Chukas – Fixing Mistakes

Parshas Chukas is a parsha filled to the brim. Between the parah adumah, Moshe hitting the rock, and both Aharon and Miriam dying, it’s easy to overlook the rest of the parsha.

However, I would like to discuss a different episode in the parsha.

The Jewish people are on the bordering cities to the Land, which they have been travelling for 40 years to get to. Moshe requests from the nation of Edom that they grant them passage through their land to allow the Jews into Eretz Yisrael. But the king of Edom decides that he doesn’t want the Jews walking through his land.

The people circle back and needs to travel around the land of Edom and it is on this journey that, as the pasuk says, vatiktzor nefesh ha’am baderech, the nations spirit got shortened. And we can understand why. They are so close to Eretz Yisrael after wandering and wandering, and then Eisav’s descendants need to mess everything up and now they are circling back the way they just came, only to keep on traveling. Sounds pretty disheartening.

They complain about Hashem and Moshe, asking why have you brought us out of Egypt to this place where there is no bread or water? And the bread that we do have makes us weary. Hashem them sends the snakes, and many people were bitten and died from the fatal poison. The people realize their mistake, tell Moshe that they have sinned and ask him to daven for them. Hashem tells Moshe that he needs to make a snake on a stick and anyone who is bitten can look at the snake and will be healed.

To truly understand this piece of the Torah we have to realize who these people were. This is the 39^th year since they left Egypt, and to be precise, there are only 3 people left who actually witnessed the exodus, Moshe, Yehoshua, and Calev. Everyone else has died in the desert and the Jewish nation is now comprised of the next generation. They didn’t walk through the Yam Suf, they didn’t stand at Sinai in flesh and blood, and they weren’t the ones who complained all the other times.

Rashi tells us that their concern with the Mun was that it got totally absorbed in their bodies, and they didn’t need to excrete at all, and they said that soon it will all catch up with them and the Mun will make them explode, since, “is there any such a thing as someone born from a woman that doesn’t need to excrete? The experience of ingesting the Shechinah (which is what Rashi explains the Mun was) scared them and made them exhausted. They viewed themselves as only human beings that were never reborn through the Yam Suf or through Hashem reviving them at Har Sinai. Our parents were special and they knew how to ingest the Mun, but us? We can’t handle this.

I think Hashem’s response to them teaches us something about serving Hashem as a human. We always hear stories of tzadikim who were more comparable to angels than humans, and as inspiring as they are, we still need to face the reality that we are merely humans. And how then do we serve Hashem correctly?

Every other time that Moshe davened for the people, they were healed and the plague stopped, but here they need to do work as well. The plague was still going on and there still were snakes in the area, and when someone got bitten they needed to hobble over to this copper snake on a staff, and take a really good look at it. It wasn’t enough to just glance, they needed to stare at it, and see Hashem Himself as the source of the bite.

When serving Hashem as human beings, it is ok to make a mistake, but we need to be able to recognize that we have made a mistake and pray to Hashem to save us. But that isn’t the end game. We need to be able to look that mistake in the eye, and gaze at it really well and see it’s Source. When we can see that Hashem is the source of everything then we can be healed.

And this was the message that this generation of Jews needed to internalize. No, they weren’t their parents, they hadn’t stood at Har Sinai or crossed the Yam Suf. They hadn’t seen Hashem as clearly as their parents had. But they were the generation going into eretz Yisrael, which was a place where the Mun didn’t fall. They would need to work the fields and see Hashem through the grain and through the ground. They needed to sharpen their vision to see Hashem in all His glory in the air, water, and mundane crops and cattle which they needed to survive. This episode helped give them this vision.

I find it interesting that, unlike other plagues in the Torah, it doesn’t say that the snakes ever went away. I think we all live with snakes and the copper snake that Moshe made is still standing. All we need to do when we get bitten by the poisonous snake in our life is to find that staff with the copper snake and take a really good look. As the Gemara in Rosh Hashana says, it isn’t the snake that healed, it is when we have our eyes raised toward Hashem that He heals us.

We too are humans serving Hashem and making mistakes, and we need to learn how to look at the copper snake and see Hashem there as well. Then we can be healed.