In the
passage from Torah we shall read together tomorrow morning, there is a
narrative that has confused many over the centuries. It has confused the learned, both those learned
in Torah, and those whose learning was of a more general nature. For the above, and all those in between,
there has always been a big question about this week’s reading.
Moses and Aaron once again face a
rebellion by the People Israel. This
time it is about water. There is no
visible source of water for the people and their flocks and herds. They ask Moses pointedly: Why did you bring God’s congregation to
this desert? So that we and our
livestock should die?
As we know, there is nothing more
basic and necessary to sustain life, than water. After an earthquake in Turkey, I was watching
the news coverage of the rescue efforts and noticed that the labels on cases of
bottled water being unloaded from a lorry read, Hayat. This means ‘life’ in Turkish. How appropriate, I thought. Where I come from, bottled water tends
to be sold under whimsical brand names.
But this Turkish brand name cuts to the chase.
Water is therefore an entirely
appropriate point of rebellion. I’ve pointed
out many times in recent weeks as we’ve worked our way through the book of
Numbers, that it is largely a treatise on leadership. One who aspires to leadership should expect
challenges based on legitimate questions about the quality of their leadership. We can certainly sympathise with Moses and
Aaron at this point. We can almost hear
them thinking: Oh, no! Not another rebellion! What do they expect of us, after
all??! We cannot bear these
challenges! How can we make them stop??!
But God did not abandon His chosen
leaders to face the people’s wrath alone.
He instructed Moses to gather the people around him and speak to the
cliff. And water would flow from it. Easy, peasy. Lemon squeezy. But Moses did not follow God’s
directions. Instead, he shouted down the
rebels, and he angrily struck the rock.
And water flowed from it, and the people were saved.
So down through history, people more
thoughtful than I have asked the question:
What was the big deal? So
Moses struck the rock instead of talking to it.
But God brought forth the water anyway.
So this is the sin that made Moses and Aaron unfit to lead the
people into the Promised Land? Isn’t
this being just a bit judgmental of our leaders, given all they have gone
through? And further: Moses has always responded with a
bit of an angry edge to the challenges.
Why is it that in this incident, his rather emotional response is
suddenly unacceptable?
Good questions. But really the answer is not that difficult
to intuit. Moses and Aaron were simply
not the right leadership for the specific times.
Our teachers point out that this
incident occurs during the thirty-eighth year of the wandering. The previous incidents of rebellion occurred
during the first two year. So, over
thirty years have passed: years that the
text skips over. In literature and film
generally, a huge gap in the story is used by the writer as a device to show
that, despite the elapse of so much time, things haven’t changed much. In this case, what has not changed is Moses’
leadership style.
But the nature of the challenges he faces, has! In the last ‘episode,’ the challenge against
Moses was not a legitimate challenge.
When Korach and his 250 followers stood up to Moses, they had no
complaint about his leadership. They
just wanted to be in charge. Please go
to my blog and read my drash from last week, or last year or the year before
for that matter, for more on why the rebellion of Korach was not a legitimate
challenge.
This one, however, is definitely a legitimate challenge. Water is life. If a leader’s actions – or lack thereof – are
liable to cause the people to perish, then that is as legitimate a challenge as
there is. But Moses does not react as a
leader reacts to a legitimate challenge.
He reacts as an exasperated, beaten man.
And here, the end is near; most of the generation of Egypt has passed
away. A new generation has been born and
grown up. They have raised a legitimate
question. These are not slaves. They are free men and women. They have overcome numerous challenges to get
to where they are at this point. But
Moses is leading them as one leads a rabble.
As the warden leads a prison full of convicted felons. As a child-minder leads a roomful of clueless
pre-schoolers.
God has already told Moses how to get the water from the rock. And had Moses done as instructed, the people
would have understood immediately that God was there, watching over them to
respond to all their legitimate needs.
But Moses instead lashed out in anger.
He struck the rock, and in so doing he sent a very different
message to the assembled people. His
message was: How dare you question
me??! See how powerful I am??! But that was not the appropriate message for
the circumstances. Our Tradition reveres
the figure of Moses. He was a great man,
perhaps the greatest, the Prophet of Prophets.
But his actions in this case, at the place that came to be called, Mei
Meribah or ‘The Waters of Contention,’ were not appropriate for a leader of
a free people. Another leader was chosen
for the latter task. And that leader was
Joshua Bin Nun.
There is an expression, Horses for Courses. It is an illustration from the sport of
horse-racing that comes to teach us important lessons. There are a number of different kinds of
racehorses, and each is most suited to a particular kind of race, on a
particular kind of course. We use the
expression Horses for Courses as a metaphor for the need to choose the
right tool for the job. To choose the
worker who is skilled to accomplish the specific work. To choose the leader best suited to the times
and circumstances.
Moses was chosen by God to lead the People Israel out of slavery in
Egypt. God didn’t choose him for
nothing. Moses was definitely the Man of
the Hour. His leadership can be credited
with no less than saving the People Israel and enabling them to take their
place in history. But for the generation
born and forged in the desert, it was clear that Moses was no longer the man of
the hour. He was, in a sense, a
relic. With him at the helm, the
congregation of the People Israel would not have been able to march forward
into the next phase of their unfolding adventure. They would have been stuck in the past.
Leadership is an art. When the
leader is not the right one for the times, the best he can do is stand
down. That’s not an easy thing to
do. Moses would never have stood down,
and therefore he had to die before Joshua could take the reins and lead the people
into the Promised Land. There was
nothing democratic about the political structure of
Israel-in-the-Wilderness. But when there
is a democratic structure, then it is up to the led, to choose
the appropriate leader. Likewise,
after the Second World War the British people promptly voted Churchill and the
Conservatives out of power. The great
wartime leader was not the right man for the challenges in the aftermath of
war. While ending his career as the
leader of the opposition might seem an ignoble end, nobody questions the right
of the voters to place Churchill there.
This week’s Torah portion
provides much food for thought. For any
leader who wonders if he is the right leader, the Horse for the Course. For any led people, wondering whom they
should choose to lead them to their destiny.
Shabbat shalom.
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