When difficulties strike, we seek ways to alleviate them and to mitigate the associated mental anguish. We might listen to music, use a “lucky” charm, or perform a ritual we believe will prevent things deteriorating further. Yet, these otherwise innocent practices can develop into more than just a balm for the pain of challenging times and what was once a crutch becomes an impediment.

In Chukkat we discover a peculiar episode, occurring during our desert sojourns but leaving an enduring impact. After the people complain that life was better in Egypt, a poisonous snake epidemic ensues and many die of snakebite. The people admit their error and Moses prays to God. God, curiously, tells Moses to fashion a copper snake, placing it high atop a pillar.

Anyone bitten should look upwards and thereby live. As the Talmud states, the copper snake itself had no healing properties, but prompted people to look heavenwards, focus on God and, in so doing, be healed. It was the agent triggering healing. Post-plague, with the people healed, the snake travelled with them. Not surprisingly, it became an icon for good fortune, but gradually the people turned to it rather than God to find salvation. The support had now become a hindrance.

The story of the copper snake takes one paragraph, which doesn’t end there but continues documenting our desert travels. The first word after the incident is vayisu, “and they travelled”. The paragraph closes only once our movements from place to place are recorded, suggesting that objects or ideas may serve as supports at certain stages, but if we latch on to them to protect us from life’s persistent challenges, we risk paralysing ourselves. We enter a world of superstition rather than one of meaning and reason.

Elements which assist in hard times should help us into life rather than away from it — when they become a stumbling block against living a life of growth and vitality, it’s time to let them go.

Rabbi Joseph Dweck