Parashat Chukat

Parashat Chukat
Sivan 30, 5771 ~ July 2, 2011
by Barry Waldman

"RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!"

(Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)

Upon the death of Miriam, the water that flowed in her merit throughout the duration of the desert wanderings ceased. The people quarreled with Moses and Aaron, who fell on their faces. Hashem instructs Moses to speak to the rock, which would then give forth its water. Instead,

Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock, and he said to them, "Now listen, you rebels, are we to draw water for you from this rock?" Moses raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, when an abundance of water gushed forth, and the congregation and their livestock drank.

For this, Moses is prevented from entering the Land of Israel. But the precise nature of his sin is unclear. According to Rashi, it is the simple fact that he disobeyed G-d's command to speak to the rock, and struck it instead. Per Ramban, it was for implying that he and Aaron had the power to bring forth water from the rock ("are we to draw for you water from this rock?") instead of attributing the miracle to G-d. However, it is Maimonides' explanation that I would like to explore in greater depth.

Rambam contends that Moshe sinned by becoming angry. This was compounded by the fact that the people would assume Moshe's emotions reflected those of Hashem's - and there is nothing to indicate that Hashem, Himself, was angry. Now, from the sketchy reading of the text, it appears as if Moshe's wrath was a reaction to the people's quarrel over the water situation. However, the midrash suggests just the opposite - Moshe was the instigator:

Miriam died, and the well was taken away so that Israel would recognize that it was through her merit that they had had the well. Moses and Aaron were weeping inside, and (the Children of) Israel were weeping outside, and for six hours Moses did not know (that the well was gone), until (the Children of) Israel entered and said to him: For how long will you sit and cry? He said to them: Should I not cry for my sister who has died? They said to him: While you are crying for one person, cry for all of us! He said to them: Why? They said to him: We have no water to drink. He got up from the ground and went out and saw the well without a drop of water (in it). He began to argue with them... (Otzar Midrashim)

Moreover, not only was Hashem not angry with the people over their fear of thirst, He rebuked Moshe for failing to properly address it!

And when the well was taken away, they began to gather against Moses and against Aaron, as it is written... Moses and Aaron were sitting and mourning for Miriam. God said to them: Because you are mourners, they should die of thirst? Get up and take your staff and give the community and their cattle something to drink... The Holy One, Blessed Be, said to (Aaron and Moshe)...: Leave here, quickly! My children are dying of thirst, and you are sitting and mourning this old woman? (Yalkut Shimoni)

Here, then, is the question: If Moshe's anger was not prompted by the people's quarrelling, what precipitated it?

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her book "On Death and Dying," proposed five stages of grieving, one of which is anger. Feeling abandoned by the loss of a loved one, this anger is often directed at the person who has died. Indeed, our parsha bears this out through the nuances of Lashon HaKodesh (the Holy Language). Moshe exclaims to the people: "Now listen, you rebels (morim), are we to draw water for you from this rock?" Fascinatingly, as R. David Fohrman observes, the spelling of "morim" - mem, resh, yud, mem - is identical to the spelling of Miriam. Thus, the verse can also be read, "Now listen, Miriam, are we to draw water for you from this rock?" That is, "Miriam - it is you who have provided the people with water these past 40 years as a result of your merit. How could you leave us?! Now it is us - on top of all our other burdens - who have to supply these people with water?!"

But perhaps there is an even deeper source of Moshe's anger. Chazal have explained the difference between two categories of statutes, mishpatim and chukim. Mishpatim are rational laws that make sense to us, ones that humans would likely have instituted even if they had not been ordained by the Torah.

Chukim, on the other hand, are laws beyond the limits of human understanding, but which we nonetheless follow because they have been decreed by Hashem. The parsha is titled, "Chukat," and begins with the bewildering laws of the Red Heifer, whose ashes are used to purify one who has come in contact with the dead. "Zot chukat hatorah" - "this is the chok of the Torah" - i.e. this is the quintessential chok, the chok that symbolizes the incomprehensibility of all chukim. Not even Moshe - the greatest of prophets, the most trusted servant, the only one able to speak with Hashem directly - was able to penetrate the deeper mysteries of what lay beyond the grave.

Thus, perhaps an element of Moshe's anger was directed at the finality and unfathomability of death itself.

The 11th century commentator, Rashi, explains as follows: 'If you (Moses) had spoken to the rock and it had brought forth (water), I would have been sanctified in the eyes of the congregation, and they would have said "If this rock, which does not speak and does not hear, and does not require sustenance, fulfills the word of God, then certainly we should as well." Remembering that over the past several parshiot we have read of the people's complaining and of their questioning of God's plan, Rashi understands the punishment to result from Moses' failure to speak to the rock which would have convinced the people to follow God.

