Serpents and Spirals of change: Letting teshuva be our guide
by Lior Gross
Content note: descriptions of symptoms of chronic illness, including MCAS & ME/CFS; unreality/psychosis
When I became acutely debilitated by chronic illness, I started having dreams of snakes. Many different kinds of dreams, with many kinds of snakes: snakes that looked like dragons, snakes in water, vipers, anacondas, all different kinds of slithering serpents. In a Jewish dream group, I told them about one dream in particular. The reflections I received were that I was going through a crucible of important change. That was certain, I thought at the time – everything was changing. It was the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, with lockdown and uprisings against police brutality. At the same time, my body and its functions were unrecognizable from what I was used to – immobility episodes, allergic reactions, crushing fatigue. When I asked my rabbi about how to navigate the uncertainty, she guided me to imagine floating on the waters rather than trying to swim away. What I didn’t know then was that I would be in for a much deeper transformation.
A year and a half later, I was in deep cocoon mode – unable to move from my bed, fed and cared for by many hands – and I started experiencing visions of snakes during the daytime. They would travel up and down my spine and curl up in my abdomen. They reminded me of old gods of Egypt and I was afraid they would take over my body. I wanted to exorcise these phantoms. All my strength started going towards engaging with the fear, as voices told me my decisions were precarious and my life hung in the balance. Little did I realize this was true – not because of the supernatural threat but because I was tending to the energetic when I needed to be grounded in the physical, caring for my weakening body in order to take care of my soul.
I was very afraid a great deal of the time for many other reasons. Breathing was difficult, let alone speaking, swallowing, or moving my limbs. I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t tolerate light, noise, textures, temperature changes. It took a month to adjust to a pillow under my head instead of laying completely flat. Whenever I tried a new food or was exposed to a perfume or chemical, I would break out in hives and feel my throat closing.
I felt electrified yet frozen with terror, waking up throughout the night screaming with my heart pounding. I was hardly moving and yet I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t look at screens, so I didn’t have anything I could do but journey through the soul. My interior life was active with processing, remembering, meditating, and turning bits of Torah over and over.
This week’s parasha teaches us about a deep truth: the power of uncertainty. Hashem is Great Mystery[i], Change[ii], the ultimate Stranger[iii] and the Unknown Manifest. When we try to define the Divine, we run the risk of idolatry by limiting the Divine to a known quantity, an image, something to grasp onto.
According to some streams of Jewish mysticism, the universe in its current iteration was created and is being created continuously for the sake of relationship. In relationship, it is love’s anathema to fix someone in your mind as one immutable idea, to place them on a pedestal as a frozen statue of who you think they are. A relationship is about learning to encounter the other sideways[iv] again and again, peering through the lattice[v], peeking behind the veil.
Why do we grasp so tightly, then? It is so easy and yet destructive. Perhaps it is easier to have a known loss than an unknown potential, to keep oneself isolated rather than plunge into the depths of the holy dark[vi], [vii], the underground buried place of renewal and change.
The parasha this week invites us into the cave, to explore the roots of our fears. We will go slowly, starting at the shallows. Do not go too far too fast all at once, or you will get lost.
In Parashat Chukat, the people are given the paradoxical, magical instruction of the ritual of the red heifer – its ashes and preparation makes anyone in contact tamei, yet the waters of lustration that its ashes help create can render someone tahor.
Miriam dies in Kadesh, and the people are without water. They are afraid and wish they had died instead of gone to freedom and lived.
Aharon and Moshe face the glory of the Divine, and then Moshe hits the rock at Meribah for water instead of speaking to it, as instructed. He and Aharon will not get to see the promised land.
The people Israel try to cross through Edom but are denied passage.
Aharon dies.
The people Israel wage war and destroy.
In our parashah, Numbers 21:4, it is written:
וַתִּקְצַ֥ר נֶֽפֶשׁ־הָעָ֖ם בַּדָּֽרֶךְ׃
And the people’s soul was made short on the road.
The last time the people had short spirit was in Egypt.
To have restricted breath is a state I am familiar with. It could refer to hyperventilation, or chest tightness from an allergic reaction, or the slow ways in which tension held in the abdomen for a long time eats away at your lung capacity. We brace ourselves against the unknown and in doing so reduce our ability to respond with full spirit.
So the people speak out against their Divine, through the name Elokim, and Moshe. They assume death is imminent.
What does Hashem do?
The Divine sends serpents.
וַיְשַׁלַּ֨ח ײ בָּעָ֗ם אֵ֚ת הַנְּחָשִׁ֣ים הַשְּׂרָפִ֔ים וַֽיְנַשְּׁכ֖וּ אֶת־הָעָ֑ם
(Numbers 21:6)
And the Divine sent in the people fiery burning serpents, and they bit the people.
