We rarely know what someone was holding for us until it’s gone.
That is not a metaphor. The Talmud teaches (Ta’anit 9a) that a well of living water, Be’er Miriam (Miriam’s Well), traveled with Israel through the wilderness because Miriam could find water. Not through magic, but through a capacity she possessed, an instinct for locating what sustains life even in the harshest terrain.
And then she died. And no one else knew where to look.
What follows is painful to read. The people howl at Moses. God tells him to speak to the rock. Instead, Moses, exhausted and grieving, strikes it. Twice. Water pours out. And Moses is told he will never enter the Promised Land. Not because he struck a rock, but because he couldn’t demonstrate what Miriam had demonstrated for decades: that the desert holds life within it, waiting to be invited out.
The question I keep returning to is not why Moses failed. It’s why no one had learned what Miriam knew. Who had been watching? Whose hands had been placed alongside hers?
Later in the passage, when the Israelites follow the foreign god Baal Peor, whose very name means “to lay bare, to be exposed,” I wonder whether this is what happens to a people who have lost their inner compass. Not weakness. Exposure. The kind of vulnerability that comes from having nothing to hold on to.
This Shabbat, I want to hold three questions with you. Who have we been teaching? What are we actually passing on, not the titles but the capacities? And can we trust, even in the middle of the wilderness, that what comes next can be good?
I hope to see you.
עוֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו הוּא יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל וְעַל כָּל יוֺשְׁבֵי תֵבֶל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן
We continue to pray for peace in the Middle East, a region that has endured war for too long; and we pray for the safety of our troops. May they stay safe and return home soon.