“It is a land that consumes those who settle it”—Numbers 13:32.

Moses sends scouts to tour the Land of Israel and report back with the best strategy for conquering the Land. Instead of fulfilling their mission, the scouts return with a bleak report and insist that the nation remain in the desert.

There are two questions: a) Why did the scouts disparage the prospect of entering the Land that G‑d had promised them? b) The scouts were handpicked by Moses because of their high spiritual standing – “all of them men of distinction” (Numbers 13:3). How then could they have failed so dismally to carry out their charge?

The scouts were not afraid that they could not conquer the land. They were afraid of what their lives would be like after they didOn a simple level, we may answer that the scouts were afraid of battle. But this only answers our first question and not our second. G‑d had already promised them that they would easily conquer their enemies. If the scouts were spiritual men, they certainly had faith in G‑d’s promise to grant them victory.

A deeper explanation is given which answers both questions. The scouts were not afraid that they could not conquer the land. They were afraid of what their lives would be like after they did. Being spiritual people, they had a profound fear of becoming involved in the kind of worldly affairs that would arise in the course of settling the Land—agriculture, city-building, commerce, government, etc. In the desert, they had no work, no homes, no responsibilities. They were happy to be nomads, for such living left them free to inhabit what the kabbalists refer to as the “plane of thought and speech,” rather than “the plane of action.”

What these misguided spiritualists forgot, however, is that G‑d’s purpose for them was not in the modified reality of the desert, but in tackling the holy task of settling the Land and dealing with the world.

It seems we alcoholics may have a lot in common with these men. They say that we are more sensitive and idealistic than most people and, for that reason, have found great pain in confronting the realities of this world. Whether this is true or not would be hard to say. What we can say with a fair amount of certainty, however, is that no group has ever more clearly displayed an obsession for buffering themselves from reality. No bunch has more feared facing the rigors of mundane existence and “settling the Land.” We felt ourselves more at peace in “the planes of thought and speech” than that of action. Indeed, philosophizing and debating were more readily agreeable to us than tending to everyday affairs. We wanted to live in our own heads, not in the real world. Alcohol helped us do that and, in a strange way, some of us may have even thought it helped us get closer to G‑d.

We felt ourselves more at peace in “the planes of thought and speech” than that of actionBut, also like the scouts, we were tragically mistaken. G‑d desires that He be found in reality. Whether or not we are up to the task is irrelevant. It is not on our power that we rely, but on His. What we thought to be merely an admission of our own inability to handle unmodified existence, we later came to realize was actually a most brazen accusation against G‑d—that He could not help us to deal with reality nearly as well as alcohol could. Thus, we told G‑d in so many words that we did not trust Him to help us carry out our G‑d-given mission that awaited us in the daunting Promised Land of sober reality.

Recovery has helped us correct this grave error in our thinking. We do not fear the world quite as much today as we once did. We are ready to enter and settle the Land, to “live life on life’s terms” and – with G‑d’s ever abundant help and mercy – to face head on whatever may await us there.

If any man of you, or of your future generations, shall be unclean . . . or be on a journey far off, he shall keep the Passover to G‑d on the fourteenth day of the second month . . . (Numbers 9:10–11)

On the date commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, it is a mitzvah to celebrate the holiday of Passover. When the Temple stood—may it be speedily rebuilt in our day—this celebration would entail bringing a special sacrifice on the day before Passover, the Paschal lamb. The Torah tells also of a “Second Passover” granted to a group of men unable to fulfill their obligation with the rest of the nation on the regularly appointed holiday. Because they were ritually impure, they were excluded from performing the sacrificial offering in honor of Passover. Aggrieved because of their missed opportunity to fulfill a commandment of G‑d, they approached Moses and asked that he somehow make an exception for them. G‑d spoke to Moses and told him to establish a makeup date, one month later, after they would have a chance to purify themselves. The “Second Passover” thus became a mitzvah, a commandment of the Torah, eternalized for all time.

Why didn’t G‑d just tell Moses about the “backup plan” when He told him about the regular Passover?But if the Second Passover was destined to become a commandment, why didn’t G‑d simply relate this commandment to Moses at the outset, as He did with all of the other commandments? Why didn’t G‑d just tell Moses about the “backup plan” when He told him about the regular Passover? Why did the people first have to ask for it?

The Second Passover represents the power of teshuvah (literally: “return”). By returning to G‑d, one has the power to retroactively transform past failings into veritable merits. For it is the penitent’s prior distance from G‑d that serves as the very springboard for his current heightened desire to cleave to Him. Ironically, had he not once been estranged from his G‑d, he would never have come to the kind of yearning for Him that he feels now. The darkest moments of his past, what were once his greatest liabilities, now become his greatest assets, the source of an intense motivation for re-found closeness with G‑d.

Such a condition, however—where past misdeeds become virtues—cannot be premeditated. G‑d’s rulebook could never prescribe failure to serve G‑d properly as a way to later become closer to Him. The opportunity to transform the past must come from the penitent himself. He must ask for it, and only then is it granted.

In recovery, we’ve found a new relationship with G‑d. We have an appreciation for His wisdom, love and guidance that we are quite sure could never have been possible had we not been forced to turn our lives over to Him as the only known treatment for a disease which is progressive, incurable and fatal. We did not become alcoholics in order that we could later discover G‑d in recovery. Nor is that something that we could ever have planned. It isn’t even something G‑d would have told us to do.

A certain chassid was once chided about the fact that the chassidim tend to make a big to-do about the Second Passover. “You celebrate a holiday established for impure people,” his detractors laughed. “No,” he answered, “not a holiday for impure people. A holiday for impure people who became pure.”

We could never have planned it. G‑d would never have advised it. But this is how things worked out.Some might think it odd when they hear an alcoholic in recovery say something like “Being an alcoholic is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” Perhaps they think that recovery is meant only to make us more like normal people, to catch us up. But we do not have the dubious luxury enjoyed by “normal people” who decide how and when to let G‑d into their lives. Such is our fortune: that we must strive to join that happy lot for whom their very survival dictates that they give themselves entirely over to G‑d.

We could never have planned it. G‑d would never have advised it. But this is how things worked out. And this is what has made us closer to Him today.