During some of the hotter, sunnier days of the first lock down, Gary, my husband, decided to buy an enormous paddling pool. He and I could happily sit in it with the kids should the mood grab us (it rarely did!) It meant the world to the kids to have this oasis pop up in the garden. They would dig out all their inflatable swimming toys, and insist they needed the snorkling gear we bought on holiday in Eilat. Inevitably it would all get left in or around the pool for me to clear up later, and emptying the enormous amount of water needed to fill the pool was not something we had done enough thinking about before our purchase! It rather quickly became something of a curse! When we finally did manage to bail out, pour out, and dry out the pool, we were hit by a stinking lawn underneath it! The pool had been a fabulous, sustaining blessing, allowing the children to feel almost as if they were on holiday cooling off by the pool rather than stuck at home with two working parents trying to desperately also teach two different curricula. It rather rapidly became a curse. But did the cursed part of dismantling the pool outweigh the benefits? It seems not as it went up (with similar effects) twice more that summer, and this week we put it up once again to survive the heat wave. This time, however, it went on the patio rather than the grass, and when the rain hit and it was time to empty the pool, Gary figured out how to create a siphon with the pump we use to clean our fish tank, and to direct all the water straight to the drain. I was pretty proud of him and his ingenuity, and relieved I wouldn’t be standing in the garden bailing the paddling pool out after all my evening meetings this week.
It’s possible that a paddling pool isn’t what has sustained you over the last 18 months, it’s also possible you are wondering what on earth this all has to do with the Torah or Jewish teaching, but worry not, we will get there! We have all found different coping mechanisms, from couch to 5K to eating as much chocolate as you could add to your online delivery. This week, in Torah, we discover what sustained the Israelites through so much of their wandering in the desert, as well as the fact that quite often they were blind to these blessings, and saw only the challenges and the curses.
The thing that sustained the Israelites in the desert isn’t quite explicit in the portion this week, but is derived from a midrashic reading of the text. In numbers 20:1-2 we read that
“The entire congregation of the children of Israel arrived at the desert of Zin in the first month, and the people settled in Kadesh. Miriam died there and was buried there. The congregation had no water; so they assembled against Moses and Aaron.”
This passage comes in the chapter before what Harry so beautifully leyned this morning, and is yet another example of the moaning the Israelites kept throwing at Moses and Aaron and God. Sometimes a good moan can be cathartic, and we don’t always want our moans to be solved, we want to be heard. But the ancient Rabbis, reading the Torah, didn’t believe there were any coincidences or mistakes in Torah. The fact that this bout of Hebrew complaints comes immediately after Miriam’s death was an important factor in understanding what had sustained the Israelites thirst this far. Midrash – a Jewish story telling tradition, realises that this means there must have been a magical well of water, that had accompanied the Israelites on their journeying through the desert. As it dried up on Miriam’s death, it must have been Miriam’s well! The water from Miriam’s well had sustained them almost to the promised land, but not quite the whole way.
Instead of appreciating the incredible blessing of the well travelling with them for as long as it was, the Israelites only see the negative of it being gone. Moses loses his temper, and God is similarly unimpressed, again!
Miriam’s well isn’t just mentioned in the Midrash but in the Mishnah (Pirkei Avot 5) where we are told it was one of 10 miraculous things created by God just before Shabbat started . Another of them appears in next week’s portion – the mouth of the talking donkey (come back next week for the talking donkey story!), another is tongs, answering the question if you need tongs to make tongs, how were the first tongs made! So Miriam’s well was understood as a miraculous part of creation, thrown into being in the last seconds before God stepped back to admire the work of creation, and take a much needed break for Shabbat, as we still do today.
Just as the well sustained the Israelites through the desert for a certain period, Shabbat has been a part of sustaining Jewish life and also personal balance for thousands of years. When I began at EHRS in April 2020, I hadn’t been online or on my phone on Shabbat for 17 years. This was a spiritual discipline that added deep meaning and practical respite to my week. But during lockdown, there was no other way to connect as a community, to be together to support one another on Shabbat, and to provide the much needed sustenance of prayer. What sustained me before the pandemic would not sustain me through it, so things changed. I took huge comfort from the words of philosopher Martin Buber that when two people meet, God is the electricity that flows between them. God helped sustain us in the electricity literally flowing between us.
I hope to reclaim my spiritual disciplines at some point, but between the well and Shabbat, and with the complaining of the Israelites, this morning perhaps let us take a moment to consider what it is that has sustained each of us over these last, hard 18 months. We have lost loved ones, many of us have been ill, isolated, lonely. We have battled with home school. And while the timeline might be slipping slightly, we are slowly but surely, and safely, coming out the other side. There is, for sure, much to grumble about, and sometimes having a good moan can be cathartic. But let’s also give thanks for that which has sustained us. Or in the words of the blessing we say each time we do something for the first time:
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, shechecheyanu, vekiyimanu, vehigiyanu, lazman hazeh.
Blessed is the Eternal, Sovereign of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and has brought us to this time.
The paddling pool was somewhat of our Miriam’s well last summer. The blessing of having it also means dealing with the curse of putting it away, but it was sustaining and uplifting for the while that it was up. I want to thank the community of EHRS for being another part of what sustained me over the last 18 months. I want to thank Harry for modelling what it means to come through for others, and to also experience your own pain and loss, but continue to hold it as you live life as well as you can. Today let’s all try and give a small thank you for something that has sustained us, as Miriam’s well sustained the Israelites, and may we all be sources of sustenance to someone else.
Cain Yehi Ratzon venomar Amen.
