Striking the Rock: Today’s Challenge?

“Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will give its water…” (Numbers 20:8)
“And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice…” (20:11)

This moment—Moshe Rabbenu striking the rock instead of speaking to it—has bewildered commentators for millennia. Why was this act, seemingly minor, the cause of such a grave consequence: Moses and Aaron barred from entering the Promised Land? The mystics unveil a depth here far beyond disobedience. It is a moment of metaphysical rupture—a misalignment between worlds, and an echo of the cosmic war between light and distortion.

At the heart of this incident lies a mystical distinction: the spoken word versus the act of force. To speak to the rock would have been to reveal its inner consciousness, to evoke water not by coercion but by resonance. To strike the rock, in contrast, was to compel it—to draw its waters through an act of domination. This distinction is not just about the method, but about the spiritual age it represents. To speak is to elevate. To strike is to overpower.

The Rock and the Shadow of the Erev Rav

The rock, say the sages, represents the collective soul of the people—lowly, obstinate, but bearing hidden water, hidden holiness. And at the moment Moses struck the rock, he was not just reacting to a stone. He was lashing out at the people themselves, or more precisely, at the Erev Rav among them—the mixed multitude he himself had insisted on bringing out of Egypt, against God’s advice.

The Midrash and the Zohar hint that God warned Moses not to take them. But Moses, in his boundless compassion, believed they could be elevated. They could be purified. He brought them anyway. And for forty years, they sowed confusion, complaint, idolatry, and rebellion. Moses bore their weight. Until, at the rock, he broke. Instead of drawing forth water through gentle speech, he let anger guide his hand. He struck.

This, say the mystics, is the deeper meaning of the sin: Moses allowed the frustration with evil to override the spiritual method of redemption. He fell into the very pattern he had sought to correct—using force rather than transformative word.

And here is the warning for us.

Our Present Moment

We, too, are standing before the rock. The horror of October 7 burned itself into our flesh and memory. It was a day of knives and fire, of children murdered, of families executed, of evil unmasked in its most savage form. There is no excuse for it. There is no justification. And since then, the world has erupted in a frenzy of antisemitic hatred. We are not imagining it. It is real.

We are at war. And “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.” Many battles will be fought and won with bombs and with guns. And they must be. We are not pacifists, and we do not turn the other cheek to Amalek.

But let us be very clear: this is not the end of the war.

The deeper victory will not come through airstrikes alone. It will come by lifting up the serpent on the pole—by exposing evil for the parasitic lie that it is. That is the meaning of the copper serpent in the wilderness: not to destroy the snakes, but to look at one—to see it—and through that act of exposure, to neutralize its power.

And here is the danger: just like Moses, we will be so furious, so heartsick, so inflamed by righteous rage, that we may miss the gate of redemption. We may strike when we are meant to speak. We may lash out at the rock—at the world, at our enemies, even at ourselves—when what is called for is a higher response. We may, in our justified outrage, become unwilling to deploy non-military means to rescue ourselves: truth, speech, law, vision, holiness. And that reluctance could lead to devastating consequences, just as it did for Moses.

The Unentered Land

Moses does not enter the land—not as punishment, but as consequence. The people he struck could not follow him into a future of spiritual speech and subtle light. His mission was complete, and his method—force in the face of distortion—was no longer suited to the world to come.

So too with us. We will win battles, and we must. But if we wish to win the war, we must recover our voice. Not just to tell our story, but to reveal the lie. To lift the serpent high enough that the world sees it and turns away in revulsion. That is how evil ends: not with silence, and not only with swords, but with the bright, terrible, healing light of truth.

Conclusion: The Final Redemption and the Rock

In the final redemption, water will again flow from stone—not by force, but by the collective voice of a people who have learned to speak again. Who have remembered the power of speech rooted in soul.

The Erev Rav will fall, not by war alone, but by exposure. Their sustenance will dry up when the world sees that evil has no substance, and that speech rooted in truth is stronger than any blow.

Then, at last, the rock will yield its waters
not because it is struck,
but because it is called—
and it will answer.