This week’s portion, Hukat, contains a lot of variety
of ritual and narrative action. It is
part of a larger recurring theme in the book of B’midbar (Numbers), what
I like to think of as the roller coaster of behaviors that the children of
Israel are faced with a hardship, they complain to Moses, Moses gets angry or
embarrassed, God gets angry, threatens or carries out some kinds of punishment,
the people apologize and the “ride” starts over again.
Chapter 19, which stands alone for its obscure and difficult
to understand ritual of the purification rite involving the ashes of the Red
Heifer (which Michael Chabon acknowledged and made a central plot point several
years ago in his novel the Yiddish Policemen’s Union) underscores the
point made several times in the Torah that no matter the method for reaching a
state of ritual impurity, there is always a path back to rejoin the
congregation.
The main action takes place in Chapter 20. In the first verse the Children of Israel
arrive at Kadesh, and without warning, Miriam dies. This is immediately followed by a return trip
on the above-mentioned roller coaster, where the people immediately begin to
complain about the lack of water. The
literary language of the complaint, which continues for four verses (20:2-5), a
very vocal expression for a terse Torah (Miriam’s death and burial gets a total
of five words) is very pointed. It
echoes language from 2 recent portions which is meant to draw the attention of
weekly followers of the Torah reading, namely:
in verse 2, “if only we had perished when our brothers perished at the
insistence of the Lord”, a reference to the punishment suffered by followers of
Korach just last week; and in verse 5, an echo of the description of the
report of the scouts in Shelach Lecha, mentioning that here in the
wilderness we are without the figs, grapes and pomegranates they are promised
to find when they reach the promised land.
So once again Moses and Aaron fall on their faces (v.6), and
once again they call out to God for guidance (v.7), and once again God provides
a solution (v.8). This time God doesn’t
show anger or frustration, but Moses does.
His tone with the people is angry (“Listen, you rebels”) and he asks a
rhetorical question about getting water from the rock, which God has already
told him will happen when he speaks to the rock, and yet Moses strikes
it twice. By asking the question, “shall
we get water for you out of this rock?” (v.10) as if he doesn’t already know
the answer, Moses makes the miracle of the water pouring forth from the rock
look like his miracle, and not God’s.
For this breach in the following of God’s instruction Moses (and Aaron)
meets with a very serious consequence – he loses the right to lead the Children
of Israel into the land they were promised.
Does the punishment fit the crime? This question has been bothering biblical
commentators for nearly two thousand years.
Moses starts out as an obedient, if unwilling public servant. He sacrifices his family life, puts up will
all kinds of difficult problems to solve (scarcity of food and water, dispute
resolution, judicial decrees, travel issues), deals with all of the customer
service issues of the venture as well as being the primary creator or a new
life style and culture. That’s a lot of
work for one person. Then he justifiably
grows impatient and loses his temper, and for that he gets punished by not
being able to see the end goal he’s been working towards; it seems pretty
harsh.
There are a lot of explanations for God’s punishment
here. Moses didn’t follow instructions –
maybe his intimacy with God made him feel he had license to ad lib, and that
lack of humility is what was being punished (Moses shows great humility in most
instances). Maybe Moses and Aaron had
burned out, or more gently, and reached the extent of their talents – the human
experience is dynamic, and the right leaders for the Exodus and the community
building experience of the wilderness were not the same people who might be
best suited to leading a younger generation in conquest and settlement of the
land. This may mean that the hitting of
the rock was only a pretense for the punishment, and that seems plausible, in
light of the reasons why corporate human relationships departments act today,
not always providing the replaced employee with all of the reasons for a
dismissal. Its possible God was looking
for a reason to let Moses know his time was coming to an end, or that there
would come a time when his leadership was over, and this was the best way to
break that difficult news.
Questions for discussion:
1
Can we blame the Children
of Israel for complaining about a lack of water? Is it possible there was a better way for
them to bring their concerns to Moses?
Are there more constructive ways to make a leader aware of a problem?
2
.
Moses decides in this
situation to act differently from the way God instructed him. Do you think this is why he was punished?
3
How does a leader know when
it’s time to step aside and hand the job off to someone else?
Steve Kerbel, an education consultant, is a past chair of
the Education Director’s Council of Greater Washington and a national vice
president of the Jewish Educators Assembly.
