By general election or graduation, by bereavement or break-up: all eras eventually come to an end. Many of those endings overlap with other things that need to continue, however, from jobs to childcare: in one part of our life we may feel like we’re breaking down or pieces of us shatter, while in other areas we just have to keep the show on the road. Whatever the particular version of “lights, camera, and smile” that applies, many people perform so well that it’s hard to tell whether or not they’re really having the time of their life. Maybe it takes someone as famous for writing about relationship break-ups as Taylor Swift to admit openly that “I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks, ’cause I can do it with a broken heart.”
It’s an ability worth singing about, because doing anything good with a broken heart can feel like a struggle, for us as for our ancestors. Early in Parashat Chukkat, it’s soon after the death of Miriam that Moses loses his temper with the grumbling Israelites and hits the rock instead of telling it to produce water. Then after the death of Aaron and a painful brush with enemies who take captives, it’s the whole Israelite people who seem unable to hold it together, with more fatal consequences when their grumbling results in Divinely sent fiery serpents whose bite is fatal.
Just before they complain aloud, the key Hebrew idiom of vatiktzar nefesh ha-am baderekh (Numbers 21:4) is often translated as the Israelites “growing restive” or “becoming discouraged” on the journey, though it could literally mean “the spirit of the people was shortened.” Rashi explains that this expression describes something like a person whose mind is not large enough to contain the trouble that befalls them and whose heart does not have enough room for that worry to abide there, so that with this shortened spirit, the trouble or worry becomes too much for them to bear.
Chizkuni describes a physical version of this, reading nefesh as the physical equivalent of spirit: he says the Israelites “grew short of breath” because the sun beat down on them as a direct consequence of Aaron’s death. The clouds of glory that had accompanied them in his honour while Aaron lived, like the water supply associated with Miriam, departed when he died. This left them exposed to the desert sun beating down on them relentlessly, so that they ended sunstruck, short of breath, and physically unable to take the heat.
For the Israelites, the impact of the loss of their leaders seems to be just too much, whether it is a supernaturally-inflected physical impact or a mental trouble beyond their capacity to bear it. If it is this bad for the people, how much more so for those who actually have to take over from those long-time leaders: in the same moment that he mourns the death of Aaron as his father, Eleazar faces the intimidating task of literally taking on the mantle of the beloved High Priest; for Miriam, there is not even an appointed successor named, so we don’t know who has to take on some of this apparently irreplaceable woman’s role.
Yet perhaps the Israelites (or their leaders) are more like Taylor Swift than we might imagine: despite all this, by the end of the same chapter as the shortening of their spirits, the Israelites somehow find breath enough to sing. Amid the description of the Israelites’ travels is their stop at the well by which the Eternal told Moses to assemble the people for miraculously appearing water – after which we read “Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well—sing to it…” (Numbers 21:17). When Ibn Ezra notes that this is how the song begins but Torah does not record the whole of it, perhaps we might also hear a hint of something else going unrecorded: we might imagine how Eleazar continued his father’s work without hitting the headlines, or how less famous women quietly stepped up, helping to hold the community as they grieved and as they took their next steps through the wilderness.
If Rashi understood that the shortness of spirit was symptomatic of a state where the Israelites lacked a large enough heart or mind to cope with the troubles that came their way, it might be possible to invert his reasoning to understand one way that those newer leaders helped the people to move towards a place where they could appreciate the miracle of well of water. Counterintuitively, perhaps, we might imagine that they helped the Israelites by encouraging them to lengthen their spirits, breathing in air and breathing out song, and so gradually increasing the space in their minds and hearts to deal with their troubles. By doing it even with a broken heart, they kept going until they could do it with a healed heart; until their mind broadened enough to embrace new possibilities.
It may be true for entertainers like Taylor Swift that “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart.” For more ordinary people, just trying to make it through the wilderness towards a promised land, it may be that doing it with a broken heart is our only option, however good we are or aren’t, and that might be enough for now. Heartbreak comes in many forms, from personal grief for someone without whom your journey must continue, to the collective pain of a people’s suffering without a clear end in sight. Wherever pain threatens to shorten our spirits, may we be helped to keep breathing, to keep singing, to expand our spirits until our hearts and minds are broad enough to bear the challenges of our lives; and may our paths feature enough wellsprings of blessings to help us back to genuinely grinning as we’re winning and hitting our marks, without any need to do it with a broken heart.
Rabbi Eleanor Davis
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.