Numbers 20: Struck the rock
Numbers 20
7 and Tehovah spoke to Moshah, saying,
8 “Take the staff and assemble the community, you and your sister Aaronah, and before their very eyes speak to the rock to yield its water. And you shall extract water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts.”
9 And Moshah took the staff from before Tehovah, as She had directed her.
10 Moshah and Aaronah assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and she said to them, “Listen, you rebels, from this rock shall we extract water for you?”
11 And Moshah raised her hand and struck the rock twice with her staff. Out came abundant water, and the community and their beasts drank.
12 But Tehovah said to Moshah and Aaronah, “Because you did not trust Me enough to sanctify Me in the eyes of the Daughters of Tisraelah, therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land that I have given them.”
במדבר כ
ז וַתְּדַבֵּ֥ר תְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשָׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃
ח קְחִ֣י אֶת־הַמַּטֶּ֗ה וְהַקְהִ֤ילִי אֶת־הָֽעֵדָה֙ אַתְּ֙ וְאַֽהֲרֹנָ֣ה אֲחֹתֵ֔ךְ וְדִבַּרְתֶּ֧ן אֶל־הַסֶּ֛לַע לְעֵֽינֵיהֶ֖ן וְנָתַ֣ן מֵימָ֑יו וְהֽוֹצֵאת֙ לָהֶ֥ן מַ֙יִם֙ מִן־הַסֶּ֔לַע וְהִשְׁקִ֥ת אֶת־הָֽעֵדָ֖ה וְאֶת־בְּעִירָֽן׃
ט וַתִּקַּ֥ח מֹשָׁ֛ה אֶת־הַמַּטֶּ֖ה מִלִּפְנֵ֣י תְהֹוָ֑ה כַּֽאֲשֶׁ֖ר צִוַּתָּֽהָּ׃
י וַתַּקְהֵ֜לְנָה מֹשָׁ֧ה וְאַֽהֲרֹנָ֛ה אֶת־הַקָּהָ֖ל אֶל־פְּנֵ֣י הַסָּ֑לַע וַתֹּ֣אמֶר לָהֶ֗ן שְׁמַעְנָה־נָא֙ הַמֹּר֔וֹת הֲמִן־הַסֶּ֣לַע הַזֶּ֔ה נוֹצִ֥יא לָ֖כֶן מָֽיִם׃
יא וַתָּ֨רֶם מֹשָׁ֜ה אֶת־יָדָ֗הּ וַתַּ֧ךְ אֶת־הַסֶּ֛לַע בְּמַטֶּ֖הָ פַּֽעֲמָ֑יִם וַיֵּֽצְאוּ֙ מַ֣יִם רַבִּ֔ים וַתֵּ֥שְׁתְּ הָֽעֵדָ֖ה וּבְעִירָֽן׃
יב וַתֹּ֣אמֶר תְהֹוָה֘ אֶל־מֹשָׁ֣ה וְאֶֽל־אַֽהֲרֹנָה֒ יַ֚עַן לֹא־הֶֽאֱמַנְתֶּ֣ן בִּ֔י לְהַ֨קְדִּישֵׁ֔נִי לְעֵינֵ֖י בְּנ֣וֹת תִּשְׂרָֽאֵלָ֑ה לָכֵ֗ן לֹ֤א תָבֶ֙אנָה֙ אֶת־הַקָּהָ֣ל הַזֶּ֔ה אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־נָתַ֥תִּי לָהֶֽן׃
*
The cell phone sends me a notification of a new message in the WhatsApp group of my extended family on my father’s side. I tense up. It’s May 2021 and by now the third week of “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israel’s military confrontation with Hamas. The messages firing in the family WhatsApp group divide into two. In my heart, at least, everyone else is on one side, and I am on the other. A few extreme Right-wing cousins flood the group with brutal comments about Israeli Arabs, because of the riots against Jews in mixed Arab-Jewish cities. They call on us to go to Lod, Ramle, Acre to defend the Jewish inhabitants, who the police are not protecting. They characterize all Israeli Arabs as terrorists and demand that we take law and order into our own hands. As for Gaza’s Arabs, the tone is no less unequivocal: Hamas was, after all, chosen in democratic elections in 2006, and so all of Gaza’s citizens are, as far as they are concerned, terrorists, and Israel’s air attacks should be even harsher. Not one of the extended family responds to these comments object to them. I hold my tongue too, because, at my request, we’d agreed earlier that we will not deal with politics anymore.
That request of mine had come the previous December when a member of the “Hilltop Youth” in Judea and Samaria, Ahuvia Sandak, died in a car chase with the police. Ahuvia and his friends had been throwing stones on Palestinian cars, in retaliation for the killing of an Israeli jogger in a settlement the day before. The police took after them and in mid-chase the car carrying the stone-throwers flipped over and Ahuvia was crushed to death. One of my cousins, in a series of furious WhatsApp messages, like everyone else in her milieu, utterly delegitimize the police and joined the calls for a Commission of Inquiry that would lead to the punishment of the police officers involved, and voiced her approval of a number of extreme right-wing responses to the incident. When I tried to express a contrary point of view the tension reached new heights and no substantive discussion took place. Now, with “Operation Guardian of the Walls” going full blast, I knew that if I were to respond to the wholesale condemnations of Israeli Arabs, civil war would break out in my family, this time, with no restraint, and I feared the results. I decided to leave the group.
