Torah of Recovery: Hukkat 5784/2024

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Rambam on Numbers 19:3

And ye shall give ‘her’ unto Eleazar the priest. This [first heifer] was to be prepared by Eleazar, but all other heifers [in subsequent generations] must be prepared by the High Priest.’... The purport of this is to tell us that this commandment, because of its profound secret, deserved to be given to the greatest of the priests, and yet it was not given to Aaron [but to Eleazar the deputy]! ... it may be [that the performance thereof was not given to Aaron] as a punishment for [his part in the incident of] the [golden] calf, as Rabbi Moshe the Preacher wrote.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 880

[The ritual of the red heifer is] a classic example of a law that defies rational explanation. Indeed, the general tenor of the commentaries asks us to accept this law without understanding it, as a sign of love for and trust in God. The commentators hold that it wold be almost unseemly to search for a rational explanation, implying that God's word would be acceptable only if it fit our canons of reasoning. Human failure to understand a truth does not make it any less true.

Bamidbar Rabbah 19:3

Solomon said, “About all these things I have knowledge; but in the case of the parashah on the red heifer, I have investigated it, inquired into it, and examined it. [Still] (at the end of the verse in Eccl. 7:23), ‘I thought I could fathom it, but it eludes me.’”

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 880

Israel Ruhzin points out that this cow purifies the impure but renders the pure impure; God similarly purifies those who approach the sanctuary in a spirit of humility with knowledge of their own inadequacies, but condemns those who come in a spirit of arrogance and a claim to perfection. A modern commentator suggests that the ritual's purpose is psychological. To heal a person burdened by a sense of wrongdoing, who feels the purity of his or her soul has been compromised, we take an animal completely without blemish and sacrifice it, as if to imply that perfection does not belong in this world. Perfect creatures belong in heaven; this world is given to the inevitably flawed and compromised.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p 153

The great blessing of Chukkat is the knowledge that whatever our defilement and whatever our mistakes, we can always return to our essential purity...It is understood by our Tradition that the quintessential mistake of our ancestors as they wandered through the wilderness was the sin of the Golden Calf. This portion begins by discussing the great ritual for purification. The first and major ingredient required for this ritual is the Red Heifer. To know the source of sin, I must lay the red Heifer on the fires of Truth. Because she is the mother of the Golden Calf, the source for the pattern of sin, her ashes are the first ingredient that I will need for purification.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 271

In this case, the fears of the people are that they are going to perish for lack of water. Even though their entire experience has been that God cares for them, when they experience the death of Miriam, their fears overtake this knowledge. Letting their fears run rampant causes the Israelites to blame Moses and bemoan leaving Egypt. Interestingly, this time, God does not get angry. God understands that death causes a split in people. We are split between the world of the living and the next world. This split, left unhealed, will cause us to forget everything we know and revert back to our primal fears. God knows this and instructs Moses to talk to the rock so that the people know they are not alone. Talking to the rock will cause the people to remember that God cares about them and that the death of an individual does not mean that God has left the individual or the communal survivors. Moses, in hitting the rock and speaking to the people as if it were he and Aaron who brought forth the water and other miracles, reinforces the people’s fear rather than assuaging it. It is in this way that Moses does not sanctify God’s name and beingness.

Pesachim 66a

Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: Anyone who acts haughtily, if he is a Torah scholar, his wisdom departs from him; and if he is a prophet, his prophecy departs from him. The Gemara explains: That if he is a Torah scholar, his wisdom departs from him is learned from Hillel, for the Master said in this baraita: Hillel began to rebuke them with words. Because he acted haughtily, he ended up saying to them: I once heard this halakha, but I have forgotten it, as he was punished for his haughtiness by forgetting the law...Similarly, Reish Lakish said: Any person who becomes angry, if he is a Torah scholar, his wisdom departs from him, and if he is a prophet, his prophecy departs from him. The Gemara explains: That if he is a Torah scholar his wisdom departs from him is learned from Moses, as it is written: “And Moses became angry with the officers of the host, the captains over thousands and the captains over hundreds, who came from the battle” (Numbers 31:14). And what was his punishment? As it is written afterward: “And Elazar the priest said to the men of war who went to the battle: This is the statute of the law, which the Lord commanded Moses” (Numbers 31:21), which proves by inference that this law had become hidden from Moses due to his anger.

