Two days before the conclusion of the thirty-day mourning period following the passing of Moses on Adar 7 (see Jewish History for the 7th of Nissan), Joshua dispatched two scouts--Caleb and Pinchas--across the Jordan River to Jericho, to gather intelligence in preparation of the Israelites' battle with the first city in their conquest of the Holy Land. In Jericho, they were assisted and hidden by Rahab, a woman who lived inside the city walls. (Rahab later married Joshua).
Link:
The Two Spies
R. Avraham Yehoshua Heshel was one of the leading Rebbes of his day, serving as rabbi and spiritual leader first in Apta (presently called Opatow), then in Iasi, and finally in Mezhibuzh. He was known for his great love of his fellow Jews, and is commonly known as “the Ohev Yisroel [lover of Jews] of Apta.”
Link: Special Powers
In today's "Nasi" reading (see "Nasi of the Day" in Nissan 1), we read of the gift bought by the nasi of the tribe of Shimon, Shlumiel ben Tzurishadai, for the inauguration of the Mishkan.
The First Temple, why was it destroyed? Because of idolatry, murder and adultery.
The Second Temple, when they were occupied in studying Torah, doing mitzvahs, and acts of loving-kindness, why was it destroyed?
Because there were those who were intolerant of others without cause. Which teaches us that senseless intolerance is equal to idolatry, murder and adultery combined. (Talmud Yoma 9b.)
There is no sin of senseless intolerance listed in Torah. And yet, while the cardinal sins of Torah demanded only 70 years of exile, intolerance is so sinister, so powerful, it can take us almost two thousand years to heal from its wounds.
In simple terms, it’s much easier to deal with obvious, open failures and repair them. Intolerance, however, comes concealed beneath layers of justifications and self-righteousness. When you don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong, and on the contrary, that you were fighting a holy war, it’s hard to make up for all the damage caused.
Yet there is a deeper reason: Other sins, even the most heinous sins, are symptoms of flaws in the human person. To repair those flaws, each of us is granted 70 years upon this earth—ten years for each of the seven categories of emotions.
But intolerance of the other lies at the primal genesis of evil, at the point of fissure and subsequent fragmentation that occurred in the earliest stages of creation, as the universe lost contact with the infinite divine light that preceded it.
Because it is embedded so close to the core of our reality, it can attack the core of the human psyche, chochmah, the seminal point of reason.
That is why its antidote must also transcend reason. It must be related to the primordial infinite light itself, a light that knows no bounds. The key to healing humanity is therefore unreasonable.
Which means that with a single unpredictable and unconditional act of one human caring for another, connecting with another, especially another he feels he cannot tolerate, the whole of creation is healed and fulfilled.