Miriam in the Desert

Carol Fox Prescott

I meant to write about personal healing to celebrate my 80th birthday. There was so much of it to do all year long as the roll of caregiver during Jerome’s long illness became more and more demanding, the bone on bone pain that led me to my miraculous hip replacement surgery and recovery, the insidious dismantling of our democracy that defines so much of the world we live in and finally, Jerome’s death followed by the world going mad. The reality of the Carona virus, uncountable deaths, social isolation, the latest outbreaks of police brutality, massive amounts of people taking to the streets risking jail, assault, and death, if not from the police then from the virus.

And then I looked at this week’s portion. The Hebrew Children have their own bout of madness, making their own childish demands, and even Miriam strikes out towards Moses’ new wife, “that Cushite woman.” We are told nothing about this Cushite woman except that both Miriam and Aaron seem threatened by her closeness to power, and Miriam, but not Aaron is punished by God in the form of some kind of skin disease and is banished from the camp. Moses cries out to God to heal his sister and the people choose to stay in place rather than move on without her. And she is healed. And then she cried out to me

AND, THIS IS WHAT SHE SAID:

I could not abide that woman. I knew it was not my place to speak, I knew that she provided my brother with the warmth and physical companionship he sorely needed, especially since the death of my good friend, his wife Tziporah. But my heart hurt when I saw them together. Don’t ask me to make sense out of it. It made no sense except that for those months after Tziporah died he had turned to me. Once again I was not only his sister, but also his partner. While Aaron devoted himself to the priesthood, now I too had purpose.

Tzoporah had been a good wife and helpmate to Moses and because of the friendship that held us together, because of the generous ways in which she included me, the childless one, included me in all their family celebrations as well as the day to day preparation of meals eaten together, our shared confidences each evening as the sun disappeared below the horizon. I was part of a family. But I had been a prophet, a prophet among the people. Who knows if was true but a belief had grown among the tribes that wherever I was, water would be plentiful and so I had held my place.

But once she came into prominence both for Moses and among the multitudes, I became an afterthought. My prophecies grew ordinary, I was so angry; I couldn’t hear my truth through the pounding indignation in my brain. And when I dared to speak out, when I dared to let my voice be heard, my skin, my beautiful silky skin that had been my pride for all the years of my life now burned white hot and was infested with horrible, jagged ugly scales. And the itching, oh my God, the itching. There was no relief. And there was no comfort. I was forced outside the boundaries of our camp to fend for myself. Was this a just punishment? Was what I said so terrible? What was I really being punished for? And was this to be the rest of my life? It was my woman’s body that was being punished? Aaron was not punished. I had dared to enjoy my beauty, my sensuality. I had dared to be a woman who ignored the directive to be fruitful, to multiply. I had honored my birth family but had not created a new one for myself. I had not chosen a man to rule my life; I had enjoyed a place of esteem in my community.

Then, thank God, after seven hideous days, Moses cried out to God that I be healed, and it all stopped. I loved that he did that, and I was lovingly welcomed back among the people.

He held me around the waste to keep me from falling as we slowly moved our way toward our compound and my tent. He was so gentle. I could feel his love and I was reminded of the frightened, vulnerable youth who had run away from Egypt when in a fit of temper he had actually killed an Egyptian overseer. Temper! We certainly had that in common!

I have often wondered what he was praying for when he cried out to God to heal me. Was it only an act of love to heal my physical body or was he also praying for me to be healed into submission? I was grateful to receive the restoration of my health, my strength and God help me, my silky smooth, beautiful skin but I had been silenced. I agree that my ranting about his wife came from ugly, selfish anger, temper, if you will, but dear God my punishment was fierce.

In the years left to me, I made every effort to understand what my role had been in this migration towards our land of promise. When to speak and when to be silent? I have learned the value of silence but I have also lost the joy of spontaneity, the ecstasy that I experienced when moving through the dry land that had been the sea is a distant memory. It is only in the company of women and children that I can begin to find it again but we do not live only in the company of woman and children, and to separate us from our brothers and fathers, and sons, and uncles and cousins and husbands is to create a world of lies. There is no freedom there, for any of us. It is only when we can live and work together, all of us, all God’s Children, towards our freedom that we can ever even begin to see the shores of our land of promise. And perhaps it is only when we can be together, each one of us, a fully prized human being, that we will actually live there.