Torah Thoughts – Chukat 5777

We have all had our “Moses hits the rock” moment from this week’s Torah portion, Chukat. You know the time when you just lose it and do something you regret later on. Mine occurred in fifth grade. I was really mad, about who knows what, and took it out on a French glass door that separated our kitchen from our dining room. Sure enough, I didn’t win that battle and ended up with nineteen stitches in my upper right arm. Moses was even unluckier. Angry at the Israelites, angry at the world, he struck a rock God commanded him to talk to (I know it’s confusing, in the wilderness water is often underground and needs to be coaxed out into the surface). While Moses wasn’t physically hurt by his actions, God punished him by preventing him from reaching the Promised Land. In an instant, all of the striving, all the struggle to be there for the creation of the Israelite nation was over. Moses would be forever relegated to the purgatory of the wilderness.

This is one way to think about it. However, perhaps God had something else in mind altogether. Let’s examine why Moses lost his temper in the first place. Throughout the book of Numbers, Moses had faced a continual stream of controversy, attacks from both within and without, and in this week’s Torah portion in particular, would lose both of his siblings, Aaron and Miriam. He was stressed, he was grieving, and, now he was alone. He was certainly in no shape to lead the people into the Promised Land. What Moses really needed was some R & R. But, there was no way he would actually agree to take any on his own. Perhaps this was God’s plan all along, because the punishment also came with a free trip up Mount Nevo for the spectacular view of the Jewish future. Perched just by the Jordan River, Mount Nevo offers views of most of Canaan. There, in the solitude of nature, Moses could fully process all that he had been through and come to terms with the tremendous legacy he would leave future generations, regardless of whether he led us into the Promised Land or not. I cannot say the stress of my fifth grade life was anything like that which Moses faced in his time, but my accident with the French doors was certainly a wake-up call. Sometimes you have to “hit the rock” to find the waters of renewal.

Shabbat Shalom,