Maimonides, on the other hand, contends that Moses sinned in becoming angry as he admonished the complaining people. The sin of his anger was compounded because the people assumed that whatever Moses said was a reflection of God's will, and if Moses was angry with them, God, too, must be angry with them. Yet, there is no such evidence of God's anger. Therefore, implies Rambam, Moses is culpable for the outcry that would follow.

Nachmanides, known as Ramban whose work was done in the 13th century, understands Moses rhetorical question "shall we get water for you..." to imply that he (Moses) and Aaron had the power to bring forth the water. Moses should have said "Shall God bring forth water..." For him, this explains why God said that Aaron and Moses had not sanctified his name.

So many and so diverse are the attempts at explanation that some have even given up trying to understand. On of the later commentators, Shmuel David Luzato of the 19th century offered: 'Moses sinned one sin, and the commentators loaded thirteen sins and more, for each of them invented a new sin... Therefore, all my days I refrained from deep investigation of this matter, out of fear that I might come up with a new explanation, and I too would find myself adding a new sin to Moses our teacher!' So, rather than assign the wrong understanding to God's decree about Moses and/or to add to the long list of Moses' wrongdoings, Luzzatto stops asking the questions.

from Yalkut Shimoni:

A little further on, the passage suggests slightly different, harsher, words from God:

"The Glory of YHWH was seen by them" -

Parashat Korach

Parashat Korach
Sivan 23, 5771 ~ June 25, 2011
by Todd Wilkof

Parshat Korach offers another portrayal of the minds of the newly liberated. Fresh on the heels of the debacle of the spies and its punishing aftermath, we observe in Parshat Korach a generation unable to live on the lofty plane of closeness to the Almighty promised at Sinai. Instead, we observe their descent into a petty world of jealousies and empty prestige. Personal willfulness and misguided longing for what they believe is their due, gives way to frustration with their peerless leader Moshe. Individualized discontent festers and grows, with each group of dissenters cultivating their own set of grievances. Korach, Moses and Aaron's first cousin, is indignant that he was not chosen as Kohen Gadol. The Reubenites, Datan and Aviram, are the descendents of Jacob's first born but their birthright of leadership is passed over to their relative Joshua. And as if there were not enough ill feelings percolating, the 250 firstborn leaders who lost their privileges after the sin of the Golden Calf to Levites are reeling from their loss of status. At the heart of all these individualized complaints is a misunderstanding of what G-d requires of the Jewish People.

With each group dismayed by their own circumstances, the entire camp falls victim to a spiraling descent into strife and contentiousness. Complaint quickly morphs into open opposition to Moshe and potential mutiny. Together, all the separate parties, nursing their own individual grievances, cried out against Moshe and accused him of not only being unfair but also devious and dishonest. A confrontation ensues, led by Korach, who tries to show the camp of dissenters that Moshe and Aharon do not have a monopoly over sanctity and kedusha.

"Why have you raised yourselves up over them," Korach demands of Moshe while standing before the people. He goes on to argue that Moshe had exerted his own will, in disregard to reason and the personal longings of the people to share in his leadership. Korach's solution is that there should be no subgroups such as Moshe has dictated- Cohanim, Leviim, kings, and prophets and so forth- they should all be identical. Everyone is equally close to G-d in Korach's vision of Jewish Nationhood.

Moshe must determine if Korach is against the institution of the priesthood and the special status it confers, or if he is in fact seeking the priesthood for himself. In his complaint against superiority and privilege, is Korach actually trying to establish his own title of distinction? To ferret out the truth Moshe's first response is to address Korach's complaints rationally:

"Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us out of a land flowing with milk and honey?''

"Is it not enough for you, and the Leviim, that G-d set you apart from the rest of Israel? He brought you close to Him in order that you might work in His Mishkan and lead the people..... Yet you still demand priesthood?"

When this approach proved unsuccessful, and only after the dissenters refuse to come and meet Moshe and discuss matters as equals, does Moshe seek Divine intervention.

He prays to G-d that He should prove to the nation the legitimacy and veracity of all his actions. He asks of Hashem to open up the earth to swallow Korach, Datan and Aviram in order to show everyone that Hashem has chosen him as leader. Indeed, the next day the ground did open its mouth and swallowed Korach and all his men, and all their property.

What is the outcome of this miracle and the quelling of the mutiny in this harrowing fashion? Everything returned to its previous order. The fire disappears, the earth closes its mouth and the people revert to their grumblings and lack of faith in Moshe.

