In the first of this week’s double portions, Chukat, the Jewish people complain twice and Moshe’s response is not only unusual, but deeply perplexing. First, the people complain about the lack of water; God instructs Moshe to speak to the rock to draw out its waters. Instead of speaking, Moshe strikes the rock with his rod. As a consequence, God tells Moshe that he will never enter the land of Israel with the Jewish people. Later in the parsha, the Jewish people complain again for water and bread (they are tired of the manna); this results in God bringing a plague of snakes. Moshe turns to God again, and God commands Moshe to use a nachash nechoshet, a copper statue of a snake, to stop the plague.

Moshe turns to God and prays for help, but God doesn’t answer Moshe’s prayers directly. Instead of bringing water and stopping the plague of snakes, God instructs Moshe to take an action himself to bring forward his prayers. In both instances, Moshe uses a gimmick, a trick, an intermediary– albeit in one, he was commanded to do so (the copper snake), and in the other he was not (striking the rock). If God had answered Moshe’s requests outright and just brought water from the rock, Moshe would not have sinned by striking the rock with his rod. If God had answered Moshe’s prayer and stopped the snakes, he would not have had to make this strange, almost idol-like, unprecedented image of a snake. What’s with all the tricks?

Each of these episodes occurs immediately after the death of one of Moshe’s siblings. Moshe hits the rock after Miriam’s death, which took place at the end of last week’s parsha. The plague of snakes and the nachash nechoshet, copper snake, occurs after Aaron’s death in this parsha.

The commentaries tell us that the Jewish people receive a miracle in the merit of each of these sibling leaders. In the merit of Miriam, they receive a well of water which moves with them. Thus, following her death, they lack water, which causes them to complain to Moshe and leads to the incident in which Moshe hits the rock. In the merit of Aaron, the Jewish people were protected from the elements in the desert by a cloud of glory. Thus, after Aaron’s death, there is a plague of snakes.

This explains why there is a lack of water and why the Jewish people are exposed to the snakes of the desert, but why is moshe’s prayer in both instances ineffective, resulting in both instances in an action in place of words?

Moshe, I think, does not know how to fix what has been lost by the death of his sibling co-leaders. In both cases action replaces words because, in his grief, he has reverted back to his old self, to the Moshe who can not speak, who is “not a man of words”. The real cause for water and for protection, his siblings, are gone and he is bereft. So he must lean on a gimmick, the rod and the copper snake; he needs help and relies on a trick.

Mature adults function and succeed in the world through their words and thoughtful, planful action, in contrast with children who act out due to their lack foresight, self control, and the ability to regulate their emotions. In our parsha, with two thirds of our leadership suddenly gone, Moshe is lost, and he cannot bear the burden of leadership on his own. As wonderful a leader as Moshe has been, God therefore tells Moshe that soon a new leader will take his place, and he will not be the one to lead the Jewish people into the land. We see that a lack of leadership results in regression for Moshe, and helplessness for the nation.

We live in an era in which there is war, strike, natural disaster, and disunity in the United States, in Israel, and across the globe. Perhaps we, as a world right now, like the Jewish people and Moshe in our parsha, suffer from a vacuum of proper, mature, visionary leadership. Without which we act like children, bereft and without proper vision and hope for the future.