Sometimes life seems to crawl along slowly. We cannot wait to get on with things and move to the next step. Other times, life seems to speed by us. We wonder where the years went. 

This week's Torah portion (Chukat) has a hidden message about how time changes us and how, if we are not paying attention, life can rush right past us and leave us unprepared for new challenges.

The first section of the portion relates the inexplicable laws of the Red Heifer (you can read more about it here), and passes quickly to the story of the Israelites in the wilderness of Tzin, again grumbling about not having enough water. The transition from one section to the other goes like this: "The entire Israelite community came to the wilderness of Tzin in the first month…" (Numbers 20:1).

However, the seemingly simple transition from the laws of the Red Heifer to the story of the water shortage hides a secret. The time it takes to get to the "first month" is not a matter of days or weeks. It is actually thirty-eight years that pass by without comment.

How do we know that the story of the Israelites' grumbling about water happened thirty-eight years after the laws of the Red Heifer? You can discover this only by peaking ahead in the book of Numbers.

The book of Numbers began by telling us that it had been two years since the Israelites left Egypt. All of the stories previous to the Red Heifer in Numbers took placed during that year. However, in the book's final portion (Mas'ei), we read a list of all the places where the Israelites camped during their forty years of wandering. There we see (in Numbers 33:36-37) that the wilderness of Tzin was the penultimate stop on their journey before coming to the edge of the frontier with the land of Israel, forty years after leaving Egypt. In the blink of an eye, thirty-eight years passed.

This passage of time helps to explain what happened in Tzin. For the second time during the Israelites' journey, Moses responded to the people's complaints about not having enough water. In the first instance (Exodus 17:1-7), forty years earlier, Moses had followed God's instructions to strike the rock to cause water to flow to slake the Israelites' thirst. In the second instance, God told Moses to "speak to the rock" to make the water flow. The text tells us, however, that Moses ignored God's instructions. He called the Israelites "rebels" and, instead of speaking to the rock, "he raised his hand and struck the rock twice" to produce the water.

What happened? Did Moses remember the long-ago success of hitting the rock and fall back on a familiar path to produce the desired result? After forty years of leading the Israelites through the wilderness, had Moses come to believe that he didn't need God's instructions anymore and he could just rely on his previous experiences? Was Moses, in his old age, just confused about what to do and followed an old and familiar pattern?

We can't be sure why Moses lost patience with the Israelites and decided to strike the rock instead of following God's instructions to speak to it. It does seem, though, that God was not pleased with Moses' choice. God tells Moses that, because of what he did at Tzin, "You shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them" (Numbers 19:12). 

Thirty-eight years is either a very short time, or it is a very long time. It is short enough for Moses to believe that what worked before will work again nearly four decades later. It is short enough that it passes in the amount of time it takes to pause between two verses.

But thirty-eight years is also long enough for Moses to forget that God – not himself and his experience – is the source of his wisdom and authority. Thirty-eight years is long enough to grow weary and unkind to the people he had devoted his life to serving. Thirty-eight years may have been long enough to convince Moses that he knew it all, when, in truth, he had forgotten it all.

We may not notice the changes that can happen in us as we grow older, but those changes can take us along wrong paths and undo us. That's not an indictment against Moses or against us. It's just part of what happens in our short, temporary lives. We cannot stay forever energetic, optimistic and hopeful. Eventually – seemingly in the blink of an eye – we can grow dependent on our old tricks, cynical about the changes in the world around us, and pessimistic about the future. Maybe that's part of what happened to Moses.

Life is short. Moses took note of this when he wrote in Psalm 90, "At daybreak, [people] are like grass that renews itself… but by dusk, it withers up and dies." And, the psalm says that the days of our lives "pass by speedily and we are in darkness." Life can pass us by.

But the psalms also reminds us that, despite our tendency to lose track of time, we can find hopeful and meaning even as we age. Moses wrote, "Yes, teach us to count our days, that we may obtain a heart of wisdom" (Psalms 90:12).

We never lose the opportunity to gain in wisdom, if we have a heart to do so. If we keep our attention on that which is eternal, and not focussed on our own imperfect and brief experience, we can continue to grow wise as we grow old. The passing of days may be fleeting, but it can also teach us to continue to say "yes" to life.

Here is a snippet of a memory from my childhood. 

Our family was getting ready for a vacation and it had taken the better part of the morning to get the last-minute packing done. Expectations of an early departure were frustrated and my parents were looking at each other with anger and blame. While they struggled with and against each other to get our family out of our New York City apartment, into the car, and out onto the road, the emotional temperature was rising.

