Parshat Chukat
The last decade of world history (plus other eras as well) show how hard it can be for a group of disparate people to come together around common goals. Our commentators’ ideas for Parshat Chukat remind us of some of the stumbling blocks along the way to the goal, fighting for what unifies our very different subgroups.
A Nation of Individuals Or...
When Moshe writes to ask Sichon to let the Jews pass peacefully [reader: he rejects their suggestion, advances towards the Jews to wage war], 21;22, Moshe uses the singular form of the verb, e’ebrah, let me pass. Earlier in this parsha, lodging the same request with the king of Edom, 20;17, Moshe had said na’aberah, let us pass through.
For the fundamental insight, R. Mecklenburg references Shadal, Samuel David Luzatto, a Biblical commentator fifteen years his junior, who also held some controversial views about Torah. R. Mecklenburg either did not know them or did not care.
In our case, Shadal pointed out that a group can be a conglomeration of individuals or a unified whole. R. Mecklenburg gives an example from Devarim 4;29, where Moshe speaks of Jews’ search for God in the plural (u-vikashtem), then switches, writes the rest of the verse (the Lord your God, and shall find, if you seek Him with all your heart and soul), in the singular. He suggests the start of the search will be individual, each Jew alone, because of troubles that will befall them.
Should the majority “find” Hashem, such that the nation can be characterized as having found Him (even if there are still evildoers in their midst, adds R. Meckenburg), Hashem will respond to the overall nation. [I will permit myself some editorializing: The idea fits well with how Jews in the past century and a half have found their way to Israel, some/many of them also back to observance. The search was individual, each Jew finding his/her own reasons to get here, but once here, we are—with God’s help—in the process of finding our way to having found Hashem together. A work in progress.]
Speaking to Enemies
The insight explains the distinction between the two enemies Moshe sought to avoid fighting. The Jews were not going to be allowed to war with Edom (as we learn in Devarim), so Moshe shaped his request gently. Let us, a bunch of individuals who cannot band together to fight you anyway, pass through your land.
They had no such restrictions with Sichon, could therefore present themselves more proudly, demand right of passage as a nation, or else impose the consequences.
Misidentifying the Source of the Problem
Chapter twenty opens with a challenge, lack of water. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch reads 20;4 as the people’s accusation of Moshe and Aharon for having brought them to this desolate place, the reason they say haveitem, you have brought us. They are certain (in his reading) of Hashem’s good wishes, Hashem’s desire to support and sustain them, bring them to the Land, of their status as Hashem’s nation, slated for a wonderful future together. If they find themselves instead in a desert without water, it must be Moshe and Aharon’s doing.
In the next verse, when the people refer to the lack of vegetation, R. Hirsch spots another dimension to their complaint. It was spring, when most places teem with trees and produce, yet here they were where there was none. They were sure God would have brought them to more secure land.
This is not God’s Will, but the work of your hands, R. Hirsch thinks the people say to Moshe. [I think the idea is plausible, whether or not it is historically accurate, and one of the sad elements of Jewish history, how Jews, of all sorts, develop certainties they then act on, even when they are completely wrong. This one is particularly egregious, since this is towards the end of forty years being led by Moshe, a time of regular miraculous interventions, yet the Jews could still be sure Moshe—and Aharon, whom they loved!—were at fault. If only we could learn to be less certain.]
The Path to Convincing Ourselves of Untruths
I recently had occasion [a common phrase of mori ve-rabi Prof. Twersky’s, I think his way of noting when his various endeavors came together] to encounter a comment of R. Hirsch’s, where he has a similar view of the spies. R. Hirsch says what seems obvious once he says it, the spies (and Jews on all the other occasions they accost Moshe) should have asked Moshe how they were going to overcome the fear-inducing Canaanites. Instead, they drew conclusions and proceeded from there.
Here, too, the people’s assumptions fuel their missteps. They were God’s people, God did intend to bring them, alive and well, to the Land of Israel, without either of those correct statements supporting their ideas about Moshe and Aharon.
As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Were this an oral presentation, I would repeat that quote, because it is sadly still so true and gets us into trouble with sad and distressing outcomes.
When We Know We’re Redeemed
The beginning of the same chapter referred to Benei Yisrael, kol ha-edah, the Children of Israel, the entire congregation. Rashi took “kol ha-edah” to signal the Jews were ready to enter the Land, those slated to be left behind had already passed away.
Ramban objected that the Torah uses the same phrase in verse twenty-two, a point Malbim supports by pointing out that the Midrash said it there, and Rashi himself repeated it over there. Malbim suggests an answer based on a Yerushalmi at the end of Ta’anit (and a Midrash Eichah). The Yerushalmi is explaining the origin of the holiday on the fifteenth of Av, and says the Jews’ practice in the desert was for all of them to sleep in graves on the night of Tish’a B’Av (the anniversary of the sin of the spies), with around one-fortieth of them not awaking the next morning. (The last year in the desert, no one died; thinking perhaps they had mistaken the date, they repeated the practice until the fifteenth of Av, and then celebrated the completion of their sentence).
Malbim suggests our two verses might reflect when they were the whole nation primed to enter Israel, and then when they themselves came to know they were the whole nation primed to enter Israel.
We don’t always know who we are. He adds a poignant idea, perhaps Moshe realized it already in the first verse, the Jews only later. Sometimes others see values and strengths we ourselves do not yet see. If we add that to what R. Hirsch said, it would mean Moshe at the rock knew he was facing the whole people, ready to enter Israel, who had finished expiating their sin of the spies, but who could not believe God had taken them to a place where water was a challenge. And the encounter cost Moshe and Aharon their shot at entry to Israel.
The Jews grew into their nationhood in our parsha, knowing when to present themselves as a unified whole, when as individuals, but still struggled to see Moshe and Aharon correctly, and did not see themselves accurately until after they had lost the right to have those two greats march them into Israel.
