This week, we study, read, and learn from Parashat Beha’alotcha. And it’s always one of those portions that when it comes back in our reading cycle I have A little bit of a flashback too. Once upon a time, I spent an entire semester an HUC-JIR studying just this portion, and really just one letter of this portion. Just one little ב (Bet) in Numbers 12:1 trying to figure out what it means.
In this chapter, Miriam and Aaron are speaking בְּמֹשֶׁה, B’Moshe. The translation usually says that they spoke against Moses, but there are many different possibilities. Here, they seem to be concerned about Moses’s choice of a wife, a Cushite woman. There’s not enough detail to really know what was going on in the portion. All that we know is that the episode continues with Miriam and Aaron being called before God and God striking Miriam with tzara’at.
In this class, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Miriam, Aaron, Moses, and God were doing and why they were doing it. What is it that the text isn’t overtly saying? How would understanding that one Bet differently change our understanding of the whole story?
Every year, when I read that one letter, I am always transported back to class.
In truth, what was emphasized in this portion and in that class is how much one word, even one letter, can completely change our understanding of what is happening around us. We don’t necessarily need to have all the details. We don’t need to be incredibly verbose. We don’t need the epic Tolstoy-length novel of the of Moses and Aaron and Miriam and their relationship. If we try, we ca see that there’s so much meaning in just one little letter.
This is one of the lessons that is emphasized at the end of the story. When Miriam is stricken with tzara’at, Moses goes to God to pray for her healing. That prayer, it’s an extremely short prayer with extremely short words, each word is only two or three letters: אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָהּ, El na r’fa na la, Please God please heal her. Every time I come back to this, portion, to that one letter, to that prayer, it reminds me of how much we can put into so little.
This probably wasn’t an accident that the writers of the Torah didn’t feel the need to really expand on this story. The Torah isn’t a text that is filled with internal monologues or emotional adjectives. It’s a series of short stories with terse sentences in which we find the layers of meaning. In studying it, we get the opportunity to be reminded that we don’t need to say a lot, to mean a lot. We are reminded that when we are intentional about each and every one of our words, then our meaning will flourish. And we are reminded that often the simplest and shortest sentences are the ones that we carry for the rest of our lives: “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” “That hurts,” “Help me,” all become sentences that can change who we are at our core and the course of our lives.
In this we, we can become like Moses, choosing to use our words to heal rather than to take up space. We can become like Miriam and Aaron, who’s generosity is seen better through action than through speech. And we can become like God, knowing that one statement can build up or tear down. May this Shabbat serve as another reminder that we don’t need to say a lot to show who we truly are to one another.