Rambam on Numbers 20:13

The correct interpretation appears to me to be that the incident with the first rock took place in the sight of the elders of Israel alone, as it is expressly stated there. But here [in Verse 10] it is said, And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together etc.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, volume 2, location 3159, Kindle edition

“The accumulated anger and frustration of forty years bear down on Moses,” and he simply cannot see or hear the people anymore. He is so incensed, and so emotionally frayed, that, the Torah subtly indicates, he cannot really hear God anymore either. And so, tragic as the situation is, God realizes that God must find someone else—because when all is said and done, you cannot lead people you disdain, and you cannot guide people you can no longer even really see. According to Numbers what God still has, but Moses has lost, is the ability to respond empathically even to this stiff-necked people. When anger crowds out the possibility of empathy, it is time for a new leader.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 885

One might conclude that God's decree of death in the wilderness for Moses and Aaron was not so much a punishment as a recognition that their time of leadership was over. They were emotionally worn out by having led the people for so long. In some cases, there was a two-generation gap between them and their followers. Moses and Aaron were not sinners; they were the right leaders for the Exodus, for Sinai, for establishing the tabernacle. They were not the right people to lead a younger generation into battle.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 884-885

4., 8., 11. the community and their beasts drank In the midst of the wilderness, thirsty and discouraged, they seem to be saying "We who used to think of ourselves as the Lord's congregation can only think in terms of being thirsty, along with our cattle. Similarly, in verse 8, God promises to send water for 'the congregation and their beasts. This has been understood to mean that the people, desperate with thirst, were responding at virtually an animal level, no different than their cattle...The people drank like beasts, each person concerned solely with easing his or her own thirst. Only when we share with others what we ourselves also crave, do we rise above the animal level and become truly human.

Nahmanides on Numbers 20:7

But the Truth is that this is one of the great mysteries of the Torah.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, volume 2, location 3259

Israel is prohibited from nurturing grievances against the Edomites: “Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your kinsman” (Num. 23:8). But even more fundamentally, it is forbidden from becoming hard-hearted as a result of its often harrowing past. The people’s encounter with Edom on its way to the land of promise is intended as a warning and an awakening: When you are settled in your land, people who are hungry and exhausted may come looking for help. Treat them not as you yourselves were treated, but as you would have wanted to be treated. It would be all too easy for the past to teach you brutality; let it teach you kindness instead.

Isaac Abarbanel, cited in Michael Carasik, The Commentator's Torah, p. 144

As Zechariah 11:8 says, "I lost three shepherds in one month" - Miriam, Aaron, and Moses.

Rashi on Numbers 20:29

(1) ויראו כל העדה AND ALL THE CONGREGATION SAW [THAT AARON HAD DIED] — When they saw Moses and Eleazar descending and that Aaron was not descending with them, they said, “Where, then, is Aaron?” — He replied to them, “He is dead!” They thereupon said, “Is it possible that a man who stood up against the Angel and stayed the plague, — that over him the Angel of Death should have power?!” — Moses at once offered prayer and the ministering angels showed him (Aaron) to them lying upon the bier. They saw and believed (cf. Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 17). (2) כל בית ישראל [THEY WEPT FOR AARON …] EVEN ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL — all: both men and women, because Aaron used to pursue peace and promoted love between contending parties, and between man and wife

Rabbi Jan Katzew, Ph.D., The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 241, 243-44

DEATH IS THE DOMINANT THEME in Parashat Chukat. The portion is a pivot point, a transition from the generation that experienced negative liberty (freedom from Egyptian slavery) to the generation that would experience positive liberty (freedom to worship God in the land of promise). Miriam the prophet and Aaron the priest die, and Moses learns that he will also die in the wilderness because of his impulsive act of defiance, an act of chutzpah (חֻצְפָּה)1 against God...

How are we supposed to know when chutzpah is a vice and when chutzpah is a virtue? For cogent responses, we need to look within us and between us. Looking within involves examining intention and reflection. What is motivating our chutzpah? Are we grandstanding and taking credit for work that is not of our own design? Mussar practice involves looking within and looking around; chutzpah is an intrapersonal trait, and it is also an interpersonal trait. We can find chutzpah within us and also around us. Looking between us involves considering the impact of our chutzpah on other people—our family and our neighbors as well as the strangers among us. Are we taking up a cause that may not benefit us directly, but will give voice to someone who has been silenced? Our moral integrity, that is, our soul, is at stake. When we are chutzpadik (when we exhibit chutzpah), we should look inside us and ask, “Why am I doing this?” We should look around us and ask, “Who is benefiting from my chutzpah?”

Rashi on Numbers 20:22

MOUNT HOR (more lit., the mount of the mount) — This was a mount on top of a mount, like a small apple on top of a large apple. — Although the cloud went before them and levelled the mountains (cf. Rashi on 10:34), yet three of them remained: Mount Sinai for the giving of the Torah, Mount Hor for Aaron’s burial place, and Mount Nebo for Moses’ burial place (Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 14).