I remember sitting in the back seat of our 1963 Mercury Comet sedan, illegally parked on the corner of East 82nd and Madison, with all the luggage finally stowed in the trunk. My father was in the driver's seat, my sister sitting next to me, and we were waiting for my mother to emerge from the apartment building so we could begin the long drive. It was hot, early summer. The traffic was noisy. My father — usually a calm and quiet man — was starting to fume with impatience. After ten minutes of waiting, finally…

Snap.

My father slammed his hand on the horn at the center of the steering wheel. It blasted. Unexpectedly, though, it didn't stop when he lifted his hand. In his anger, he had broken the horn and it just kept going in one, long, loud drone. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

At first, my sister and I were terrified. We had never seen our father so angry, and we imagined that the blaring horn would only make him angrier. Only, that didn't happen. We were surprised — and relieved — when our father started to laugh. Somehow, he had enough presence in that moment to recognize the ridiculousness of the situation. 

I still remember that day sometimes when I face stressful situations. I remember how just surrendering to the absurdity of my mounting frustration can help me release tension and escape the vicious circle of anger that feeds on itself. I remember also, though, the terror I felt that day when I saw my father lose control.

There is a moment in this week's Torah portion (Chukat) that feels similar to me. Moses had spent months listening to the Israelites' unending griping. They complained about how much they missed Egypt, the land where they had been slaves. They whined about how Moses told them what to do all the time, even though they knew that God spoke directly to him. They even muttered against the miraculous manna that fell from the sky and kept them alive. On top of all of the stress generated by all the complaining, Moses also was grieving for the loss of his sister Miriam who had just died. 

You can sense in the story that Moses was about to lose his cool. When the Israelites came to him complaining, once again, about the lack of water, something in Moses just went…snap.

God had told Moses to talk to a certain rock and command it to give water. The water, God said, would slake the Israelites' thirst. But Moses didn't do that. Instead of speaking to the rock, he let his anger show and he spoke derisively to the Israelites. He said, "Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10). Moses then slammed the rock twice with his rod. The water flowed and did not stop until every Israelite and every animal belonging to them was satisfied. The people were relieved and the muttering campaign against Moses was stifled for the moment, but something else was broken. 

After the incident at the rock, God spoke to Moses and told him, "Because you did not have faith in Me to sanctity Me in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them" (Numbers 20:12). God did not like the way that Moses lost his temper in front of the Israelites and the consequences for Moses were severe. God told Moses that he would not enter the land of Israel, even after leading the Israelites there for forty years. 

It seems odd to me that God said that Moses did not show faith. In what way could that be true? Is losing self-control in anger a form of "losing faith"?

The science of psychology teaches us that human beings have far more control over their emotional impulses than any other creature. Our brains' huge frontal lobes allow us to see beyond the present moment and to plan for the future. That includes the ability to find better solutions for frustrating situations than aggressive, angry behavior. 

Using our ability for impulse control is, in many ways, what Jewish law is all about. We practice impulse control over our appetites through the laws of kashrut. We discipline our impulse toward greed through acts of tzedakah. We moderate our impulse to anger by practicing patience, compassion toward others, and self-compassion. If we show our faith in God by adhering to dietary laws and the laws that command generosity to those in need, certainly, we also keep the faith by exercising restraint in our anger. 

Proverbs teaches, "It is better to be slow to anger than to be mighty, and one who has self-control is better than one who conquers a city" (16:32). The real might is self-discipline. The real conquest is the conquest over oneself.

And here is another reason for practicing self-restraint. Moments of uncontrolled anger can be powerfully destructive. We do not need the example of Moses who lost his chance to enter the Land of Israel. Our prisons are filled with people who did something terrible in a fit of rage. When we begin to see red, we shut off our frontal lobes and lose the ability to see beyond the present moment. The hurt and harm we can do in such a moment can last forever with terrifying consequences.

We can find greater joy and fulfillment in life by developing the techniques of channeling our anger. Doing so does not require that we become all-forgiving saints or emotionless Vulcans. It just requires practicing some proven techniques — deep breaths when the temperature starts to rise, clear statements about what we are feeling and what we want, walking away from a difficult situation before we blow our top, and even, as my father taught me, the ability to laugh at oneself.

