This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Friday, June 12, 2026.

One of the strange realities of being a parent—or a rabbi—is that sometimes the reaction seems wildly out of proportion to the offense. Here’s an example that may or may not be related to my life. I’ll let you decide. A child leaves a towel on the floor, and suddenly, you’re into a whole dissertation about responsibility, respect, and what kind of person they want to become. That’s because it’s not really about the towel; it’s about taking ownership of our actions and what it means to live a less cluttered life.  

That may help us understand one of the most troubling episodes in this week’s parshah. 

Parshat Sh’lach is remembered for the story of the spies. Twelve leaders scout the Promised Land. Ten return filled with tremendous fear. The people lose faith, and an entire generation is condemned to wander in the wilderness. 

But tucked near the end of the parshah is a much smaller story. A man is found gathering wood on Shabbat. He’s brought before Moses, and God instructs that he be put to death. No question, it’s one of the Torah’s hardest passages to comprehend. Gathering sticks hardly seems deserving of such a severe punishment. 

Many commentators note that this story must be read in context. The generation has just witnessed the consequences of the spies’ lack of faith. The people are standing at a crossroads. Will they become a covenantal community or simply a collection of individuals doing whatever they please? 

The medieval commentator Ramban suggests that the wood collector acted publicly and defiantly. We’re not merely talking about someone who forgot it was Shabbat or made an innocent mistake. It was a deliberate rejection of a communal commitment. 

But I don’t think the lesson stops there. Shabbat itself was never just about rest. It was the Israelites’ weekly declaration that they were no longer slaves. In Egypt, every day was a workday. Every day was about production. Shabbat taught a revolutionary truth: your worth is not measured by what you produce. 

The wood collector’s offense was not really about sticks. The sticks were simply the symptom. The deeper issue was an outright rejection of the sacred pause that would define Jewish life. 

The punishment feels severe because the Torah is emphasizing what is at stake. If the people can’t stop, can’t pause, can’t trust that the world will continue without their labor for one day, then the covenant itself is in jeopardy. 

Our challenge today isn’t having to put off the wood gathering for Shabbat. But it’s similar. Our challenge is not answering emails at dinner, not scrolling through our phones before bed, and not convincing ourselves that everything is urgent. 

Shabbat reminds us that holiness begins when we stop. 

This week, find one moment to put down that bundle of sticks you’ve been carrying. Take a walk. Share a meal. Sit with someone you love. Breathe. Sometimes the most sacred thing we can do is nothing at all. 

How do we hold onto truth when fear clouds our vision? How do we stay anchored to our values when doubt pulls us astray? In Jewish tradition, we often rely on physical rituals—objects and actions that reconnect us to purpose. One such ritual, the mitzvah of tzitzit, appears at the end of Parshat Shlach Lecha, not as a random law but as a spiritual antidote.

Parshat Shlach Lecha tells the story of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout the Land of Israel—ten return with a report of giants and danger, insisting that the land is unconquerable. Only Caleb and Joshua advocate faith and forward movement. The people panic, cry out, and ultimately reject the journey into the land. As a result, God decrees that this generation will wander the desert for forty years.

In the aftermath of fear and forgetfulness, God commands a new mitzvah:

“Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments … so that you may look at them and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them.” (Numbers 15:38-39)

The blessing we recite when donning tzitzit is:

Baruch atah Adonai … asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al mitzvat tzitzit.

“Blessed are you … who sanctified us with commandments and commanded us regarding the mitzvah of tzitzit.”

Tzitzit become a wearable memory—a daily visual and tactile reminder to live by God’s values and not be swayed by fear or majority opinion. Where the spies lost sight of God’s promise, tzitzit offer clarity. Where the people were overwhelmed by external appearances, tzitzit redirect inward toward faithfulness.

This week, the Torah invites us to ask: What anchors us to our truth? What helps us stay grounded when we feel uncertain or overwhelmed? The mitzvah of tzitzit—whether worn physically or remembered spiritually—calls us to remain loyal to our convictions and to God’s vision for justice, courage, and faith. Let us look upon our own “fringes”—those daily rituals, those community commitments, those sacred reminders—and allow them to pull us back from fear toward purpose.

I am a reflective practitioner. I have a strong tendency to look back on experiences, services, programs, and moments and evaluate how they went, how I felt, what the outcomes were, or what I might do differently next time. I keep these notes in different forms: sometimes on a sticky note, sometimes I write up a report, and sometimes in ongoing conversations. Where this often backfires, however, is when I reflect too hard for too long and forget that I can’t change the past. When this happens I end up with a lot of should’ve/would’ve/could’ve moments that are largely unhelpful to dwell on unless I am going to run the program again, in which case I need to transform them into “I will.” 

Looking back can often be helpful; after all, we read the Torah every year, learning something new about ourselves or about what could’ve been done differently for the Israelite nation. However, there is also a point when the past becomes unrealistically rose-colored, and dwelling on “hindsight is 20/20” hinders us from moving forward in a healthy way. This also becomes a hindrance in our Torah portion this week. 

This week we read Parshat Shlach Lecha and the story of the spies. The parshah begins with Moshe sending 12 spies, one from each tribe, into the land of Cana’an to bring back an accounting of the land. The spies return with their report, and it’s pretty discouraging. Two spies report back with a positive message, but the negativity of the other ten reports instills so much fear into the nation that they decide they do not want to make the journey into the promised land after all. This infuriates God, who then decrees that anyone who went out from Egypt at age 20 or older will not be allowed to enter the land of Cana’an. This generation will purposefully die out so that a new generation, unfettered by the destructive mindset of their predecessors, can start anew.

The Israelites in chapter 14 break into a huge outcry in the camp after they hear about the supposed giants in the land of Israel. “We should’ve stayed in Egypt! We could’ve been eating what we wanted! We would’ve been better off enslaved than here with only the unknown ahead of us!” This “if only” thinking proves to be to their detriment as they are unable to see the reality that was slavery and unable to trust in God or the leadership guiding them through this transitional time. 

What we learn from this moment is that reflective practice is healthy when we’re looking back in order to find a stronger, more sustainable path forward. Nevertheless, this is a stern warning from God that “should-ing” on ourselves can be counterproductive. Instead, we must send ourselves, shlach lecha, into the future with the strength of experience, knowing what our past has taught us. 

About a year and a half ago, the whole world was obsessed with Wordle, the online word-guessing game. Plenty of people still play (including me), and even continue to share their scores on social media. Scrolling through Facebook, you’ll find different responses. In fact, living on the West Coast, I actually had to stop myself from checking Facebook before I completed that day’s puzzle because other people’s reactions would actually make me nervous about my own skills. Sometimes the word is easy, sometimes it’s more obscure. Some players are proud, some are frustrated. It’s fascinating for everyone everywhere to be working on finding the same answer, working toward the same goal, and yet, true to human nature, have widely varying reactions to the challenge. Perhaps there’s something at the root of this notion, which is exactly why I love this week’s Torah portion. 

This week we read Parshat Shlach Lecha and the story of the spies. The parshah begins with Moshe sending 12 spies, one from each tribe, into the land of Cana’an to bring back an accounting of the land. The spies return with their report, and it’s pretty discouraging. Two spies report back with a positive message, but the negativity of the other ten reports instills so much fear into the nation that they decide they do not want to make the journey into the promised land after all. This infuriates God, who then decrees that anyone who went out from Egypt at age 20 or older will not be allowed to enter the land of Cana’an. This generation will purposefully die out so that a new generation, unfettered by the destructive mindset of their predecessors, can start anew.

The spies – it’s a classic story of groupthink, influence, and peer pressure. They all go into the same land to explore, and yet somehow two of the spies have a different take. There is much commentary on why, how, and what exactly made them stand out. However, the text itself gives us a big clue, if you’re into grammar. In chapter 13, when they go into Israel, there is a change in verb form. “They went up (plural) and came (singular).” In other words, they all started together, but arrived at different places, perhaps both mentally and physically. 

The Talmud suggests that this change in verb conjugation is about intention. While most of the “spies” went into the land and were gathering economic and military data, Caleb went to go visit the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron. He went up in a group, but arrived at his conclusions about the land through his own exploration. Perhaps at the initial encounter he did see the land like the other scouts, but he pushed on using his own thinking to find a place that had meaning for him. 

Caleb and Joshua pave their own path in this week’s Torah portion. They’re able to escape the influence of the collective voice to show the power of the individual and some positive thinking. That’s not to say that the individual is always right or that going against the majority is always the preferred method. But perhaps the Torah portion this week is a lesson that sometimes the only way to get the full picture is to consider both sides, and then to draw your own conclusions.

It will be no surprise to many of you, my loyal readers, that I’m not great at downtime. I’m a planner, and I like to be busy, whether it’s reading a book, going on a walk, or even just texting a friend. Idle time is not my favorite, so as you can imagine I’m not the best when I’m supposed to be resting to recover from an ailment or when we lose power and it’s pouring rain. This is also why I sometimes struggle with Shabbat. While I’m often working on Shabbat, and thus busy, Shabbat afternoons, especially in the summer, feel restless rather than restful. For most of the week, I’m also attached to my phone, so avoiding technology is particularly difficult when my normal response to having nothing to do is to grab my phone and mindlessly scroll social media.

This week we read Parshat Shlach Lecha and the well-known story of the spies. The parshah begins with Moshe sending 12 spies, one from each tribe, into the land of Cana’an to bring back an accounting of the land. The spies return with their report, and it’s pretty discouraging. Two spies report back with a positive message, but the negativity of the other ten reports instills so much fear into the nation that they decide they don’t want to make the journey into the promised land after all. This infuriates God, who then decrees that anyone who went out from Egypt at age 20 or older will not be allowed to enter the land of Cana’an. This generation will purposefully die out so that a new generation, unfettered by the destructive mindset of their predecessors, can start anew. As the Torah details the creation of a nation that is fierce and fit, God notices that they are also struggling with preserving the sacred downtime that is Shabbat.

This idea of rest is so serious that we hear the story of a wood gatherer who gathers wood on Shabbat. God deals a harsh punishment; the Torah declares the consequence for this infraction was death. While such a punishment may sound disproportionately severe to our ears, it certainly furthers the notion that making time to stop, rest, and rejuvenate is essential to living. These days no one will stone you for not taking care of yourself and resting on Shabbat as the Torah might suggest. However, we’re no less responsible for helping each other push the pause button and for our own health.  

Deep down, I know that breaks are essential, rest is restorative, and that putting down our devices can be lifesaving. Or at the very least, Shabbat can be your weekly reminder to be present not only for your family, but also for yourself.