Parsha Shlach — Failure as a tool for growth

In this week’s Parsha, we have one of the biggest stories of failures in the story of the 12 leaders sent to assess the conquest of the Land.

They came back with a negative report. As the Torah says:

Numbers 13:31

והאנשים אשר עלו עמו אמרו לא נוכל לעלות אל־העם כי־חזק הוא ממנו׃

“But the men who went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.”

Many reasons are given for this — putting self interest first and low self belief.

We like to call them spies. They were not spies. They were our leaders. This was a leadership failure.

Throughout history and today our leaders have failed. There have been and are terrible consequences for these leadership failures. The “punishments” on the average person seem unfit and makes no sense.

In our Parsha, the punishment was severe and did not seem to fit the mistake. The generation was to wonder for 40 years and die in the desert and not enter the Land of Israel.

I think this extreme punishment teaches us that we need to change, be resilient, learn from our mistakes. Be better.

In today’s we world, we worship success. But there are more failures than success.

In my daily calm app, there was a meditation to embrace our failures as an opportunity for growth.

There are many categories of failures. Some examples:

World — climate change, poverty, war, allowing evil and lack of moral compass

National — self interest of politicians, corruption ,not following their voters wishes

Family & Personal -Bad parenting , Low emotional Intelligence , Accidents , jealousy..

While we have these different categories, the needed change is all the same. It starts with ourselves.

In last weeks Parsha commentary Rabbi Sacks ZL quoting “ Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in his famous essay, The Lonely Man of Faith. This essay speaks of “Adam I” — the human person as creator, builder, master of nature imposing his or her will on the world — and “Adam II”, the covenantal personality, living in obedience to a transcendent truth, guided by a sense of duty and right and the will to serve.

Adam I seeks success. Adam II strives for charity, love, and redemption. Adam I lives by the logic of economics — the pursuit of self-interest and maximum utility. Adam II lives by the very different logic of morality, where giving matters more than receiving, and conquering desire is more important than satisfying it. In the moral universe, success, when it leads to pride, becomes failure. Failure, when it leads to humility, can be success.”

I think this sums up our personality. We are by nature self centred, while the challenge is to have a strong self esteem and belief we need to be more caring, more sensitive to others.

While marriage and raising a family guides,, we grow most from our failures.

As Rabbi Sacks zL wrote “Crisis, failure, loss, or pain can move us from Adam I to Adam II, from self- to other-directedness, from mastery to service, and from the vulnerability of the “I” to the humility that “reminds you that you are not the centre of the universe,” but rather that “you serve a larger order.”