TTfT 1214. Moshe sent 12 spies into what would become the land of Israel asking them to bring back a report about the land. Ten of the spies brought back a bad report; they interpreted their findings in a way that would demoralize the people. (Yehoshua and Kaleiv insisted that the land was good and that Hashem’s promise to bring them to the promised land would be fulfilled.) (The question of how the ten spies got so misled into bringing back a bad report is the subject of tomorrow’s session. For now let’s focus on what they did and what role Yehoshua and Kaleiv played or did not play.

We can extrapolate the size of the cluster of grapes that the spies brought back to the Jews in the desert from the fact that it is described as being carried by a pole held by two people. Once you say a pole, which indicates a large pole, one already knows that two people are carrying it. From the statement “two people” we learn that there were actually two poles, carried by four people.

Furthermore, there is reason to deduce that those two poles (carried by four people) were supported by an additional two poles that were themselves carried by four people. The result is that eight people carried the cluster of grapes, one carried a pomegranate, and one carried a fig. This brings the total to 10, which is the number of spies involved in bringing fruit back to infer a bad report.

Yehoshua and Kaleiv didn’t carry any fruit. This is either because of their prestigious status, or because they did not want to be included in the sinister plan.

It is interesting that the Israeli Ministry of tourism has a logo that has two people carrying grapes. If you ask a person who’s slightly knowledgeable about the logo they will probably tell you that the two people depicted are Yehoshua and Kaleiv. But based on this passage of Talmud, that is clearly not true. On the contrary, Yehoshua and kaleiv are precisely the two that did not carry anything back.

Perhaps what that logo means to represent is what could have and should have been if the spies were coming back with a good report as Yehoshua and Kaleiv did. All of history would have been different. And that positive perspective of the Land is what the tourism ministry wants to promote.