Beha'alotkha (Part 2) - Numbers 8:1-12:16

In this week's Torah portion we have Moses having an emotional meltdown, then God having to prove that He can provide enough meat for the people (and then killing those who ate it!), and some other emotional outburst, such as people being given the power of prophecy which started freaking out some of the others.

After all of this, Aaron and Miriam are having a conversation about Moses and his cushi wife.

Cushi could be an ethnic group, or could refer to a darker skinned person. These are the two general interpretations of the word.

Now, this meme was created to take advantage of a pop-culture icon - the white woman who gets on the phone to complain about black people. But the text actually says, "And Miriam and Aaron...".

And after this event, Miriam gets stricken with a skin disease that requires that she be apart from the rest of the people, and then have a priest check if she is OK after a period of time, forcing her to shave all the hair off of her body and immerse herself in a pool of water.

But what about Aaron?

Nothing happens.

That's right, the same guy who made the golden calf and was made High Priest, the guy who has almost no dialogue and rarely interacts with the population, again walks away from any punishment.

This is akin to last week, where we read that a supernatural test for an adulteress, which can be used when there is no witnesses, has no equivalent for the man. And if the husband of the accused adulteress turns out to have been innocent, nothing happens to the man.

While this is not exactly the same thing, it does seem to be a bit unfair.

One thing that people have to realize is that Miriam, like Tzippora, are minor characters, unlike the animated movie, "The Prince of Egypt" where, if it weren't for them and their feature song, the Jews wouldn't have followed Moses.

Remember, when Aaron and Moses die, the people are in mourning. When Miriam dies, for them it was a non-event to which they respond, "So, where's the water?"

Aaron, on the other hand, is a sort of "founding father" of the priesthood. And while he was not allowed to enter the land of Israel for some undisclosed sin, for the most part, God and Moses both bent over backward to make sure that Aaron was given one honor after another.

And perhaps that is why, in the story, Aaron does not get punished, because he represents the entire priesthood, and for him to be rendered unclean as a priest, and as a symbol of all future priests, it would have been unseemly for him to become a metzorah - afflicted with an unclean supernatural skin disease.

But for a woman who will be unclean monthly, well, to the author, that wasn't such a big deal for her.

Yeah, it sucked being a female character in a minor role in the Tanach.

But remember, these stories were never written for women.