Four Songs

Rabbi Noa Kushner

August 7, 2020 / Parshat Ekev

1

In this week’s Torah,

We are standing, looking into the promised land 

And we are looking back at our time and the time of our parents b’midbar / in the wilderness 

We were in the wilderness for 40 years

A generation has passed, and we are just now realizing it 

Time is like that in the wilderness

Between one place and another

It feels infinite, as if we will be in this in-between place forever 

Strangely, Torah has a lot to say about our first moments in the wilderness

The times when we failed, when we recovered 

But the majority of the moments in-between are simply left out 

About 38 years of moments, give or take 

And so we have to search for clues to understand what it might have been like 

What helped them during that whole time, what helped them remember what was important 

Because these moments in the desert are just the moments are most interested in now

Because we too are looking for clues 

As to how to live in an in-between time

2. 

Famously, unlike now, we get much of what we need b’midbar directly from God

Miracles

God postmates manna right to our camps

The rabbis are sure we always smelled fresh because we rolled in the plants and spices that grew in the wilderness 

Maybe not the most dignified miracle but certainly not one that should be overlooked 

And yet, we learn, maybe the most important thing in the desert, water, was not guaranteed

Sure, for the vast majority of time, the rabbis say a well accompanied us 

The well of Miriam

But when Miriam dies, the well goes away with her

And at the end we are left without secure water in the wilderness.  

What do we do? 

It is funny, we don’t complain like have so many other times. 

Instead, there is a strange fragment of a verse —

In the middle of what looks to be the middle of a travel itinerary, 

We, the Israelites go to a place is named, Be’er / “Well”

A place where God instructs Moses to assemble Israel so that God could give us water

But at “Be’er,” 

No active water is given or appears as in other places

Instead, in just a few words

Israel sings a cryptic song to a well and a well seems to emerge. 

THEN Torah says tells us (or maybe we sing it in our song, it’s hard to tell) that the well was dug previously, by unnamed nobles and princes 

It is all very strange and raises a lot of questions: 

If the place is called, “Well,” 

and there was a well there to begin with 

Dug by nobles and princes 

And God told them to assemble to get the water — 

Why do we sing? 

No where else in Torah do the people sing to a well to bring it into being — sometimes they have to dig a well, but we don’t sing. 

In fact, the people don’t usually sing at all! In fact, the rabbis notice the last time we sang a song in Torah was 38 years ago, when we crossed the sea. 

Not only that, but the “song” they sing, if we can call that, 

Especially compared to the song at the sea

Where everyone, following Moses, sang to God in synchronistic iambic pentameter 

This song here is a fragment, a tiny bit of a song, an opening 

עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ־לָֽהּ /

Spring up, oh well, sing to it 

That’s the whole song 

And even if you include the part about the well being dug by princes and nobles —  

It is still not very… descriptive

What is going on here? 

What do we learn about surviving in the wilderness for a long time from this cryptic song? 

A. Relief 

Perhaps we should start by understanding that perhaps the short length of the song says a lot about the wilderness itself

Their moment and ours 

That is to say, even if you are traveling to a place called WELL

And even if you have had a well follow you your whole life

In the wilderness that well might also easily disappear 

The wilderness makes us less sure of ourselves 

Like traveling at night in a far away place 

Even if we, too, saw the sign that says WELL HERE, WELL TOWN, WELL HOTEL 

We still might not trust that the well was really still there 

See, in the wilderness, the things that, under normal circumstances we take for granted

The necessities 

Here b’midbar / in the wilderness they become occasions for great relief 

So perhaps, on the simplest level

Even though God told us (as God had told us many times) there would be water there

Even though the name of the place was WELL 

the wilderness had worn us down so much, we were so cynical 

that we we were still surprised to receive this water

The well felt like the very first miracle we had ever received 

And so, once this well started to open and reveal itself 

We sang out of true relief, gratitude

Perhaps we were out of breath from the release and wonder that it was still really there. 

So we skipped the formalities and harmonies in order to take long, cool drinks 

And like the many blessings after things that matter, like the ones in hospital rooms, the words were stilted and simple 

עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ־לָֽהּ /

“Spring up oh well, please keep springing — and we will sing to you.”

It was a song interspersed with our tears of relief, b/c even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, we can still be thank ful for our lives. 

B. Earth 

Or maybe the song is sparse and truncated because 

In the face of the ongoing wilderness

A generations long time in the wilderness 

Israel was silenced by the raw magnitude and vast architecture of the desert itself, of the natural world

Maybe we had few words because we were in awe, fear of creation itself 

Maybe, in this small song, this prayer

As the rabbis suggest, Israel is actually pleading with the earth to care for them

In other words, in that moment, we recognized our utter dependance on the earth 

We saw, without a relationship with the earth, 

Without honoring the earth’s seasons and topography, we would die in the desert.

