Healing Well of Miriam

ב״ה

20 Shevat 5770

After my fifty-fifth birthday, at the end of January, I thought about how women age. How much my face has changed over the years! I started graying in my teens, like my dad and my grandmother. For years I struggled against it with hair colors, until I finally decided that I didn’t want the chemicals in my system, that health is more important than vanity. This causes me to think differently about cosmetics, as well, trying to choose something as natural and healthy as possible. Yet, I still care about putting my most attractive face forward to the world.

The Torah talks about certain people who reached great ages. Midrash says Abraham and his son, Isaac, looked so much alike that Abraham suggested to Hashem that fathers should age in order to be able to be tell them from their sons. Hashem agreed and decided to begin with him. Abraham understood this world’s connection to death and accepted aging as a being of this world, as a descendant of Adam.

Although men do care about their changing appearance as they age, this has traditionally been a concern primarily considered “feminine”. Three women were rejuvenated–Sarah, Jochebed, and Miriam. Sarah was rejuvenated when she was in her nineties and pregnant with Isaac. Jochebed was one hundred thirty-seven when she gave birth to Moses; her youth was restored shortly before that when she re-united with Amram. Her daughter, Miriam, was rejuvenated under the chuppah after she recovered from leprosy. There is more to these stories than mere vanity. Indeed, these stories hold out a promise of redemption, of reversal of the curses that brought death into the world. It is no coincedence that these miracles came to women, for it was the first woman who initiated the change of the world’s status, bringing death into the lives of all her descendants. In a very real way, each time one of these women experienced renewal, Eve’s damage to the world was repaired.

The first level of the soul, nefesh, is connected to the physical part of a person. As the nefesh is rectified, the physical is also effected. This is the first level of Redemption described by Isaiah.

Never again will come from there a young child or old man who will not fill his days; for the youth of one hundred years will die and a sinner at the age of one hundred years will be cursed. –Isaiah 65:20

Death will still exist in the world during the first stage of Redemption, but it will not be what it presently is. At this time the body, with its desires and needs, its aches and pains, demands our attention and leads the soul to fulfill its necessities. Ideally, the body is to be subservient to the soul, a vehicle for the soul’s work in the world. When this is the case, the body will last as long as the soul needs it. Death will come only when the soul’s work is finished. When that time comes, death will come as a “kiss of the Shekinah”, drawing the soul to her source. With the body being dominated by the soul, it will not suffer the ravages of aging and illness.

Each time we look in the mirror, we can think of this promise, of this potential that is built into Creation.

Sason v’simcha,
Miriam Leah