– "“I see hence I exist”. Is it true that only what we see with our eyes exists? If it is so, why do two people who see the same incident interpret it differently? This week’s parasha invites us to discuss this important issue. The beginning and the end of the parasha deal with the meaning and the difference between the out and inner eyesight and how a man interprets what he sees.
The beginning of the parasha deals with the spies and ends with tzitzit. The language in both parashot is similar and emphasizes the eye and sight.
Numbers 13:
(18) “and see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they are strong or weak, whether they are few or many;
(32) And they spread an evil report of the land which they had spied out unto the children of Israel, saying: 'The land, through which we have passed to spy it out, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.
(33) And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.'”
Numbers 15
(37) And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:
(38) 'Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make
throughout their generations fringes on the corners of their garments, and that they put in the fringe of each corner a thread of blue. (The blue color is a symbol of the sky, what is up, and it comes to tell us that while the eyes are looking down and see the Tzitzit, look up because the inner eyesight is only the faith that lifts up the man. Faith is the inner eyesight)
(39) And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye go not about after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go astray;
(40) that ye may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God.” (Inner eyesight leads to a memory that leads to the action that is seen and if fact a circle is created here as our sages said in Bavli, Minchot tractate page 43 72 – It was learned: and you saw him and remember…and do – seeing brings to remember and remembering brings to action.).
At the beginning of the parasha the spies tell the truth, they tell what they have seen. The Rambam in his introduction to Pirkey Avot also known as: “The Eight Chapters” talks about the five parts of the soul, and the senses, which he calls the “feeling power”, are in the lowest level because they might deceive.
The senses too are graded and the sight is in the highest level. Above it is the imagination, the power that the keeps the memory of the senses after their disappearance and the power that is capable of drawing imaginative pictures that do not exist in reality. It is one sort of insight but there is also a second sort of insight the sight of the brains. This sight does not come from the heart but forgoes it.
In the wonderful novel “On Blindness” the Portuguese writer Joze Saramago brings coping of the blind to the extreme. This eyesight brings to a total anarchy and even causes setting fire to a house (in the novel one of the blind women is setting fire to the madhouse in which they live). Only the Doctor’s wife who has a double vision leads a small group of six blind people to “Tikun Olam” (correction of the world). This group tries to keep a proper social life in a world without law and order and copes with difficulties of life and the need to look for food and water.
Blindness is not the picture that is broadcasted to the mind but its interpretation, to be more specific, the disability to interpret it in the right way. An example I heard in the past: somebody sees a man lying and another man standing over him and cutting his leg. When the man who saw it was asked what he saw, he said that he saw a cruel man being cruel to another man and cutting his leg. Maybe he is right, but the chances are that he was wrong and saw a doctor who cuts off the man’s damaged leg in order to let him live. That is the reason why “objective” eyesight is not accurate, but its insight analysis, not with the imagination but with the mind.
Another thing, a man can see that another one gets hurt and not intervene because he “does not see”, he is afraid to do something, and this is blindness, blindness that leads to burning the home.
We can say that the Torah commands us, a Hillel said, if you are not blind to yourself, you are not blind to the other as it is said: what is hateful to you, do not do to your friends, to say, look inside to your brains and conscience, ask yourself what do you see and do it also regarding the other.