"But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moshe and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord."

These are the words of people who experienced the miraculous escape from Egypt, the receiving of the Torah at Sinai, the protective embrace of the clouds of glory, the daily nourishment of manna and countless other miracles in the desert. Once again they remain unmoved by this latest phenomena of nature. What follows in the ongoing chapters that describe their desert experience are antidotes to this entrenched recalcitrance. The parsha that follows Korach is Hukkat, which describes the Red Heifer. It is one of the most mystifying sections of the Torah, defying reason and resisting understanding of even our wisest sages. In keeping with the unfathomable character of Hashem's ways, no explanation of the reasons behind the rites of the Red Heiffer are offered up. Instead, the precepts of the commandment cannot be questioned rationally, as they posses a sublime meaning known only to the King who commanded it. This is the crucial lesson to be internalized by the newly liberated minds of the children of Israel. In contrast to those who genuinely accept the yoke of the Divine, are those who appeal to their own sensibilities, seeking personalized explanation to things which the laws of the human nature do not apply. For those who accept the yoke of heaven as Divinely prescribed they will be purified of their own will. Those determined to rely on their understanding are destined to be swallowed up by their own limitations. Korach is the symbol of the negative side of this dichotomy. We are commanded "Do not be like Korach and his band (17:5). His arguments for self-determined privilege not only weakened the nation but also in turn were an attack on G-d Himself. As a result the earth swallowed him alive and left no trace of him.

Parashat Shelach

Parashat Shelach
Sivan 16, 5771 ~ June 18, 2011
by Barry Waldman

FROM GRASSHOPPERS TO LIONS:

RECLAIMING THE INHERITANCE OF ERETZ YISRAEL

“Always, at the beginning, there is a dance of grasshoppers...” (Emmanuel Levinas)

Returning from their tour of spying the Land, the meraglim infect the people with their doubts of its conquest: “the men there are of great stature…we were as grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” They conclude: “We are not able to go up against these people, for they are stronger than we (mimeinu).” R. Hanina b. Papa finds this statement even more egregious than it sounds. For mimeinu can also be read “than He.” (Sotah 36a). Thus, the meraglim insinuate that – even with Divine assistance – the people would not prevail in a war against the Canaanites (Merome Sadeh). The Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, has a novel interpretation of this gemara: the meraglim were not questioning the likelihood of winning a military campaign (with or without God’s help), but whether they had sufficient moral grounds to launch a conquest for the Land in the first place. What right did they have to usurp an indigenous population from the homes, cities, and land they had been living on for centuries? In the minds of the meraglim:

Did they think their right lacked might, or that they had no rights, that the Promised Land was not permitted to them?

The right of the native population to live is stronger than the moral right of the universal God…one cannot take away from them the land on which they live, even if they are immoral, violent, and unworthy and even if the land were meant for a better destiny... (Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings)

Is there an answer to the meraglim’s rejection of the Land on this basis?

We can always turn to the first Rashi in the Chumash (Bereishis 1:1):

Why does [the Torah] begin with "In the beginning"? This is because [of the concept contained in the verse] "He declared the power of His works to His people in order to give to them the inheritance of nations" (Tehillim 111:6). Thus, should the nations of the world say to Israel, "You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations," they [Israel] will say to them: "All the earth belongs to G-d. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us."

Hmm. Seems rather arbitrary…hard to find any superior moral argument for Israel there – unless we focus on Rashi’s qualification “whomever He saw fit.” What, precisely, would make one nation more “fit” to inherit the Land than another?

In his reply to the meraglim, Levinas offers a solution based on the idea that Eretz Yisrael “vomits its inhabitants” when they do not meet the Land’s expectations (Vayikra 18:25):

Only those who are always ready…to accept exile when they are no longer worthy of a homeland have the right to enter this homeland…

If it seems paradoxical that the only way to merit the Land is through a willingness to be exiled from it, then consider perhaps the greatest non sequitur in all of Torah: When Avraham asks “How will I know that I will inherit it [the Land]?” – God responds by showing him a vision of all the future exiles of his descendants (a vision so horrific that Avraham needed to be sedated first! – Bereishis 15)

To discover the unifying principle underlying God’s response to Avraham’s question, Levinas’ reply to the meraglim, and Rashi’s opening comment on Bereishis, we’ll now turn to some of the teachings of Rav Matis Weinberg on the singularity of the Land of Israel.

