This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government moved forward with one of the most significant Zionist initiatives in decades, allocating over $350 million to authorize and establish 61 new Jewish communities in the ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria. This is a bold move. As usual, the international community and media went into a frenzy of condemnation, completely ignoring the continuous Palestinian rejection of recognition, compromise, and peace with Israel, and their persistent turn toward terrorism, intifada, and jihad.
We must be clear: we cannot and will not let Hamas and its terrorist affiliates steal our ancestral land or erase our indigenous connection to it.
Netanyahu is acting as the Caleb and Joshua of our time—faithful, resolute, and courageous enough to claim the biblically mandated and historical land, ensuring the strategic security of the Jewish people and nation. In an era defined by Hamas’s persistent refusal of peace and coexistence, the moral, legal, and biblical clarity of our presence in Judea and Samaria is absolute. We are fully within our rights, and we bear a profound historical responsibility, to build, protect, and secure the Land of Israel.
At this volatile crossroads, Parashat Shelach arrives with striking clarity. While the international community debates borders and cross-examines our indigenous rights, the Torah offers a definitive counter-narrative. It does not command us to retreat in fear. Instead, it demands that we move forward with faith—just as Caleb and Joshua did when the land seemed most intimidating and the voices of doubt were at their loudest.
The Anatomy of Fear vs. Vision
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses dispatches twelve spies to scout the Land of Canaan. Forty days later, they return bearing undeniable evidence of its bounty: massive clusters of grapes, pomegranates, and figs. Yet, ten of the spies choose to fixate on peril rather than promise. Terrified by the inhabitants whom they describe as giants and formidable warriors, they declare conquest impossible. Only Caleb and Joshua dissent, maintaining that the land can—and must—be claimed.
As our rabbi beautifully articulated from the pulpit this Shabbat, the tragedy of the ten spies lay not in what they saw, but in how they processed it. They observed the physical topography but utterly failed to comprehend its spiritual reality. Swept up in a wave of collective anxiety, they succumbed to a herd mentality. Blinded by the superficial strength of their adversaries, they lost sight of the broader truth: that the same God who redeemed them from Egyptian bondage would ensure their victory in the Promised Land.
Caleb and Joshua alone possessed the fortitude to break from the herd, reminding the nation that with faith, no obstacle is insurmountable.
A Lesson in Breaking from the Herd
This ancient dynamic played out in real-time during our own service. At the conclusion of Mussaf, a group of young adults stepped forward to lead the concluding prayers. Caught up in the momentum of the moment, they inadvertently skipped a portion of the liturgy, accelerating prematurely to the final hymns.
Despite the rabbi’s gentle attempts to redirect them from the pulpit, the congregation—operating on pure muscle memory and herd instinct—followed the youth down the wrong liturgical path. It wasn’t until the rabbi stood firmly, halted the momentum, and instructed everyone to stop and reset that the service was brought back on course.
It was a brief, seemingly minor incident, but its timing was poetic. It illustrated how effortlessly a community can drift off course when it simply follows the crowd. It requires courageous leadership to demand a “full stop,” to enact a course-correction, and to steer people back to where they legally and spiritually belong.
Becoming Leaders: The 613 Mandate
This lesson speaks directly to the young men and women celebrating their B’nai Mitzvah in our synagogues today. Coming of age in the Jewish tradition is not a passive milestone marked merely by the passage of time. It is an active enlistment into a life of Torah and mitzvot.
Caleb and Joshua were young leaders who refused to let majoritarian fear dictate their convictions. They stood isolated but unwavering. Today’s B’nai Mitzvah are called upon to mirror that exact audacity—to challenge the secular herd mentality of modern society.
In a world where it is comfortable to drift, to conform, and to blend into the family of nations, these young adults are standing up to declare a different path. They are willingly absorbing the responsibility of the commandments, choosing the elevated standards of Jewish destiny over societal convenience.
There is a well-worn adage that for those who view tradition casually, a Bar Mitzvah becomes more bar (the party) than mitzvah (the commandment). For those who internalize Jewish responsibility, the inverse is true: it is entirely about the mitzvah—the mission, not the social calendar.
The calendar itself underscores this truth. Today, June 13—written numerically as 6/13—serves as a beautiful, cosmic echo of the 613 mitzvot these young people are inheriting.
A Light Unto the Nations
As Jews, we were never engineered to blend into the global herd or drift passively alongside other nations. Our mandate is to sanctify reality—infusing our thoughts, words, and actions with Divine holiness. Like Caleb and Joshua, we are tasked with breaking from the crowd when necessary, acting as a light unto the nations, and anchoring humanity to righteousness and tikkun olam (repairing the world).
That is our enduring mission. And at this precise moment, when global pressure and geopolitical uncertainty regarding Judea and Samaria loom large, the eternal directive of Parashat Shelach remains unchanged:
Do not succumb to fear. Break from the herd, stand firm in our historic truth, and move forward with unyielding faith.
Andy Blumenthal is a dynamic, award-winning leader who writes frequently about Jewish life, culture, and security. All opinions are his own.