Parshas Chukas (5768)
This weekend in the synagogue we read Parshas
Chukas - which contains, among other things,
the "Song at the Well" that the Jewish people sang at
the end of their forty-year sojourn in the desert before
entering the Land of Israel [see Numbers 21:17-20].
This was a song in which the Jewish people
expressed gratitude to G-d for having given them the
miraculous well and its constant water supply which
kept them alive in the arid Wilderness.
The Midrash comments that unlike the Song at the
Sea which the Jewish people sang at the beginning of
the 40-year journey in the desert - and which Moses
led them in song - in this song at the well Moses
name is nowhere to be found.
To understand why this is, we first need to understand
the Torah's concept of shirah (song). In the normal
course of events, we often fail to perceive G-d's hand
at work, and we wonder how most of the daily,
seemingly unrelated phenomena surrounding us
could be part of a Divine plan. We see suffering and
evil, and we wonder now they can be the handiwork of
a Merciful G-d.
Rarely, however, there is a flash of insight that makes
people realize how all the pieces of the puzzle fall into
place. It's that "aha!" moment when things come full
circle (in fact, the Hebrew word for song, shirah, also
means necklace or circle), when everything clicks, and
when we can finally understand how every note,
instrument and participant in G-d's symphony of
Creation plays a role. The result is song, for the
Torah's concept of song is the condition in which all
the apparently unrelated and
contradictory "happenings" do indeed meld into a
coherent, merciful, comprehensible whole.
But it takes a certain spiritual maturity and
sophistication to be able to see G-d's hand working
through nature and behind the scenes in the course of
human events. This explains why at the Splitting of the
Sea, when the fledgling Jewish nation was just
starting out and was as yet spiritually immature, they
needed Moses to hold them by the hand, so to speak,
and to lead in them singing the shirah.
But after forty years of the Jewish people experiencing
all kinds of tests and challenges and open and
hidden Miracles with Moses as their guide and
teacher, he had enough confidence in them to sit back
in his armchair and tell the people standing there at
the well, "I took all of you up until this point, but I don't
have to lead you anymore. Now you can go sing your
own shirah!"
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