Parashat Chukat 5768

In her essay “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Annie Dillard writes “The island where I live is peopled with cranks like myself. In a cedar-shake shack on a cliff—but we all live like this—is a man in his thirties who lives alone with a stone he is trying to teach to talk….Reports differ on precisely what he expects or wants the stone to say.”

In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Chukat, God commands Moses to assemble the people Israel and before their eyes to hold up his staff and “speak to a stone.” From this stone, God promises, water will flow out to quench the thirst of the complaining Israelites. Moses disobeys, he smashes the stone twice with his staff, water comes forth, and God tells Moses he will not enter the Promised Land because of it.

I wonder what God intended Moses to say to the stone?

Dillard adds, “I do not think he expects the stone to speak as we do, and describe for us its long life and many, or few, sensations. I think instead that he is trying to teach it to say a single word, such as ‘cup,’ or ‘uncle.’”

A man in his thirties is trying to teach a stone to talk. An impossible task.

All Moses had to do was speak to a stone. I guess he too could have simply said “cup” or “uncle” and water would have gushed out as promised. But he couldn’t utter a word.

What happened to Moses? Was he so overcome with frustration and rage that he lost the ability to speak? Was it that the people around him wouldn’t stop moaning, or that his sister Miriam had just died, or that he was stuck in the desert, or that he had just survived two violent attempts at mutiny? Did he simply snap? Did his anger and grief boil over beyond the point of speech? Was he was left only with hostility?

In the end, God could not teach Moses to talk any more than the man could teach the stone.

Dillard writes, “Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.” The man is trying to teach the stone to talk because the silence of nature—the silence of the divine—can be deafening. The man is trying to teach the stone to talk because he longs for, lusts after, thirsts for communication.

Maybe God tried to teach Moses to talk because he knew the Israelites also longed for communication. The Israelites needed someone to speak a word that they could hear. A word that would break through their fear and pain and soothe their souls. In the end, Moses had no word to give, not to the stone and not to the people.

At times, each one of us is silent when we should speak, or desperate to hear from one who will not. On this Shabbat, let us remember that it is not the word that matters, but the act of speech of itself. Dillard writes, “The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.” Let us open up our souls to speak. Let us allow ourselves to listen.