Parshas Shlach/çìùjka

(37^th Parsha of 54 sections of the Torah)

By Rabbi Avraham David (great grandson of the Strettyner Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Langner) Numerical Interpretation of  Torah with aid of Gematria. Bible Code. Questions/Comments  908-907-00953 . online at www.codeoftheheart.com  ©2006 Dvar Torah 5766   “Study Gematria and Sharpen Your Mind”  

The Power of Speech

In this week’s Parsha, we learn about the consequences about speaking lashon hara, or evil talk. We are told that the children of Israel were punished a day for a year. For forty days of spying, they were to stay in the desert for 40 years (Numbers 14:33). The Children of Israel were punished as a direct result of believing the spies who slandered the land of Israel. They said that they can never occupy the land as the land devours it’s people and the natives themselves were too mighty. The people believed the renegade spies. The Children of Israel were therefore punished by God for not having faith in Him to successfully bring them into the ‘promised land’ . If we actually count the number of years, it was 40-1 or 39 years. In fact, Moses name itself alludes to the 39 years that the Children of Israel were under his guidance as the n mem is the 13^th letter, the a shin is the 21^st letter and the v hey is the 5^th letter which total 39. Perhaps he was busy teaching them about the 39 categories of forbidden labor on the Sabbath.  In this Parsha the evil talk was about the land of Canaan and it’s inhabitants. To God, this was enough as we see how important the land is with the aid of the codes. It was in last week’s Parsha that Moses said to God, “Did I conceive this entire people or did I give birth to it, that You say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as the nurse carries the suckling, to the land that You swore to its forefathers”(Numbers 11:12). The last letters (encoded and rearranged) of the words of the phrase,  uh,ctk ,gcab rat vnstv  “the land that you swore to your forefathers”  spells  the word vru,, Torah.  As we see from the encoded word, the land of Israel is very important in the eyes of God and that is why the slandering of the land with the power of the mouth lead to such a severe punishment of circling around the desert for many years. In hindsight, the punishment really became a reward as the Children of Israel were under the guidance of their greatest Teacher, Moses. His teachings of the words of God are so important that we, the descendants of the Children of Israel, continue to study it till this very day.    

Moses did not chose ordinary people to spy out the land. He sent men of
importance. The Torah says, ohabt lk jka , “Send forth for yourself men”(Numbers 13:2). According to Rashi, the term anashim means men of importance. Not only were they important, they were men of wisdom. The proof is in the codes. The encoded letters spells the word ofj, chacham, meaning wise (see Baal Haturim).  The standard Gematria of this word is 68, which is the same as ohhj, chayim , or life. Wisdom and life share the same Gematria as the  purpose of life is to obtain the wisdom of God through the study of His Torah.  With the aid of another code, we find another insight about chacham. The
term chacham also has a value of 32 as the letter chet is the 8^th letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, the caf is the 11th  letter and the mem is the 13^th letter. In total it equals 32. The number 32 is the Gematria of the ck , lev (love)  heart. According to the Sefer Yetzirah, it refers to the 32 paths of wisdom as there are 31 nerves and the 32^nd is the brain. We human beings also have 32 teeth. The last four teeth to come out of our mouths are called wisdom teeth. Conventional wisdom is that they are called wisdom teeth since they come out at a later time of our life, when we have more wisdom (see kidshealth.org). In fact, we see the wisdom of our creator in just looking at the arrangement of our teeth. The front teeth are called canines, which are used in cutting and chopping. The next teeth are the premolars and then the molars which are used in crushing and grinding. We judge someone’s wisdom with what comes out of his/her mouth with the power of the speech. Perhaps the ‘32’ teeth allude to that. As we noted above, King David uses the word
lbuak, which is translated as the tongue (organ of speech). The root of the word is ia, shein, meaning tooth. The sages of Israel have said that the tongue is so dangerous that it has two barriers including the mouth and the teeth. We have to be careful what comes out of our mouths.

Just see what happened in Miami. A group of Seven African American Muslims were charged (6-22-06) with terrorism for making derogatory statements about America and making verbal threats of terrorism to destroy the Sears Tower and FBI buildings. Such is the power of speech. No explosives were found at the site of the search but the power of speech (weapon of the mouth) can be so dangerous that it can bring the wrath of the most powerful government of the world on these people. It was also the power of speech of the Ten spies that brought the Glory of God to appear in the tent of the meeting and it was there that God told Moses, How long for this evil assembly that provokes complaints against me? (see Numbers 14:27) The lesson of the Parsha is that we must always praise the One Above and never  complain for the sake of complaining.  Always have faith in God.        

A refuah shlaimah to my father, Yaakov Zev Ben Malka, who is recovering from stroke at Vanderbilt Nursing Home, SI, NY   

Shabbat Shalom ouka ,ca