Short Parsha Riddles: Shlach / שְׁלַח

בְּמִדְבַּר / Bamidbar / Numbers 13:1-15:41

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Don’t forget to read my Parsha Poem and parsha overview for Parshas Shlach, plus this cool Israel craft project.  Plus… copywork and parsha activities – something for every week of the year!

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פָּרָשָׁת שְׁלַח לְךָ
for Parshas Shlach:  Come SPY with us!!!
בְּמִדְבַּר / Bamidbar / Numbers 13:1-15:41

[1]

We always should listen and trust in Hashem,
For He is the one from whom good things all stem;
Yet bnei Yisrael whimpered and kvetched in the dust,
And doubted Hashem when they really should __________!

[2]

Each parsha its very own lesson sure teaches,
With very good reason for each word it preaches;
But there’s also good reason when two are placed near –
A lesson in there the meraglim don’t hear.  What is it?

[3]

The meraglim all brought back a bitter report,
Like judges and juries who run a sham court;
Just two of them stood up for all that was true –
How much like __________ and __________ are YOU???

[4]

All that Hashem does is all that He should,
And so we must look at each thing for the good;
But those ten meraglim just scratched at their head,
Too afraid when they saw that these people were dead.  Which people?

[5] BONUS!

A true gruesome fate awaited the men
Who fell for all the meraglim told them;
Each year on this date, their own graves they must make,
And sleep there, unsure if they’d ever awake.  What date?

STUMPED?? Here are some answers: 
[ 1 ] Trust.  But don’t we all?
[ 2 ] The meraglim story right after Miriam’s tzara’as shows they didn’t learn their lesson from her punishment for lashon hora (Rashi 13:2).
[ 3 ] Yehoshua and Kaleiv.
[ 4 ] Some say the meraglim said eretz Yisrael “consumes its inhabitants” (13:32) because they saw many funerals – Hashem’s diversion so the giants wouldn’t harm them (Sotah 35a).
[ 5 ] Tisha b’Av (Taanis 30b).  This creepy explanation says the men would dig graves to sleep in, and many would die overnight.  However, Rashi (14:33) says the men all died at age 60, which is why the deaths took exactly 40 years.