Planting Trees We May Never Sit BeneathParshat Shelach and the Quiet Strength of Parents Who Keep Showing Up

Introduction: The Pain of Not Seeing the Fruit

There is a heartbreak tucked inside Parshat Shelach — quiet, but unshakable. After the sin of the spies, Hashem decrees that the generation who left Egypt will not enter the Land. These were the people who had endured slavery, crossed the sea, stood at Sinai. They had followed the cloud, eaten the manna, and watched miracles unfold around them. And yet — they would not arrive. They would die in the wilderness.

But the decree is not only a sentence of loss. It is also a transmission of hope. Because it comes with a promise: “Your children — the ones you said would be taken captive — them I will bring in, and they shall know the land you have despised” (Bamidbar 14:31). In that single verse lies the Torah’s quiet affirmation of every parent who gives everything they have and still does not see the fruit. Your children will enter — not in spite of you, but because of you. Their journey forward will not erase your effort. It will be rooted in it.

For any parent walking with a child through pain, this is one of the hardest truths to hold. We long to witness the turnaround. We yearn for the moment that confirms: it mattered. It helped. It worked. But Parshat Shelach whispers another kind of faith. Sometimes, the healing we plant will not bloom in our presence. Sometimes, the love we offer takes root in silence, in absence, in years we will never see.

And still — it matters. Because Torah does not measure love by immediacy. It measures it by loyalty. And sometimes the deepest form of love is the one that keeps planting — even when we know we may never sit in the shade.

The Long View of Torah — Parenting Without Immediate Results

There is a well-known Midrash about an elderly man planting a carob tree. When a passerby asks why he’s planting something that won’t bear fruit for seventy years, the man replies, “Just as my ancestors planted for me, I now plant for those who come after me.” It’s a moving story — often quoted, rarely lived. Because the Midrash doesn’t tell us what it feels like to keep digging and watering and waiting, with no sign of growth. It doesn’t describe the silence. The doubt. The way hope starts to feel heavy in your chest after enough days of disappointment.

To invest in something that may never bloom in your lifetime — that may only nourish someone else — is not just faith. It’s the kind of love that strips you of ego. It is humility at its most honest. And yet, Torah insists: it still matters. Even when the soil stays quiet. Even when the fruit never appears in front of you.

There is a mother I know whose teenage son stopped talking to her. Not out of defiance, but out of despair. He was struggling with depression and couldn’t articulate what he was feeling — so he shut down. For months, she would knock gently on his bedroom door, leave food outside, and whisper “Goodnight, I love you” even though he never responded. On Shabbat, she’d sing zmirot softly in the kitchen, knowing he was listening behind the wall. He never came out. Not once. But she kept singing. She once told me, “It felt like singing into a void. Like planting a seed in a desert I wasn’t sure would ever see rain.” And yet, years later, when he began to heal and eventually opened up, he told her, “I remembered your voice. I couldn’t come to the table, but I knew you were still there. That’s what got me through.”

The Zohar teaches that “no effort is ever lost,” and the Sfat Emet adds something even more piercing. Commenting on the generation of the desert, he writes that the greatest emunah is to act with no visible outcome — because that is the purest trust in Hashem’s reality, not our own. When we love a child without return, when we plant without proof, when we show up without knowing whether it’s working — we are embodying that emunah. There is no applause for that kind of parenting. No clear metrics of success. But there are roots being formed, far beneath the surface.

The Talmud in Pirkei Avot tells us, “The reward for a mitzvah is the mitzvah.” Sometimes, the only reward we get for showing up is the knowing that we showed up. And that has to be enough. Because the truth is, what feels like futility today may one day be the reason our child knows how to love, how to heal, how to survive. We do not control the timeline. We do not get to decide when the tree will bear fruit. But the Torah promises us this: if we plant with love, and stay faithful through the silence, the fruit will come. Maybe not in our season. Maybe not in our lifetime. But it will come. And it will carry the imprint of our hands.

The Desert Is Not a Void — It’s a Place of Transmission

It is easy to see the forty years in the wilderness as a pause in the story — a consequence, a wandering, a delay. But the Torah’s own presentation of these years is more complex. Again and again, the midbar emerges not just as a setting, but as a teacher. The Kedushat Levi writes that although the generation of the desert did not enter the Land, they were not spiritually discarded. They were trusted with the transmission, not the triumph. Rather, they were entrusted with the foundational task of forming a people who could one day inherit it.

Their role was not to arrive, but to prepare. They became the transmitters — not through conquest or brilliance, but through their daily perseverance, their struggle, and their continued presence in the journey itself. They transmitted a Torah that lives not in conquest, but in continuity.

