By Morriah Kaplan
I imagine many of your are reading this from machaneh (if you have time to read it at all). If I got the timing right, you're probably nearing the end of Construction and counting down, on the fingers of one hand, the days until Chanichim arrive.
We all know Construction can drag on, especially near the end. During my summers spent working at machaneh (which was most of them up until this one), I always had the sense that machaneh could only be so much fun without Chanichim. While it was fun to wear shoes with no backs, drink cup after cup of coffee all day long, and go on the Rope Swing without having to wait in line behind every single Amel, at a certain point I started to feel lost. This feeling would persist until the Chanichim showed up to give me back my raison d'être.
This is where we find the Jews this week - still wandering in the desert but on the precipice of entering into the Promised Land. They've made it to the Wilderness of Zin, and there's a feeling of restlessness, of excitement, of something big happening soon, but they still have to wait. For all my Miriamnikkim, I would compare this part of the Jews' journey to the last two kilometers of the Juan de Fuca trail - walking up a gentle but persistent incline on a curvy gravel road. Each bend in the road holds the promise of seeing Frank's big yellow school bus, the sign that we've made it, that we're done with tiyul. But not. quite. yet.
The Jews are thirsty, and - not unlike tired Chanichim ready to be done with tiyul - they're complaining to Moses. Moses consults with God, who instructs Moses to talk to a rock and command it to give water. The Israelites are being more petulant than ever, so Moses loses his cool, and hits the rock instead. Enter major drama. They get water, but Moses isn't allowed to enter the Promised Land.
Intuitively, we all get why this is bad and why Moses was punished. Hitting things is not a way to get what you want. While we can read pretty far into this parsha as a lesson in patience, however, a lot of the commentary actually highlights the issue of trust. Moses wasn't punished because he impatient, but rather because he was distrustful; by hitting the rock, he failed to place his trust in God to protect and provide for them.
The concept of trust has deep political and historical importance for us, particularly with regards to collectivism. For those of us who have tried living in collective structures, we know the importance of trust. For collective movements we support, such as organized labor, trust is integral to getting stuff done.
Let's talk about the labor movement for a minute. When workers join a union, they need to trust the union leadership to represent the worker's best interests in negotiating contracts with the management. When a union strikes, each member has to not only trust the union leadership that striking is the right thing to do, but also trust each individual member to do their part and participate in the strike. The emerging non-unionized labor movement - like Fight for $15 - requires even more trust, because workers don't have union structures to fall back on should the strike not work out.
Trust is so important in the labor movement, in fact, it has it's own name: Solidarity. To get things done, workers have to stand in solidarity with one another, trusting that they've chosen the right course of action and trusting that