Episode 5: Be’er Miriam - The Well of Miriam
Miriam’s well sustained her people step by step in the wilderness. This episode invites listeners to tap into this wellspring of belonging, as well as the Tao de Ching, what it means to be a Miriam person, twilight creations, the mystical meaning of wells, Lakewood New Jersey, and a practice for bringing Miriam’s wisdom to life.
SHOW NOTES
You can find the account of the people at the sea and the songs of Miriam and Moses in Exodus Chapter 14 and 15. Nachshon is named as the first person into the sea in the Talmud, Sotah 37a.
Maor VaShemesh, Beshalach 20 offers an extensive teaching on the power of Miriam’s song versus Moses’s song and the magic of circle dancing.
Rabbi Beroka’s conversation with Elijah the Prophet can be found in Taanit 22a:7
Find out more about Dr. Marcie Beigel here.
Look out for Becca Goldstein’s web presence coming soon!
Find an overview on Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing here
The Zohar describes Yocheved and others singing Miriam’s exalted song in Sh'lach 25:199.
Bell hooks speaks ofPatriarchy as the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation in her essay “Understanding Patriarchy,” chapter two of The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (Washington Square Press 2004)
The Alshekh’s teaching on Miriam’s tambourine can be found in the Alshekh on Torah, Exodus 15:20.
You can see Rabbi Jericho’s current Shiru L’Adonay playlist here.
Reb Nachman of Breslov on the roshei teivos of “Vataan Lahem Miriam Shiru L’Adonay, Miriam chants to the people, Sing right now to Goddess,” can be found in Likutei Moharan 27:6:10.
Survival Guide for a Spiritual Wilderness is a part of the Judaism Unbound family of podcasts made possible with support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah.
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My daughter used to do gymnastics. I remember once when she was ten years old, we went to one of her meets in some giant convention hall in Manhattan. All the girls from her gym wore the same sparkly black and purple leotards, some of the kids were so itty bitty they looked like little chickens. My daughter was more on the chicken side. Each kid went out and did the same routine on the mat with little variations, their legs all knobby and bent in not quite the right position, repeatedly tripping and falling in inelegant heaps. And then no matter how the routine went, when they were done, each kid would walk down a line of all of their teammates and get a high five from each one, sharing enormous grins and shivering energy and delight, in doing this together, as a team.
I know this probably sounds totally ordinary to you, but to me— it was jarring
One of my core memories from when I was ten years old is standing at the mechitzah, the wooden barrier in synagogue that separates the men from the women, peeking through a little gap, and watching the boys and the men dance together on the holiday of Simchas Torah. They whirled in ecstatic circles, a mass of bodies, some boys like– squirrels, darting between the legs of men as big as bears, and all of them, no matter their age, in identical dark pants and white shirts, yarmulkes on their heads, caught up in the same ecstatic celebration of their lives as boys, as men, devoted to studying Torah, belonging to this ultra-Orthodox culture, to each other.
Belonging wasn’t just for boys or men in my culture, but I felt awkward in female-only settings, my skin felt too tight, my expressions all lopsided, never knowing what to say, how to joke around, what to chat about, how tohang out. The girls around me generally didn’t like me–I was a nerd– weird– poor– very uncool. I didn’t know how to be a successful girl, and on some level I didn’t want to be. So I went through my childhood as a loner, occasionally catching a glimpse of the ways that the boys and men belonged together, and envying their passion and their purpose and their connections, but knowing that wasn’t for me.
When I saw my daughter with her gymnastics group, all these kids drawn together with a passion to learn and practice gymnastics, when I saw my kid’s ease and familiarity with her culture, it was such a moment of —wow—I can’t believe I made this human being who knows how to belong with her peers, so easefully.
Belonging is a human need. And it’s one most of us don’t meet enough— especially as adults. And belonging is always important, but it’s more than important when we find ourselves in a spiritual wilderness. Because then belonging becomes essential for our survival. Belonging keeps us sane, and belonging is at the center of the critical day-to-day process for getting ourselves out of a spiritual wilderness and into a garden of plenty. Belonging is a core piece of the wisdom of Miriam, and we’re going to explore it in this episode along with the Tao de Ching, what it means to be a Miriam person, twilight creations, the mystical meaning of wells, Lakewood New Jersey, and a practice for bringing Miriam’s wisdom to life.