The Netivot Shalom, already noted above, reveals something even deeper. The desert is not just a neutral space. It is the ideal setting for divine transmission precisely because it is barren. It offers no illusions of control or permanence. In the words of the Netivot Shalom, the midbar symbolizes total bittul ha'yesh — a nullification of ego and material attachment — and that is what makes it the proper vessel for receiving Torah. Hashem gives the Torah not in a city, not in a cultivated land, but in a place of exposure and vulnerability. And this, he teaches, is the essence of spiritual preparation: a soul must be made empty before it can truly receive. The generation that received the Torah was forged in that emptiness — in the daily surrender of comfort, certainty, and autonomy. That surrender became the very soil from which lasting faith would grow.

This reframes the experience of the dor hamidbar. Their task was not merely to endure punishment, but to live out a model of what transmission looks like when the destination is withheld. They did not inherit land — they inherited and conveyed Torah. Their greatness was not in arrival but in continuity. The Ramban writes that much of the Sefer Bamidbar is devoted to describing the inner shaping of a people still in formation — a people not yet settled, but learning how to carry holiness even in movement. And that is no small thing. It is perhaps the most difficult spiritual task of all: to walk with Hashem when the road is long, the landscape is uncertain, and the outcome remains unseen.

This is why the Torah emphasizes that your children — not another generation, not a replacement people — will enter the Land. “Your children… them I will bring in, and they shall know the land you have despised” (Bamidbar 14:31). The work done in the wilderness was not erased. It became the foundation. The transmission of faith does not always happen through clarity. Often, it happens through repetition, through consistency, through staying with the journey when it no longer offers the comfort of miracles or reward. The generation of the midbar taught their children how to be sustained by man, how to follow the cloud, how to live a Torah that was not just dramatic revelation but daily reliance.

The midbar, then, is not spiritual exile — it is spiritual formation. The years in the wilderness teach that Torah is not inherited only by the strong or the victorious, but by those who continue to walk. By those who stay connected even when they do not yet understand the path. The desert was not a pause in the story — it was the quiet transfer of something eternal. The ones who did not arrive were still the ones who made arrival possible.

The Rash Climb — When We Try to Fix What Needs to Be Held

After the decree, the people panic. Overcome by remorse, they rush to ascend the mountain — the very path they had just rejected. Without waiting for Moshe or for Hashem, they try to reclaim what they think they’ve lost. But it is not a true return. It is a desperate reaction. Moshe warns them: “Do not go up, for Hashem is not among you” (Bamidbar 14:42). But they go anyway — and are struck down.

This moment reveals a core misunderstanding of what teshuvah requires. The people act quickly, perhaps even sincerely — but not with inner transformation. They confuse urgency with repair. They move — but they have not changed. They mistake motion for healing.

The Baal Shem Tov teaches that when a soul falls, its first instinct is often to jump back — to recover status, to reclaim certainty, to undo the pain. But this impulse can itself be a form of ego — a need to escape the discomfort of vulnerability. Real teshuvah, he writes, begins not with climbing but with sitting: sitting in the truth of what was broken, letting the heart break open before trying to rebuild. It’s a descent into honesty before it can be an ascent into return.

We see this play out in parenting. When a child begins to unravel — whether through behavior, silence, or distress — our first instinct is often to fix. To move fast. To act. We look for therapists, programs, advice, anything that might bring the situation back under control. And sometimes, those actions are necessary. But when they come from panic rather than presence, they often misfire. Not all wounds respond to intervention. Some ask to be held, not solved.

There is a kind of pain that will not be moved by strategy. Only by nearness. A parent once told me, “I kept looking for the solution. But what she needed most was for me to stop searching — and sit on the floor with her.”

The people who rushed up the mountain were not punished for wanting to repair. They were punished for trying to reclaim without surrender. To return on their own terms — without confession, without inner change. But true healing does not come from reclaiming control. It comes from relinquishing it. From admitting we cannot force our way back into grace.

For parents, this is one of the most sacred and difficult truths: not every rupture can be sealed right away. Some are meant to be witnessed. Held. Endured. And over time, that stillness — the quiet, non-anxious presence of someone who does not leave — becomes the container for something holy to begin again.

The Zohar says that “Hashem is close to the brokenhearted not because they are broken — but because they stay present in the breaking.” That is our avodah too. Sometimes love is not the climb. It’s the refusal to abandon the base of the mountain.

Terumah, Challah, and the Return to Sacred Routine

After the trauma of the meraglim and the failed attempt to force entry into the Land, the parsha shifts tone completely. Suddenly, we are no longer hearing about despair and loss, but about mitzvot tied to a future in Eretz Yisrael: terumah, challah, and other agricultural laws — mitzvot that can only be fulfilled once they arrive in the Land.

Rashi explains this transition as divine reassurance: despite everything, the people will arrive. Despite collapse, rebellion, and fear, the promise still stands. The covenant has not been revoked. The path is longer now, but it still leads to redemption.

And yet these mitzvot are more than comfort — they are instruction. They teach what to do next. How to rebuild, not through grandeur, but through groundedness. Rav Hirsch writes that challah is the elevation of the ordinary: turning something as physical and daily as bread into a spiritual act. The Torah reminds us that kedusha — holiness — does not only appear at moments of revelation. It lives in repetition. In routine. In the small, consistent actions that root the soul.

This is the Torah’s gentle guide for recovery: when you cannot fix the story, resume the practice. When everything has fallen apart, set the table again. Keep the light on. Fold the laundry. Bless the dough. Offer the first portion. Do the next small act of faith. Not to erase the pain — but to build a future from within it.

And this is also the avodah of parenting. After rupture — after the argument, the silence, the slammed door — what rebuilds trust is not a speech. It’s a sandwich packed before school. A ride in silence that still communicates love. A bedtime routine kept even when the heart is hurting.

The mitzvot of terumah and challah were not given to perfect people. They were given to a people in the midst of recovery — a people learning how to keep going. That’s what these laws are: small offerings that remind us we’re still in relationship, even after the worst has happened.

To a child, these moments are not background noise. They are the quiet evidence that the connection is still alive. That even when words have failed, love is still being offered — one portion at a time.

Tzitzit and the Legacy of the Fringes

Parshat Shelach ends with the mitzvah of tzitzit. At first glance, it may seem like a shift — from national crisis to a law about garments. But its placement is intentional and exact. After the sin of the spies — whose eyes led them astray — Hashem gives a mitzvah designed to train the eyes: “And you shall see them, and remember all the commandments of Hashem… and you shall not stray after your heart and your eyes” (Bamidbar 15:39).

The spies saw the land — but not the promise. They saw through the lens of fear, not faith. Tzitzit are given to help us see differently. To orient our vision not by impulse, but by covenant. Not by panic, but by memory. They remind us that what is visible can reawaken what is sacred — that physical reminders can restore spiritual alignment.

Placed on the edges of our garments, tzitzit live on the margins — yet they shape the center. They are threads of presence. Quiet signals that we belong to something higher. They do not command attention, but they are always there. A whisper of who we are, and whose we are.

In this parsha, tzitzit become a subtle model for how love — especially parental love — is often transmitted. Not through grand gestures, but through daily consistencies. They are a metaphor for the Shema whispered outside a closed bedroom door. The dinner plate left on the counter. The coat laid out before a cold morning. Acts that feel peripheral — but are anything but.

These gestures, like tzitzit, may not be mentioned. They may go unnoticed. But they form the spiritual fringe from which a child one day returns. They may not remember the advice. But they will remember the presence. They may forget the words. But they will remember the thread.That someone stayed. That even when they turned away, they were not abandoned.

Tzitzit teach us this sacred truth: what hangs loosely today may become the thread that pulls them home tomorrow.

What Shade Feels Like to a Child

“Your children… they will know the land.” The Torah does not say they will inherit it, or live in it — but that they will know it. And in Torah, knowledge is never abstract. It is intimate. It is lived.

The next generation does not learn how to walk the land through maps or speeches. They learn it through the feel of footsteps beside them. Through the tone of voice that never gave up. Through the quiet rhythm of daily acts that made space for something holy to return.

A child who enters the Land may not remember the details of the desert. They may not recall the exact words that were spoken, or the rhythm of the years. But they will carry something deeper: the echoes of love that walked with them.

The parent who stayed close when it would have been easier to retreat. The strength that remained even after hope began to dim. The hard conversations held with trembling. The simple acts of care repeated with no recognition. The faith that lived not in declarations, but in presence.

They may never say it aloud. But one day — perhaps as parents themselves, perhaps standing at their own threshold of fear or uncertainty — they will feel it. And they will understand.

They will look around and realize they are sitting in the shade of a tree someone else planted. A tree that took root in silence. That weathered long, dry years. That grew slowly, without applause. And the story of that tree — the sacrifices it required, the resilience it embodied — will live inside them.

To every parent walking through the midbar: keep planting. Even when the soil feels barren. Even when the road offers no reassurance. Your footsteps are not erased. Your presence is not forgotten.

You may never taste the fruit. But it will carry your name — and grow from your roots.