To begin: A land that can “vomit its inhabitants” implies that it knows and senses those dwelling within it. Ordinarily, we think of the earth’s surface as inert, blindly following Nature’s laws, oblivious to the humans that walk upon it. The exception is the Land of Israel. Eretz Yisrael is conscious of its inhabitants and their relationship to it, and responds accordingly. It can embrace them like a lover, as it did for Ya'akov Avinu. Even the stones he set around his head desired to be close to him:

[First] It says, “He took some stones (plural) from the Place...” But then it says, “He took the stone (singular) which he set around his head…” This teaches us that all the stones came to one place, and each one argued, “Let the tzaddik rest his head on me!” We are taught that they all were fused into one. (Chullin 91b)

Or the Land can reject them in disgust:

The land shall not yield her produce…Your land will be desolate… You will become lost among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you. (Vayikra 26:20 - 38)

The way in which the Land responds is a function of the choices made by its inhabitants; moreover, this responsiveness provides insight into the meaning of real freedom, as opposed to mere liberty. As Rav Matis Weinberg explains, liberty involves the ability to invent choices and the license to act upon them. On the other hand,

“…freedom demands that human choices have undeniable consequences: if choice makes no fundamental difference, then there are no genuine options and, ipso facto, no genuine freedom...Freedom provides existential options, not mere behavioral alternatives...

Yisrael needed to learn that freedom is not the trivial license to perform what you want to do – it is the inalienable right to create what you want to be. Yisrael needed to learn that choices are terrifyingly real...The more powerful and willful our freedom, the more powerful, absolute, and inexorable the impact of our will. (Frameworks, Va’era)

Never has there been a people in the history of the world who related to its land in such a way as Yisrael – incorporating into its national charter a provision to accept exile en masse if it failed to uphold a standard of just conduct. There have been “lands of liberty,” but Eretz Yisrael is the only true Land of Freedom – a Land that will coexist only with a free people who accept the consequences of their choices:

Only those who are always ready to accept the consequences of their actions and to accept exile when they are no longer worthy of a homeland have the right to enter this homeland. You see, this country is extraordinary. It is like heaven. It is a country which vomits up its inhabitants when they are not just. There is no other country like it; the resolution to accept a country under such conditions confers a right to that country... (Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings)

Our claim to the Land, therefore, is not dependent on the degree of our religious zeal or nationalistic longings – but on whether we become B'nei Chorin (Children of Freedom). It is a matter of identity, of what it means to be B’nei Yisrael:

What is the source for the zechus for Eretz Yisrael? How do we understand that the promise to Avraham is not just an arbitrary gift, but a yerusha (inheritance)?

It requires a definition of one's identity of Yisrael in order to be zoche (worthy) to Eretz Yisrael…Self doubt is the inability to articulate an identity for oneself...if the zechus (merit) doesn't exist in your mind, [you will not have] the moral grounds to maintain the zechus to Eretz Yisrael… If you put limitations on your understanding of what you are, then you are completely lost, and you have no zechus for Eretz Yisrael, because Eretz Yisrael cannot be justified in political or religious terms. (R. Matis Weinberg: Pesach and Eretz Yisrael, 2002)

What it means to be Yisrael and to be attached to Eretz Yisrael is not something that originated at Sinai, or even with the brit with Avraham, but reaches back to the beginning of Creation and what it means to be fundamentally human and connected to the earth. This is the significance of the verse from Tehillim that Rashi brings as the rationale for Yisrael’s inheritance of the Land:

'The power of His works He declared to His people in order to grant them the inheritance of nations.' (Tehillim 111:6)…speaks to a people who must learn to experience mitzvot not as moral maxims or impersonal decrees, but as the pulse of existence, the choices that make Creation what it is.” (Frameworks, Re’eh)

Beginning with the banishment from Gan Eden, exile is the process of defining and refining the identity of Yisrael. Exile is the “long march to freedom” that transforms us from grasshoppers into lions:

And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, as a lion among the beasts of the forest… (Micah 5:7)

The Land will ultimately welcome us back with love, as it did with Ya’akov Avinu. Nothing will

…stand in the way of the deeper inheritance of the Land of Israel by her true lovers when their time has come to love again. (Frameworks, Hayei Sarah)

No longer burdened by the guilt that accompanies self-doubt, but emboldened by the confidence that accompanies self-discovery, we will ascend to the Land like the lions we have become.

"The lion is the mightiest of animals and turns away before no one."

(Mishlei 30:30)

Postscript: After nearly 2,000 years of exile, on June 7, 1967, Israeli soldiers from the 55th Paratroop Brigade reunited the city of Jerusalem during the Six Day War. They entered through...the Lion's Gate. On that day “we were as lions in our own eyes, and so we were in the eyes of others.”

(Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff Yitzchak Rabin, and Jerusalem Commander Uzi Narkiss entering the Old City through the Lion's Gate.)

Parashat Beha'alotcha

Parashat Beha'alotcha
Sivan 9, 5771 ~ June 11, 2011
by John Sutton

The setting for this parsha is in the Sinai desert. A lot of familiar ground is covered, including the receiving of manna to eat, quickly followed by the complaint for this vegetarian diet, and the “quail fest”. There is much unrest in the camp.

We are reminded that Moshe’s father-in-law, Yitro and his family are among the camp and Moshe invites Yitro (here called Hobab ben Reuel) to join them and travel to Israel “…and we shall treat you well”. But Yitro had already decided to return to his own people.

Miriam and Aaron became embroiled in the bickering. They spoke against Moshe regarding “the Cushite woman he had married.” I wondered who this Cushite woman was as it didn’t fit the narrative of Moshe’s previously documented life.

It had already been stated that Joshua would succeed Moshe. So if none of Moshe’s children would succeed him, were they inferior ? (Yalkut Me’am Loez, Book 13). Some commentators have said that this (Cushite) woman was not (Yitro’s daughter) Zipporah. Cushite is variously described as black skinned, and also Abyssinian. The land of Cush was Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Cushite women were said to have striking beauty... taller, with chiseled features, quite unlike the descendents of Avraham. Rabbi H.J. Hertz says that Cushite and Midianite were synonymous (Hertz Chumash). So was Yitro a Cushite? He was stated to be a prince of Midian, and we assign Midian to the Sinai Peninsula. So did Moshe previously travel to Abyssinia/Ethiopia, and was Zipporah from Abyssinia or was she from the Sinai? Ibn Ezra identifies the Cushite woman as Zippora, a native of Midian. So was there another wife? There is much conjecture on this but in those times this was obviously possible. Moshe fled Egypt and would have travelled far to escape Pharaoh’s search. Did he stay on the west side of the Red Sea? Abyssinia was more than a thousand miles from Goshen but a very possible destination.

Joseph Kaspi, a medieval commentator questions the Rambam’s assertion (in his Guide for the Perplexed) of Onkelos’ interpretation that the Hebrew adjective Kushit (black or Ethiopian), “beautiful”, is the very opposite of what was stated, black opposite to white. Kaspi criticizes the Rambam for supporting Onkelos’ explanation and draws many parallels. He suggests that Moshe took another wife, an Ethiopian, after Zipporah. He justifies this by saying there are many events not recorded in the Torah. It was not our business to pry into his motives. But the repetitious statement “for he had taken (married) an Ethiopian woman” is as if to say “It is true that he had married an Ethiopian woman.” Unfortunately, the Torah leaves the thought incomplete.

The Stone Chumash commentators say that Moshe’s wife confided in Miriam that she no longer had a family relationship with Moshe. He was too preoccupied with his relationship with Hashem, always having to be pure, i.e. celibate, in case Hashem chose to speak with him. (Interestingly, this is right on the heels of the rules for the Nazarite.) Some commentators place this (celibacy) as the reason that Yitro left with his family. We don’t hear of Yitro, or of any of Moshe’s direct family again. Yitro took them all back to Midian, or Cush. In fact, the next time we hear of the Midianites is in Parshat Pinchas, when B’nei Yisroel are ordered to harass and smite them (Bemidbar 25:17).

What interested me in the Cush-related statements is the reference to Cushites being black skinned. The Torah speaks, by name, of many tribes of which we must beware. Hashem commanded that we annihilate some of them, and some of those we did destroy in battle. Others we never did defeat, contrary to what Hashem had commanded, and we rue that day. We say that Haman was an Amalekite… about the worst appellation that a Jew can lay on someone... but it doesn’t, in any way, physically describe the Amalekites. History, especially recent history, has divided and segregated people, first by the color of their skin. But nowhere else does the Torah refer to a people by their skin color. We wonder how can this be?

Many of us vividly recall that the United States was segregated by skin color until only forty years ago. Many of us would recall growing up in a shul with only light-skinned members. We look around in our synagogue and we see fellow congregants with about every possible skin coloration. But here, in the 21^st century, I know of no instance of a person at Beth Jacob being categorized by skin color.

Hashem heard the words of anger between Miriam and Aaron. Miriam was obviously the instigator and her spiritual tzaras was changed to physical tzaras, i.e. leprosy. Her skin was turned white. Did Hashem whiten her skin as a punishment for criticizing Moshe or was it for referencing his wife’s skin color, black versus white? Is this the Torah’s admonishment to B’nei Yisroel to not classify a person by color of skin?