What exactly did the Meraglim do wrong?
Moshe sent them to scout the Land, and they returned with a report. They didn't invent anything. They described what they saw. Were they supposed to lie?
The answer is that the Meraglim totally misunderstood their assignment. They were sent on a holy mission to the Holy Land, but they returned speaking the language of geopolitics, conquest, and strategy.
They viewed Eretz Yisroel as a national project, and their job as a reconnaissance mission to assess military risks or political outcomes.
Instead of recognizing the Land as a Divine inheritance, they viewed it in terms of statehood, reducing it to an army and sovereignty.
Eretz Yisrael is a holy land. When we conflate it with the political structures and the military might of the State, we repeat the Meraglim's mistake, even while imagining we're doing the opposite.
Here you have a video of a tree falling in a small Hasidic Jewish village. Instead of relying on emergency crews funded by taxpayer dollars, it is a private volunteer organization that responds, an organization supported by members of the community who donate $18, $36, or similar amounts each year.
Rather than appreciating that dedication, a Republican influencer who is running for Congress in Florida's 6th District, more than a thousand miles away used this video to spread hate and attack our community.
And while he is using footage from Rockland County to push that message, our local politicians and elected representatives remain silent.
But I'm sure that if a New York Democrat had posted something similar, they would all be rushing to condemn it.