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There were two fundamental sins committed by the generation which experienced the desert and received the Torah. The first was the sin of the golden calf which defied pure faith and belief in the Torah. The second was the sin of the spies which challenged the actualization of that vision of faith in the Land of Israel.
After the mass revelation at Sinai, Moses was called to ascend the mountain for forty days and forty nights to receive the Torah directly from the Almighty. The people expected Moses to descend on what they thought was the fortieth day. When he did not do so, they demanded that Aaron the High Priest make an idol that would represent the God, Who had redeemed them from Egypt. Aaron attempted to delay them but when they insisted, he took their gold jewelry and made a golden calf. He delayed the times of the sacrifice offerings until the next day, hoping that Moses would return in the interim. However, by the next morning, Moses still had not descended, and the people began sacrificing to the calf and celebrating. This evoked harsh heavenly judgment from God who sought to destroy the nation and start over with Moses and his descendants. Meanwhile, Moses descended bearing the Tablets of the Covenant. When he saw the golden calf, he was enraged and threw down the Tablets, which broke. He punished the sinners and began a process of repentance and repair. Moses prayed fervently on behalf of the people until God agreed to forgive the nation rather than destroy it.
About a year later, due to the nation's concerns about entering the Land, Moses sent spies to survey it. When they returned from their mission, they spoke so negatively about the Land that they weakened the nation's resolve. The spies reported that the Israelites would be unable to conquer the Land because its inhabitants were warriors and giants. “The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night [the night of Tisha Be-Av]. All the Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron. ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt,’ the whole community shouted at them, ‘or if only we might die in this wilderness! Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be carried off! It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!’ And they said to one another, ‘Let us head back to Egypt’” (Numbers 14:1-4). Due to this sin, the whole generation was doomed to die in the desert. It was only their children who would enter the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua son of Nun. According to the Talmud, God said: You cried for nothing on this day, so I will cause this day to have something to cry about in future generations. If you do not rectify the sin of the spies, the Temple will be destroyed on this day. Since the people did not merit to amend this sin by settling the Land following the Torah's guidance, both Temples were later destroyed on Tisha Be-Av.
The people who sinned with the golden calf did have faith in God. However, they thought they needed the power of an intermediary and this impaired their pure faith and Torah belief. As a result, they lacked the fortitude to stand up to the spies, who sought to dissuade them from entering the Land. The people disdained the Land of Israel and betrayed their Torah mission. The Jewish nation did not fully rectify that sin with pure devotion and faith to be implemented in the Land of Israel. Therefore, generations later the First Temple was destroyed on Tisha Be-Av and later still, the Second Temple was destroyed then as well. (See 37:4 below about how our fasting on Tisha Be-Av is meant to rectify the sin of the spies.)
In every generation, the Jewish people are forced to cope with the challenge that could lead to the sin of the golden calf. Since the world is in a constant state of flux, at times it seems that the Torah's message is hidden and and there is no one to clarify it. There is a temptation to seek a “golden calf” such as a foreign ideology or excess piety or extreme austerity, which in reality, erode the delicate balance provided by the Torah’s guidance.
Similarly, every generation is faced with challenges when fulfilling the mitzva of settling the Land, both in coping with external enemies and internal conflicts. To properly fulfill this mitzva, it is necessary to take spiritual concepts and mitzvot and “settle” them into the real world, with all its trials. People may complain that the concepts are too lofty or distant from reality or too difficult to put into practice. It falls on us to correct the sin of the spies by settling the Land according to the Torah’s directive. We must demonstrate that specifically by following God’s ways, the Land is settled with an abundance of blessing. (See 17:14 below about the sin of the spies in recent generations.)
The Jewish people's repentance and redemption as a whole are dependent upon rectifying these two sins. To rectify the sin of the golden calf, we must ensure that our pure faith remains free of any hint of idolatry (as we have explained in this chapter and will explain further in the next). To rectify the sin of the spies, we must devote ourselves to carrying out the mission of the Jewish people – to settle the Land in accordance with the Torah and to reveal the Divine Presence in all aspects of life. (This will be explained in Chapter 17, which focuses on the Land and the people).
