Do you want to be with loved ones when it happens? By yourself? At home? In a hospital? What about on vacation? Or in jail? Do you want to die of old age? How about young and in battle, fighting for what you believe in? Do you want to die doing an extreme sport? While sleeping? While meditating? In a natural disaster? Do you want to die of hunger? Or cold? Do you want to die while listening to music? While at work?
For most of us, this is something we might think about and even have desires about, but feel we have minimal control over.
There were some things about death in this week’s Torah portion, Chukat, that really caught my attention.
First of all, in this portion, we learn of the deaths of our leaders: Miriam, Aaron, and Moses.
Miriam was the first of them to die. Let me set the scene.
The Children of Israel were wandering in the desert rather than just passing through – thanks to their disbelief in God’s ability to get them safely to The Land. “The People were staying in Qadesh, and Miriam died there, and was buried there.” (Numbers 20:1)
Now, I want to tell part of the story of what happened next, and I promise I will tell the rest of it in a minute. But here’s the relevant piece for now.
Chapter 20 verse one tells us that Miriam died. And verse two tells us that there was no water there and The People were thirsty (this makes sense….). But God is God, so this was not an insurmountable problem.
God told Moses and Aaron to gather the congregation as witnesses and to speak to a rock and water would flow from it and be enough for all the people as well as their livestock. Moses and Aaron gathered the people, Moses raised his rod, hit the rock twice, and water flowed. Out came enough for all the people and livestock.
(Do you notice that what Moses did wasn’t exactly what God told him and Aaron to do?)
Aaron was the next sibling to die.
The story of his death is a little longer than Miriam’s. First of all, the Torah tells us explicitly that this death was a direct result of him not obeying God about the water and rock incident. Secondly, since he was The High Priest, there were some logistics to take care of. Aaron and Aaron’s son El’azar and Moses went off to a mountain in Hor and there was a transfer of power.
El’azar became The Cohen HaGadol – The High Priest – and descended the mountain with Moses. Aaron never came down because he was “gathered to his people.” That is, he died. And the people mourned for him for thirty days.
Moses, the last of the three siblings to die, doesn’t die in this portion, but he’s told that he will die before entering The Land. Like with Aaron, it is made explicit that this is a direct consequence from the hitting of the rock, rather than speaking to it. The story of Moses’ death is longer than that of either Miriam’s or Aaron’s, but happens later — it’s the end of The Five Books of Moses.
Now here’s the part of this week’s Torah portion that I said I would come back to.
Right after Miriam died, the people complained because there was no water. Of course, without water, humans can’t live. And so they expressed that they would have preferred being consumed by the earth like their brethren were just one Torah portion before this one. That’s what happened in Korach, when the earth opened up and swallowed the rebels (in case you missed it).
Now the “funny” thing is – I don’t know if you remember – that just a couple weeks ago (in Torah reading) they were going to go to The Land, but there were “giants” there. Remember that? So the people asked why they would be killed there instead of just dying in The Wilderness. Back then dying in the wilderness sounded like the way to go. Their wish was granted with a proclamation that they would wander the desert for 40 years until the old generation died out.
But of course when it was time to die in the wilderness, then they were back to wishing they’d either have been swallowed by the hole in the earth that they ran screaming from, or that they’d just died in Egypt instead of in this place that had no figs or cucumbers or melons … or water.
In other words, they didn’t want to die of thirst.
Like in the portion a couple weeks ago, they didn’t want to die by being swallowed into the earth.
And before that, they didn’t want to die at the hands of the “giants” in The Land.
And before that, they didn’t want to die by drowning in the Red Sea.
And before that, they didn’t want to die as slaves in Egypt.
So…
I don’t know about you, but I see a common thread here. They don’t want to die. Well, at least that’s what they’re saying. And I’m sure there’s some truth in that, but given the context, I feel like there’s something else they’re asking for/complaining about.
I think they don’t want to fear. And in a classic “the grass is always greener” move, they seem to be saying that they were less afraid of death before, and it would’ve been nice to die before they had to endure this new fear.
Do you see that? Or is it just me?
Fear is an awful feeling. In the scenarios I mentioned above about ways to die, some of them might have invoked strong feelings in you. Some of them might have made you feel calm about dying that way, some of them might have made you fearful.
We actually get very little say in how or where we will die. But we experience losses and uncertainty and all sizes of fears even before facing death, and we do have some control over how much we will fear. Just as The Children of Israel could have thought to themselves, “God has saved us from literally every other near-death experience we’ve had since leaving Egypt, so we are sure to get the water somehow. Won’t it be cool to see what miracle happens next?”
They could have said that. They had basis for it. It was a legitimate way of looking at the situation.
Here’s the thing: Fear and curiosity cannot exist at the same time.
Isn’t that cool? Try it sometime when you’re afraid. Try to approach the situation with curiosity and see what happens. You might just get your own little miracle.