Israeli women sail to Miriam’s Well on Lake Kinneret
Devorah Abramson and Yehudit Dribben blow the shofar at Miriam's Well on Lake Kinneret. Photo by Aviva Spiegel.
JERUSALEM — In the annals of the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Maureen Kushner has a rare happy story — and likely the only one dating back more than 3,000 years.
For the last 12 years, on the anniversary of the death of Miriam the Prophetess on Nisan 10 in the Hebrew calendar, New York-born Kushner has been chartering a vessel from Holyland Sailing in Tiberias to bring a boat full of women to the spot on Lake Kinneret where, according to Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:1), the mystical peripatetic spring known as Miriam’s Well now rests.
Typically, 126 women and children equipped with rams horns, violins, harps, drums, flutes, guitars and tambourines have made the joyful maritime pilgrimage on the freshwater body, also called the Sea of Galilee and Lake of Gennesaret, to what Jewish tradition considers the exact spot where the miraculous spring — which supplied the children of Israel with water during their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai Desert — ended its own journey.
This year, the yahrzeit (death anniversary) of Miriam began on the eve of Friday, April 3, immediately before Passover. But Kushner, who is named after the miracle-working older sister of Moses, told Religion Unplugged she booked the sailing for Thursday, April 2 in order to allow Sabbath-observant women from Jerusalem and other distant cities to join. All was set for this year’s celebration when Israel’s Health Ministry locked down the country in mid-March in an attempt to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
At their most severe, the pandemic regulations restricted Israelis to remaining within 100 meters of their home and prevented almost all non-citizens from landing at Ben-Gurion Airport. Without any tourists arriving, the pilgrim boats remained moored in Tiberias and at Kibbutz Ginosar for almost three months.
Recently, the Health Ministry began lifting some of its pandemic regulations. On Wednesday, June 3, the ministry allowed Kushner and her social-distancing reduced group of 40 women and children — equipped with face masks, water, hats, sunscreen and kosher snacks — to make their 135-minute voyage on the lyre-shaped lake. When the King David raised its anchor, it was Holyland Sailing's first boat trip since quarantine regulations went into effect.
“What a hallelujah for our beloved Kinneret!” Kushner said. “What a hallelujah in honor of our great, great, great HaKodesh Baruch Hu (the Holy One Blessed Be He), who is filled with goodness and compassion and love and blesses Am Israel (the Jewish People) with rain and dew and sustenance and a good life here in Eretz Israel, the Good Land.”
Kushner told Religion Unplugged she was especially excited that this past winter saw heavy rains, which filled the freshwater reservoir to the brim at about 209 meters below sea level after five years of drought in Israel.
“The Kinneret is full! In great and abundant thanks to HaShem (God) in the zechut (merit) of Miriam HaNivia (Miriam the Prophetess), we celebrated with shofarim, drums, flutes and the harp,” Kushner said.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Miriam was married to Caleb ben Yefuneh. Though she died in the wilderness of Zin, he miraculously carried the spring named in his wife’s honor across the Jordan River on Nisan 10, Kushner told Religion Unplugged.
Miriam's death is noted in Numbers 20:1, and in the next verse, the Israelites complain about the lack of water at Kadesh. The text reads, "Miriam died there and was buried there. The congregation had no water; so they assembled against Moses and Aaron."
In Jewish tradition, this abrupt shift from her death to complaints about the lack of water was explained by postulating a "well of Miriam" appeared after she died. Further elaboration identified the rock that Moses struck to bring forth water in Exodus 17:5-6 with this well.
Today, Miriam the Prophetess has become a popular figure for Jewish feminists.
So powerful was the memory of Miriam’s Well in Jewish lore that even after the spring disappeared into Lake Kinneret more than three millennia ago, it was said to have occasionally appeared miraculously, briefly wandering in the diaspora.
According to Hasidic lore, Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Taub (1751–1821), who was the sage of Nagykálló (Kalov in Yiddish) in eastern Hungary, once called on his assistant Rabbi Yaakov Fish to harness his horse and wagon just before Yom Kippur. The two set out to Fish’s fields, where they found a small pool. Immediately the holy man disrobed and immersed himself, while Fish stood by transfixed. After the Day of Atonement, Fish returned to his fields, which he knew intimately. But the pool had disappeared. Fish asked his master, “Rabbi, as you know, despite our long friendship I never mix into your affairs. But I beg you to enlighten me about the pool of water that appeared and disappeared so mysteriously in my fields.”
The holy man, who founded the Kaliver Hasidic dynasty, smiled: “If Rabbi Yaakov had had the sense, he would have dipped himself the same as I did, for at that moment, Miriam’s Well passed by.”