Speak to the Rock!
Jews who seem to be as “hard as a rock” should not be helped by using the “striking” method. In the past, the hardness of Jews who grew up in an environment saturated with Jewish knowledge and warmth, derived from their rebellious spirits. Nowadays, the hardness is a result of generations of benign neglect. The remedy is not anger and “striking” but to address them with words that come from the heart. This has proven to be the only effective way to reveal the inner pure waters that every Jew possesses.
Hitting the Rock in Anger
One of the most enigmatic passages in the Torah concerns Moses’ actions that led to G-d denying him entry into the promised land.
The Jewish people were accustomed to drink water that miraculously emerged from a rock. When the righteous Miriam passed away, the rock disappeared and the Jews no longer had a supply of water. The Jews complained to Moses, who, in turn, conveyed their demands to G-d.
G-d’s response to Moses was to speak to a rock and it would provide them with water. Moses, in the presence of all the Jews, struck the rock twice, whereupon the water started to flow.
At this point G-d harshly rebukes Moses, for his failure to “sanctify Me in the presence of the Jewish people.”
Rashi’s interpretation is that Moses failed to heed G-d’s instructions to speak to the rock, Instead Moses struck it. Maimonides’ interpretation is that Moses before striking the rock got angry at the Jews. His anger was unwarranted and led to his censure by G-d.
It is hard for us to imagine that G-d would so harshly punish Moses for striking the rock rather than speaking to it. Similarly, it is difficult to comprehend why was his anger at the complaining community so objectionable to G-d?
Striking the Resistant Rock
One way of explaining this is to understand what was meant by G-d when he told Moses to speak to the rock. In an earlier episode G-d expressly told Moses to strike the rock from which water emerged. Why did G-d change His way of providing for water?
The rock is also a metaphor for their insensitive hearts. A rock is a lifeless, heavy and immobile object, hence the expression “a heart of stone.” Water, on the other hand, is refreshing and invigorating and the source of all forms of life. Water is thus a symbol for Torah, that is likewise, life sustaining.
When the Jews first experienced a problem with their water supply, it was a manifestation of a deeper spiritual problem: a lack of spiritual life. Moses was thus told by G-d that even a rock can produce water. No matter how hardened a Jew may be, one can always find the water within.
Unfortunately, to extract the water there might be a need to “strike the rock,” to chip away at the tough exterior. This, however, took place before the Jews received the Torah at Sinai and before they sojourned through the desert for forty years.
Moses’ striking the rock at that point was illustrative of their lowly state that could not be altered without “breaking” the hardness. In modern parlance, this approach is referred to as “tough love.” To break a person’s resistance to help, there are times when we have to it the rock.”
Forty years later, when a similar “water shortage” arose, Moses had thought that it was again an indication that there was something amiss in their spiritual status. Their “rock” hardened hearts were not allowing the vibrant and refreshing waters of their soul to emerge. Here too, Moses thought there was a need to strike the rock to produce the desired result. Moses, thus, got angry at the Jews.
His anger was not - G-d forbid - an outburst of a person who had no control over his emotions, but it was a calculated technique to break their recalcitrance to get the water out. Moses judged the Jews harshly and regarded them to have not progressed since the first episode when they complained about the water and was told by G-d to strike the rock. It was because Moses expectation of them was so great that he was so disappointed when he realized they did not live up to it. His only recourse, he thought, was to admonish them and thereby break their hardened “shell.”
Hence, Rashi’s interpretation that his “sin” was the striking of the rock instead of talking to it, goes hand in hand with Maimonides’ explanation that his “sin” was that he got angry. Striking the rock was the outer manifestation of anger, which strikes at the person and is intended to break their hardness.
Miscalculated
Moses, however, had miscalculated. The Jews were now on a lower level. These were not the first generation who witnessed the exodus and the experience at Sinai. These were their children. Their hardness, derived not from a rebellious spirit and resistance to holiness, but from a lack of awareness. They did not need to be broken to extract their pure waters; they had to be spoken to - a much softer approach.
When Moses regarded them as being spiritually on par with their parents, he exhibited his connection to the earlier generation. G-d thus removed him from leadership, not as a punishment in the simple sense of the word, but as an indication that he did not belong to the new generation. Joshua his disciple would bring them into Israel.
Are we Rocks?
The lesson for our times is that Jews who seem to be as “hard as a rock” should not be helped by using the “striking” method. In the past, the hardness of Jews who grew up in an environment saturated with Jewish knowledge and warmth, derived from their rebellious spirits. Nowadays, the hardness is a result of generations of benign neglect.
The remedy is not anger and “striking” but to address them with words that come from the heart. This has proven to be the only effective way to reveal the inner pure waters that every Jew possesses.
Particularly now, as we stand poised to enter into the Messianic Age, there is a compelling need for Jews to talk to one another to produce “water,” not through anger and striking at their “rock hardened resistance.” This approach of Ahavas Yisroel is the most potent force to break all the rocks and remove all the impediments to the holiness embedded within all of us.
Indeed, this is the function of Moshiach, to reach in to every Jew and elicit his/her inner goodness, thereby transforming the entire world into a world that “will be covered with the knowledge of G-d as the Ocean-bed is covered with water.”
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Chukas by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
