Chukat

Numbers 19:1−22:1 - Rosh Chodesh Tammuz


D'var Torah By: Rabbi Lisa Edwards for ReformJudaism.com

The Gift of Grief

In an almost imperceptible yet seismic shift, this week’s Parshat Chukat jumps us a few decades ahead in the wilderness journey of the Israelites. Maybe we need a movie screen caption that reads, “thirty-eight years later.”

Perhaps the time shift is difficult to notice because not much else has changed. Early in the portion, seemingly from out of nowhere, we read: “Miriam died there and was buried there,” (Numbers 20:1). Although she was the sister of Moses and Aaron, and a leader herself in the Israelite community, no more detail is given of what happened when Miriam died. No cause of death is given, no age at death, no description of mourning. We don’t even know who buried her. “Died and buried” is all Miriam gets for her long years of service.

Or is it? The very next verse tells us “the community was without water” (20:2). This juxtaposition is to teach us, writes Rashi (France, eleventh century), that the Israelites “had water for the whole forty years from [Miriam’s] well on account of the merit of Miriam.” Abraham ibn Ezra (Spain, twelfth century) disagrees, noting an absence of water long before Miriam died (Exodus 17:1, for example).

Whatever the reason, it seems to be their thirst, rather than Miriam’s death, that brings the Israelites to whine and argue with Moses and Aaron. “Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place?” (Numbers 20:5). Poor Moses, Aaron, God, and us as well, we’ve heard all this before—almost forty years ago and from a different generation. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”1

Perhaps this is why Moses grows so angry, losing patience once more. And the same goes for God. When God tells Moses and his brother Aaron to take the rod and “order the rock to yield its water,” Moses does so in similar fashion to the way God instructed him decades before—he strikes the rock, but this time he does so twice, saying “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” (Compare Numbers 20:6-12 to Exodus 17:5-6).

Continue reading.


Follow our    page.