Parashat Chukat
Tammuz 10, 5772 ~ June 30, 2012
by Joel Ackerman
In the middle
of this parasha, we fast forward 38 years from the events surrounding the death
of Korach and his followers in the previous parasha. The Torah is silent about this time. No
information is given here on any events that occurred during this period. Instead, we pick up the story in the 40th
year in the desert with the deaths of Miriam and Aaron and, finally, the
movement of the Israelites towards the Land.
One wonders what this lengthy period was like.
After the
incident of the spies, Moses had told the people that G-d had decided that they
would not enter the Land until all those aged twenty and above had died
(Bamidbar 14:28-35). G-d did not mince
words: “Your children will roam in the
wilderness for forty years and bear your guilt, until the last of your
carcasses in the wilderness. Like the
number of days that you spied out the Land, forty days, a day for a year, a day
for a year, shall you bear your iniquities – forty years – and you shall
comprehend straying from Me.”
Sholem Asch
describes the mood among the people at the beginning of that period in his
novel “Moses”: “They went about with
bowed heads, shrouded in sadness. Until
now they had had, in the midst of all their tribulations, an aim and purpose…
But now what prospect was there? For
themselves, only death; and for their children, freedom. Very rare were the spirits among them who
could rise to this challenge: to live out all their remaining lives in
privation and suffering for the sake of their children.”
And Asch
describes Moses’ own state: “What would
be his own fate? Was he not one of the
grown persons who had come out of Egypt?
Was he not himself of the first generation? The thought made him tremble. He could not
entrust the B’nai Israel into other hands.
He must see them into their land.
G-d would be merciful to him and let him live long enough to complete
G-d’s work. And perhaps G-d would relent
and shorten the sentence of forty years, hasten the growth of the B’nai Israel,
prepare them sooner for the conquest. He
would not cease to pray.
He would exert
himself to keep the B’nai Israel close to the borders of the Promised
Land. He would not force them back into
the horrible desert. He would wander
with the tribes between Ezion-Geber and Kadesh Barnea, push his way through to
the borders of the Promised Land.”
As we know,
G-d did not shorten the sentence, but He was merciful – to a certain extent - for
those thirty-eight years. He did not
desert His people.
G-d had told
Moses after the incident of the spies: “Tomorrow, turn and journey toward the
wilderness, in the direction of the Sea of Reeds” (Bamidbar, 14: 25). But Moses fudged, and G-d did not call him on
it. Again, Sholem Asch. Moses prayed for the people and “God
vouchsafed to Moses the light of his justice.
And Moses said in his heart that he would not compel the B’nai Israel to
leave Kadesh Barnea; he would not compel them to break up camp. Nor, indeed did
the cloud above the sanctuary rise in sign of departure. And even though G-d had bidden Moses to turn
back into the wilderness on the morrow, Moses interpreted the word ‘morrow’ to
mean ‘after a time.’” He interpreted “in the direction of the Sea of Reeds” to
mean “any part of the Red Sea”, and kept close to that arm of this body of
water that extended to Ezion-Geber
(i.e., modern Eilat) rather than return to that part near Egypt.
And G-d accompanied
his people and found ways to be merciful to them so that they should not become
totally overwhelmed with despair. Rashi comments
on the list of places in the journey of the Israelites in parashat Masei
(Bamidbar 33:1-49): “Why were these journeys written? To make known the acts of kindness of the
Omnipresent. For although He decreed
upon them to move them about and make them wander in the wilderness, you should
not say that they were wandering about from journey to journey the entire forty
years and had no rest…. During the entire last thirty-eight years they only
journeyed twenty journeys.”
The Torah
further states (Devarim 28:4) that neither their clothes nor their shoes wore
out. And in this week’s parasha, our translation
of the Torah reports that when the people complained about lack of food and
water, G-d sent fiery snakes and serpents that bit them, and many died. However, Nehama Leibowitz teaches that this
translation is incorrect; that the word “vayeshalach” does not mean “sent” but
rather “let go”, “released”. In other
words, what occurred here was not that G-d took an action and sent snakes
against the people, but that the snakes had always been present and threatening
to attack, but G-d had restrained them up to then – but then He stopped
restraining them – temporarily, perhaps - to remind the Israelites that all that time He had been protecting them.
And so it went
for thirty-eight years. The older
generation lived with the fact that they would die in the wilderness, and so
they did, bit by bit. Their children had
to watch this, constantly aware of both the death sentence passed on their
parents and the fact that they themselves could not progress until that
sentence had been fully carried out.
And it was not
just parents and children. There was no
generation gap. Those young men 20 or 21
years old were under that death sentence, but those only slightly younger - 18
or 19 - were not. They waited, conscious
of their close call, and they matured under G-d’s protection to become the elders
and leaders of the next generation.
It was a
strange and tense time, yet somehow the people worked their way through this, somehow
survived it. Somehow Moses kept at his
self-assigned task of leading them and preparing them for that next step. And as we learn in this parasha, when the
time came, they were ready to move.
Shabbat Shalom
