of that havruta, to put it mildly. The spies

gave over the information they were asked to

provide, but they did so with a clear agenda.

They gave it a negative spin. Any piece of

information we convey can be spun in very

different ways. And the spies spun the

information in a negative way, convincing the

people that they should not proceed into the

land. When Moshe spoke to the people, he spun

it the opposite way. He described to them the

military might and fortresses of the people in the

land, but then assured them that Hashem would

help them. This is the opposite of what the spies

did – describing the land in a way that

frightened and discouraged the people. We live

in an age of professional marketing, when

everything is made to look good. Advertisers

make their products look so appealing.

Cigarette ads show healthy, happy people

having a great time smoking. They don’t show

what smoking does a person’s health and his life

generally. Movies and television series with

very inappropriate content are presented as

respectable forms of entertainment. Events here

in the community are innocently billed as

“engagement parties” or “get togethers” but

include large amounts of alcohol and even

drugs. People are misled to

think there’s nothing wrong with these events

because of the way they are marketed. As

Torah Jews, we must beware the marketing.

Just as the meragelim were able to make Eretz

Yisrael look like a terrible place, people in our

society routinely make very inappropriate

things look respectable and

appealing. We need to have the strength and

courage of Kalev and Yehoshua, who stood up

to the “marketers” and were not misled. We

must remain true to our principles rather than

be fooled by the “packaging,” and always

remember what is appropriate and what is not.