Perhaps this song, if we were to sing it today 

Could bring us to the same recognition of the majesty of the natural world 

Could bring us to a recognition of our dependence on the planet: 

The earth’s ability to care for us or destroy us 

Maybe this song could be the beginning of our prayer 

asking for forgiveness from our earth and from our God who created it

Maybe this song could be the beginning of our admission that science, wisdom, restraint, obligation

Are what will make the miracles now — the great miracle of healing our planet 

Maybe in moments like theirs and ours a long and complex song is not what is required

Rather, when there is such a great breach

Such a vast distance across from where we are to where we need to be 

We begin with remorse and humility and silence 

So maybe it is not that the song trails off 

Rather, in their moment

As in ours

We realize there can be no words beyond, “We raise our voices for you, Oh well”

We are quiet, remembering that the mouth of the well was created long before any of us, at the twilight of creation

And our lives, both then and now, depend on our ability to care for this well and the systems in which it lives

So maybe the cryptic song is one that stops short and listens — to the wilderness that surrounds us all.

C. Crying 

Or maybe it was not a song at all. I know it says we sang but maybe there is no fully accurate word for what it was we were doing

See because when the rabbis teach about this song, 

Usually they relate it to other songs: 

The song when we crossed the sea, as I mentioned earlier 

Joshua’s song, Song of Solomon… 

But the Kedushat Levi relates this moment not to singing but instead — to crying —

He says it is similar to when we were escaping Egypt 

and pharaoh was chasing us

וַיִּצְעֲק֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל /

and (we) the children of Israel cried out in fear

Perhaps, he suggests, we were not singing to the well but crying out to God in desperation —

And I add, perhaps there are not many words recorded to this song because it is the sound of us pleading and hitting bottom and these things are not captured in words

And then we remember 

We remember back when Hagar is cast alone into the desert with her young son 

We know that when the meager ration of water she was given runs out

And she was despondent and desperate and thirsty

She cries and raises her voice, and it is that crying out, not any words, 

that brings an angel 

who tells her to open her eyes and there, just like in our story b’midbar / in the wilderness, is a well.

And according to one midrash 

Hagar didn’t know but she was standing right on top off that well

It was under the ground right exactly where she was standing 

It was just that, like us in the wilderness, she had to cry to find it 

Maybe there is a version of singing this song that is crying 

Crying for everything that has gone wrong

Crying for all that seems that it cannot be fixed by us alone

Crying out of fear to God

Crying for help 

Maybe when we are in the desert and we cannot see any water

When the wilderness or our enemies or the accumulation of all the betrayals we have suffered  seems to overtake us

We learn the only song left is the one that cries for all that is lost and all that seems lost 

Only then can we begin to remember the wells right underneath our feet. 

D. T’shuvah 

One last interpretation:

B’midbar / In the wilderness

we have much less by way of distraction

We cannot run and hide from relationships, from mistakes

There is no where to go

So, too in the wilderness of Torah

We cannot hide from what went wrong.

Only 36 verses earlier we were also thirsty

And God tells Moses to strike a rock to get water for Israel 

Moses does not strike the rock gently or with faith or a particular love of the Israelites who are frantic and complaining once again

He strikes with anger, he calls the people cruel names

He breaks trust with the people, with God 

And God says Moses degrades the holy name by performing this miracle in such an abusive way

Why am I telling you this?

Because the tradition says that rock and this place Be’er / WELL

the place of the stopped up well 

are — the same place. 

So when, a few verses later, we are singing our song to the closed well

(And notice Moses is not singing)

And we are singing for the well to open 

and recounting in the song how the well was once dug by princes and nobility

The tradition says Moses and Aaron were those princes 

So perhaps we sing our song as if to say, 

“Moses, you are one who can open this well in the right way, you are the prince, here is your change to do it right, another chance.” 

In other words

Our song links two stories —

The song story of what already happened when Moses struck the rock, the rupture

And the song story of what might be

A song of t’shuvah / of return 

A song redo, a tikkun, a repair 

See instead of only singing about the past,

This religious song allows us to see what happened before 

As an opportunity for repairing something now 

See a religious song knows that 

a well that is covered up can always be opened again.

We remember 

No matter what has been destroyed

How barren it all seems now

In Torah, after we sing, we go from מִמִּדְבָּ֖ר מַתָּנָֽה

From the barren wilderness to the place that is literally named, “gifts” 

So may it be for us

May whatever we’re enduring now b’midbar / in the desert,

create the beginning of songs that tie the old world and the new world together, 

great gifts,

נְחָלִ֖ים בָּעֲרָבָֽה / streams in the wilderness.