What Matters Most

I'll be turning 68 in just a few weeks. We've just had a week-long family reunion with my wife's non-Jewish extended family and all of my four children (my 93-year-old mother-in-law has now decreed — as is her prerogative — that we will have a family reunion EVERY summer). As such, I've been asked numerous times how my rabbinic program is going, particularly since I was unable to attend the reunion last summer, as I was struggling with serious challenges with one of my adult children. Also, the reason I withdrew from PRS for six months and moved from the 2023 cohort to the 2024 cohort. Studying the end of life and generational challenges of B'Midbar — which we complete this Shabbat with Matot/Masei — has left me reflecting on what positive lessons and meaning I can draw at a later stage of my own life from the journey of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness — in the b'midbar. I think Rabbi Mel Gottlieb in his book Torah Travels summarizes B'midbar well, albeit perhaps with a little more spiritual upside than I am interpreting at this moment: "Our mystical masters discerned that this was not a physical journey at all. Rather, it was the outline of a spiritual journey from a place of restriction and brokenness toward a progression of greater wholeness, to a discovery of soul and connection to God." For me, it has enabled me to think once again about life's meaning — and my life's meaning — and in giving me renewed clarity about "what matters most," it has brought me closer to my own understanding of the Divine.

B'midbar turns on two events that we perceive of as great tragedies: the sin of the scouts in Sh'lach Lecha and Moses striking, instead of speaking to, the rock in Chukkat. God immediately pronounces the same punishment for each of these sins: neither the generation who were freed from Egypt nor Moses and Aaron will be allowed to enter the land of Canaan. There is much commentary on whether or not either of these punishments is fair but to me the main thrust of B'midbar is NOT about whether God is a just God but rather about how humans — both one of the greatest that ever lived AND the mere ordinary masses — cope with the realities of human life. For Moses — what appears to be the shocking revelation of his mortality and for the People — that their ultimate hopes and dreams will only be realized by their children and their children's children.

There are several similarities between the two episodes from which I think we can derive significant life lessons.

The first commonality is that in the case of each great sin, God actually plays a significant role in creating the circumstances leading to the outcomes. In the Sh'lach Lecha scout episode, God with great specificity commands Moses to pick a chieftain from each of the "ancestral tribes" to scout the land (N13:1–3). The fact that Moses, in D'varim 1:22–23, blames the people for requesting the scouting mission, for me only highlights the pshat of God's role. And then in the Meribah incident, God instructs Moses and Aaron to "take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water" (N20:6–8). God asks Moses to take the very mateh that he used in Exodus to strike the rock, a curious detail since God is only asking Moses to order the rock to give water. That God's commands in both cases play a role in the outcome naturally contributes to our sense that the severe punishments are "unfair." But to me, this is exactly one of the lessons I think B'midbar is teaching us: life WILL frequently seem — and in fact may be — unfair. As humans, overcoming perceived unfairness is a trait we all need to survive in the world and we call it "grit."

The second similarity is even more fundamental. In each case, God explains the extremity of His reaction as coming from a lack of trust in Him by both the Exodus generation and Moses and Aaron. In targeting His punishment — following Moses' plea to spare the people in its entirety — on those "who have seen my Presence and the signs I've performed in Egypt and the Wilderness" and yet who still lack the belief that God will fulfill his promise to deliver the land to the people. Then at Meribah, God says "lo he-emantem bi l'hakdishayni" — "because you did not trust me enough to affirm My sanctity...you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them." Rashi expresses God's thinking on Moses' lost opportunity to sanctify God in front of the people: "For had you spoken to the rock and it had brought forth water, I would have been sanctified before the whole congregation for they would have said: What is the case with this rock which cannot speak and needs no maintenance? It fulfills the bidding of the Omnipresent God. How much more should WE do so." Relationships involve BOTH dependency and trust. Neither the sin of the people nor the sin of Moses and Aaron were violations of the mitzvot; rather they reflected a foundational flaw in the covenantal relationship between the people and God and the uniquely intimate relationship that God and Moses share.

But in one striking way, the two episodes are utterly different. While the questioning and lack of trust of the people is completely consistent with how they've behaved since the exodus from Egypt, Moses' actions in striking the rock — twice in fact — are shockingly out of character. A first-time reader of the Torah might well stop at this point and literally say "he did WHAT??" In a way, God too must have been shocked. Moses — whom God describes to Miriam and Aaron at the end of B'haalotcha as being "trusted throughout My household…[the only one with whom] I speak mouth to mouth, plainly, and not in riddles" — suddenly CANNOT be trusted. That even "the most humble man on earth" could become so frustrated with the incessant and repeated complaining of the people that he could just LOSE it, immediately meant to God that Moses was no longer able to lead the new generation with whom God would recreate His covenant. So God immediately issues His decree and like Aaron upon the deaths of Nadav and Abihu, Moses is silent. He too is shocked by his own behavior and understands in an instant its implications. Moses in this moment of weakness becomes human…becomes mortal…and then actually is able to initiate the succession process that so obviously needs to occur sooner or later. And in becoming human at Meribah, the impact of all of Moshe Rabbenu's teaching becomes that much greater and relatable.

I've actually been struggling with these two pivotal moments in B'midbar because it seems that the Torah and our tradition only see them as inevitable outcomes — tragic endpoints of dysfunctional relationships in which the two parties never quite seem to be able to find an overlap in their Venn diagrams of hopes and dreams. In Sh'lach Lecha, God gives such a harsh decree that it makes me as an empathetic parent and grandparent shudder: "…your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for YOUR faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness" (N14:32–33). To imagine being part of that generation — whose inability to grow and learn from experience leads to so much suffering on the part of their children and grandchildren, who are also just waiting for their parents and grandparents to die off so that AT LONG LAST, their lives can go on — IS truly a nightmare. But after Chukkat, and in D'varim, God and Moses DO find a way to rebuild their relationship — Moses being God's greatest prophet throughout D'varim and God allowing Moses to see all of the land "with your own eyes" before he dies on the summit of Pisgah (D34:1–6).

The contrast between the outcomes of these two relationships is a powerful reminder to me that, as I age, the legacy I am working on building is that of a person who keeps learning, growing and teaching and taking the risk to continue to explore things I'm truly passionate about.

In the end, the source I find myself drawing on for my perspective on B'midbar is not Rashi, or the Rambam, or even Rabbi Sacks. It is the Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis who writes in his book What Matters Most as follows:

"The challenge to each of us is to accept the danger of our personal journey [and] with or without certainty to find our good work in this world, and do it faithfully…to risk being who we really are, is [in the end] what matters most."

In returning to PRS over these past seven months, I've found that as I take the risk of being who I really am, I'm increasingly able to find my "good work in this world." And hopefully in so doing, this will create a legacy of love and meaning for my children, grandchildren and all of those others I connect with intimately along the way.