Chukat: When Leaders Use Force Rather Than Words
Torah at the Intersection
As this week's Torah story begins, the entire generation that fled enslavement in the land of hardened hearts is dying, leaving a community of traumatized orphans. Torah offers new collective rituals relating especially to death and there is hope that the next generation is emerging with a renewed capacity to move together through life and death. The entire community arrives on the first new moon at a place called Kadesh, meaning Holiness or Sanctity. Perhaps with the new knowledge there is hope that this new generation will transform into the consciousness that can lead to a promise land, a consciousness that centers honoring life and death and maintains separation from killing and defiling other humans.
Immediately though, the power of the transmission of the new death rituals are tested. Miriam, the high priestess who protects and sanctifies water, dies in this place of Holiness. Instead of holding collective space for celebrating her life and mourning all that has been lost with her death, the people's trauma is activated and they again cry out that it would have been better to perish in the plagues that struck their ancestors. In their distress and confusion they long for a version of the certainty of Pharoah's kingdom, where, they imagine, there were grain, figs, vines and pomegranates. And, most importantly, water to drink.
And then the leadership of Moses and Aaron, among the few survivors of the first generation, is put to the test. They ask the Eternal Presence that has travelled with them to bring back the water. They receive a clear message to follow the way of Miriam which is to trust that, even from a place that looks to you as a dry hardened stone, there are words and actions that open the flow of life. This is how Miriam stationed herself by the river Nile and led the women in the way of the circle across the sea.
Moses and Aaron hear the message to speak to the stone just before them and from it water will pour forth.
Instead, Moses’ anger towards the people erupts and he takes his rod and strikes the stone twice. Water does indeed pour forth from the stone, emphasizing Torah's teaching that at the heart of faith and transformation is the belief that the flow of life can always be tapped into. And Torah does not stop there. She wants us all to understand what choices and actions will lead to fulfillment of the human promise. The choice to strike the rock twice, adding defilement and humiliation to the first burst of anger, dooms the leadership of Moses and Aaron. They will not lead the people into the promised land. Leaders above all are to use words that inspire trust, not actions that carry violence and anger, to resolve conflict and restore a sense of safety.
The people's journey to find right relationship to water and the land continues without them ever reaching that promised land either. Instead, they war and conquer, generating mistrust and bad relations with all the other peoples of the region. This is all in the story of this week's Torah portion.
For more, here are my previous writings and a video on this tragic story:
Chukat: Do we water seeds of peace or seeds of conflict?
Chukat | The Matter of Life and Death
I'd like to invite all the readers here to two Zoom calls with Israeli and Palestinian activists and thinkers who are deeply committed to the ways of nonviolence.
Wednesday July 9 at 7:30-9:30 evening Jerusalem time
Wednesday August 6 at 7:45-9:15 evening Jerusalem time
Please post a comment on the substack asking for the zoom links or more information.