Our Torah portion this morning - Hukat - contained an interesting non sequitur. In chapter 20 of the book of Numbers we are told that Miriam - Moses' and Aaron's sister - has died. The people mourn her passing. In the very next sentence we are told that people complain of thirst. The rabbis immediately question what one has to do with the other? How, the rabbis wonder, has Miriam death impacted the sudden lack of water? The rabbis answer that Miriam was the source of water for the nation of Israel. She was a prophetess, she led the women in song and dance after crossing the sea, and she merited having a well of water miraculously follow the people around the wilderness as the people journeyed to the land of Israel. When she died, the rabbis said, the well dried up.
This story is one of many that highlight the spiritual nature of the 40 years in the desert. The prophets talked about the righteousness of their youth. As Jeremiah says - and as is included in the Rosh Hashanah service - זכרתי לך חסד נעוריך...לכתך אחרי במדבר - "I remember your religious youthful days...how you followed Me in the wilderness". For the prophets and later the rabbis, the 40 years were a time of loyalty to God marked by the awesome spirituality of Mt Sinai and the building of the Tabernacle.
But this glorification of the desert years ignores the glaring evidence to the contrary found in the Torah text itself. The people in the desert actually neglected God, transgressed, complained and wanted to return to Egypt. They clearly were not spiritual and they clearly did not exhibit fealty to God.
The rabbis though wanted to create an alternative narrative for their own religious purposes. They intended to tell a story of the Jewish people that would augment that found in the Torah. The rabbis' version was so influential that we often wonder why their story isn't in the Torah. When we remember learning about Abraham smashing the idols in his father's store we are surprised to find that it actually isn't in the Torah!
Which leads us to Juneteenth. Congress passed legislation and President Biden signed it into law on Thursday making June 19 a Federal holiday. It is the day in 1865 that Major General Granger led Union troops into Galveston, TX announcing the end of the Civil War and more importantly the end of slavery. As I'm sure is the case with most of you, I never heard of Juneteenth before a few years ago. I grew up learning about the Civil War and the emancipation proclamation but I never learned that it took 2 1/2 years until the news reached Texas. In fact, many black people - as a panel of Black Jews on the Juneteenth ZOOM program sponsored by the Conservative Movement the other night recalled - they hadn't heard of Juneteenth until they were in college.
It is fascinating that the narrative that our country teaches in school misses important details in the history of minority segments of our population. Important events in the Native American and Black histories are swept under the rug and ignored. There is the greater story that we are taught, and there are the ugly details that are left to college students to reveal.
This holiday - Juneteenth - I hope will cause us to lift the rug on these embarrassing omissions. We need to learn all aspects of the origin stories of all the people who make up this great nation. Once we learn each other's stories, once we hear the joy and the pain, once we listen to each other, then we can truly be a great nation and a light to the world.
I'd like to conclude with this prayer from the Jewish Multiracial Network found on ritualwell.org.
"Creator of life, source of compassion. Your breath remains the source of our spirit, even as too many of us cry out that we cannot breathe. Lovingly created in your image, the color of our bodies has imperiled our lives.
Black lives are commodified yet devalued, imitated but feared, exhibited but not seen.
Black lives have been pursued by hatred, abandoned by indifference and betrayed by complacency.
Black lives have been lost to the violence of the vigilante, the cruelty of the marketplace and the silence of the comfortable.
We understand that Black lives are sacred, inherently valuable, and irreplaceable.
We know that to oppress the body of the human is to break the heart of the divine.
We yearn for the day when the bent will stand straight.
We pray that the hearts of our country will soften to the pain endured for centuries.
We will do the work to bind up the wounds, to heal the shattered hearts, to break the yoke of oppression.
As the beauty of the heavens is revealed to us each day, may each day reveal to us the beauty of our common humanity. Amen."
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