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Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

HUKKAT

FROM GRIEF TO ANGER

“And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.” (Numbers 20:11)

Moses loses his sister and brother in this week’s Torah portion, Hukkat, and while we are told that at Aaron’s death all Israel mourned, it is astonishing to note that at Miriam’s death there is no public mourning. She dies, is buried on the spot, and then Israel complains that there is no water to drink. The rabbis associate Miriam’s death with a dearth of water, explaining that as long as Miriam was alive water was available through her merit. Now that she has died there is no water. Belatedly, they realize that they had taken for granted her quiet, unruffled support during her lifetime, but instead of remembering her as the blessing she was and taking time out for a proper grieving period, they turned their grief into anger. There was no water, they complained and turn on Moses.

Moses, too, did not grieve for his sister’s death—or, at least, no mention is made of his taken time to mourn her death. Instead, Scripture let’s us know that Miriam’s death and the subsequent lack of water became an immediate concern for Moses who assumed responsibility for his people. His own emotional needs were eclipsed by the demands of Israel.

Could it be that even God did not recognize Moses’ all too human need to step away from the daily responsibilities of leadership? Certainly God could have intervened, and asked Joshua, Moses’ assistant, to get the water that the people needed. But He didn’t. Moses was left alone to deal with the people’s frustration. There was no time or place for Moses to indulge in his sense of loss for a sister who saved his life, years ago in Egypt, and who sang and danced at the Reed Sea.

There seems to be a callousness in this story that demands explanation. Israel does not mourn at the death of Miriam and Moses is given no time to grieve for his sister. Grief turns to anger, anger that he, Moses, could not suppress. And so, when God told him to speak to the rock to bring forth water for the thirsty people, instead Moses became enraged. “Listen you rebels,” Moses uncharacteristically shouts, “shall we get water for you out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10) And then Moses strikes the rock twice, water gushing out for the people to drink.

Most of the commentaries point out that the word “we” refers to Moses and Aaron, as though to imply that they are the authors of the miracle, thereby diminishing God’s power in the eyes of the people. Other commentaries suggest that Moses’ loss of temper led not only to the diminution of God’s power, but also to the lessening of Moses’ and Aaron’s stature within the community. Yet, one wonders. It is not altogether clear that God punished Moses for his lack of control at the rock, or his hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. Both Moses and Aaron knew that their years of leadership were coming to an end.

There is something else in what I think was Moses’ grief that turned into anger. The demands of the people never end. And life moves forward implacably regardless of the death of a sibling. The needs of his flock, the movement toward the Promised Land, the requirement of Moses to deal in diplomacy and war as they approach the border of Canaan—and on top of it all, there is his sister, his beloved Miriam, the girl turned woman who cared for him, who suddenly dies. She is the last of a generation, known only to this generation in her old age. And the people do not mourn her, as they will Aaron who provided the daily sacrifices, the blood of redemption, the food for the sacred occasions. She provided what was invisible to them and took for granted: water from a well. And she gave them that gift of water, unobtrusively, without fanfare, a mother to Israel. And when she dies only then does this new generation realize what a treasure she had been.

Imagine what Moses felt and saw. Not only did he lose someone he loved, he saw Israel as unfeeling, interested only in quenching their thirst, not even aware that their leader was full of sorrow. Little wonder he exploded in anger. Little wonder he struck the rock, expressing his grief, by bringing forth the one thing that his sister could do so effortlessly—provide water.

Often we are careless with our spiritual leaders. As a community we are demanding and we overlook that they, too, the rabbis, the teachers, the guides have their hearts broken. But life and needs and demands and everyday challenges require attention and the personal heartache is suppressed when the people come for help. And personal grief and loss is swallowed up by the immediacy of the moment’s needs.

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

KORAH

KORAH, DATAN AND AVIRAM
A Puzzling, Confusing Narrative

The description of the Korah and Datan/Aviram rebellion (Numbers 16: 1-35) is a confusing narrative. Korah appears in our story together with Datan and Aviram and two-hundred fifty elders only to reappear in separate narratives.

For example, Korah’s rebellion against Aaron, and the “populist” assertion thrown against Moses that "all the community are holy and why should you raise yourselves up above the Lord’s congregation"(Numbers 16:3) is a ringing challenge against the priestly/religious authority of both Moses and Aaron.

On the other hand, Datan and Aviram bitterly attacked Moses for not having brought Israel to the Promised Land. Instead Moses took Israel out of Egypt which they described as a land of milk and honey only to have the people doomed to die in an arid and empty wilderness! Moses has led all Israel astray, they claim. He has duped his people, relegating to himself management and control over the destiny of the Israelites which he has mishandled. (Numbers 16: 12-14)

Thus we can detect two separate rebellions, one by Korah and his cohorts and one by Datan and Aviram, and the challenge is trying to understand why these separate stories are interwoven, one with the other, so much so that the thirty-five verses are, in fact, a hopelessly confusing narrative.

