RABBI YAAKOV ASHER SINCLAIR (Ohr.edu)
This week’s Torah portion teaches the grave sin of the meraglim, the spies. Their evil report about Eretz Yisrael still echoes today, with the repercussions continuing to be felt. Of the twelve spies sent, only two remained loyal to Hashem: Yehoshua bin Nun and Calev ben Yefuneh. The other ten chose to slander Eretz Yisrael, consequently suffering immediate and terrible deaths. Due to their vile report, the Jewish people was forced to remain in the desert an additional forty years, and eventually die out, before the children ultimately were allowed to enter Eretz Yisrael.
Hashem called this rogues’ gallery of spies an eidah, literally a congregation. The gemara derives from this incident that the minimum requirement for a minyan is a quorum of ten men, since there were ten turncoat ‘double-agents’ who were contemptuously called a congregation.
If ten men can get together to conspire and hatch malevolent schemes, then ten men can assemble to form a congregation for devarim shebekedusha, matters of holiness. This exegesis is duly codified in halacha, and all because of the dastardly deeds of ten misguided men.
