Parashat Hukat: In God We Trust

This Shabbat is July 4th. One of the most remarkable things about the country born on that day is the way in which the mantle of leadership is passed peacefully from one president to the next. George Washington set this example when he wisely refused to run for a third term of office. He made it clear that there would be no kings in America, that the country would not be dependent on any one individual’s charismatic leadership but would endure on the foundations of its values and faith.

In this week’s parsha, we meet up with the Israelites in the fortieth year of their desert wanderings, at the end of their first leaders’ terms of office. How will the people survive the death of their leaders? Can the institution of benei yisrael as a people of God exist without Moshe, Aharon and Miriam, their leaders?

It all starts with the death of the prophetess Miriam, Moshe’s sister. Her death, told in a mere half-verse (20:1), is followed immediately by the statement: “And there was no water for the community.” The midrash connects the two events, saying that a well had accompanied the people while Miriam was alive, but dried up at her death. The lack of water leads the people to complain to Moshe. Moshe, after consulting with God, brings forth water from a rock for the people, but God is angry at the way Moshe and Aharon handled the situation and tells them they will not be allowed to lead the people into the land of Israel. The end of their leadership is in sight. Aharon dies at the end of the chapter.

The exact nature of Moshe’s sin has been the source of great discussion over the centuries. I will follow the lead of Nachmanides, Jacob Milgrom, and my father, all of whom have slightly different versions of the same idea. The idea is that Moshe, as God says in His accusation, did not “sanctify” God “in the eyes of the Israelite people” (20:12). Moshe did not make it clear that the water was from God. He and Aharon said, “ Shall we get water for you out of this rock?” They did not say: “God will bring forth water for you from this rock.”

Moshe didn’t just miss an opportunity to sanctify God. He missed what it was the people actually needed in this situation. Miriam had just died, and the people were looking around and feeling frightened. One leader gone, and already the situation had deteriorated -- there was no water to drink. What would it be like when eventually all of their leaders died? This was a new generation, born in the desert into the strong arms of the leaders who had taken this desert generation’s parents out of Egypt. The parents had gradually died over the course of the 40 years in the desert, and now the leaders were dying too. What was going to happen to this new generation? Who would provide for them now? Would there, could there, be water without Miriam?

Moshe didn’t help the situation with his response. He said: Yes, there is water without Miriam. There is water from me and from Aharon. We can bring you water. See? If I lift up my arm with this stick and hit the rock very forcefully not just once, but twice, you’ll see the water we can produce.

Oh, but the people needed more than that. They needed to know that water and all other life-sustaining goods come from God, that even if Miriam, Moshe and Aharon all die, God will not die, and it is God who provides. They needed to know that life would continue, that their fledgling nation could survive the death of its first leaders. Moshe, of course, knew all this himself, but he ddin't say so, and that was his failure, a failure of pedagogy.

Moshe hit the rock, but the people needed to know that their survival was not dependent on the physical arm of a mortal man. God had actually commanded Moshe not to hit the rock, but to speak to it. Maybe part of the problem here was that the action was not well-suited to the people’s emotional needs. Hitting is a physical, mortal act; speech is eternal; it is our connection to the divine. Speech was what the people needed, to assure them that their survival was not dependent on a mortal like Moshe, but rather linked to God, to the One Who Spoke and the World Was Created.

The people do survive the death of Moshe. Even though Moshe does not make it clear that the water is from God, the people understand. Even in their complaint, they have already begun to think of themselves as a kehal hashem, “a congregation of the Lord” (20:3). They understand that their future may not be with Moshe, but it will always be with God. For the first time, in one of the stories that follow this one, the people cry out straight to God, without Moshe’s intercession: “Then Israel made a vow to the Lord and said, ‘If You deliver this people into our hand, we will proscribe their towns.’ The Lord heeded Israel’s plea and delivered up the Canaanites” (21:2-3). Wow! No Moshe, no Aharon, no Miriam. Just the people and God. This is the first inkling that the people are secure enough in their relationship to God to withstand the loss of its leaders.

As the Psalm verse reads, “Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man who cannot save. His breath departs; he returns to the dust; on that day his plans come to nothing” (Ps 146:4).

The United States did not collapse when George Washington left office; the institutions built by the country’s founders were not dependent on any one individual. We Jews are testimony to the fact that the people of Israel also survived the loss of its first great leader, Moshe. For us, it is a function of having put our trust, not in mere mortals, but in the eternal God and His enduring Torah.