shiva<\/i> for my own mother.<\/p>\n She is a friend of long-standing, and a\u00a0member of my\u00a0former congregation. I hope\u00a0that I am not being\u00a0unchivalrous by\u00a0describing her as late middle-aged. She had just lost her own mother, having lost her\u00a0father\u00a0several years ago.<\/p>\n
“It is not\u00a0just\u00a0that I feel orphaned,” she said. “It is that I\u00a0feel vulnerable. As\u00a0long as even one of my parents was alive, it was as if\u00a0there was a\u00a0kind of buffer between me and death. Now that they are both gone, it begins to feel that it is my turn. No one to\u00a0protect me. I face the malach hamavet<\/i> (angel of death)\u00a0directly, face to face,\u00a0head on.”<\/p>\n
We all\u00a0deny our mortality, and as long as the older\u00a0generation is\u00a0around we feel that they, and not we,\u00a0are the ones on death’s frontlines. We are\u00a0insulated from death’s claws\u00a0by them. It is their turn and\u00a0not yet ours. But once we lose our own parents, we\u00a0can no longer deny our mortality. It is our turn.<\/p>\n
There is an\u00a0excellent book by my\u00a0esteemed\u00a0colleague, Rabbi Marc\u00a0Angel,\u00a0entitled The\u00a0Orphaned Adult<\/i>. I\u00a0often recommend this book to mourners,\u00a0particularly those who are fortunate to have\u00a0entered adulthood, even late middle age, with\u00a0both\u00a0parents alive, and experience their deaths only after\u00a0having long ago reached adulthood.\u00a0Their\u00a0feelings are unique and very\u00a0different from those who experienced the trauma of a parent’s death at an earlier stage of life.\u00a0 Rabbi Angel also describes\u00a0this\u00a0sudden sense of mortality, of vulnerability. With the\u00a0death of parents, these older\u00a0people finally must surrender their comfortable denial of their own inevitable demise<\/p>\n
In this\u00a0week’s portion, Chukat<\/i>,\u00a0we read of the death of two beloved\u00a0leaders of the Jewish people, Miriam and Aaron. Both of them\u00a0were parent figures,\u00a0albeit not\u00a0actual parents, of the Jews in the years of their wandering in the wilderness.\u00a0Instructively, a period of\u00a0vulnerability ensues\u00a0immediately upon their\u00a0respective deaths.<\/p>\n
We read first of Miriam’s death. “The Israelites arrived at the wilderness of Zin… Miriam died there and was buried there.” And then, immediately, “The community was without water.” (Numbers<\/i> 20:1-2)<\/p>\n
As long as Miriam was alive, she was a source of water, a source of life. While she was alive, the Be’er<\/i> Miriam<\/i> (well of Miriam) provided water for the people. With her death, and in her case, the well immediately dried up, the water ceased, and the people were vulnerable. Without “mother” Miriam, death by thirst threatened the people.<\/p>\n
Soon afterwards, we read, “…and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain.” And then, this time not immediately but after thirty days of mourning, “When the Canaanite king of Arad heard… he engaged Israel in battle and took some of them captive…” (Numbers<\/i> 20:28-29 and 21:1) “Father” Aaron died, and peace and security were shattered. War and that worst of fates, captivity, reared their ugly heads.<\/p>\n
It seems that it is more than mere psychological reality that with the passing of its leaders, a nation faces calamity. With the death of ones parents, one’s own well-being is threatened. No wonder that when the young sister-in-law of the 18th century sage Rabbi Yonasan Eybeshitz lost her husband, the rabbi cautioned her, in a letter which has come down to us, to take special care of her own physical well-being and the health of her young children. As our sages put it in the Talmud, “When one member of a group perishes, the entire group needs to be anxious.”<\/p>\n
How apt are the words of the Psalmist, “When my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will take me in” (Psalms<\/i> 27:10). When our parents “abandon” us and leave this world, we are bereft in many ways, and our positions in life become precarious. We need God at those moments, and turn to Him, confident that He will “take us in.”<\/p>\n
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