The Family Wolf, Benjamin, and Purim
Although I plan to hold the Footsteps live stream on Shabbat, I wanted to take a short break from the Footsteps to take a look toward Purim. Maybe it's not the traditional view of Purim, but a strange confluence of events this week put me in a more introspective state of mind and heart. It has to do with how the story of Esther begins, within the tribe of Benjamin. When Mordechai adopts the orphaned Hadassah as his own daughter, the story begins, long before Queen Vashti's refusal to appear.
Even in exile, family stuck together. This is an overlooked attribute of Benjamin, represented by the wolf. We tend to see the predatory side of the wolf, but there is another side that Scripture carefully records. That attribute of the wolf defeated wicked Haman and a foolish king's decree. It was an attribute so important that the Holy One chose not to insert His Name in the entire scroll even though He was working behind the scenes.
Through a family of wolves.
Please walk with me.
My happy place in Israel (after Jerusalem at the feasts) is located in the Aravah desert at Tamar. It is an active archaeological park, and I was blessed to participate in the last dig before Covid shut down the world, including my world in the Aravah. The fortress is so well restored that you can walk between its buildings just as if it were 3,000 years ago. You can imagine what conversations took place within its walls as successive kings and governors claimed the location for its position on the ancient Spice Route, access to the copper mines, and the road to Etzion-geber and its lucrative shipping routes.
The ancient oasis and caravansary is also known as Ir Ovot in the record of the Israelites’ travels through the wilderness. Certainly Moses would have brought Jethro’s sheep there in winter, following a route of active wells about a day’s journey apart in Midian. There is quite a collection of Midianite pottery there.
There is some dispute as to the meaning of the name Ir Ovot. Perhaps a waterskin. City of Spirits. City of the Ancestors. Regardless, it was a place the Israelites needed to camp before they crossed back to their inheritance. Not as a place of necromancy, but as a place to re-connect with their family, the fathers and mothers of the faith who preceded them through a desert Land, the faith of Abraham and Sarah who also escaped the Egypt of runaway souls.
What I love most about Ir Ovot is not the ancient fortress. It is the birds, reptiles, and other animals who thrive in this desolation. Every single one teaches me a lesson if I am still enough to learn it. The dinosaur-like khardon burrows deep beneath the acacias in the heat of the day. It knows that after the sun vaults over the mountains of Jordan, it smiles while it kisses you to death. The khardon emerges when the sun relents, teaching me that I should never rush to make a decision in the heat of the day that will wait until the cool of the evening.
There is the bright green-blue bee eater who flies among the tamarisks and nests near my caravan. She catches bees, but she thrashes them against a branch until she removes the stinger. Devorah means a bee in Hebrew, and its root, dvar, is a “word.” The bee-eater shows me what to do with words that sting. Thrash out the stinging part, and digest the parts that are nourishing.
The giant golden eagle soars and keeps watch over its territory. It knows the coming and going of every moving thing. The eagle is monogamous and usually mates for life. From the eagle I learn that it takes vigilance to protect and feed the young. Loyalty should be as firm as the rocks of the cliffs where they nest.
There are some grey wolves in the Negev and Aravah deserts, but it is the little Arabian wolf that I most admire. It is small, thin, and wiry to dissipate the oppressive heat, a greyhound among wolves. It has large ears to hear prey and also to release heat. They eat carcasses, small prey, and weak or sick gazelles. Opportunists, they’re known to eat fruit and vegetables from greenhouses and fields. Arabian wolves are nocturnal so that they don’t fall prey to the sun’s passionate kisses. Highly social, they remain lifetime mates who caress and maintain physical contact. The tribe of Benjamin was symbolized by the wolf, most likely this Arabian desert wolf:
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf;
In the morning he devours the prey,
And in the evening he divides the spoils. (Ge 49:27)
Although lone wolves are the vocabulary of romance, the wolf is a practical pack animal. It is social even in one of the most desolate places on earth where food is scarce. It’s so scarce, hyenas have been known to companion-hunt with the wolves, teaming the good hyena nose with the wolves’ cooperative pack tactics. The Benjamin wolf doesn’t keep the meal to herself. She divides the meal with her pack, and this is how wolves survive a deadly wilderness. The Temple stood in the territory of Benjamin, perhaps a testimony to the banner of the wolf. May the human family come and share in the House of Prayer for all Nations.
A pack of wolves travels between Tamar and Givat Hatzeva, the adjacent mountain, evening and morning, following the same route as the local Bedouin moving their sheep. I’m sure it is an ancient route, perhaps the one Moses used when he was a shepherd of sheep before a shepherd of Israel. A few years ago, a member of our Passover group managed to take a picture as a straggler strolled through on the way to work the nightshift.