We sanctify God and we sanctify our own lives when we learn to be the masters of our own minds. The happiness we find in controlling our own impulses is more satisfying and more lasting than any momentary satisfaction we might feel when we snap in explosive anger.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Vayetze: Righteous Anger
Ki Tisa: Moses, Anger and Parenting

The first thing to notice is the timing of the story. Moses' sister, Miriam, had just died (Numbers 20:1). Also, the story took place after God decreed that the Israelites would have to wander through the wilderness for forty years, and soon after the rebellion against Moses by Korach's followers. Moses cannot be in a good mood. 

Yet, the people complained to Moses even at this low-point in his life. They told him:

If only we had died when our fellows died before Adonai! Why did you bring the community of Adonai to this wilderness for us and our animals to die here? Why did you take us up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? This is no place of grain, figs, vines or pomegranates! There is no water to drink! (Numbers 20:3-5)

It sounds very much like the complaints Moses had heard before from the Israelites (Exodus 16:3; 17:3; Numbers 11:4-6; 14:2-4). By now, Moses was probably used to listening to them say that they longed for the days when they were slaves in Egypt. This time, though, the people went further. They said they wished they had died along with the followers of Korach. They identified with the people who were swallowed up by the earth as punishment for rebellion. 

Moses' life work had been to rescue these people from slavery in Egypt and to bring them back to the God of their ancestors. Despite the miracles they had witnessed and despite the horrible punishments they had seen for those who went against God, the people still rebelled and still wished to go back. Who could blame Moses for being angry with them?

God instructed Moses to take his staff and gather the people. He was told to speak to "the rock," which would then give its water to satisfy the people's thirst. 

We imagine that this rock must be the same one from which Moses drew water in the past, the one mentioned in Exodus, chapter 17. At that time, God had instructed Moses, "Take…your staff with which you struck the Nile…and strike the rock and water will come out of it and the people shall drink" (Exodus 17:5-6). It should be no great surprise, then, that on this second occasion, Moses again struck the rock with his staff to produce the water.

Moses gathered the people, as God had asked:

Moses then took the staff from before Adonai, as God had commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the community to the face of the rock and said to them, "Listen, please, you rebels! Shall we bring out water for you from this rock?" Moses raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice and abundant water came out and the community and their animals drank. (Numbers 20:9-11). 

Sounds great, right? Sounds like Moses, once again, had saved the day. Not so fast. Immediately after the people drank, Moses got the bad news. God told him, "You did not have faith in Me to sanctify Me in the sight of the Israelites. Therefore, you shall not bring this community to the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:13). Ouch. For what? That's heavy punishment for hitting a rock.

There is disagreement among traditional commentators about the reason for Moses' punishment. Rashi says that Moses sinned by striking the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had asked. Rambam (Maimonides) says that Moses sinned by becoming angry with the Israelites, calling them "rebels." Ramban (Nachmanides) thinks Moses sinned by asking, "Shall we bring water for you from this rock?" Moses, says the Ramban, failed to acknowledge that it was God, not he and Aaron, who produced the miracle.

Just to make the story even more baffling, it ends with a mysterious verse: "These were the waters of Merivah (strife), for the Israelites quarreled with Adonai, and God was sanctified by them." (Numbers 20:13) What does that mean? How is God sanctified by these bitter waters?

No matter what interpretation one brings to the story, one thing is clear—the story shifts the focus of leadership away from Moses and toward God. Following this story, in the second half of the book of Numbers, Moses never again appears to be a great leader. He becomes just a spokesperson for God—never again performing a miracle or rendering a judgment. 

Human leadership eventually fails. Every leader eventually comes to a time when he or she has served his or her purpose and must fade into the background. The Israelites needed Moses to get them out of Egypt, to give them the Torah, and to create order out of the rabble in the wilderness. Now that all this has been accomplished, Moses is just an old man, bitter from the disappointments life has dealt him, who lacks the energy take the people into the Promised Land. He has relied for too long on the same old bag of tricks and they just don't work the way they used to work. His time has come and gone.

Maybe Moses did not sin at all. Maybe, his punishment is not a punishment. It is, rather, just the way of all human beings. We grow older. We become set in our ways. We become unwilling to or incapable of adapting to new situations. We grow so accustomed to doing things in the ways that have worked in the past that we fail to notice new challenges or fail to rise to meet them. There is a sadness and a tragedy to that, but it also has a bright side.

Each generation has the ability to create its own models for leadership. The way things have been done in the past does not have to be the way they are done forever. Human mortality is also the key to human resilience and adaptability. Yesterday's leaders give way to tomorrow's leaders and, with each generation, we can look at the world with new eyes and to innovate new approaches.

The passing of leadership from one generation to the next might be seen as a tragedy for an individual, but it is not a tragedy for society as a whole. We are sanctified in moments of transition just as God and Israel were sanctified by the waters of Merivah. 


