Parashat Chukat-Balak, Numbers 19:1-25:9
Haftarah Micah 5:6-6:8

Dear TBE Community,

To navigate the divergence between the Israeli and Diaspora Torah reading calendars, this week we are hit by a mega double-parsha: Chukat-Balak.

I say hit for two reasons.

First, because both parashiot contain so many well-known episodes that choosing what to write about can feel overwhelming. And second, because between unblemished red cows and speaking donkeys, blessings and curses, the death of Aaron, the tents of Jacob, and the dried-up well of Miriam, who also dies, the theme I choose is Moses hitting the rock.

Or rather, some of my own recent musings prompted by that passage.

The longer I live, the less certain I feel about life’s mysteries. That is already a paradox: How can one feel certain about mysteries to begin with? What I mean is, the longer I live, the less certain I feel about how I relate to the hidden workings that propel our lives.

Is it working hard and always playing by the rules? Is it planning, making sure one is prepared for every eventuality? Is it going with the flow, remaining open, and seeing how things pan out, a happy-go-lucky state of mind, waiting for what good things will fall into one’s lap?

Different situations demand different reactions. I have worked honestly and hard. I have planned ahead. I have gone with the flow. Sometimes, whatever I did seemed to be the right thing at the right time. Sometimes, I did what seemed right, yet it did not lead to success. I calculated meticulously, but not for that one random eventuality. I went with the flow and was blindsided or taken advantage of.

I am sure most of us have had experiences like this. And most of the time, their results leave us guessing at best. Was whatever ended up happening really conditioned by our behavior, our preparedness, our lack of preparedness? Or did it have nothing to do with us at all?

The question of “what if” has inspired novels, movies, and endless conversations. What if we had taken a different path? What if we had lingered in one place a little longer? What if we had studied medicine instead of French literature? There are so many untold and unlived stories of our lives. And even when we feel, in a moment of agency, that we have caught a glimpse into the inner workings of our lives — in that very moment, the agency can slip away again, as I wrote in one of my first poems, Daylight Saving Time. It could all be slightly yet significantly different, like in a biblical doublette.

We want to be in control of lives that are slowly but steadily moving out of our hands and toward an end we cannot change.

I often experience the moments when I did nothing to shape the narrative of my life as the moments when I feel closest to the hidden workings of life; closest to the divine mystery. These are the moments that reassure me that I, like my fellow humans, am part of the clockwork of the universe, already inscribed into the larger narrative of all life. In those moments, what I am left with is joyful, stupefied wonder: A sensation of trust, even faith, that somehow everything does make sense.

Recently, I experienced such a moment while serving as faculty at URJ Camp Newman. I have always been good at geography; I always look at the map and know where I am going. But in the busy time leading up to my stay in Northern California, I had only connected Camp Newman with Santa Rosa. When I arrived, I realized that the town even closer to camp is Calistoga.

Fifteen years ago, an old friend from my Heidelberg University days and I went on a road trip from San Francisco to Mendocino along PCH. On our way back, we haphazardly drove down the Russian River Valley and ended up in a place called Calistoga. It was my first time in California, and I was enchanted by the wind-beaten evergreens along the coast, the flip-flops-and-sweater fashion, the glimpses of a river through pine branches, and that small wine-country town, quiet in the mid-June heat like the wine villages of my childhood.

I loved it, but I did not necessarily plan to return. Until I did.

Calistoga is only about seven miles from Camp Newman, and it became my go-to place for errands, for an excursion with a rabbi colleague, for an adult meal and a glass of wine on an evening out. This mundane routine was filled with magic for me. I had not planned a nostalgic “Calistoga Revisited” tour fifteen years later. But there I was, mysteriously returned to a place from my past. A past in which I, now in my fifties, was still in my thirties. I was tracing back my love for California, connecting with my friend over WhatsApp, sending him photos of a landscape that, back then, had been new and fascinating to both of us.

And all of it had simply happened upon me. I had not forced it. I had not arranged it. I had not interfered. And because of that, it felt complete, as if divinely orchestrated.

Often, when I think about moments like this, I think of Moses hitting the rock.

There are many interpretations of what exactly Moses did wrong in Bamidbar, Numbers 20. Was it the actual act of hitting instead of speaking, as God had commanded? Was it his display of doubt in God’s power before the entire people? Was it that he acted as if he himself would produce water from the rock? Was it the staff he used? Was it his unresolved relationship with Miriam, whose death immediately precedes the episode?

One common interpretation is that Moses failed to show faith in God, publicly, no less, when he lost his temper and hit the rock instead of calmly speaking to it and letting things unfold. He forced the result. And the result did come: Water flowed. The people drank. The crisis was solved.

But only in the short term. Moses hastened the outcome. He made himself, for a moment, almost divine-like. And the consequence is that he dies before entering the Promised Land.

When we try to hit the rock because we feel we need to hasten, control, or force something, it often does not work out. I have planned trips that were meant to become everything I wanted, only to have them fall flat. We are often not loved back when we want to be loved back. One of the reasons my marriage did not last is because I went ahead with it despite many red flags, because I so badly wanted to have a family and was not willing to accept anything else. Reality — or divinity — caught up with me.

It sounds trite, but good things need time to evolve. They begin like little green shoots poking through the ground, until one day they become mighty redwoods.

Of course, life-coach messages can be infuriating. Moses knew that. We all do. If we do not plan and push enough, we are told we are not ambitious enough, not “top dog,” as people say in this country, and somehow that is supposed to be shameful. But if we do not relax enough, we are told we are too rigid, not Zen enough, and obviously nothing good can ever come from that either.

It is so hard to find the balance. It is confusing to choose the perspective through which to make sense of one’s life: Are the tents blessed or cursed? Or neither? And then what?

This confusion is one of the reasons moments that simply fall into place are so beautiful and comforting. They are like those moments in movies when the protagonists drive through a wide-open landscape, smiling in silence, the wind blowing, the road ahead clear.

They are serene moments of something like true faith that allow us to behold the rock and know, at least for one suspended instant, that things will be all right. That we don’t need to strike anything. In such moments, when the circle feels complete, perhaps we glimpse what Moses, in his anger and exhaustion, could not see: The water is going to come.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch