Chukkat

Synopsis

 

Chukkat open with the famous purification ritual of the red heifer which God instructs Moses and Aaron. Such an animal, with no blemish upon it, must be slaughtered and burned with cedar wood, hyssop and crimson, its ashes mixed with water and used for the purification of those who come into contact with a corpse. Paradoxically the ashes make ritually impure the ritually pure people who prepare them, and they must go outside the camp until night.

 

The Israelites arrived at the wilderness of Zin. Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron dies, and is buried at Kadesh. Once again there is a lack of water and the people complain against Moses and Aaron. God tells them to take a rod and to order the rock to yield water before the watching people, but Moses actually hits the rock twice. Water does gush out, but God is angry, seeing the action as a lack of belief. Moses and Aaron are told they will not enter the Land. The place where this happens is called Merivah, the waters of strife.

 

Aaron dies at Mount Hor on the border with the land of Edom. He is mourned by the children of Israel for 30 days and his son Eleazar succeeds him as high priest.

 

The Israelites go into battle at Hormah, but on the journey onwards they again complain about God and about the leadership of Moses. God sends a plague of seraphim (burning serpents) and many die; the plague is resolved only when Moses acts by making a bronze seraph figure, which heals the people when they look at it.

 

Again the Israelites go into battle, this time with Sihon the king of the Amorites, who refused to let them go through his land. After defeating him and taking his land, they go on to defeat Og the King of Bashan and also take possession of his country before marching on to Moab, right across the border from Jericho.

 

D’var Torah

 

 הֵמָּה מֵי מְרִיבָה, אֲשֶׁר-רָבוּ בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת-יְהוָה; וַיִּקָּדֵשׁ, בָּם

 

“These are the waters of Merivah, where the children of Israel strove against God, and he/it was sanctified in them / he was separated from them.” Numbers 20:12-13

 

One of the most confusing passages in Torah happens here in Parashat Chukkat – not the mysterious ritual of the red heifer which is the ‘hok’ par excellence of torah, a law without obvious or rational basis to be done simply out of obedience to God’s laws, but the events at the rock, where instead of ordering the rock to yield its water, Moses struck it twice instead.

 

God had instructed Moses and Aaron to take a rod, assemble the community, and order the rock to give its water. But instead of so doing, Moses had struck the rock twice, had described the Israelites as rebels, and had done the whole thing himself, without including Aaron.  Tradition tells us that Moses’ many failings are demonstrated here. Anger, impatience, self centeredness, lack of fait in God, impetuousness… and that this is the reason that God tells both Moses and Aaron that they will not enter the promised land, because Moses allowed his own character flaws to take over instead of placing enough trust in God and Aaron did not stop him. But I wonder. That verse “These are the waters of merivah, where the children of Israel strove against God, and he/it was sanctified in them / he was separated from them.” seems to be pointing at something a little different.

 

When God first gets Moses to hit a rock and get the water, it is in front of the generation who left Egypt. Slaves, people who were used to miracles and magic.  This time we have a generation who were born free, we are nearly at the fortieth year of the wandering, and something else is required for them as their thirst for water is addressed.

 

 “God said to Moses and Aaron,” “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.” Those are the Waters of Merivah - that the Israelites quarrelled with God—“ and then we have this strange phrase “va’y’kadesh bam” translated usually as some variation of “through which God affirmed God’s sanctity.”

 

It is this notion of the sanctification of God in this passage that I find deeply troubling. From the moment when God blessed and sanctified the Shabbat day (Genesis 2:3), the verb va’y’kadesh has an infrequent but powerful presence in bible.

 

It is used at the foot of Mt Sinai when Moses tells the people to prepare for the giving of the commandments in three days time, he tells them to wash themselves, to stay away from women, and he performs this verb upon them.