Attempts are made both by the Sages and by Medieval commentators to patch together the narratives, creating back stories for Datan and Aviram and for Korah. For example the Talmud in Nedarim 64b suggests that Datan and Aviram were the two men who struggled with one another when the young Moses, then prince in the Egyptian court, came upon them and tried to pry them apart. One of them calls out to Moses saying, "who made you chief and ruler over us?" (Exodus 2:14) Connecting that story with Datan and Aviram is a clever linkage, for in the present narrative they also accuse Moses of" lording" it over them. (Numbers 16: 13)

In the case of Korah’s defiance the Midrash fashions all sorts of legends and accounts in which Moses is seen as an abuser of power, a gouger, and a man who made Korah, during the Levitical purification period, appear foolish. (B'midbar Rabbah 18:4)

But then, as the stories are melded together, one wonders how the punishments by God are played out. Were the incense pans to be brought to the Tabernacle immediately or the next morning? Who are the chieftains who came with Korah? Were they elders of the tribes or themselves Levites? And what is it about the donkeys that Moses claims never to have taken? No one ever accused him of taking anything of value to begin with. And among many other issues regarding the text, where and how did Korah die? We are not sure whether Korah was swallowed in the famous earthquake together with Datan and Aviram, or whether he was consumed by fire together with the two-hundred fifty rebellious elders.

It’s impossible to tell.

Deconstructions and reconstructions of the various elements in the rebellions have been attempted by modern biblical scholars, and the various components of the stories through these reconstructions make it clear that the Sacred Author(s) wove together an intricate and sometimes puzzling narrative. (1)

The deconstruction of the narratives by these scholars has been interesting and clarifying, to be sure. But the question for me has always been not that there are several stories combined. My question is this. Why weave together these stories at all? The Sacred Author(s) must have known that the Korah story is, from a formal point of view, difficult if not incomprehensible. They were as canny a group of story tellers and law-givers as any in the ancient world. Did they have a reason to mingle and dissolve together two narratives? Is there a purpose to the confusion?

At its basic level, the Korah rebellion was religious in nature. The question of who is holy and holiness is not limited to the priesthood. Why do Moses and Aaron and his family arrogate unto themselves the cloak of sanctity, Korah asks? Everyone is holy, Korah proclaims. We should all have access to the sanctity ascribed to you.

Datan and Aviram, on the other hand, verbally attack Moses’ administration of the people’s political and social welfare. You took us out of Egypt, they proclaim. And like many a political antagonist, they subvert the truth and call for the overhaul of Moses’ leadership. When Moses further proclaims that he has never taken a donkey from the people, or wronged them in any way, what Moses is saying, and what is often a common charge against public officials, is that he has never been on the take, using public funds or taken materiel to enrich himself.

Two stories: one is a rebellion against Moses and Aaron within the framework of the religious arrangement of priesthood and tabernacle; the other is a rebellion based on political and social issues and upon the administration of the people’s welfare.

If that is so, then why not tell the stories separately? Korah and the Elders and Datan and Aviram have separate agendas, describe each rebellion as a discrete act of dissension.

It seems to be a deliberate attempt by the redactor to superimpose both the religious together with the social/political not to confuse but to reveal, if only subliminally, that these stories share something in common which when taken together are greater than if they were told separately.

Israel’s destiny was shaped by an historic event, the Exodus, and its inner life will be shaped by its laws, its values and its call to be an am segulah a special people and a holy nation. Both spheres, the external historic and the internal spiritual were to be valued in combination. It will never be enough for the Children of Israel to pay homage to and draw wisdom from its historic association with freedom from slavery and to create a nation state based solely upon the Exodus from Egypt and the promise that it would establish itself in a land flowing with milk and honey.

The commandments, the human values and the spiritual depth which brings a person or a nation to a level of sanctity, equity and social justice, and which was embedded in the lives of the priesthood and Levitical tribes, and which they were responsible both as servants of the people and teachers of the nation, could best be expressed in a land of their own where the political and social life of the people lies in combination with the holy and the sacred.

It was this combination of history and social institutions as sacred, and the sanctity of the sanctuary through which a priesthood (later to be translated after the destruction of the Second Temple to all the people) would imbue a nation with religious and humane values was—and still is— a unique model and an exemplar.

The rebellion of Korah and the elders was a blow against Moses and Aaron and against the sanctity of the nascent priestly institution. Datan and Aviram’s subversion of the history of the Israelite nation and the promises made to them concerning the future, when taken together, would be a lesson to all who read what seems to be a confusing account. The two stories—perhaps awkward—balance two vital elements in Jewish history: Exodus and Commandment, a holy and sacred life within the civic life of the Jewish People nurtured by the Torah and the sages who came after. One without the other is not enough.

And even during the long diaspora, Jews prayed for a return to the land, turned their hearts to Jerusalem when they prayed and longed for a time of return and rebuilding.

To the Sacred Author both stories were, in a way, indistinguishable from one another and when the final redaction was made the rebellion of Korah and the elders was slipped into the narrative of Datan and Aviram. While the Israelites were frightened by both the earthquake and the fire which consumed the elders, they would eventually realize the essential truth in both narratives. Israel’s history without the laws of sanctity would be like a body without a soul. And the laws and sacred statutes without a land would be like a painting without a frame.

(1) See, for example, the articles in TheTorah.com by the editors of TABS and the carefully analyzed pieces by Professors David Frankel and Israel Knohl. (https://www.thetorah.com/series/korah-datan-and-abiram-case-study

Korah, Datan and Abiram: A Case Study for the Methods of Academic Biblical Studies Project TABS Editors