Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

Wells of longing: Beha’alotcha

As a teenager, I would sometimes attend shul in an old part of town in a little ‘shtiebl.’ Sometimes the Rabbi’s mother, an older woman, would be there. She was a character. One day she looked me over and gave my mother what she thought was the highest compliment: “she will marry a Rabbi”. I am not sure what she saw in me that made her utter those words. But in her world, and indeed in mine at that time, marrying a Rabbi was probably the highest religious aspiration a woman could have. Fifteen-year-old me would have been shocked that Adina in her late forties wrote an exam this week thus completing her third year of rabbinical school. “Dear Mrs Corn, I didn’t marry a Rabbi… But I am becoming one!”

In this week’s Parsha, we learn about religious aspirations in a way that echoes with modern times. Moshe is the leader of the Jewish people and God’s direct mouthpiece to the people. Suddenly we find his sister Miriam, gossiping to her brother Aharon. They say, “Does God only speak with Moshe, God also speaks with us…” In their discussion, it becomes clear that the siblings are jealous of Moshe’s spiritual access. Instead of reassuring Miriam and Aharon, God acts harshly, summoning the three siblings and saying to them, “How dare you speak against my servant Moshe, for to him I speak mouth to mouth while with you I speak in dreams and vision”. In other words, God confirms Miriam’s fears, the relationship between Moshe and God is unique. God then departs and Miriam is left with a spiritual skin ailment called tzar’a’at or leprosy. Aharon is very distressed to see his sister take the hit for their gossip and he asks Moshe to pray on her behalf. God’s response is that Miriam needs to remain outside the camp for seven days, and then she can return and her leprosy will be cured.

I have always been struck by this story. Miriam, like so many women through history, had spiritual aspirations. She sees her brother communicating with God with ease and she desires such a thing for herself.  Are not all women who knock at the doors of our shuls, churches and mosques modern day Miriams, asking for a seat at the table? Her longings seemed so just and so noble! My only solace in this story is to imagine Miriam’s time in the desert. The desert, with its vast expanse, profound emptiness and silence is surely the space where Miriam would have to strip down any attempts at comparison and move within. Away from the religious institution, she could also discover that no one ‘gives you’ your spiritual connection. You cultivate it yourself. I like to believe that perhaps God sending Miriam out the camp became a form of medicine to Miriam: Stop looking around you and comparing yourself, find your own spiritual walk, your own spiritual talk.

Miriam is credited with gifting the Israelites with a water well that accompanied us through the desert, providing us with water. The Esh Kodesh[1] wrote a beautiful interpretation of Miriam and her well. He writes: that (Miriam) reached such a high spiritual level is not attributable to divine elicitation but rather to her own self-generated effort…the source of her service is within her, it flows from her. That is why the well – source flowing with living water, holy water, existed by virtue of her merit.

Rabbi Shapira sensitively notes that God had not necessarily come seeking Miriam, but rather she had sought God, her calling to spiritual leadership came from deep within her and thus linked her symbolically to a well, a body of water, whose source is self-generated, as it were, from terra-strata sources.

Not everyone has opportunities thrust on them, and we can’t always wait for God (or the CEO) to tap us on the shoulder. Sometimes we need to be like Miriam and generate our internal wells of longing, hope and even ambition. These can be in any sphere of life. At 15, I was tapped to be a Rebbetzin but at 47, if I keep following my path, I may just be a Rabbi.

Shabbat Shalom

[1] The Esh Kodesh was written by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, a Hassidic Rebbe who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto and taught Torah there. He was transported to Trawniki concentration camp in 1943 where he was eventually shot. His writings were found by a construction worker in the Warsaw Ghetto after the war, hidden in a milk bottle.