What the Israelites' greatest failure can teach us about today's uncertainty - opinion

How did it all come apart so quickly?

Everything had been prepared for the great journey to Israel. The camp had been carefully arranged. The tabernacle had been constructed, and the priests and Levites had received their roles. The debacle of the Golden Calf had been forgiven and receded into the rear-view mirror.

We stood only a few weeks’ journey from the deserts of Sinai to the hills of Jerusalem. Poised on the threshold of destiny, we were ready to enter the Promised Land. How did that dream unravel so quickly? How did we fall so quickly from the threshold of destiny and become a generation condemned to wander the sands of Sinai for 40 more years?

But what ignited this chain of failures? The answer is painfully simple and deeply human: we were afraid of change. Until now, the Promised Land had been a distant vision. The promise of a land flowing with milk and honey had inspired them during the Exodus from Egypt. But now, the dream was within reach. Entering the Land of Israel was no longer an aspiration. It was about to become reality.

Dreams are perfect. Reality is not. Reality demands sacrifice, perseverance, and the courage to confront uncertainty. The closer we came to entering the Land of Israel, the more daunting the prospect became.

Our fear led to false nostalgia. Fear has a way of repainting the past in brighter colors than it ever possessed. We became so frightened of moving forward that we began to romanticize our past in Egypt. We longed for the fish and vegetables we had eaten in Egypt. Who, in their right mind, would long for slavery and persecution?

The fish and vegetables that we remembered were meager rations given to slaves. We had lived lives of hardship and subjugation. Yet a familiar past, however painful, felt more attractive than an uncertain future.

The fear ran so deep that it even affected family life. Normally, family serves as an anchor of optimism. Every child embodies a belief that tomorrow can be better than today. Having children is itself an act of faith. We build families because we believe in the future.

Even in Egypt, under unimaginably harsh conditions, we built large families. This is precisely what infuriated the Egyptians. They sought to limit the Jewish population, viewing it as a strategic threat. Yet the more the Egyptians persecuted us, the more we multiplied. We were confident in a future, perhaps one still decades or even centuries away, and were willing to build families in anticipation of that future.

At this stage in the desert, however, fear began to overwhelm confidence. The anxieties voiced in public gatherings gradually seeped into family life. Instead of renewing hope, the tents became places of frustration and despair. The uncertainty that filled the public squares followed the people home. Tents that should have been filled with hope now echoed with complaints and tears.

Surprisingly, this atmosphere even affected Moses, himself a mortal being. In a dramatic moment of despair, he threw up his hands and asked God to take his life. God responded by instructing him to appoint a council of 70 elders to help shoulder the immense emotional and administrative burden he had been carrying alone.

Even after receiving these instructions, Moses responded to a divine promise in a strikingly unusual fashion. When God promised to provide meat for the people, Moses asked whether enough animals could be slaughtered to satisfy such a vast and demanding crowd.

It is difficult to read this verse literally. A man who had stood at Sinai and received God’s revelation would not plausibly doubt God’s ability to feed a nation. In whichever way the verse is interpreted, Moses’ response is unusual for someone of his prophetic stature. It reflects how deeply the nation’s discouragement had penetrated. The disillusionment that began among the rank and file had spread upward, reaching even its greatest leader.

At its root, the great collapse began with fear of the unknown. Fear bred insecurity, which surfaced in a series of failures. Those failures gradually snowballed into the catastrophe of the spies.

Confidence about the future is an indispensable component of faith. Faith does not whitewash the future or promise a life free of struggle and disappointment. It does, however, assure us that history is moving toward a destination that God has already determined.

That assurance does not tell us how long the journey will take or how difficult the road may be. But it provides a foundation for confidence and hope. Faith should not distract us from present challenges, nor should it become a form of escapism. It should, though, strengthen us with the optimism and resilience needed to confront an uncertain future without being paralyzed by fear.

We are all living through a period of profound uncertainty, both globally and within the Jewish world. On a global level, it often feels as if we are living in the calm before a storm. Over the next decade, artificial intelligence is expected to transform economies, education, and many aspects of daily life. No one can fully predict its impact. What does seem certain is that the world of 2036 may look dramatically different from the world of 2026.

At the same time, large-scale migration and rapid demographic change have left many people in the West feeling unsettled. Institutions, norms, and assumptions that once seemed permanent now appear fragile or in flux. Whenever people feel that the world around them is changing too quickly, anxiety grows.

Historically, periods of instability and social anxiety have often fueled antisemitism. Jews become convenient scapegoats for pressures that have far deeper causes.

Blaming a visible minority creates the illusion of certainty in a confusing world. If Jews can be cast as the source of society’s problems, then a complex reality suddenly seems easier to explain. People imagine that there is a clear enemy to blame and that defeating that enemy will restore a lost sense of order.

Of course, this is a destructive fantasy. Assigning responsibility for vast social, economic, and cultural changes to a tiny minority and a small country is not a serious explanation of the challenges facing the West. It merely diverts attention from the far more complicated realities that societies must confront.

In Israel, we are also confronting uncertainty. There will likely be no dramatic or definitive ending to this three-year war. We are exhausted from carrying this burden for so long. Iran will probably remain under its current regime, and the threats along our northern border may not disappear entirely.

At home, many fundamental questions remain unresolved, and the upcoming elections are unlikely to produce lasting solutions. Policies enacted by one government can easily be reversed by the next.

It is natural to flinch in the face of uncertainty. This is precisely where faith enters the picture. Faith does not blind us to genuine concerns, nor does it deny the challenges before us.

It should, however, shape the way we view those challenges and how we respond to them. Fear narrows our vision and tempts us toward despair. Faith steadies us, enabling us to face an uncertain future without being overwhelmed by it.■