JUNE 29 • 2023 | 45
challenge without drama. He had been
there before.
The text gives us a clue, but in so
understated a way that we can easily miss
it. The chapter begins thus: “In the first
month, the whole Israelite community
arrived at the desert of Zin, and they
stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died
and was buried. Now there was no water
for the community …” (Num. 20:1–2).
Many commentators see the connec-
tion between this and what follows in
terms of the sudden loss of water after
the death of Miriam. Tradition tells of a
miraculous well that accompanied the
Israelites during Miriam’s lifetime in her
merit. When she died, the water ceased.
MOSES MOURNS MIRIAM
There is, though, another way of read-
ing the connection. Moses lost control
because his sister Miriam had just died.
He was in mourning for his eldest sibling.
It is hard to lose a parent, but, in some
ways, it is even harder to lose a brother or
sister. They are your generation. You feel
the Angel of Death come suddenly close.
You face your own mortality.
Miriam was more than a sister to
Moses. She was the one, while still a
child, to follow the course of the wicker
basket holding her baby brother as it
drifted down the Nile. She had the cour-
age and ingenuity to approach Pharaoh’s
daughter and suggest that she employ a
Hebrew nurse for the child, thus ensur-
ing that Moses would grow up knowing
his family, his people and his identity.
In a truly remarkable passage, the
Sages said that Miriam persuaded her
father, Amram, the leading scholar
of his generation, to annul his decree
that Hebrew husbands should divorce
their wives and have no more children
because there was a 50 percent chance
that any child born would be killed.
“Your decree,” said Miriam, “is worse
than Pharaoh’s. He only decreed against
the males, yours applies to females also.
He intends to rob children of life in this
world; you would deny them even life
in the World to Come.” Amram admit-
ted her superior logic. Husbands and
wives were reunited. Yocheved became
pregnant, and Moses was born. Note
that this Midrash, told by the Sages,
unambiguously implies that a 6-year-
old girl had more faith and wisdom
than the leading rabbi of the genera-
tion!
Moses surely knew what he owed his
elder sister. According to the Midrash,
without her he would not have been born.
According to the plain sense of the text,
he would not have grown up knowing
who his true parents were and to which
people he belonged. Though they had
been separated during his years of exile
in Midian, once he returned, Miriam had
accompanied him throughout his mis-
sion. She had led the women in song at
the Red Sea.
The one episode that seems to cast her
in a negative light — when she “began to
talk against Moses because of his Cushite
wife” (Num. 12:1), for which she was
punished with leprosy — was interpreted
more positively by the Sages. They said
she was critical of Moses for breaking off
marital relations with his wife Tzipporah.
He had done so because he needed to
be in a state of readiness for Divine
communication at any time. Miriam felt
Tzipporah’s plight and sense of abandon-
ment. Besides which, she and Aaron had
also received Divine communication, but
they had not been commanded to be celi-
bate. She may have been wrong, suggested
the Sages, but not maliciously so. She
spoke not out of jealousy of her brother
but out of sympathy for her sister-in-law.
So it was not simply the Israelites’
demand for water that led Moses to lose
control of his emotions, but rather his
own deep grief. The Israelites may have
lost their water, but Moses had lost his
sister, who had watched over him as a
child, guided his development, supported
him throughout the years, and helped
him carry the burden of leadership in her
role as leader of the women.
It is a moment that reminds us of
words from the book of Judges said by
Israel’s chief of staff, Barak, to its judge-
and-leader Deborah: “If you go with me,
I will go; but if you do not go with me, I
cannot go” (Judges 4:8). The relationship
between Barak and Deborah was much
less close than that between Moses and
Miriam, yet Barak acknowledged his
dependence on a wise and courageous
woman. Can Moses have felt less?
Bereavement leaves us deeply vulner-
able. In the midst of loss, we can find it
hard to control our emotions. We make
mistakes. We act rashly. We suffer from
a momentary lack of judgement. These
are common symptoms even for ordinary
humans like us. In Moses’ case, how-
ever, there was an additional factor. He
was a prophet, and grief can occlude or
eclipse the prophetic spirit. Maimonides
answers the well-known question as to
why Jacob, a prophet, did not know that
his son Joseph was still alive, with the
simplest possible answer: grief banishes
prophecy. For 22 years, mourning his
missing son, Jacob could not receive the
Divine word. Moses, the greatest of all the
prophets, remained in touch with God. It
was God, after all, who told him to “speak
to the rock.” But somehow the message
did not penetrate his consciousness fully.
That was the effect of grief.
So the details are, in truth, secondary
to the human drama played out that
day. Yes, Moses did things he might
not have done, should not have done.
He struck the rock, said “we” instead
of “God,” and lost his temper with the
people. The real story, though, is about
Moses the human being in an onslaught
of grief, vulnerable, exposed, caught in
a vortex of emotions, suddenly bereft
of the sisterly presence that had been
the most important bass note of his
life. Miriam had been the precociously
wise and plucky child who had taken
control of the situation when the life of
her 3-month-old brother lay in the bal-
ance, undaunted by either an Egyptian
princess or a rabbi-father. She had led
the Israelite women in song, and sym-
pathized with her sister-in-law when
she saw the price she paid for being the
wife of a leader. The Midrash speaks of
her as the woman in whose merit the
people had water in a parched land. In
Moses’ anguish at the rock, we sense the
loss of the elder sister without whom he
felt bereft and alone.
The story of the moment Moses lost
his confidence and calm is ultimately less
about leadership and crisis, or about a
staff and a rock, than about a great Jewish
woman, Miriam, appreciated fully only
when she was no longer there.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) was a
global religious leader, philosopher, the author of
more than 25 books and moral voice for our time. His
series of essays on the weekly Torah portion, entitled
“Covenant & Conversation” will continue to be shared
and distributed around the world.