Shelach: G-d Would Have Sent Women

You stand at a precipice.

Your life is about to change in the most magnificent of ways. After a nomadic lifestyle, wandering from place to place and feeling unsettled for more than a year…

You can taste the freedom of Home. 

Rich farmland for miles around. 

Abundant cattle and crops to live off the land. 

And most of all, the peace of mind your family has been craving for generations.

A long-awaited reprieve from the stress of poverty, hard labor, and homelessness – where basic survival consumed all other goals and desires.

You're so close.

Your house will soon ready.

But the land is not yours just yet.

There's still work to do.

You can see the end vision clearly.

What it will look like and what your glorious future will be – way sooner than you imagine.

Or – you can see the weeds growing in the garden that will soon be yours.

The current renters living in utter disarray.

The hurdles seem big and heavy. You can focus on that.

Or you can see the true essence of this place.

The apple of the world's eye, where milk and honey flow.

The lushness and expansion living right at your fingertips. 

The Kli Yakar makes a fascinating observation on the words שלח לך אנשים.

Send for you men.

Moshe sent men to scout the land. Perhaps that was the norm of the time.

Sending women would have been the most unusual thing to consider. 

But that would have actually been G-d’s first choice.

In His own words, according to the Kli Yakar: “According to My view, seeing into the future, it would have been better to send women who cherish the land, for they would not speak negatively about it. But for you – send men.”

They weren’t sent as spies, but as tourists. They became spies, because they perceived the land through a spy’s eye. Through the critical perspective of men on a mission to conquer and overcome. 

But you see, {{first_name}}, that’s a natural masculine viewpoint.

And it can be necessary and healthy in many ways.

A man naturally wants to provide and protect.

His brain will gather evidence to assess his own strength against the obstacle in front of him.

The spies reported they were like grasshoppers in the eyes of the giants they met. They didn’t see the physical capability – in their own strength – to move into their homeland.

This perspective may feel practical. Even responsible.

But from this vantage point, the life waiting for you remains just beyond your grasp. 

And forty years is a very long time to keep wandering in the desert – just to become the person, the nation, finally ready to receive their destiny.

But a woman holds the future in her ovaries.

She sees beyond present limitations to what is possible in a thing.

What can be gestated from raw potential.

Her cycles help her become a magnet to her purpose.

To her destiny.

She sees not only the obstacles and destruction but the hope of renewal.

The miracle of rising into our fullest potential and receiving the greatness Hashem wants to bestow. Channeling His seed, His promise and birthing new possibilities. Seeing the beauty that’s already there.

Because her cycle embodies it.

G-d would have sent women.

They would have seen the land for what it was.

Her beauty. Her essence. Her future.

Everything she's meant to be.

And perhaps the nation would have been ready to receive their full power and destiny – collapsing 40 years into one – through this feminine vision.

Because one thing is clear.

Both are reality.

The grasshoppers, the giants, the fortified cities and warriors.

And also the luscious fruit, the battles they’d won and would continue to win, the land flowing with milk and honey.

Can you see it, {{first_name}}?

Do you feel the power inside of you?

Can you hold the feminine vision of what you know is here - at this precipice? In the life you’re moving toward?

Are you ready to receive it?

Destiny. Power. Responsibility.

Those are fearsome.

It feels safer to see ourselves as grasshoppers. Unworthy. Small.

But in you, dear woman, lives the future. 

The cycle unfolding and revealing the true essence of the land. 

The beauty in you and the world around you. 

Everything that’s possible. 

Everything that’s coming and everything that is. 

Everything that’s real.