Summer 2018

Last week I talked about step one to having a difficult conversation which was to recognize that one sided attacks are not just intellectual pursuits but rather one body attacking another body. 

The first step is to realize how that is not the way to have a conversation and be humble for another path. The Torah tells us in Numbers 12:3 that Moses was a very humble person, more so than any other person on earth. And who according to tradition wrote the Torah? God through the hand of Moses. 

So, it was Moses who wrote that he was the most humble man on earth. The rabbis on that verse try to figure out what humble means:

Rashi says he is patient.

Ibn Ezra said he never asked for recognition or reward.

Patience and selflessness are great qualities for a leader to have and are certainly character traits to strive for. We also know that sometimes in Moses’ life he wasn’t always humble in one regard—acknowledging that he didn’t always have the answer in difficult situations.

We see in this week’s parasha the famous story of hitting the rock twice to bring forth water for which the story often goes that God told Moses to speak to the rock but instead out of frustration Moses hits it twice, causing him to be punished for striking the rock.

Biblically, this is not the full story but rather a rereading from Midrash Tanhuma, brought by Rashi to explain the verse that became more popular than the Biblical narrative itself. In Exodus 17, the Jews first leave Egypt and are thirsting in the desert. They question why Moses took them out of Egypt only to die in the desert. 

God says: Pass before the people; take with you some of the elders of Israel, and take along the rod with which you struck the Nile, and set out. I will be standing there before you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will issue from it, and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

In our parasha, following the death of Miriam, the people are thirsty yet again.

“You and your brother Aaron take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water. Thus you shall produce water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts.” 

Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as He had commanded him. Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.

There is a striking difference between the two stories—the presence of God or lack thereof standing in front of the rock as it issued water. In the first story, Moses hits the rock as God commands—wordlessly as the presence of God looms. In the second story, Moses finds himself in a difficult conversation with the entirety of the Jewish people. 

He seeks God’s counsel, which is to speak to a rock, but when the heat is on—Moses seems to know best. He falls back on what he knew to be right from before in opposition to the new information God gave him. God’s credit is erased.

Instead of this being the very rock that God decreed would bring water, Moses eggs on the people with: Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock? And that line was his downfall. He forsakes his humility that he didn’t always have the answer in difficult situations. In the heat of the moment, he is not humble for another path.

Being humble as a tool for having difficult conversationsis clearly not something that is developed in the heat of the moment, rather it is cultivated in personal learning. Learning deeply about your own tradition is an essential tool to developing humility.

While that might seem counterintuitive, the more I learn about the intricate details in Jewish law, the more I realize how flexible the law really is—how there are volumes of books of law from many rabbis of varied cultural backgrounds which all lead down slightly different paths.

If I were then to find myself in a difficult situation regarding Jewish law with a person outside or inside the Jewish faith, I would know that traditionally law isn’t always as rigid as culturally we might think it is.

The more I learn about Judaism, the more I realize that I will never learn all there is to know—and that is humbling as well.

Sometimes in a difficult conversation, we don’t always have the answers, and if the other person attacks because we don’t have the answer, we need to be humble enough to realize that we are no longer having a difficult conversation, but rather an argument.

Step one—recognizing that a conversation is one body to another body.

Step two—developing a practice of learning to cultivate humility to see the flexibility within yourself as well as the paths of others.

Next week is the final installation of this series—the conversation itself!