I’m Jericho Vincent, your local feminist trans Kabbalistic rabbi and This is a Survival Guide for a spiritual wilderness. Let’s get started on the path.
When we last left the people, they had just touched down on the shores of dry land. Miriam led them in song and dance, and then they moved on. The people spent the next forty years wandering a sun-scorched Middle Eastern desert wilderness. How did they survive? We’re told that they ate a magical substance, called muhn, or in English, manna. But what did they drink?
The Torah doesn’t say. But it does say that in the fortieth year of the people’s wandering, Miriam died—our tradition teaches, by the way, not the way that regular mortals die, but in an unusual death in which Goddess kissed Miriam on the lips, and with that kiss, Miriam slipped through the veil and into the spirit world.
Anyhow, the very next sentence, after the one that reports Miriam’s death, describes the people complaining to Moses that they’re thirsty. They’re dying of thirst.
Our oral tradition teaches that the reason we go from Miriam’s death to the people being thirsty is because up until that point, Miriam had been the channel of water for the people. We’re told that Miriam had a special well. It was a rock that flowed with water when she sang to it, and for forty years she kept tens maybe hundreds of thousands of people alive in the wilderness with the water of her rock— which is called Be’er Miriam, the well of Miriam. As soon as Miriam dies, the well dries up and the people become thirsty and upset.
It’s not surprising that Miriam has the power to produce water from a stone. Water flows through Miriam stories— when she’s a child, we’re told that she midwives alongside her mother, the Ivri chief ob/gyn, so Miriam grows up surrounded by the waters of birth, and then she follows her brother as he floats on the Nile river, and then later when the people cross the sea to freedom, it’s right there, on the shore, next to the water, that Miriam calls out Shiru LAdonay, sing right now. I think it fair to describe Miriam as a kind of water spirit for our people—and for us.
Which makes sense for a survival guide. Both because water is essential to our survival in a barren wilderness and because water is a good metaphor for surviving in difficult landscapes.
One of my favorite spiritual texts, the Tao de Ching says: “The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain.”
No matter the obstacles, no matter how unpleasant things are, water organically sinks and weaves and rises and finds a way, and as it does, it lovingly nourishes the seeds of what’s next in whatever landscape it’s traveling through. Like water, we make our way through the wilderness, never in a straight path, but finding whatever way we can, and trying to nourish seeds along the way as we make it to the other side.
So back to our story, Miriam just passed, the water has dried up, the people are thirsty and afraid and complaining to Moses.
Moses asks Goddess what to do. Goddess says: take your sacred staff or branch, use it to assemble the people, and speak to the rock–it will produce water for the people.
The mateh, the sacred branch is a tool to gather people together, but Moses doesn’t seem to understand that it is the gathering that’s the catalyst for the water, the sustenance to emerge. Instead, he takes the branch, gathers the people, and lost in his fear and anger, he shouts: “Listen you Morim, listen you Morim, are we going to get you water out of a rock?” Then he hits the rock with the branch, as if it is his force, his violence, that’s going to produce what the people need..
Water does pour out of the rock and the people drink, but it’s not a triumph. Moses did not follow Goddess directions about how to gather the people, how to sustain them, he thought it had to be by his force, he didn’t understand that it was the Divine presence that emerges when people gather with sacred purpose that would produce the water. And Moses is punished as a consequence of this.
Pirkei Avot (3:2) says that if three people gather at a table and speak words of wisdom, they eat at the table of Shechina, Goddess. If Moses could have gathered the people for sustenance and used thoughtful words to bring them together, Divine presence would have rested there.
