A.
Our parasha deals with the deaths of Miriam and Aharon.
Miriam was the first of Moshe’s siblings to die: ויבאו בני ישראל מדבר צן בחדש הראשון וישב העם בקדש ותמת מרים שם ותקבר שם (“And the bnei Yisra’él came [to] the desert of Tzin in the first month, and the people settled in Qadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there;” XX, 1).
Rashi quotes the Talmud (מועד קטן כ"ח.): למה נסמכה מיתת מרים לפרשת פרה אדומה? לומר לך כמו שקרבנות מכפרין אף מיתת צדיקים מכפרת (“Why is Miriam’s death juxtaposed to the passage of the para adumma [‘red heifer’, which begins our parasha]? To tell you that just as sacrifices atone, so does the death of tzaddiqim atone”).
The Maharal mi-Prag (גור ארי' לרש"י הנ"ל וע"ע שפתי חכמים) notes that the comparison seems, at first, inapt; after all, the para adumma is not, precisely, a sacrifice, since no part of it is offered on the altar. He goes on to observe, however, that our parasha nonetheless refers to the para by the term chattath (XIX, 9), the same term used of a sin offering (cf., e.g., Leviticus VI, 17-23), despite the fact that it is not really a qorban. He concludes that the atoning quality of this pseudo-sacrifice derives from the fact that it is burnt up completely, reduced to its fundamental matter; in like wise, death is an atonement, he says, since the soul is divested of the form of the body, the source of sin. It is in this that they are similar.
If so, why is it the death of Miriam, specifically (as opposed to another tzaddiq) which is juxtaposed with the para adumma? Our eye comes to rest on a midrash: משל לבן שפחה שטינף פלטין של מלך, אמרו תבא אמו ותקנח את הצואה, כך תבא פרה ותכפר על העגל (“A parable of a son of a maidservant who soils the king’s throne; they said, Let his mother come and clean up the mess; thus, let the cow come and atone for the calf;” מובא ברש"י בשם ר' משה הדרשן).
The cow in some fashion atones for the Golden Calf; so does Mother Miriam’s death in some sense atone for Israel (ועיי' תורה תמימה שם). But for what sin?
B.
Our question is somewhat sharpened by the reflection that Miriam’s death, in a certain sense, can be said to have brought about the deaths of her brothers.
As a direct consequence of Miriam’s death, Rashi tells us, "ולא הי' מים לעדה" -- מכאן שכל מ' שנה הי' להם הבאר בזכות מרים (“‘And the community had no water’ [XX, 2] -- from here [we learn] that the entire 40 years [that Israel were in the desert] they had a well in Miriam’s merit”). For virtually the entire time of their sojourn in the desert, water was supplied by this miraculous traveling well. When Miriam perished, though, the well vanished.
And the people panicked, and crowded about Moshe and Aharon, yammering, לו גועמו בגוע אחינו לפני ד': ולמה הבאתם את קהל ד' אל במדבר הזה למות שם אנחנו ובעירנו: ולמה העליתנו ממצרים להביא אתנו אל המקום הרע הזה וגו' (“If only we had perished as did our brothers before Ha-Shem! Why did you bring the congregation of Ha-Shem to this desert to die there, we and our cattle? And why did you bring us up from Egypt to this evil place...?” ibid., 3-5).
In response, G-d told Moshe and Aharon to take Moshe’s staff, approach a certain rock, and speak to it; water would miraculously gush forth. As Moshe and Aharon walked toward the rock, the maddening crowd gave them no respite. In a flash of anger, Moshe cried, המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים (“Is it from this rock that we should bring forth water for you?”) and struck the rock, rather than speaking to it. The miracle happened anyway, and the water gushed forth; but the damage was done: ויאמר ד' אל משה ואל אהרן יען לא האמנתם בי להקדישני לעיני בני ישראל לא תביאו את הקהל הזה לארץ אשר נתתי להם (“And Ha-Shem said to Moshe and to Aharon, 'Since you did not foster faith in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the bnei Yisra’él, you will not bring this congregation to the land which I have given them;” ibid., 10-11).
So we see that this whole incident of Mei M’riva can be said to have resulted as consequence of Miriam’s death. When Israel left Qadesh and arrived at Hor ha-Har on the border of Edom, Aharon died (v. 27). But this begs the question: It was Moshe who momentarily allowed himself to become angry and hit the rock; what, exactly, was Aharon’s failure?
C.
