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 “

 

The most striking episode in this week’s Parsha is the moment when the people complain about the lack of water. G-d tells Moses to take his 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 have sufficient faith in Me to sanctify Me before the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land I have given you.”

There are difference of opinions among the commentators in regards to what actually Moses did wrong to receive such harsh punishment. Some say he lost his temper with the people (“Listen now, you rebels”). Some say he hit the rock instead of speaking to it. And others believe that he made it seem as if it was not G-d but he and Aaron who were responsible for the water (“Shall we bring water out of this rock for you?”).

What is puzzling still is why he lost control at that moment. He had faced the same problem few times before, but he had never lost his temper before. People have asked for water before. G-d then told Moses to take his staff and hit the rock, and water flowed from it. So when in our parsha G-d tells Moses, “Take the staff … and speak to the rock,” it was surely a forgivable mistake to assume that G-d meant him also to hit it. That is what he had commanded last time. Moses was following the same sequence.

What is even harder to understand is the order of events. G-d had already told Moses exactly what to do. Gather the people. Speak to the rock, and water will flow. This was before Moses made his ill-tempered speech, beginning,“Listen, now you rebels.” It is understandable if you lose your composure when you are faced with a problem that seems unsolvable. But Moses had received the solution. Why then was he so agitated about the problem?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says that the answer can be found in the Parsha itself. Earlier in the Parsha, the Torah says: “The people stopped at Kadesh. There, Miriam died and was buried.” Only then does it state that the people had no water. The commentators explain that the people had been blessed by a miraculous source of water in the merit of Miriam. When she died, the water ceased.

When Miriam died, Moses was in a state of enormous grieve. Miriam was his elder sister. She had watched over his fate when, as a baby, he had been placed in a basket and floated down the Nile. She had the courage to speak to Pharaoh’s daughter and suggest that he be nursed by a Hebrew, thus reuniting Moses and his mother and ensuring that he grew up knowing who he was and to which people he belonged. He owed his sense of identity to her. Without Miriam, he could never have become the greatest prophet of all times, talking to G-d face to face! Losing her, he not only lost his sister. He lost the person whom he owed his entire life to!

Bereaved, you lose control of your emotions. You find yourself angry when the situation calls for calm. You hit when you are supposed to speak, and you speak when you should be silent. Even when G-d has told you what to do, you are only half-listening. You hear the words but they do not fully enter your mind. This is what happened to Jacob when he thought he had lost Joseph. The Shechina departed from him for 22 years! And this is also what happened to Moses at the rock. He was not so much a prophet as a man who had just lost his beloved sister. He was heartbroken and not in control. He was the greatest of the prophets, but he was also a human with feelings and emotions! And that’s why he lost control of the situation which he had to pay a great price for it.

Yes my friends, our Parsha is about “Mortality”! G-d is eternal; we are mortal! Miriam dies, Aaron dies and eventually Moses dies too. Together they constituted the greatest leadership team the Jewish people has ever known, Moses the supreme prophet, Aaron the first High Priest, and Miriam perhaps the greatest of them all. The Parsha teaches us that even the greatest are mortal. Death is devastating, but it’s inevitable. For each of us there may be a Jordan we will not cross, or a promised land we will not enter. We are flesh and blood. We grow old. We lose those we love. Seemingly, we struggle to maintain our composure but inside we weep. Yet life goes on, and what we began, others will continue.

We may never know what exactly was the sin of Moses, or why it merited so severe a punishment. But we sure get to know that even the greatest leader of all time, his reign has to come to an end, whether we like it or not.

 

Shabbat Shalom & Regards;

Martin