There are two songs of redemption that are sometimes sung on Saturday night, at the conclusion of the Havdala ceremony: one is a song celebrating a male leader, Eliyahu, who, the song declared will bring redemption single handedly, a Moses-style of leadership. The other song celebrated Miriam, who, the song says, will dance with us, who will bring us to the waters of redemption. Moses leadership brooks no competition, he’s the greatest and it's his force of will that will make things happen. Remember last episode—he sings a song about himself. Miriam takes a different approach. Miriam speaks in the plural, she’s about gathering the people together, reminding the people of the power they have when they gather.
Let’s back up for a second–what’s this name Moses calls the people when he shouts at them, Listen you Morim, are we going to get you water out of a rock? In most Hebrew bibles that word is translated as rebels. But because the Torah is not written with vowels, the word that’s usually pronounced as Morim can also be pronounced as Miriam. So in another way of reading this text, Moses is shouting: Listen you Miriam people, are we going to get you water out of a rock?
There’s evidence that parts of Miriam’s story were erased and appropriated by men, in an attempt to shore up patriarchy. So when I see Moses shouting at the people, calling them rebels and “Miriam people” my spidey sense starts filling in some details. I see a people who adored Miriam as their leader, a people unafraid of female leadership, a people reluctant to transfer allegiance to Moses after Miriam’s death. I see Moses shouting, name calling, and hitting as an attempt to seize the people’s loyalty to his patriarchal agenda.
But I am grateful for this record of Moses shouting at the people, because it gives us that name: Miriam people. These were the people who every day gathered around Miriam’s well to fill their cups. It was a community that met regularly, whatever else was going on, wherever they were in the wilderness, they situated themselves by finding each other around the well—and drinking TOGETHER from Miriam’s waters. A river of love for Miriam bound them together, and river of necessity–an appreciation for each other as they went through the ritual of gathering the water they needed, a practice of survival.
And probably not just water. The mystical master Reb Nachman of Breslov explains: The Hebrew word for Miriam’s well, Be’er, is a homophone for the word for wisdom or insight. Reb Nachman says that Miriam’s spirit is eternal, and when we learn wisdom in places of suffering, we draw on the be’er or wisdom of Miriam.
Those Miriam people back then, were drawing Miriam’s wisdom along with her water. And Miriam, the eternal spirit of Miriam, invites us to do the same: put the well of Miriam in the middle, gather regularly for wisdom and practice. That’s how we survive.
What’s the well of Miriam? It can be any form of wisdom and practice that we’re willing to meet with other people, regularly, to draw in.
So perhaps we can understand Miriam’s well to represent the transformational power of gathering regularly, to sustain our spirits with practice and wisdom. And this is the fifth core teaching for our survival in a spiritual wilderness. Miriam’s well is a traveling oasis. Miriam’s people are those who keep meeting at that oasis together, wherever they are on their journey.
In the spiritual wilderness of this moment, the wisdom we need does not come from rigid structures or preordained paths, but from our ability to listen, adapt, and find nourishment even in the most barren landscapes. To gather together at the rock of Miriam’s well and to drink deep.
Wells are powerful magic for our people. Look at the ancient stories: Mother Hagar finds a well in the wilderness and her destiny changes from scorned concubine to powerful mother of an enduring lineage–she names that well Be’er lachay ro-ee—the Well of the Living One who sees me. Eliezer meets mother Rebecca at a well—which, by the way, the Kabbalists say is the same well as Miriam’s well. Father Isaac re-digs the wells of his father, Abraham. Father Jacob meets Mother Rachel at a well, and this meeting is the pivot on which the people move from becoming a family to becoming a whole people.
These are small groups of people finding deep connection at that place where water rises from the heart of the earth.
Wells were central to our ancestors because they often lived in barren landscapes and depended on wells for survival, but mystically, the wells represent the very life force of our people. All the wells—but Miriam’s stands out. It’s different than all of the other mystical wells in the Torah. We’re told Miriam’s well was created in the twilight of the very first Friday in the first week of the existence of the world. Kabbalistically, that’s a loaded statement. The first week of the world Goddess was in creative mode, figuring things out, fixing things, working hard. The first Friday night and Saturday are the first Shabbat— the epitome of total rest, total paradise. And the mouth of Miriam’s well is created in the twilight between these two states. Mystically, that’s expressing that Miriam’s well is a kind of bridge between imperfection and perfection, brokenness and wholeness, labor and rest, wilderness and paradise.
When we gather together and put wisdom and practice at the center–not just meeting for coffee, but meeting to learn, to do, to become—that’s what sustains us in a spiritual wilderness, and even more, that’s what transforms our spiritual wilderness into a garden of plenty.
Each episode of this podcast we’ve talked about Miriam practices: Spiritual Chutzpah, Chakeh Mah–wait for what, Tehora He–it is pure, Shiru LAdonay, sing right now– Miriam’s well is how we bring it all together: in community, meeting regularly, wisdom and practice at the center, drawing sustenance from the rock of our group work.
We do this, we change the world. I’m not being hyperbolic. I know how small communities gathered around wisdom and practice can transform the world. I’m only here talking to you about this because of one: A little over fifty years ago, my parents joined a wave of young couples who moved to Lakewood, New Jersey, so that the men could learn in a yeshiva there, founded by refugees from Eastern Europe. When my parents joined there was a community of maybe a couple of hundred couples. They were post-colonial, post-Holocaust counter cultural kids, dreaming of rebuilding the shtetl of their grandparents in the middle of white picket fence America. They put wisdom and practice in the middle. Not a wisdom or practice I endorse—they chose a patriarchal and oppressive version of ancestral wisdom and practice. But the technology of gathering at the well is powerful whether we use it to heal or harm. My parents, like their peers, become revolutionaries. They had eleven children and devoted their family to the cause. Today there are 4,000 married men studying in Lakewood, which has become an epicenter of the Yeshivish ultra-Orthodox world in America, with over 90,000 ultra-Orthodox people in the town—they have schools, camps, musicians, magazines, a powerful economy, enormous political sway—an entire culture that arose from small group of people gathering around practice and wisdom. They produced the men dancing on Simchas Torah that I once so enviously watched from a crack in the mechitza.
We need to build the same thing, in our own way, and so much larger. Instead of the men of my childhood passionately dancing like bears, while some people stare longingly from the sidelines, I want us to dance the way Miriam danced with the people at the shore—together, men, women, nonbinary folks, and at the center, not patriarchy, not oppression, but the embodied wisdom and practice of our forgotten female ancestors, the embodied wisdom and practice we need to survive and thrive in the spiritual wilderness.
We’re told that when we sing to Miriam’s well, it sings back. There’s a tremendous spiritual power waiting for us if we set an intention to meet in this way. It’s magic of the highest order.
We can channel the ancestor Miriam by forming or taking part in groups that meet to explore Miriam wisdom and other wisdom that is mystical and life-affirming and inclusive and non-patriarchal. Do you belong to a group like that? If not, would you join one? If you can’t find one, will you make one?
This isn’t easy to do. We live in a lonely time and the political mayhem of this moment tries to erode our communities further. But life is hard in a wilderness, so choose your hard. Choose the hard of building a community that is anchored in wisdom and practice, a community that can transform the world.
I know it may sound utopic but I truly believe there's a wellspring of Miriam that's either coming up for you right now or it will emerge soon. Your job is to be open to it. And you'll know you've found the right place when you feel like a plotted plant placed in the forest for the first time, that which has been cramped, your connection to the communal body, unfurled, so that you belong, fully, no part of yourself obscured, your roots and branches drenched with life-giving water that fills you with the strength to endure, and more than strength—-joy, and ease, and hope.
Let’s get out of this wilderness, okay? Let’s each find our wells, our anchors to gather around, and build cells, many many small communities around the country and around the world. Make sure that wisdom and practice is at the center of the group you’re gathering with—but that can look many ways. You can meet with folks to discuss Miriam’s wisdom that we’ve explored in this podcast or you can create a book club or a pottery practice. Whatever nourishes you and helps you build community.
Let’s practice accessing Miriam’s Well together:
Get comfortable in your seat, if you’re in a place where you can close your eyes or lower your gaze, I invite you to do so.
