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Throughout the Torah, the miraculous and the positive are always followed by disappointment or disaster. Nothing is ever constant. Like the universe and human nature.

They both have their structures and laws, but at the same time, are always changeable and often unpredictable. A high is often followed by a low. This, in fact, has always been the story of the Jewish people throughout their existence.  Just when we think things are OK, something goes wrong, and we are disappointed.

The obvious case was Avraham, promised by God that he would come to a land flowing with milk and honey, and finding out immediately that there was a famine. All the Biblical characters go through good periods and bad ones. Just think of Yaakov and then Yosef.

With high hopes, the Israelites escaped from slavery but were then pursued. They miraculously escaped but then had to face the tough reality of the desert and no water. Their hopes of coming right away into the promised land were dashed and postponed for 40 years. Whenever one comes to a moment of greatness or ecstasy, it’s so often followed by an anticlimax and even a reversal.

In almost every case, no sooner does the Torah tell us of a climax and an anticlimax, a good event followed by a bad one, than it presents us with a series of seemingly mundane laws about Shabbat, festivals, tabernacle procedure and priestly rituals and roles. The message is that regardless of the ups and downs, crises and successes, we still have to get on with our lives.

This week, too, we have a similar situation. The authority of Moshe and Aaron is challenged by a motley crew of discontents, and they face a Coup D’état. From people close to them. Some with positive motives, others with selfish motives. The whole structure of the Israelites is challenged and brought into question. Then, miraculously, God intervenes, comes to their rescue, gets rid of the opposition, and punishes those guilty. And immediately after that, we have a series of laws about the priesthood that seem both out of place and anticlimactic, again.

A significant feature of the Torah is the constant switching of subjects from narrative to law, the constitution. We switch from what is going on around us beyond our control to the way we are supposed to live our lives, the rules we’re supposed to abide by, which help or distract from the challenges of actually living life and the problems we have to encounter.

Look at the situation that we’re in at the moment. Living through an unimaginable period of ecstasy and agony, pain and suffering. Life and death. We have staggered from depression to elation, from moments that seemed to herald success and then the disappointment of discovering that nothing’s ever so simple or as we expected. We had hoped for peace. We hoped deterrence would work. We were delighted that the reactors were bombed. But then deflated when we discovered that we were still under attack. The fickle world switches from delight at the possible removal of nuclear threats to finding fault and blame, usually directed at us. Nothing appears to have changed. We do not know yet how things will play out.

We fall back into a state of anxiety and uncertainty. These are things which most of us have no control over. The law of unintended consequences says that actions always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. And is this true at this moment?

Our challenge is how to live under these unpredictable conditions, which continue to plague us wherever we live.  All we can do is get on with our lives as best we can. Be positive and helpful to our neighbors. Assist those who need us and be sensitive to suffering wherever it is. If praying helps, we should pray. Otherwise, we need to continue our lives as best we can with a sense of purpose, identity and humanity.