Why are they called fiery? Because the seraph feature of the serpents burns the soul[viii]
Nashchu, they bit, also sounds like nachash, but it does not have quite the same letters.
The snakes bite the people, and many die, bringing true their fears.
The people come to Moshe, and say, “We have sinned!”
Is there direct causality? Is the plague and death a necessary catalyst for change? I believe that Hashem is a G?!d of life and would rather we choose life, and also that we cannot make sense of death or tragedy for others – only they can do this for themselves.
Rather, let us focus on what the text does say: this illustrates a new or latent trait of the people – the ability for self reflection and awareness.
“Because we have spoken against YKVK and you”
The people identifying that their relationship in terms of the chata, missing the mark, is with the unknown presence of the Divine instead of the Elokim presence they previously spoke against.
What is more, the people ask Moshe to הִתְפַּלֵּל֙, which is the verb from which we derive tefillah, prayer. This is in the hit’pael form, which is reflexive and cooperative, both active and passive.
How does Moshe’s self reflection function as communal prayer? Why not bring a chata offering (animal sacrifice) to the mishkan (holy dwelling place of the Divine)?
וְיָסֵ֥ר מֵעָלֵ֖ינוּ אֶת־הַנָּחָ֑שׁ
(Numbers 21:7)
The people ask Moshe to turn the snakes away from them.
Why is this verb, turn away, used? They don’t ask for the snakes to be destroyed, or for people to be healed. Simply they ask for the snakes to be redirected. This turning-away is also in contrast to the turning-towards of prayer and teshuvah.
What do snakes symbolize? They shed their skins, which can show rebirth or renewal, fertility, change. They appear at crossroads, literal or metaphorical, denoting choice and possibility, the unknown and uncertainty. They have no arms or legs, yet they move with ease – many cultures associate snakes with magic. Their bite can wound or kill, yet in smaller quantities can be healing – snakes can also represent medicine. For many, snakes also represent fear.
וַיִּתְפַּלֵּ֥ל מֹשֶׁ֖ה בְּעַ֥ד הָעָֽם
(Numbers 21:7)
And Moshe prayed on behalf of the people.
It does not say that Moshe prayed to Hashem, as the people asked. Perhaps this would be redundant. However, the change in wording does seem significant. This shift emphasizes the relationship Moshe still has with the people, even after they speak against him, in contrast with his reaction earlier at the waters of Meribah (Numbers 20:8-12).
How does Hashem respond?
עֲשֵׂ֤ה לְךָ֙ שָׂרָ֔ף וְשִׂ֥ים אֹת֖וֹ עַל־נֵ֑ס וְהָיָה֙ כׇּל־הַנָּשׁ֔וּךְ וְרָאָ֥ה אֹת֖וֹ וָחָֽי
(Numbers 21:8)
Make for yourself a seraph (fiery) and put in on a standard (same word as miracle) and it will be that all who were bitten will see it and will live.
What does it mean to live? Does it mean that the people will continue on as if it was before they were bitten and will be miraculously cured? How does the snakebite make a mark on them spiritually, metaphorically, and physically? When we go through something as traumatizing and transformative as deadly illness, what does living mean after that?
My teacher R’ Charna Rosenholtz describes this as homeopathic, inoculating the people with the resistance against the venom necessary by having them face their fears.
Fear is a response of our bodyminds that has evolved so that we may live. But what happens when fear keeps us from living, long after the threat has passed?
Moshe does not do exactly as Hashem instructs:
וַיַּ֤עַשׂ מֹשֶׁה֙ נְחַ֣שׁ נְחֹ֔שֶׁת וַיְשִׂמֵ֖הוּ עַל־הַנֵּ֑ס
(Numbers 21:9)
Moshe made a copper serpent and he put it on the standard
Why copper, other than the consonance in Hebrew? (nachash nechoshet)
According to the Or HaChayimviii, “The animal itself symbolised the slander against G?!d, whereas the material from which Moses constructed it symbolised the slander against Moses the people were guilty of.”
R’ Charna taught me that she was taught about the magical qualities of copper to conduct energy, and she was instructed as such to always have some of it in her medicine bundles. Copper is indeed conductive, and also a powerful antimicrobial agent. What’s more, copper is referenced in the Torah (Exodus 38:8) as the material of the laver, the basin the priests wash their hands in, and a potent midrash[ix] teaches that the laver was made from mirrors used to arouse and seduce in order to ensure the continuity of the Hebrews while enslaved in Egypt. Copper is associated with life. Slander against a person changes the way they are engaged with by their peers and community – it can reify a single story[x] and replaces the ability of the person to grow and change with a snapshot of one person’s interpretation of the person slandered.
