Rabbi Anderson's Divrei Torah

Shabbat shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Chukat-Balak, a double-header that is only ever read in the Diaspora, when the second day of Shavuot puts us one parsha behind Israel, and this is how we catch up. Although it starts out a bit slow, with the laws of the red heifer whose ashes purify individual Israelites from corpse-contamination, the rest of the parshah is a wild, action-packed ride. Aaron and Miriam die, Moses is doomed to die before entering the Promised Land, the Israelites win several major battles in the Transjordan, they suffer divine plague and snake attacks, they are blessed at length by the seer Bilaam – but only after he is scolded by a talking donkey!, and they fall into idolatry with Midianite and possibly Moabite women. The latest Game of Thrones spinoff only wishes it had this much action.

But what’s really important about this double parshah, I think, is its theme of transition from the first to the second generation of Israelites. Throughout both Chukat and Balak, leaders and kings keep dying off.  Even Moses seems to recede in importance as the Israelites fight a series of successful battles without him, as Balaam offers divine prophecies without mentioning him, and as Pinchas carries out God’s will in his place. Meanwhile, the new generation of Israelites seem to be learning how to survive for themselves in the formerly hostile wilderness. While the generation of the Exodus did nothing about God’s anger until Moses and Aaron interceded, their descendants seem to be more self-aware, telling Moses that the snakes are attacking because “we sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you” (21:7). Israel vows to the Lord as a people, seeking to retrieve war captives, and God listens to them and grants them victory. They figure out how to conquer Hormah, a city that eluded them back in parshat Shlach Lecha, after their spies scout out the region with apparent success. They negotiate with the Amorite kings – they, and not Moses. They mourn for Aaron for thirty days – kol beit Yisrael, the Torah emphasizes, all the house of Israel. They dig a well with “their own staffs” (21:18), and then they sing a song about it, without leadership from Moses or Miriam.

Actually, the well is interesting, because its song opens with the same words as the much more famous Song at the Sea: Az yashir. But instead of Az yashir Moshe u’vnei Yisrael, it’s simply Az yashir Yisrael. While some commentators try to read Moses and Aaron back into the well-song,[1] they are never mentioned. The medieval midrash Yalkut Shimoni explicitly says that the earlier song, Az yashir Moshe, had the Israelites repeating each line after Moses like children learning a lesson from a parent. By the Song of the Well, however, the Israelites had grown up, and they had taken responsibility for singing their own songs in response to miracles.[2] And what was so miraculous about digging a well? Yalkut Shimoni is probably building on an earlier rabbinic midrash[3] that imagines the Israelites’ well as a community-based miracle: a “rock the size of a sieve” followed the Israelites through the wilderness, settling at each stop opposite the Tent of Meeting. After the Israelite leaders encircled it with their staffs and sang to it, the water would bubble up and follow each leader back to his tribal encampment and then each Israelite back to his tent. In this scenario, the Israelites no longer need miracle-working leaders to bring water out of rocks; they’ve literally replaced those leaders with the power of their community.

If today’s Torah portion is all about the Israelites maturing and discovering that they no longer need leaders, that could make it a challenging parashah for a new rabbi to enter on. But I actually like it. I don’t want to be Moses – I don’t think most of us do, when we think about it. Moses gets to be closer to God than anyone else ever, but in order to be that way, he has to withdraw from his family and from his community. He’s constantly listening to the Israelites complaining about God and to God complaining about the Israelites. Then he tells the Israelites what God wants them to do, and sometimes it works and sometimes – often, in the Book of Numbers – it doesn’t work. Sometimes God tells him he’s doing it wrong. Sometimes he complains to God that he’s tired of acting like their nursemaid (Num. 11:12). Finally, in this parashah, we find out that he’s not even going to get to enter the land of Israel! And having Moses around all the time doesn’t sound like the healthiest model for the Israelite community, either. The generation of the Exodus came to expect him to do everything for them – they couldn’t imagine life without him. That’s a relationship in need of some serious change, which is what we see happening in today’s parashah.

As both the Torah and Yalkut Shimoni point out, the relationship between Moses and the first generation of Israelite ex-slaves is a lot like the relationship between a parent and a very young child. I remember those days with my own children. Sometimes you got lucky and they just did the thing you wanted them to do; sometimes you could reason with them; sometimes you could bribe them with M&Ms, which are almost as good as miraculous wells. And sometimes a nap got skipped and the day ended with everyone in tears. Parenting young children is important, but it’s also really hard work – and it doesn’t last forever. It’s a little sad when your babies start growing up, but it’s also a relief: you get to relate to them in a different way, to listen to their music and taste the food they made you and send them off to camp and Israel trips. I’m not a model parent, but I’m very glad that the way I related to my kids when they were little isn’t the way I relate to them now that they’re teenagers. I’m also happy to say that none of that is the way I want to relate to the adults around me. If we want a metaphorical parent, there’s always God. But as Jews, we need to be leading and supporting each other.

As TI’s rabbi, I want all of us to sing together, to share Torah together, to live Jewish lives together – and to find ourselves part of a vibrant community where we all take turns leading and following.