What was so wrong with the report that the spies presented when they returned from their mission?  Isn't the job of a spy to assess the military strength of the enemy and to share his findings with his superiors? That seems to be what the ten spies did, so what was so bad about their behavior? Rabbi Soloveitchik suggested that the job of the princes selected to "spy" on the land was not actually to deliver military intelligence, but to scope out the land and report back to the Jewish people about the land's majesty. They misunderstood their mission and assumed that they were spies in the conventional sense when, in fact, they were meant to serve an entirely different purpose. The Torah does not refer to them as מרגלים (spies) but rather charges them with the mission לתור את הארץ, which means to scout, to tour, to acquaint yourself with. Their job was to get a preview of the land, to recognize its singularity, and to inspire the rest of the people to appreciate what it had to offer.

So many of our graduates have learned the message of our parsha and corrected the mistake of the ten spies. So many of our graduates have served in Tzahal to protect our people, and that in turn has inspired so many of our students. It was an honor to honor them at our dinner. It was also an honor to march along with the seniors in the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York. Israel plays a crucial role in our school's culture and it has served to inspire so many of us. May we merit to be inspired over the course of the summer much as we have been inspired over the course of the school year.

I want to extend a huge thank you and to express my deep appreciation to Claudia Cohen and to Rabbi Danny Kroll for their hard work and dedication to inspiring our students to create the Highlites on a consistent basis. I especially want to thank Claudia and Rabbi Kroll for single-handedly putting together this year's final edition of Highlites.  Have a wonderful summer.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Kroll