Sometimes fear demands that we hold onto certainty. The antidote to this, R’ Charna explained to me, is to follow the example of the snake and die to yourself. Let yourself change and transform into shapes unknowable. Become monstrous and otherwiseiv. Life is a flowing river – let go of the shore. Life is one of the highest praises of Hashem[xi]. In order to dive in to the current of aliveness, I had to embrace the face of the Divine that is Change, uncertainty, Great Mystery. I had to accept that I didn’t know what was going to happen. I could no longer confine the possibilities to a box, and that meant accepting that positive outcomes, however far-fetched, were still on the table alongside the fear. I just did not know. I had to take it one breath at a time. And life does not come without change. As I dove in deeper, I felt the difference in valence between fear and love as my thoughts and sensations would shift with a change in vibratory frequency. Love allowed me to hold my fear tenderly. It welcomed in self forgiveness and was a balm for my terror. Softening into the sense of feeling held helped me unwind my clenched muscles. I was still afraid, and I was not resisting the fear as much. This opened the pathway for prayer, for self reflection, for doubting the voices and the fears.
In the parasha, Moshe takes a new approach to his relationship to the Divine. He hears the Mystery’s call to give the people what they need, not exactly what they want. Before, when the people demanded meat, a giant flock came down from heaven, covering the earth, rotting, and making the people Israel sick. In listening through his heart to the Divine through self-reflective prayer, Moshe discerns that the people need a sense of agency to help with their fear. They need to take their lives into their own hands in a small way. With the serpent on the standard, Moshe, as a vehicle for the Divine instruction, helps the people bring about a miracle – choosing life. This requires the people to trust Moshe and the Divine again, restoring a fractured relationship. The people and Moshe demonstrated that they could allow to themselves to let go of what they thought they knew in order to become more. This is the process inherent in teshuva, that upward spiral that brings us back to who we are becoming in a time-twisting way. Teshuva says return to the everlasting truth of change. It is said teshuva was created before the universe and as such is an orienting principle for this iteration of creation[xii]. Through the power of returning again and again to the Divine oneness, interconnectedness, and aliveness of the universe, our bodyminds, hearts and souls are taught that learning is achievable and that transformation is available[xiii]. In a parasha about death, fear transforms into life. And then what happens? Is there room to grieve?
Grief tells us that we have loved and the deeper that love, the larger the vessel for the grief. Allowing ourselves to feel the grief in whatever capacity is possible is transformative, because it shows our systems that we can do hard things. Teshuva is like grief – we become resilient through the process of its metabolization. When we learn Torah, or engage in relationships, or pray, we make small and large mistakes, and have the opportunity to try to find the strength and forgiveness to try again. This is one reason that Torah learning is important because it leads to action[xiv]: learning is a homeopathic inoculation of grief and teshuva.
In our world of constant change, cultivating the space inside ourselves for flux allows for access to life-giving flow. In order to change, we let go of what we think we know and look at what’s true in the present moment instead.
I am still finding my way with this bodymind that has been changed by illness, and is still changing. I am not leaning into teshuva as a return to a perfect past self or a panacea for my fears and illness. Rather, I am integrating what I have learned along the way as I build towards who I am becoming. Through the process of teshuva, in each moment and each day we can be a new creation if we believe ourselves to be so[xv]. Through my intention, I choose this iteration of creation to be organized around the principles of love and peace, wholeness and unity. May I be blessed with the spaciousness to continue to grapple with fear as it arises. May we all be blessed to know that on this day, we may make the radical choice to live.
[i] R’ Yael Levy, of A Way In, often refers to the Divine as the Mystery in her contemplative translations of Psalms and other Jewish texts.
[ii] Octavia Butler, an Afrofuturist, a visionary, and a prolific science fiction writer, wrote in her books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents about Earthseed, a belief system rooted in the tenet G?!D is Change
[iii] Joy Ladin, a poet, essayist, and former David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, writes in her book The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective about G?!D as the ultimate stranger.
