‘Miriam’s Razor’ Parashat Chukat 5786
After forty years in the desert, Miriam dies. In the very next verse, the Torah tells us [Bemidbar 20:2]: “And the congregation had no water to drink; so they assembled against Moshe and Aaron”. The traditional explanation is well known. The Talmud in Tractate Ta’anit [9a] teaches that a miraculous well that accompanied the Jewish People in the wilderness existed in Miriam’s merit. When Miriam died, the well disappeared. No well, no water. Yet if we read the text without that tradition in mind, another possibility emerges: Miriam died and there was no water. Plain and simple. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. After all, the Jewish People were traveling through a desert. Deserts are famous for lacking water[1]. Why should we assume that one event caused the other? And yet, the vast majority of commentators follow the Talmud’s lead and connect the water shortage to Miriam’s Well, which, by the way, is not mentioned even once in the Torah. In fact, I could not find even one commentator who offered any other reason for the water shortage.
As a rocket scientist, I spend much of my life applying “Occam’s[2] Razor”, the principle that among competing explanations we should prefer the one that requires the fewest assumptions. If a sensor reports an anomaly, I do not immediately assume sabotage, software corruption, and mechanical failure occurring simultaneously. I begin with the simplest explanation that accounts for the data. In the case of Miriam’s death, when the causes are applied to the events themselves, the simplest explanation seems straightforward: There was no water because they were in a desert. No miracle is required. No hidden mechanism is required. Geography explains everything.
But there is another kind of Occam’s Razor. While scientists apply Occam’s Razor to reality, Torah scholars, particularly those who deal with biblical exegesis, apply it to the text. The scientific question is why there was no water. The Torah scholar’s question is why the Torah places Miriam’s death immediately before the report that there was no water. If the Torah is an intentional document in which every word matters, then juxtaposition itself demands explanation. Why should these two events appear side by side? Further, why should the verse “And the congregation had no water” begin with the Hebrew letter “vav (and)”, linking it to the previous verse? From that perspective, the simplest explanation is not that the two events are unrelated. The simplest explanation is that they are well and truly connected. Our Sages are not ignoring Occam’s Razor. They are applying it to a different dataset.
What makes this imbroglio even more intriguing is that the Jewish People themselves never make the connection. Nobody ever says that Miriam died and therefore the water disappeared. Nobody mentions her merit. Nobody attributes the crisis to her loss. Nobody tells Moshe to pray for someone to take Miriam’s place[3]. The people simply complain that they are thirsty. They focus on the immediate physical problem. In a sense, they are applying their own version of Occam’s Razor. There is no water because there is no water. The desert is dry. We need a solution. End of story.
The reader, however, occupies a different vantage point. The Jewish People experience the events. The reader sees the structure. The people experience thirst. The reader sees that Miriam’s death occupies one verse and the water crisis occupies the next. The people are trapped inside history. The reader is invited to step outside history and ask why the story is being told this way. The Torah never explicitly states that Miriam’s death caused the disappearance of water. Instead, it presents two facts and leaves a conspicuous gap between them. That gap becomes the space in which interpretation occurs.
The key insight may be that multiple layers of causality can coexist simultaneously. Engineers deal with this all the time. If a rocket fails – say, the wing falls off after the missile goes supersonic[4] – the immediate cause may be a cracked solder joint. The root cause may be a manufacturing defect that Quality Assurance missed during their inspection. The ultimate cause may be a flawed organizational culture – the production line, under undue stress to reach their production goals, perhaps cut some corners here and there. So who is the guilty party? Who should be fired? The truth is that these explanations do not compete with one another. They operate at different levels and in some way, all of them are true. The same may be true here. Physically, there was no water because they were in a desert. Historically, they faced a genuine logistical challenge. Literarily, the Torah deliberately juxtaposes the crisis with Miriam’s death. Spiritually, according to the Sages, Miriam’s merit sustained the nation and her loss was manifested through the disappearance of water. Each explanation answers a different question. Neither competes with the other[5].
Rabbi Eliyahu Zinni[6] taught us that there is no disagreement between science and Torah, just between scientists and Torah scholars. Too often we assume that one explanation must eliminate all the others. A scientist who insists that physical causality is the only causality has overreached. A religious thinker who ignores physical causality has done the same. Reality is richer than either reduction. The desert remains a desert. The laws of nature remain intact. The people remain thirsty. Yet Miriam’s death is still placed immediately before the water crisis, and that placement itself demands explanation. The Torah is not a newspaper reporting isolated events; it is a text that encodes meaning through structure. Ignoring that structure would be no less an oversimplification than ignoring the physical reality of a waterless desert.
Perhaps this is why the Torah purposely leaves the connection unstated. Had it explicitly declared that the well disappeared because Miriam died, there would be little room for reflection or intellectual engagement. Instead, the Torah invites us into the conversation. Some readers will see coincidence. Some will see causality. Some will see symbolism. A religious rocket scientist can comfortably see all three, holding them in productive tension rather than forcing a premature choice. He studies hydrology when confronted with a desert. He studies textual structure when confronted with a carefully crafted narrative. He recognizes that the scientist’s Occam’s Razor explains the absence of water, while the Torah’s Occam’s Razor explains the placement of the verse. Neither explanation invalidates the other. Together they serve as a prism, revealing a world in which physical reality and spiritual meaning are not adversaries but, rather, partners, each illuminating dimensions of truth that the other alone cannot fully explain, and each pointing toward a deeper unity that transcends them both individually.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5786
Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.
[1] The Sinai Desert receives 10-30 [mm] of rain a year. To put things in perspective, Moreshet gets about 600 [mm] a year. Further, the “rainy season” in the Sinai runs from November to February. Miriam died in the month of Nissan, which corresponds to March or April. This would be just about when the water began to run out.
[2] Attributed to an English Franciscan friar and logician named William of Ockham, in the late 1th or 14th century
[3] Each year, when we recite the “Prayer for Rain”, we name a litany of our ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moshe, Aaron, and the Twelve Tribes) and ask G-d to give us rain by their merit.
[4] Yes, this happened to me. Well, sort of. It wasn’t the wing that fell off but, rather, a conduit. And it was a prototype missile. But you get the point…
[5] Lest the reader ask, “But what really happened? If we had a time-machine and could go backwards to Moshe’s time, what would we see?” The answer is that we would see Miriam being buried and then we would see the nation thirsting for water. The cause and effect, then just as now, would be left to the interpretation of the observer.
[6] Rav Zinni was the rabbi of the Technion and is now the Rosh Yeshiva Emeritus of Ohr Vishua in Haifa.