This question bothered Ramban, who subjected the incident of Mei M’riva to a lengthy analysis, in the course of which he disposed of theories proposed by several other commentators.
First, he dismisses the notion that the core issue could have been Moshe’s striking the rock. He notes that G-d explicitly told Moshe to take his staff to the rock (v. 8), which implies that it would have some use there, and striking is a logical use. He cites various examples of other miracles in which Moshe was enjoined to speak, and used the staff in some fashion, and was not penalized for it. Then, too, there is the incontrovertible fact that it worked; striking the rock brought forth the necessary water.
Similarly, he dismisses the possibility that Moshe’s anger was the problem. Again, he cites other occasions on which Moshe became angry, without suffering dire consequences, and also notes that the Torah’s text here does not make an issue of Moshe’s anger (אמנם חז"ל מזכירין את כעסו, עיי' במדבר רבה פי"ט סי' ה'), and also the fact that Aharon was not a participant either in Moshe’s anger or in his striking the rock, and yet was included in the punishment.
Ramban then focuses on a comment by Rabbenu Chananel concerning the words Moshe spoke in anger: כי החטא הוא אמרם "המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים" וראוי שיאמרו יוציא ד' לכם מים כו' וכן בכל הנסים יודיעום כי ד' יעשה עמהם להפליא, ואולי חשב העם כי משה ואברן בחכמתם הוציאו להם מים מן הסלע הזה, וזהו לא קדשתם אותי וגו' (“For the sin was their saying, ‘Is it from this rock that we should bring forth water for you?, when they should have said, that Ha-Shem should bring forth water for you.... And so with all of the miracles, they would inform them that Ha-Shem would act for them wondrously, and perhaps the people thought that Moshe and Aharon in their wisdom had brought forth water for them from this rock, and this is [what G-d meant by saying], You did not sanctify Me....”).
D.
It is in this observation cited by Ramban that I believe the key lies.
Rashi tells us that the expression כל העדה, ‘the whole community,” in XX, 1 is a clue שכבר מתו מתי מדבר ואלה פרשו לחיים (“that those who were to die in the desert had already died, and these remained alive;” ע"ע אבן עזרא שם). Despite their towering greatness in so many ways, the yotz’ei Mitzrayim demonstrated at the incident of the Golden Calf a marked tendency to magnify and exaggerate the importance of Moshe to their immediate existence, almost to the extent of deification. As Rashi tells us (Exodus XXXII, 1), they had miscalculated the day on which Moshe was scheduled to descend from Mt. Sinai with the Torah, and expected him a day early. When he did not come down, they quailed at the prospect of being marooned in the howling wilderness without their leader and mentor.
This regrettable tendency was doubtless a product of the exile in Egypt. Modern scholars have ascertained from ancient Egyptian sources that such prominent Egyptian deities as Osiris and Ptah were, in fact, deified human beings who had once walked the earth (ועיי' גם עבודה זרה מ"ג: שעשו המצרים ע"ז מיוסף הצדיק אחרי פטירתו ).
Moshe and Aharon, who had experienced that débâcle, should have been acutely aware of and sensitive to this possibility, even amongst the new, young generation. Moshe, in his momentary fit of anger, forgot it, and said what he said. And Aharon did not correct him....
Chazal tell us: הקב"ה מקדים הרפואה למכה (“The Holy One., Blessed is He, brings the cure before the affliction;” מגילה י"ג:). The atoning death of merciful Mother Miriam was already in place to offset the potential negative effect of Moshe’s remark, as we find so clearly hinted in its close proximity to the para adumma, itself atoning for the Golden Calf, which resulted from that first tendency to deify men.
Yet, this young generation, the first in two centuries to grow up independent of that pernicious Egyptian influence, required one last, sharp lesson: As Rashi tells us, the Torah is at pains to record that Hor ha-Har, the site of Aharon’s death, was on the border of Edom שמפני שנתחברו כאן להתקרב לעשו הרשע נפרצו מעשיהן וחסרו הצדיק הזה וגו' (“for because they had joined themselves here to draw near to the wicked Esav [ancestor of Edom] a breach was made in their works and they lost this tzaddiq....”).
The loss of Aharon at Hor ha-Har was their reminder that, to prosper, Israel must be an עם לבדד ישכן ובגיום לא יתחשב (“A people dwelling alone and not reckoned among the nations;” Numbers XXIII, 9), subject to the influences and tendencies of neither Egypt nor Edom.
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