In this week’s Torah portion Hukat, the prophet Miriam dies and the people have no water. They rise up against Moshe in anger. God tells Moshe to speak to a rock so that it will give them water. Moshe snaps at the people and hits the rock instead. (Hold that thought.). Water is often a metaphor for Torah herself: the wellspring of wisdom and inspiration that nourishes us. Through that lens, the loss of Miriam and her well means a kind of loss of Torah.

Miriam’s death means losing access to the spiritual flow of blessing that enlivens us. Grief can make us feel as though our access to that flow has been turned off. I imagine that grief is part of why Moshe made such poor choices here. The wise traditions of shiva offer us time away from work to feel our way through our grief, but Moshe doesn’t seem to take time off: he’s immediately faced with the people’s demands, and he responds to them… not well. 

Because Moshe acted out – speaking angrily to the people and hitting the rock with a stick, instead of speaking gently to it – God declares that Moshe will not enter the Land of Promise. Many commentators wonder, is it really fair to deny Moshe the chance to make it to the place he’s spent forty years trying to reach?! But this year, this passage feels to me like a teaching about how the journey toward the land of promise is perennial. 

The critical word here is toward. Like Moshe, we’re journeying toward promises that were made to our ancestors and their ancestors before them. Like Moshe, we may not “get there” in our lifetime. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying. Every step we take toward our ideals is one step closer to where we want to be and where we want our children to be. This year, this parsha makes me think about our nation as a land of promise – the promise of liberty and justice for all. 

Our ideals matter, and so do the means by which we pursue them. Torah reminds us that anger and violence don’t get us closer to the promise of a better world. Instead we need to lift each other up with kindness and curiosity and humility. That’s how we tap into the life-giving waters that can nourish us on the journey toward embodying our ideals. We might never reach those ideals, but what matters is that we keep aiming toward them.

Just now I chanted some familiar lines in haftarah trope, the melody system we use for the Prophets: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all [human beings] are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  All human beings are created equal. All means all: no class of human beings is superior to any other, no matter our skin color or gender or birthplace.

Human rights are unalienable: impossible to take away or give up. And among these fundamental rights are our lives, our freedom, and our capacity to pursue meaning. Everyone deserves these: this is one of the core ideals on which our nation was built. We have not yet lived up to that ideal. When our nation began, rights were extended only to white men. To varying degrees, women and people of color were considered to be the white men’s property.

We’ve come a long way, but our work is not done. People with a uterus can no longer choose reproductive health care in many states. The right to birthright citizenship is also at risk. (Historian Heather Cox Richardson explains that history.) The right to due process is at risk, especially for immigrants or for people of color mistakenly assumed to be immigrants. Programs like Medicaid and food security programs, on which many depend, are now very much at risk. 

Granted, health care and food are not among the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. But Professor Brent Strawn explains what the framers meant by “the pursuit of happiness.” It’s not about being “happy.” They meant something more like: living under a government that establishes policies designed to further the flourishing of all people. Perhaps through things like clean water, affordable medical care, enough to eat, and education.

Of course, I’m reading the Declaration of Independence through the lens of Jewish tradition. Our tradition teaches that every town should include certain civic institutions, among them a public school and a trustworthy court. And our tradition teaches that it’s our responsibility to care for the poor within our gates, and to grapple with the question of how to balance caring for “our own” and caring for others. These teachings are part of our tradition’s ethical core. 

All human beings deserve life, liberty, and circumstances in which we can flourish. As Jews, I think part of our obligation in the world is to help create those circumstances for others. That’s part of what I take from Pirkei Avot’s insistence that the world stands or depends on the three pillars of Torah (learning); avodah – which can mean both spiritual life (e.g. “services”) and service of others; and gemilut hasadim – acts of lovingkindness. (Pirkei Avot 1:2)

In what turned out to be his final sermon, Dr. King preached, “I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land.” He knew that, like Moshe, he might not make it there. And probably neither will we. Fully living-out the promises of our nation is a goal we may never be able to reach. But we still try. Learning, service, and lovingkindness can support us in our work toward life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness – toward our ideal of liberty and justice for all. 

Shared with gratitude to my teenager for reminding me of the Pirkei Avot teaching.

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Shabbat morning services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)