One of the most fascinating explanations offered by the Rambam for the forty-year journey through the desert appears in the Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide for the Perplexed). The generation that left Egypt, he explains, could not immediately enter and conquer the Land of Israel because they still carried the psychological imprint of slavery. They had lived for centuries under oppression, dependency, and fear. Freedom had been granted to them physically, but internally they still thought like slaves.
The desert years were therefore not a punishment alone. They were a process of transformation.
A new generation had to emerge — one born in freedom, raised under the Clouds of Glory, nourished by manna from heaven, and educated with a mindset of destiny rather than survival. Only such a generation could cross the Jordan and possess the land with confidence and courage.
This idea speaks powerfully to our own moment in Jewish history.
For decades, much of Israel’s public diplomacy has been trapped in a defensive posture — apologizing for our presence in our own homeland, endlessly responding to accusations, and often repeating narratives that were never ours to begin with. We became so accustomed to the false “Palestinian narrative” that at times we ourselves helped perpetuate it, speaking about Judea and Samaria as though our claim there were somehow secondary or negotiable.
But something is changing.
A new generation of Israeli leadership is emerging — leaders who are no longer speaking the language of exile, hesitation, or apology. Recently, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan met with members of Congress in Washington, openly and unapologetically asserting the Jewish people’s obligation to ensure the security of citizens and the historic and Biblical right to the entirety of the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. There is something refreshingly historic about Jews speaking with the confidence of ownership rather than the anxiety of permission.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan with U.S. Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R-In)
And predictably, the backlash follows.
Case in point: this week, reports emerged that countries such as France were moving to ban Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich from entering the country. The old world order is deeply uncomfortable with Jews who refuse to speak like guests in their own land.
Perhaps this too is part of the lesson of the spies.
The spies said about the inhabitants of the Land: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.”
The Kotzker Rebbe famously noted that once the Jews saw themselves as grasshoppers, that perception itself shaped how others saw them. When we view ourselves as weak, apologetic, uncertain, and dependent on the approval of the nations, we invite the world to see us that way as well.
But when Jews stand with confidence, clarity, and conviction in the justice of our cause to be able to live in peace and security, and the eternity of our connection to the land, the perception changes.
The generation that entered Israel under Yehoshua did not think like slaves escaping Egypt. They thought like a people returning home. Redemption required not only leaving Egypt geographically, but leaving Egypt psychologically.
So too today.
The effort to preserve and strengthen the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel demands more than military strength or political strategy. It requires a redemptive mindset — the courage to stop seeing ourselves through the fearful eyes of exile and to begin seeing ourselves through the eyes of Torah, history, and destiny.
It may take the world some getting used to. But eventually, truth has a way of catching on.
Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ruvi New
