Dear Friends;

I hope that you’ll enjoy the following Parsha summary followed by a Dvar Torah;

” Parsha in a Nutshell ”

Moshe is taught the laws of the “Red Cow”, whose ashes purify a person who has been contaminated by contact with a dead body.

After 40 years of journeying through the desert, Miriam dies and the people thirst for water. G-d tells Moshe to speak to a rock and command it to give water. Moshe gets angry at the rebellious Israelites and strikes the rock. Water issues forth, but Moshe is told by G-d that neither he nor Aaron will enter the Promised Land.

Aaron dies at Har Hahar and is succeeded in the High Priesthood by his son Elazar.

Venomous snakes attack the Israelite camp after yet another eruption of discontent in which the people “speak against G-d and Moshe”; G-d tells Moshe to place a copper serpent upon a high pole, and all who will gaze heavenward will be healed.

Moshe leads the people in battles against the Emorite kings Sichon and Og (who seek to prevent Israel’s passage through their territory) and conquers their lands, which lie east of the Jordan.

” Dvar Torah ”

Anger, is a sense of feeling annoyed and mad at something or someone. Anger, causes us to lose control. It deactivates the part of the brain that can make rational decisions. While in its grip, we lose the ability to step back and judge the possible consequences of our actions. The result is that in a moment of anger, we can do or say things we may regret for the rest of our lives.

In this week’s Parsha, we can clearly see the consequences of getting angry.  The people have asked Moses for water. G-d tells Moses to take a staff and speak to the rock and water will appear. This then follows:

He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’  Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But G-d said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in Me enough to honor Me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.’

The question that comes to mind is quite clear. What was Moses’ sin that it merited such punishment? Moses’ mission was to take the Israelites out of Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land. The only time you feel the satisfaction in your job, is when you complete a mission. But G-d took that away from him. Moses’ only wish was to take the Israelites into Israel and put his foot on the holy ground, but unfortunately, he was not granted. Why?!

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, quoting Rambam, explains that Moses was punished because he lost his temper with the people when he said, “Listen, you rebels.” He shouldn’t have got angry!

But this wasn’t the only time Moses got angry at the people. There were other occasions on which he lost his temper. Why didn’t he get punished then? For example, his reaction to the sin of the Golden Calf, which included smashing the tablets, was hardly peaceful or relaxed. But that case was different. The Israelites had committed a sin. G-d himself was threatening to destroy the people. Here, though, the people had not sinned. They were thirsty. They needed water. G-d was not angry with them. Moses’ intemperate reaction was therefore wrong, says Rambam. To be sure, anger is something to which we are all drawn to. But Moses was a leader, and a leader must be a role model. That is why Moses was punished so heavily for a failure that might have been more lightly punished in someone less distinguished.

In addition, says Rambam, by losing his temper Moses failed to respect the people and might have dishearten them. Knowing that Moses represented G-d, the people might have concluded that if Moses was angry with them, so too was G-d. Yet they had done no more than ask for water. Giving the people the impression that G-d was angry with them was a failure to sanctify G-d’s name. Thus one moment’s anger was sufficient to deprive Moses of the reward surely most precious to him, of seeing the culmination of his work by leading the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land.

Yes my friends, anger can be very destructive! Anger destroys personal relationships. Short-tempered people scare others, who therefore avoid coming close to them. Anger drives out the positive emotions – forgiveness, compassion, empathy and sensitivity. The result is that angry people end up lonely, rejected and disappointed. Bad tempered people achieve nothing but their bad temper. They lose everything else.

Rambam says that emotional intelligence should consist of a balance between excess and deficiency, too much and too little. Too much fear makes me a coward, too little makes me rash and reckless, taking unnecessary risks. The middle way is the best way which is “courage”. But there is no “middle way” when it comes to anger. Instead we must avoid it under any circumstance. We must go to the opposite extreme. Even when anger is justified, we must avoid it. Either we defeat anger or anger will defeat us!!

Shabbat Shalom & Regards;

Martin