Tamuz: Choose Life!
For more about Tamuz, see: What You See Is What You Get

As the Children of Israel neared the end of their forty-year period of wandering in the desert, they are told: "See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil … therefore, choose life (Deuteronomy 30:15-19).

The choice seems obvious. After all, who wouldn't choose life and good over death and evil? Yet the Torah tells us that time and again the Children of Israel made the wrong choice, and two of their bad decisions - which have had tragic implications until this very day - took place during the month of Tamuz.

However, since these two incidents took place during Tamuz, it follows that the unique spiritual forces of this month can bring about a repair to the spiritual damage that was caused.

The first of these two incidents, the sin of the Golden Calf, which took place on the 17^th of Tamuz, continues to mystify. How could a people who had experienced God's miracles firsthand - the Exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the Reed Sea and the Giving of the Torah - fall so quickly to the low spiritual state of idol worship?

The Midrash explains that before Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the entire Torah, he told the people he would return in 40 days. The people miscounted the days and when Moses did not appear at what they thought was the correct time, they assumed he had died on the mountaintop. Now that they thought they were leaderless and abandoned in the barren wasteland, they quickly fell into despair - which gave an opening for the yetzer hara (the Evil Inclination) to do his work.

The yetzer hara conjured up a vision of Moses' body being carried to burial by a group of angels. All the people "saw" this vision, and their grief and fear were so intense at that moment that they were vulnerable to any suggestion that promised to ease their emotional pain. And so the many gave in to the suggestion of the few - those members of the "mixed multitude" who steadfastly remained at a low spiritual level - and the people agreed to make an idol.

Rabbi Aharon of Karlin, an early Chassidic master, gives us an important psychological insight into what happened in the desert those thousands of years ago. He comments that even though depression is not itself a sin, it can lead to many transgressions. When a person is severely depressed, their vision of life becomes distorted, and decisions based upon this distorted perception can have tragic consequences.

And this is what happened to the Children of Israel. True, just a short while earlier they had seen that God was with them and performing miracles for them. But now all they could see was that they were alone. They thought that because Moses was no longer with them, God had disappeared from the picture, too. Instead of choosing to see that God can give live and bestow good even in a difficult place like a desert, the people chose instead to despair. And so they saw a vision of death, which in turn led to their choosing to do evil.

A year later, God told Moses that the time had come for the people to enter into the Land of Israel. By now the Children of Israel had witnessed many more of God's miracles. They ate manna every day. Their clothes didn't wear out. Their thirst was always slaked by a well that followed them as they traveled.

Yet despite these concrete demonstrations of God's care for them, the people were hesitant to enter into the Land of Israel. They were afraid that they might not be able to conquer it. So they asked Moses to first send twelve of their leaders to spy out the land - and the spies set out on their journey in the beginning of Tamuz.

When the spies returned 40 days later, ten of them gave a bad report of the Land. It is a land that eats its inhabitants, they told the people. Giants live there. Even in our own eyes we were as grasshoppers. We can't conquer it. We will all perish.

That night, which was the 9^th of Av, the people cried. They were so convinced that they and their children would be killed trying to enter into the Land of Israel that they demanded to return to Egypt.

Their punishment for doubting the Divine word was 40 years of wandering in the desert. The generation of the Exodus died in the wilderness. It was their children - the same children that they thought would be killed - who entered into the Land. And because the people cried for nothing, God decreed that the 9^th of Av would be day of mourning for future generations. Both the First and Second Temples were destroyed on this day, which still continues to be a day of fasting and mournful prayer.

But as with the incident with the Golden Calf, a question remains. How could the spies - who were respected and knowledgeable leaders - have made such a tragic mistake? If God said He would bring the people into the Land, why did they doubt His word?

The sin of the ten spies was that they trusted more in their vision of despair than in God's promise of salvation. They became so unsettled by what they saw in the Land of Israel - the giant people, the strongly fortified cities, and the enormous fruits - that they became small in their eyes. Because they lost confidence in themselves - and their unique role as God's Chosen People - the situation did in fact become hopeless for them.

The ten spies who saw themselves as being grasshoppers in comparison to the inhabitants of the Land perished during the years of wandering in the desert. However, the two spies who disagreed and said that with God's help the Land could be conquered - Joshua and Caleb - were allowed to enter the Land of Israel.

In other words, on a certain level, there really is a connection between what you see and what you get.

Tamuz is the beginning of the summer season. The longest day of the year is in Tamuz, and in the Land of Israel the sunlight is strong and bright every day of this month.

With so much light, one would think that Tamuz would be a time of clear and accurate vision. Yet as the incidents of the Golden Calf and the spies show, light can obscure as well as reveal.

Chassidut makes a distinction between sunlight and spiritual light. Sunlight reveals to us external, material things. When we look at life through the lens of the sunlit world of CNN, the world can appear to be a big, frightening and dangerous place. And we - as individuals and as a people - can appear to be small, abandoned and helpless.

But there is another light that illuminates the world - the light of the Torah (the word Torah is itself related to the word Ohr, which means light). When we see the world through the lens of the Torah, we see a world where God is in control and taking care of us every second of the day.

"See," God is telling us, so to speak. "I am the One Who has set this day before you. See, it is I - and not some other force - Who is in charge of life and good, and death and evil."

When we learn to look beyond our limited vision and attach ourselves to God's vision of the world, we realize that we have the power of choice. We can choose to live our lives in dark despair and constantly fear others - but we don't have to. Instead, we can choose to trust in God and believe in His ability to bestow goodness upon us in even the most difficult circumstances. We can choose life.

According to Rashi, the great 11^th century Torah commentator, the eyes are the spies of the body, and as we see in this month's To-Do List for the Soul, the spiritual attributes of Tamuz all have to do with rectifying one's vision.

The ability to see events in their proper perspective is one of the hardest tasks of Tamuz. On the 17^th of Tamuz, which is a fast day, we begin a period of mourning known as the Three Weeks. This time of mourning reaches its apex on the fast of the 9^th of Av, when we commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples. These three weeks are a time of increasingly intense sadness - for we know all too well how much pain and suffering the Jewish people have suffered, and continue to suffer, during this 2,000-year-long Exile. However, Chassidut warns us that even though it is proper to be sad during this time, we must guard against falling into the trap of despair.

The truth is that the mourning of the Three Weeks is only half the story. Because the 9^th of Av is the birthday of Mashiach, Who will usher in the period of the Final Redemption, this is also a period of joyous (albeit muted) anticipation.

Therefore, if even during these difficult times we can train ourselves to keep our vision on God's promise of Redemption, we will help to repair the spiritual damage caused by our ancestors in the desert. And through these efforts, may we merit to see the coming of Mashiach and the rebuilding of the Temple this Tamuz.