Other Posts on This Topic:
Chukat: The Reason for the Red Cow
Ki Tisa: Moses, Anger and Parenting
Steve Jobs and Yom Kippur

Last week, I wrote about the question, "Why Pray?"  With this week's Torah portion, there is an even deeper question to answer: Why observe any of the commandments? It is a question that goes right to the heart of our ability to understand the world around us.

Parashat Chukat begins with one of the strangest of all the commandments in the Torah. Moses instructs the Israelites to slaughter and burn a cow that is entirely red and to save the ashes for a ritual to purify people who have come in contact with a dead body. If that's not odd enough, the passage also contains this paradox: the person who gathers the ashes of the Red Cow is rendered ritually unclean by the same ashes that are used to purify others (Number 19:9-10).

The paradox has been apparent since ancient times. In the midrash, wise King Solomon is said to have exclaimed, "I succeeded in understanding the whole Torah, but, as soon as I reach this chapter about the Red Cow, I searched, probed and questioned. 'I said I will get wisdom, but it was far from me.'" (Yalkut Shimoni 759; Ecclesiastes 7:23).

Ever since, there has been an argument in Judaism about how inexplicable laws in the Torah should be viewed. Some say that God's laws are beyond question and must be observed without question or explanation. According to this point of view, the mitzvot are their own justification—we fulfill them because God has asked us to do so. The more inscrutable a law is, the better it is to teach us this lesson.

This is the logic of the Vilna Gaon (Rabbeinu Eliyahu of Vilna), who taught that any attempt to explain a law would lead to the violation of the law. He says that once people begin coming up with reasons for observing a law, they begin looking for cases in which the reason does not apply and excuse themselves from observing the law in those cases. 

For example, if I believe that the reason for the prohibition on playing musical instruments on Shabbat is to prevent me from repairing an instrument that breaks on Shabbat, I might think that it is okay to play the instrument as long as I don't repair it. The rational explanation, argues the Vilna Gaon, actually leads to the law's violation. He says that it's better not to explain the laws and just to observe them without question.

If that seems like shaky reasoning to you, you are not alone. The Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides) ridicules the Vilna Gaon's objection (five hundred years before the Vilna Gaon was born!). According to the Rambam, those who believe that it is impermissible to consider rational explanations for the commandments suffer from "a certain disease of the soul." He explains:

Those people imagine that if the laws appear to make any sense at all or to serve any purpose, others will assume that the laws must have come from human reason and not from God. It is only if the laws have no reason and serve no purpose that people will attribute them to God, since no human being could come up with something so inexplicable. According to this weak-minded theory, human beings are more perfect than our Creator! For we do things that have a purpose, while God's actions are different; God commands us to do what is of no use to us, and forbids us to do what is harmless. Far be it from so! On the contrary, the sole object of the Torah is to benefit us. (A Guide for the Perplexed, Section 3, Chapter 31)

So, then, how would the Rambam explain the law of the Red Cow whose ashes render the impure pure and the pure impure? The Rambam says that the laws of ritual purity serve to create awe and reverence for God and the Temple in the hearts of the Jewish people. He seems to suggest that the ashes behave the way they do simply because there needs to be a way to purify the ritually impure and it needs to be something miraculous. Red Cow ashes are as good at fulfilling those requirements as anything else might be.

Still not satisfied? Here's my take on inscrutable laws: the explanation is that there is no explanation. 

In the time of giving of the Torah, laws like that of the Red Cow made sense to people based on their traditions, customs and understanding of the world. There is no reason to assume that the Torah's first audience was more mystified by the ritual of the Red Cow than we are mystified by the pageantry of halftime at the Superbowl. On reflection, the ancient Israelites surely saw the strangeness of the law,  but they accepted it as "the way we've always done it." Even if they did ask, "What is the point of this?" the answer could only have been the same one we give about the Superbowl: "That's just the way it is."

The common cultural understandings for these laws disappeared millennia ago (long before the time of the rabbis of the Talmud and midrash), and we are left only with the mystery. But that's a good thing. Mystery is much more interesting than a cultural oddity. Our reflection on the Red Cow reminds us that there is so much about the world that we do not and cannot understand. We find that we don't really understand the past. We certainly don't understand the future. And, perhaps, we will learn at last that we don't really understand the present, either. 

The purpose of the Red Cow is to remind us that we submit ourselves to a universe and a God that is beyond our ken. We don't observe commandments just because we understand them, we observe them also because we wish to celebrate a world that we don't understand.