 

It is used when Aaron and his sons are taken through the rituals of becoming priests and particularly high priest. It is used again at the ritual opening of the Tabernacle readying it for sacrifices.   All of these uses are not so much about making something holy, but about separation and dividing, making something ready for particular usage. The only time we hear about the sanctification of God is in the verse before ours,

Vayomer Adonai el Moshe v’el Aharon, ya’an lo he’emantem bi, l’hakdisheini l’einei bnei Yisrael, lachen lo tavee’u et hakahal hazeh el ha’aretz asher natati lahem.

And God said unto Moses and Aaron: 'Because you believed not in Me, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.'

But our verse continues as if an editorial interjection rather than continuing the words of God, not in the first person as the verse before, and not adding to the conversation so much as explaining a context: These are the waters of merivah, where the children of Israel quarrelled with God, va’y’kadesh bam .

 

I would like to suggest that we are no longer in the realm of the punishment of Moses or even of the people with this verse, and we are also not in the realm of the sanctification (or not) of God. Instead, we should look at this verb vay’kadesh and recognise that it is reflecting the geography of the surroundings of the people of Israel; they are in the wilderness of Zin, in the area of Kadesh. In other words they are in an isolated and separated place, not yet part of a community, not connected to anywhere else.

 

The root k.d.sh comes to mean ‘holy’ by virtue of its more fundamental meaning – that of being separate, distinct and different. It makes sense in all the other usages of this word as a verb va’y’kadesh, as God separates the Sabbath day and makes it distinct, Moses separates out the people and warns them to be different from usual, the High Priest (and the priesthood generally) are separated from the rest of the populace. The tabernacle is also made a distinct and special place when it is given the status of Kedoshah by Moses once it is completely built. So why would we not translate our verse as “These are the waters of Merivah, where the children of Israel strove against God, and were separated/ isolated/ made different because of it.”

 

This is the generation that didn’t have to leave Egypt. This is not the generation who were at Sinai. This is the generation who were born into the wilderness, born after the spies had led the people into a spiral of anxiety and depression by reporting that the promised land, while wonderful and fertile, was filled with giants who made themselves look pathetic in their own eyes. This is the generation who as yet know neither themselves nor God.

 

So maybe what is happening is that after punishing Moses and Aaron for their not teaching about belief and faith to the children of Israel and so being told that they will not be the ones who lead them into the promised land, the attention turns to the relationship between God and the children of Israel – this generation who were not yet taught to sanctify God and to have faith – and because of their striving against God, something different has happened to them.

 

There are times when we look for purpose in our lives and times when we simply jog along with them. Times when we need to believe and times when it doesn’t seem so important. Times when we can believe and times when it seems impossible.

 

This is the very first time the new generation, the ones for whom miracles were the everyday occurrences of manna and water, of needs being met without much effort and battles being won without much loss, had to face something different. Miriam has already died, there is a shortage of water, Aaron and Moses were both getting older and there must have been a general understanding of the mortality of the leadership who had been there from the beginning, who spoke to God, who knew (or appeared to know) the purpose of the wandering.

 

This generation had to see something special; they had to see words bring about change. It was time for them to take on some of the intimations of obligation to God that up till now had been taken on for them. Moses and Aaron may or may not have failed in the way they carried out God’s instructions, in many ways it doesn’t matter; What matters is that an awareness was brought about that this new generation were not yet ready  to take on the task of their elders. It was time for something to hasten their readiness. And so I read these verses not as sanctifying God so much as preparing and altering the people in readiness to take over the work. That by their striving against God they were creating a relationship that would change them. Va’y’kadesh bam is not God being sanctified by the waters of Merivah, a concept which eludes me to be honest, but the people being made ready to be holy by their actions at that time.

 

All of us need to grow and to alter, to take on the burden of the work that others have done before us, be it for the community or within the family; promotion at work or a change of career – we grow up and we grow. It is not something we have a choice about, and that too is made clear in this sidra. But what is also made clear is that however much we don’t want to take on the work, however much we strive against it, we cannot escape it – the very act of striving against it changes us…. So we might as well take it on with good grace. For that too will sanctify us and support us in the work we do.

 

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild