<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span style="font-size: 22px;" class="">" We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:32-33). <br class="">One of the greatest teachers of Torah of our age, Nechama Leibowitz, zt'l, in one of her essays on this parsha, <br class="">asks an important question: how did the spies know what the "giants" thought of them? If they really were giant beings, <br class="">then one could understand the feeling that "we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes," but how did they know if the "giants" even noticed them? <br class="">Unfortunately, although Nechama Leibowitz posed this great question, she didn't give any hint as to an answer. The following is a Midrash in which God rebukes the spies:<br class="">"I take no objection to your saying: 'we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves,' but I take offense when you say 'so we must have looked to them.' How do you know how I made you to look to them? <br class="">Perhaps you appeared to them as angels!" (based on Numbers Rabbah 16:11).<br class=""> <br class="">On the other hand, Rashi says that the spies reported overhearing the giants talking to one another, saying that "there are ants in the vineyard that resemble human beings.” <br class="">(Rashi is also quoting an ancient midrash from the Talmud).<br class=""> <br class="">Judaism's preference of the optimist over the pessimist is made clear not only by what the Torah has to say on the subject of the spies <br class="">but even more so by the first remark attributed to the Creator upon His completion of the work of creation. "And God saw all the He made, and behold it was very good..." (Gen. 1:31).</span><br class=""> <b class=""><i class=""><br class=""><span style="font-size: 21px;" class="">A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.</span></i></b><br class=""><b class="">Harry S Truman</b></body></html>