Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Chukat, “the laws”, which starts out kind of Leviticus-y but gets juicier with narrative. We’ll start with a brief recap:
We learn a bunch of laws of purity relating to dead bodies, which requires purification with the ashes of a red heifer. Miriam dies, and the people start wailing about lack of water. God tells Moshe and Aaron to take a staff, gather the people in front of a rock, and ask the rock for water. They do this except instead of talking, Moshe strikes the rock. The rock starts gushing water, but God is PISSED that he hit ii instead of talking to it, and punishes them by saying they will not enter the land of Israel. Moshe sends a message to the Edomites asking to pass through peacefully, but the kind of Edom says no, so the Israelites have to go around. They arrive at Mount Hor, where Moshe, Aaron and Aaron’s son Elazar ascend the mountain. Aaron takes off his high priest clothes, his son puts them on, and Aaron dies. The Israelites stay there and mourn for thirty days. The Amalakites sneak up on them and attack the camp, but the Israelites pray to God for help and are victorious. Then, they’re back to kvetching about the manna, so God sends serpents into the camp, who kill lots of people. MOshe prays on their behalf to God, then makes a copper serpent and places it on a pole. Anyone who has been bitten looks at it and is healed. The parsha concludes with an interspersed record of battles the Israelites won against different tribes, and a sort of victorious war poem about their victories.
There’s no shortage of commentary on this parsha and why Moshe got the punishment he did, or why he struck the rock instead of speaking to it. What is missing is… Moshe’s reaction. He doesn’t say anything in this parsha, he just moves onto the next thing. Eventually, we will hear Moshe beg and plead with God to reverse the punishment he receives, but at the moment we don’t hear him react at all. While this might seem surprising, I think it’s actually very human. Sometimes, we need to sit with big news for a little while before we can react to it, or we might need a chance to react again, because what we do in the moment doesn’t necessarily reflect how we really feel. We might feel pressure to respond in the moment to everything that happens to us, but Moshe teaches us that it’s ok, maybe even admirable, to take some time to process before we respond. He was focused on the people in that moment, and on meeting their needs as much as possible, and he knew that his relationship with them and with God wasn’t over.
For this, I want to offer him a blessing, and to invite each of you to share in that blessing as well. The world is fast paced, and it can feel like everything is changing so big and so quickly. To be able to take time and craft a thoughtful response is a blessing, and by doing so, you are creating blessings for those around you.