[iv] Bayo Akomolafe, a post-activist trans-public intellectual, author, and teacher, writes and speaks about ways we can move, outside of colonial norms and neurotypical imaginations, awkward ways of orienting that help us encounter the other, the strange, the unknowable that dwells in the cracks. He encourages us to become monstrous in the original sense of the term, to shock ourselves and each other out of the trance of hegemonic normalcy in order to encounter the unexpected that is present in everything. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/release-the-kraken-why-we-need-monsters-in-these-times-of-crises
[v] Song of Songs 2:9, a Jewish text of love that is part of the canon of the TaNaCh (Torah (5 books of Moses), Neviim (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings)), whose authorship is ascribed to King Solomon; understood mystically as an allegory for the love between the People Israel and the Divine
[vi] R’ Fern Feldman writes and teaches of the sacred darkness in Judaism: https://rabbifernfeldman.com/?p=461
[vii] Pir Ibrahim Baba Farajajé, aka Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé, may zhis secret be sanctified, is a scholartivist, tikkunolamologist, queer the@logian and public intellectual of multi-religiosity. He wrote and taught about the luminous dark in Sufi Muslim and Jewish thought: https://taya.ma/luminousdark
[viii] Chaim Ibn Attar, a Moroccan rabbi, Torah commentator, and kabbalist, wrote in his work Or HaChaim about the serpents in Numbers 21:6, and extensively about the process of teshuva as it is implicated in our parashah. I highly recommend reading his seven-part commentary on Numbers 21:8, which I encountered after I wrote the majority of this drash: https://www.sefaria.org/Or_HaChaim_on_Numbers.21.8.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
[ix] Midrash Tanchuma is a commentary on the Torah by the Sages, especially R’ Tanchuma. It goes parasha by parasha through the text. In its commentary on Parashat Pekudei, in Siman 9, the midrash tells about the enslaved Hebrew women in Egypt defying Pharaoh by seducing their husbands in the fields where they worked, by using copper mirrors that would later be used to create the laver in the mishkan.
[x] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a postcolonial feminist author, spoke in her 2009 TED Talk The Danger of A Single Story about the ways in which a single story about someone or something can flatten our understanding of the true rich, deep, and dynamic existence of that someone or something, and of ourselves and the world in general. A single story can come from or lead to tokenization, stereotypes, and prejudices, and reify existing power imbalances. A single story, much like a monocropped field, can only yield so much before it exhausts itself, and does not represent the full bounty and beauty there is to offer. It is unsustainable, and can be harmful.
[xi] Psalm 148 expounds upon the variety of creation that all praises Hashem, and Psalm 150 says
,“כּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל ײ”
every breath/all life/all the soul praises Hashem, as well as in the Shabbat morning liturgy, it is written that
“נִשְׁמַת כָּל חַי תְּבָרֵךְ אֶת שִׁמְךָ ה"
The soul/breath of all life praises Hashem’s name.
How can elements of creation, including breath itself, praise Hashem? Through their very existence.
[xii] The Talmud asserts that there were seven things created before creation, including Teshuva (Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 54a). R’ Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first rebbe of the Chabad chasidic movement, also wrote in his 19th century commentary on Parashat Ha’Azinu about teshuvah predating the universe.
[xiii] Cantor Abbe Lyons, in an interpretive Amidah shared with me by R’ Diane Elliot of Taproot, chants “teshuvah is possible” and “forgiveness is available” and “transformation is happening”, for their respective prayers in the Amidah.
[xiv] In the Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 40b, the Sages are asked: “Is study greater or is action greater? Rabbi Tarfon answered and said: Action is greater. Rabbi Akiva answered and said: Study is greater. Everyone answered and said: Study is greater, as study leads to action.”
[xv] R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, a chassidic master, wrote in the Kedushat Levi, Deuteronomy, Megillat Eicha 16: “"Return us to you, God, and we will return; renew our days as of old." Let us understand precisely what is meant by "as of old." It is explained in the midrash on the verse, "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear God." The midrash (Sanhedrin 98a) says, "'Now' refers to teshuva." And the explanation is thus: Every person of Israel is obligated to believe with complete faith that at every moment they receive life from the Creator, as they expounded: "'Let every neshama praise God'--that is, with every breath (neshima) praise God." For at every moment the life force wishes to leave a person, and the Holy Blessed One sends to the person, at every moment, a new life force. This implies that teshuva works for every person, for at the moment that one does teshuva, one believes that one is a new creation, and in this God in God's abundant mercy does not remind the person of their previous errors. But if, God forbid, a person does not believe this, then, God forbid, teshuva is not effective. And this is the explanation of the midrash that says 'Now' refers to teshuva--since the person believes that now they are a new creation, teshuva is effective for them. And this is the explanation of the verse, 'Return us to You, God, and we will return.' How will we return? "Renew our days as of old." This is what the Talmud explains [in the story of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi]: "When will the Messiah come?" He answered, "Today"--Today, if you will listen to his voice, if you will realize that every day you are created anew.”
Lior Gross (they/them/theirs) is a student at Hebrew Seminary’s rabbinical school, a cofounder of the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, and an educator at Pearlstone, the headquarters of Adamah. They live on Piscataway land and love to be outside, connecting with the riot of life that bursts forth in all seasons. They are exploring what it means to slow down and radically rest in a time of polycrisis, and how the fractals of this apocalypse manifest in their body and the Earth’s body as disability, neurodivergence, and queerness. Some of the communities they have learned from are the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, JOIN for Justice’s Empower Fellowship, We Will Dance With Mountains, Shomeret Shalom, and Taproot.
