RABBI WEIN ON CHUKAT 5775

Over all of the millennia since the incident described in this week’s parsha regarding Moshe striking the rock instead of speaking to it, the great commentators to Torah have struggled to make this incident more understandable and meaningful to us ordinary mortals. At first glance, the punishment does not seem to fit the crime. Because of this, many of the commentators have seen the incident of hitting the rock instead of speaking to it not as an isolated incident, but rather as the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.