I first encountered the wolf tracks at Miriam’s Spring near Scorpion’s Ascent. At the place where Miriam died and was buried, Ein Tzin, there is an oasis of water that bubbles from the sand and rock. It flows across the desert, trilling choruses of little waterfalls among the tall, green cane and wild palms. Here there are bird and wildlife tracks in abundance, and among them, the unique angled track of the wolf in the soft earth of the spring.
As I visited with folks who work at the Aravah Institute for Environmental Studies, I learned that this pack of wolves crosses each evening from Jordan to Israel. In Israel, it is a protected species. The border is not much more than a stone’s throw from Tamar, and the Peace Route is a road paralleling the border. If you drive along the Peace Road, you can see vehicles driving on the Jordan highway just on the other side. Although the border is monitored, there is no visible military presence on either side. Desolation is a fence that makes good neighbors.
The wolves cross the Peace Road each evening and morning. They don’t need passports, vaccinations, or luggage. The pack doesn’t belong to either country, but it touches them both. They are what’s left over after boundaries are drawn, citizens of their own ancient path. Maybe it is this that I claim from the wolves. The old saying is that there is no place like home. I’ve never had a place I called home. Too many moves. Nowhere. Everywhere. A scrap left over when God assigned families.
Maybe this is why Israel is so dear. The rootlessness, loneliness, and sometime homelessness of childhood held one constant: the Bible. Emotional and financial instability were offset by a desperate eagle-like clinging to an inscribed Rock in the wilderness. The words of the Bible never moved. They moved me. There was a home, if like Abraham and Sarah, I could leave behind family and friends to find it. Fortunately, I had little to leave behind. The first time I set foot in Israel, I was home. I’d been living within its pages all my life.
Torah works very hard to instill family identity. We were all in Egypt; we were all at Mount Sinai; we are all children of Abraham. The wolves of the Aravah come home every night. They drink the fresh water from Miriam’s Spring, satiated in spite of the saline earth.
Miriam died and was buried there in the Tzin, and there the Israelites rebelled because there was no water. The water dried up when Miriam died. She was the mother of Israel, a prophetess, a leader. The sages point out that while the Israelites had thirty days of mourning for Aaron and Moses, not for Miriam. They were not given the days of mourning for their mother. When we don’t grieve properly what is lost, the grief will work out in ways we don’t like or understand. In this case, the Israelites complained bitterly because the water left them along with their beloved Miriam. The received the rod instead of comfort in grief. So they complained. Rebelled.
I look around for Miriam when I am at her spring. Although the water returned when Moses struck the rock, Moses and Aaron’s act of rebellion in striking instead of speaking to the rock cost them entry to the Promised Land. They were a family. They should have set up days of mourning for their sister, Israel’s mother in faith. Speak of her good deeds and sing her prophecies; don’t strike at her one failure. The Tzin’s ancient seabed and sun crystallize the little outer pools of fresh water into salt once they separate from the main stream.
Miriam’s Spring is far from humanity, so the wolves come here. I think somehow the pack honors her memory. Family. There is not enough sand in the Tzin to quench her memory in an unmarked grave. It absorbed it. It holds her memory there for generation after generation of the wolfpack. At night, they still sing her victory songs. It’s hard to tell the difference between a shofar call and a wolf howl in the mountains of the Tzin. It echoes.
Soil and water flavor a fruit or vegetable. They determine how it will taste. So it is with us. We are a world of grieving families. The salty soil of the Aravah holds the tears for our lost mothers and missing brothers. It flavors how we grow and where we are home. When we are home. Salty. Acid. Bitter. Sweet. There is little in the Aravah more comforting than a chorus of wolves echoing through the rocks. Their home is wherever they sing songs to one another in the night.
In spite of their Persian exile, Esther and Mordechai remained a family. They rallied together under the banner of Benjamin in a wilderness of evil plots and decrees. It saved the Jewish people, a family fractured, scared, troubled, and far from home. Mordechai did not forget Esther in her time of need. Esther did not forget Mordechai when she became Queen of Persia. The Holy One never forgot His children though they were in a faraway land.
The time is coming when we must call to one another across the mountains and streams. Tune up your shofars. No matter where we are, the songs of deliverance are our home until we cross the border together. The Word in you is home.
We do plan to live stream more Footsteps on YouTube on Shabbat at 4:00 pm Eastern.
SHABBAT SHALOM, Family!
