Timeless Torah

Once upon a time there was a sister. Not just any sister, but an older, righteous sister, who also happened to be a prophetess. And not just any prophetess, but one able to take the credit for your being born and protecting you when as a helpless baby you were being swept down the Nile. And then imagine, she whispered to your older brother, who incidentally doubles up as the nation’s High Priest, that you were neglecting your husbandly duties.
Sounds like innocent, interfamily gossip: Harmless prattle, hardly worth getting upset over. Nonetheless, someone in fact was peeved. Not Moses, about whom his sister Miriam was speaking about; the great leader was much too humble to worry about such pettiness. It was the Almighty, who took time from running His universe, who paid heed and struck.
“Loshon Harah and spreading tales,” He thundered. “That cannot be countenanced.” Consequently Miriam was banished from the Israelite camp for seven days until she was healed from leprosy, this being the punishment G-d had deemed appropriate.
This episode is followed in the Torah narrative with the twelve spies sent to report on the Land of Israel. Rashi, the medieval French commentary, asks why are these two events (Miriam and the Spies) juxtaposed? Is there some inherent relationship between the two that they should be recorded one right after the other?
The answer is that the harsh consequences suffered by Miriam were meant as a lesson to the twelve scouts. If she, quietly relaying some private family matter to Aaron, was so severely penalized, how much more so should they have been careful about publicly casting aspersions on G-d’s Promised Land!
Unfortunately, the majority of the group somehow overlooked Miriam’s excommunication and denounced the land that was “flowing with milk and honey” as a place that “consumes its inhabitants.”
It is already recorded in the Torah that Moses strengthened Hoshea’s inner defenses (one of the two spies that recommended entering the land without delay) by adding the Hebrew letter Yud (י) to his star student’s name. The additional letter changed the pronunciation of the name to Yehoshua which means that, “G-d will save you” from the conspiracy of the other scouts.
According to the Targum Yonason, Moses singled out Yehoshua because his tremendous humility made him susceptible to the persuasion of his fellow spies. This leaves Calev the son of Yefuneh, representing the tribe of Judah as the only individual who, on his own, internalized the true significance of what had occurred to Miriam. The obvious question is why did Calev succeed wherein all the others failed?
The final book of the Hebrew canon is Chronicles which in large part consists of long lists of family genealogies. In Chapter two we are told that our faithful scout Calev, was first married to Azuvah, with whom he had fathered several children. When she died, he remarried. Calev’s new bride was none other than Miriam, sister to Moses and Aaron.
Bearing this in mind, it should be fairly easy to understand why only Calev absorbed the lesson of Miriam. When his wife was plagued with the tzora’as (a spiritual malady with leprosy-like symptoms), she was exiled from the camp for seven days. That makes one entire week when Calev, who probably wanted to be in the study hall with his peers, was minding the children by himself. You can imagine what it must have been like. After seven days the desert sand had gotten into everything, the tent was a mess and needed a good cleaning. The dishes had probably piled up, the youngsters were screaming for their Mommy, and even the manna from heaven was beginning to taste like week old bread pasted with peanut butter and jelly.
Of course, Calev’s first words when Miriam returned were, “I’m warning you. If anybody in this tent ever speaks loshon harah again, I’ll....!”
How often do we see others making a terrible mistake only to repeat it ourselves at some later date? Let’s not wait for lessons to be learned the hard way. What happened to Miriam and the ten spies should be noticeable enough for us to open our eyes and close our mouth.