Making sense of the sedra: Chukat

There are moments in history when the world seems to lose its moral bearings. We live in such a moment now.

We have seen violence celebrated, truth distorted and hatred dressed in the language of justice. We have witnessed a troubling inability to distinguish between aggressor and victim, evil and good. The noise is relentless. The certainties we once took for granted appear less certain than before.

It is precisely at such moments that we turn to Chukat. The parashah begins with one of the Torah’s great mysteries: the law of the Red Heifer. Even King Solomon, the wisest of men, said of it: “I thought I could become wise, but it remained beyond me.”

Judaism does not ask us to understand everything. It asks us to recognise that not everything can be understood. Faith is not the certainty that we possess all the answers. It is the courage to continue the journey even when answers elude us.

That is the lesson Moses and Aaron struggled with at the waters of Merivah. Faced with a frightened and angry people, they momentarily lost patience. Leadership, the Torah teaches us, is not about control. It is about resilience: the ability to remain calm when others cannot.

Then, unexpectedly, comes Balak. A pagan prophet, Bilaam, stood on a mountain intending to curse the Jewish people. Yet every curse becomes a blessing. How often in Jewish history has this happened? Those who sought our destruction have inadvertently strengthened our identity. Those who tried to silence us have reminded us why our voice matters.

Bilaam looked down at the camp of Israel and uttered words we still say every morning: “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.” Others saw weakness. Bilaam saw something different: a people who carried hope through history. That remains our task today. To refuse despair. To answer hatred not with fear, but with faith. To build homes, schools, communities and futures. To become, in an age of anger, a source of blessing.

The Jewish story has never been the story of power alone. It is the story of a people who, even in difficult times, never stopped believing that light is stronger than darkness and that blessings can emerge from places we least expect.

Rabbi Benjy Morgan is at Olami UK