Place your right hand, the hand of Compassion, palm down on your belly, and your left hand, hand of strength over it.
Take a deep breath in. Hold it for a moment. And then release slowly. Again, breathe in. And slowly, out.
Imagine you’re in a desolate landscape, barren, empty. The sun is burning down. Imagine you see others staggering through this wilderness, each person alone, each person dazed and disoriented. There’s a rock at your feet. It looks like any of the other rocks that dot this landscape. But instead of stumbling past this rock, lurching forward, you stop, you kneel to the ground, you place your hands on the rock, gently, and you sing to it:
“Open up your eyes to the sunlight, open up your heart to the song, listen to the drum beat so steady, together, we will overcome.”
The rock begins to drip with water, water begins to flow, and you cup your hands and bring the cool water to your lips and you drink deeply. You feel the water moving through your body, nourishing you, feel the clarity that the water gives you, feel the seed of Miriam energy in your belly, that ancient pulse of life, a gift placed within, from the ancestors, soak in the water. See that seed growing rich roots that anchor you in the ground, stabilizing you, and a trunk that rises up your spine, keeping you supple and strong, drawing water up to energetic branches the sprout from your shoulders and crown, thick with blossoms of joy.
And then lift your head and call out to the other figures in the landscape:
(second lyric of Ella’s song) “Take my hand and together we will walk down this winding road, look around and together. We won’t fear what we don’t know, open up your eyes to the sunlight, open up your heart to the song, listen to the drum beat so steady, together we will overcome, walk with me together as we cross this beautiful land, walk with me, my friend, together, all of us, hand in hand.”
And then there’s a small group of you drinking from the well you found, the well sent to you by Miriam, and everyone’s roots are sinking deep into the ground and everyone’s trunks are rising rising tall, and everyone’s branches are spreading out in relief, and you raise your eyes, and you’re no longer in a wilderness, an orchard has risen, the trees have grown into a forest (Isaiah 32:15).
Take a deep breath in. Know that this is a vision, a vision of prophecy, for your life. Feel how oxygen-rich the air is. Feel the comfort of the company you’ve curated. Feel the well flowing over your feet. Feel the love of Miriam all around.
Take another deep breath in. And out.
When you’re ready, gently bring yourself back to the present. Open your eyes if they were closed. Feel the ground beneath you. The breath in your body.
Miriam’s Well is with you. Always. And I’d like to offer you a blessing as we bring this podcast to a close.
May you be blessed to remember that you were built for times like this.
May you be blessed with the spiritual chutzpah to demand and shape a new era of justice, compassion, and joy.
May you be blessed with the chakeh mah to maintain equanimity whatever unfolds, and to recognize your moment to act, your role that you get to play in this unfolding.
May you be blessed with tehora he, the ability to never lose sight of the good that dwells within every person—especially yourself.
May you be blessed to dance often and in good company, to Shiru LAdonay, seize every moment of joy you get with a full and open heart.
And may the Well of Miriam rise before you, clear and abundant, even in the driest wilderness.
May you meet other Miriam people, like you, at the well, and may the waters of the well quench your deepest thirst for wisdom, for healing, for the strength to continue.
May you drink deeply and be transformed: turning pain into insight, fear into courage, exile into belonging. May you move forward with your community knowing that you are not lost, not forsaken—
but carried, nourished, and guided by the flow of something ancient, something enduring, something holy.
And May you feel the tender love of the ancestor Miriam walking with you, every step of the way.
I'm rabbi Jericho Vincent, and I'm so grateful to have taken this trip with you, guided by the ancestor Morah Miriam. This has been a Survival Guide for a Spiritual wilderness. I'll see you on the path.
Thanks to Ella Joy Meir for the beautiful original music, the Kanfei Edges Group, to my creative partner Ben Blum, to Morah Miriam for her guidance, and to Ruach HaOlam, the oneness within, between and beyond us all. Survival Guide for a Spiritual Wilderness is a part of the Judaism Unbound family of podcasts made possible with support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah.
