In Israel: Ḥukkat
“Rise up, O Well”
This week’s Torah reading begins with the detailed procedure for purification from corpse contamination—a rather technical matter. But this section is then followed by a number of historical recitations and even two pieces of ancient Hebrew poetry. The second of these, known as the “Song of the Well,” is particularly mysterious. After the Israelites arrive in the land of Moab, the Torah reports that they sang the following song:
“Rise up, O Well,” they sang about it,
“The well that the chieftains dug, that the noblemen opened,
With their staffs, as it was decreed.”
The incident referred to in this brief snippet is quite unknown today. Presumably, it was connected to some famous (perhaps miraculous) discovery of a source of water in the arid territories of Edom or Moab, said to have been crossed by the Israelites on their way to the land of Canaan. But this song ultimately came to be connected to a particular person, someone not even mentioned by name in it: Moses’ sister Miriam.
It all started back in the book of Exodus—in fact, right after the actual exodus from Egypt. The people were in need of water, so God instructed Moses to strike a certain rock with his staff, which he did. Immediately, the rock flowed with water. Forty years later, in this week’s reading, the same thing happens again: Moses goes with Aaron and again strikes a certain rock, and again the water flows. (For more details, see my brief essay, “Moses Big Mistake,” found on this website under the rubric, “Essays, Bibliography, and Other Things.”)
It certainly seemed strange that there were two water-giving rocks, in two different places and separated by forty years! Thinking about this, interpreters concluded that there were not two water-giving rocks, but only one, and it must have followed the Israelites throughout their forty years of wandering. That’s why they never ran out of water: Moses and Aaron must have repeatedly struck the rock during that whole time, and it had always supplied the people with plenty to drink. In fact, this is what our reading’s song seemed to be hinting at: the rock was “the well that the chieftains dug”—that is, that Moses and Aaron had dug, and not so much “dug” as caused to open—“with their staffs, as it was decreed.”
But if so, why was it connected to Miriam? The answer is found a bit earlier in this week’s reading. There it is reported that Miriam died (Num 20:1). Immediately thereafter, the Torah reports that the people ran out of water to drink. Naturally, ancient interpreters wondered if these two happenings were related. If, as long as Miriam was alive, there was plenty of drinking water, but as soon as she died the water ran dry, then this ongoing supply must have been delivered because of Miriam’s many virtues. As soon as she was no more, the divine spigot was closed. It may have been Moses and Aaron who physically struck the rock (and not altogether properly on the last occasion, as this week’s reading reports), but the water actually came from the rock because of the virtuous Miriam. It came to be known as the “Well of Miriam.” Once she had died, her merit could no longer bring about this ongoing miracle, and the water stopped.
Shabbat shalom!
Weekly Torah Reading, July 8, 2016
Outside Israel: Koraḥ
The Whole Garment
Koraḥ is the villain of this week’s Torah reading, the leader of a foiled rebellion against Moses and Aaron. “Look, all of us are holy,” Koraḥ said to them. By this he meant that he and his family were, like Moses and Aaron, all members of the sacred tribe of Levi. As such, Koraḥ argued, they all ought to have an equal claim on the priesthood—so there was no reason for Aaron and his descendants to be the only kohanim (priests) serving in Israel’s sanctuary.
An ancient midrash connected Koraḥ’s attempted rebellion to what immediately preceded the Torah’s account of it: the law of tassels (Num 15:37-41). Midrashists sometimes asked what the connection was between two apparently unrelated items that appear one after the next in the Torah. This hermeneutical practice was called doreshin semukhin, “interpreting adjacent things.”
(Just as an aside: The classic example of this sort of reading concerns three apparently unrelated laws in Deuteronomy 21:10-21. The first law governs the conditions under which a man may marry a woman taken captive in war; the second concerns the awarding of the birthright to the firstborn when there are two firstborn sons in a polygamous marriage; the third outlines the treatment of a rebellious son who refuses to heed his parents. Why these three laws one after the next? The midrashic explanation is that if a married man takes as his second wife a woman taken captive in war, then his two wives will likely, in the course of things, have each given birth to a son—a potential cause of strife in the family, since each is a “firstborn son” to his mother—and the son who loses out on the birthright may then turn rebellious, refusing to heed his parents.)
In the case of Koraḥ, interpreters asked whether the law of tassels might have had something to do with his attempted rebellion. After all, putting tassels dyed the color tekhelet on the four corners of a garment would certainly be expensive, and Koraḥ was a rabble-rouser eager to recruit followers to his cause. An early, perhaps pre-rabbinic midrashic text called the Book of Biblical Antiquities (originally written in Hebrew, it survives only in Latin translation) thus reports that after Moses had promulgated the law of tassels, Koraḥ exclaimed, “Why is an unbearable law imposed upon us?”
A later version of this midrash goes into greater detail. According to this account, Koraḥ immediately asked Moses, “Does a garment that has already been dyed completely tekhelet still need the tekhelet-colored tassel on its four corners?” “Yes,” replied Moses. “And a room that is full of Torah scrolls—does it still need a mezuzah on the doorway?” “Yes,” Moses again answered.
It’s clear that Koraḥ was trying to impugn Moses’ authority by showing the laws he was transmitting to be illogical. After all, if seeing a single thread of the color tekhelet served to remind people of the accoutrements of the tabernacle (mishkan) and the priestly garments—and thereby led them to remember God’s holiness and to seek to be holy themselves—then surely that connection could be made far more strikingly by a garment that was entirely tekehelet-colored! Why would it need the special tassel? And if the mezuzah was intended to remind people of the Torah’s commandments, wouldn’t that act of reminding be far more striking if one were entering a room full of Torah scrolls? Would such a room still need the mezuzah at its entrance?
But there was a hidden message in these two questions. What was on Koraḥ’s mind was the special status of Aaron and his descendants. “We’re all Levites,” Koraḥ had said, and in that sense they were all equal threads in an all-tekhelet garment. If so, why single out one particular thread—Aaron and his descendants—from all the others? Similarly, if all Levites were comparable to room full of Torah scrolls, all of them containing the words of God, why should a special little parchment be singled out and put at the room’s entrance?
Perhaps this is why Koraḥ’s rebellion was viewed by the Rabbis as so insidious. He was a clever politician intent only on his own gain, but succeeded in masking his intentions and persuading other people that he was actually their representative in opposing an elite.