It hurt me to cut myself off from the family like this, but the quiet of the silent majority hurt me even more than my extremist cousins’ pronouncements. I feared in my heart that maybe the rest of the family agreed with those cousins’ views and weren’t as shaken by them as I was. My inability to maintain a conversation with people who think very differently from me, to listen and be listened to, frightened and saddened me. I felt failure. Disappointed in my own inability to bear others’ angers, and from my impatience with trying to raise empathy for the umpteenth side for the genuine suffering of so many Arabs. I raised my hands in surrender.
*
“With hand raised high, the staff quivering in her hand, right after she had struck the rock with it, and just a trickle of water had emerged, she hesitates for a moment whether to struck it again, or maybe anyway to try and talk to it, as Tehovah had commanded her to do?” Thus Michael describes Moshah in a mediation he prepared for us for our shared study of Parashat Chukat, Toratah-style, this last shabbat. “This time, when the Daughters of Tisraelah cry for water, Tehovah commands Moshah to talk to the rock to bring forth water, unlike the situation in Exodus 17, where, to calm the parched crowd, She commanded to strike it. The Parashah tells us,” he continues, “that Moshah doesn’t just strike the rock, instead of speaking to it, but that she strikes it twice! What do you think went on inside her between the first time, and the second? Why did she decide to hit it again? Let’s close our eyes for a moment now, and stand there, ourselves, with our hand in the air, facing the rock, after striking it once and see what happens.”
For the better part of a year now I participate every motzaei shabbat (Saturday night) in a Minchah prayer service via Zoom, whose participants are from the US and England, who in recent years became aware and kindled to the Toratah project. In the US, it’s still afternoon. The participants sacrifice their Shabbat rest for intensive study of the coming week’s parsha in its Toratah version. At every meeting we dedicate some time to meditation, in the course of which, for a few minutes, we sit in silence facing the mystery and existential questions that the text summons or demands. The meditation that Michael has prepared for today, invites us to reckon with our responses to the rocks standing in our way.
I close my eyes, and the first image that comes to mind is me, holding my cell phone in my hand, noticing the new WhatsApp message from the family, which if I open, I know, will attack me. This standing before my family, who I experience as shut and blocked as a solid rock; how do you talk to a rock like that? I remember that night when the girls were little in which two organizations—two activist groups—right-wing settlers, including one of my sisters, and left-wing activists, including one of my other sisters, met in our apartment in Jerusalem. We were glad to open our home to a meeting like this even though I was very scared of the embarrassment I’d feel when the shouting would start and the harsh words slice through the air. Would my sisters fight with one another in front of everybody? In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to be a part of this and so I hid in the girls’ bedroom where they sunk in sleep, unaware of the battle royale going on in the living room. Along with my sisters, other friends of ours from both sides took part in the evening, and their difficulty in communicating with one another, to empathize with the other, and feel some empathy coming from them, stayed with us long after that evening. My husband Yehudah wrote about that evening for The Daily Beast and talked about the Green Line which that night ran through our living room and through his heart.
*
At the close of the meditation as we return to our text study, I connect the moment before the button-pressing removing me of my family’s WhatsApp group to Moshah’s hand, waving in the air. Did I do the right thing by leaving, which I feel was a kind of hitting instead of talking? Projecting my guilt onto Moshah, I judge her harshly during the conversation, for hitting the rock instead of trying new ways of communicating with it. It seems to me she doesn’t trust the rock, doesn’t trust Tehovah and doesn’t trust herself. The group doesn’t share my harsh judgmentalness. They point to the support that Tehovah gives Moshah, since, after all, waters do gush out of the rock after she strikes it. They talk about their difficulties in shifting from one kind of reaction to another and the challenge of standing in the face of pressure like the one in which Moshah finds herself, between the demanding people and the demanding Goddess. Yael makes clear to us the insanity of the kind of relationship Tehovah and the people are developing in the Wilderness, unable as they are to communicate with one another. If it weren’t for Moshah’s interventions that stave off catastrophe time and again where would we have been by now? How long can we expect Moshah to hold on like this? Maybe we can have some empathy for her failure here, standing, once again, in front of a rock, having to placate and soften it? Maybe you just can’t go through this life without raising your hands in surrender from time to time, and hope that next time you’ll be stronger?
But in Moshah’s story, there is no next time. The ending of Mosha’s story gets written, and she’s punished - she will never enter the land. Tehovah can’t depend on her, and I have tears in my eyes.
Restless, I compare the two stories of rock-hitting, from Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 and I notice a difference. If in Exodus the hitting is done in the presence of the elderly women of Tisraelah alone, and Tehovah uses the words I am standing before you there, this time it’s happening in the presence of all the people and Tehovah doesn’t promise Her presence. The second story focuses on Moshah’s own ability to communicate with a rock and get it to bring forth water. This ability is what will sanctify Tehovah among the people, because holiness is the ability to communicate and draw out living waters from one another. I think I understand why Moshah can’t lead the people into the land. We have to develop, here, a language to communicate among ourselves and among the others that share this land. We have to learn to speak to someone whom we experience as a rock. Will we get a second chance?