Chukat and Ruyard Kipling

 

 

At the heart of this week’s reading, Moses beats a rock – a rock God instructed him to speak to. For this action, Moses doesn’t make it into the Promised Land. Moses, of course, has a temper. As a child, he beat an Egyptian, burying him before fleeing into the desert. He has called out his followers as failures and, this week labels them ‘Morim’ – rebels. It’s not that he is wrong – the Children of Israel are graceless, rebellious and revolting. But Moses feels under-appreciated and put-upon. In a Midrash (BMidbar Rabba 19:9) the Rabbis imagine that, at first, only drips of water emerge from the rock – miraculous certainly, but prompting from the masses the sneering allegation, “what are we, sucklings or babes just weaned from milk?” And that sneering response is the thing that ignites in Moses his second striking of the rock, the one that brings upon him Divine sentence.

 

These recent Parshiot paint the most remarkable portrait of a leader unravelling under pressure. Every year I’m struck with enormous empathy as Moses receives the sentence for losing his temper. It’s so easy to understand how a person would come to strike out – after doing so much. But it’s not just leaders who face these pressures, and it’s not just leaders who are called upon to resist anger in thought, word and deed despite the provocation. It’s all of us.

 

We are in a wonderful run of BM celebrations – six in two months! – and my mind flits back to a gift my father gave me as a child; a framed print of Ruyard Kipling’s poem, If.

 

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;

Then yours is the world and everything in it. And what is more, you’ll be a man my son.

 

We are called upon to find ways to respond to threat, challenge and the disregard of others with patience. We are called upon to demonstrate equanimity, especially when treating our fellows. Rambam called this the golden path – the Shvil HaZahav. It leads from childhood to adulthood and eventually to the Promised Land. Above all, be kind.

 

Shabbat Shalom