“There is no water other than Torah” said our Sages in several places (Bava Kama 17a, Avodah Zara 5b, et al.). And since water is the metaphor for Torah, it is no idle coincidence that so many of the pivotal events in the history of our people involved water.
-G-d’s first judgement ever against humanity in its entirety (except for Noah and his immediate family) was executed by water in the global Flood.
-When Abraham our father had been Abraham for just three days and merited three angels (whom he did not yet identify as angels) visit him, the angels who would herald the birth of his son exactly a year hence, he invited them into his tent with the words “Let a little water be brought…” (Genesis 18:4).
-After Abraham forged his covenant with Phichol, his first disagreement concerned the wells of water which Avimelech’s servants had seized (21:25).
-Decades later, when Abraham sent his servant (whom the Midrashim identify as Eliezer) to Aram-Naharayyim to find a wife for his son Yitzchak, he encountered Rebecca at the well of water (24:11).
-In this week’s parashah, Yitzchak restored the water-wells which his father Abraham had dug, and which the Philistines had blocked. The Philistines’ hatred for Abraham and all that he represented was to visceral that they rejected even the benefits of the water-wells which he had dug (26:18).
-And the conflict between Yitzchak and the Philistines was a conflict over water (26:20).
-Decades later, when Ya’akov returned from his exile with his uncle Lavan, his formative moment was when the angel encountered him at the waters of the River Yabbok: it was then that Ya’akov became Yisrael (32:23-30).
-And centuries later, the Pharaoh of Egypt decreed the death of all baby boys by the waters of the River Nile - yet it was those same waters of the Nile which saved Moshe's life.
-When Moshe grew up and killed the Egyptian slave-diver who was beating the Hebrew slave, and when Moshe subsequently fled to Midian, he met his future wife Tziporah at the well of water (Exodus 2:16-21).
-And decades later, the process of redemption from Egypt began with water when Aaron turned the waters of Egypt into blood, and finished with water when the Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea.
-Forty years after that, the final miracle of redemption was when Joshua led us across the River Jordan into Israel, and stopped the waters from flowing for long enough for the entire nation to cross the river dry-shod, echoing the miracle which Moshe had wrought at the Red Sea (Joshua 3:13-17).
It was this miracle of water that G-d used as Joshua’s credentials to demonstrate to the entire nation that He was with Joshua as He had been with Moshe (v. 7).
-And several centuries later, when the Prophet Eliyahu (Elijah) confronted the false prophets of the Ba’al and the Asherah-tree, Eliyahu drenched his offering in water before calling down fire from Heaven to burn his sacrifice (1 Kings 18:22-39). It was this open miracle that returned the masses of Jews back to Hashem, away from the idolatry that had been rampant.
Over and over again, water is the symbol for blessing:
G-d promises us “the rain of your Land in its appropriate season” as reward for keeping His mitzvot (Deuteronomy 11:14 and 28:12), and Moshe depicts the Land of Israel as “a Land which drinks water from the rains of Heaven” (11:11).
Half-a-millennium later, King David would open the Book of Psalms with his depiction of the ideal man, who does not associate with evil people at all, “and will be as a tree planted on the confluence of waters” (Psalms 1:3).
This is often translated as “streams of water” or something similar, but the word פַּלְגֵי is from פֶּלֶג, meaning “division”, hence my translation “confluence”: “A tree planted on the confluence of waters”, waters coming in abundance from several sources, so even if one river runs completely dry, there is still water aplenty.
Again - water as the paradigm of blessing.
Let us focus briefly on the topic in the parasha of the wells which Abraham had dug, and which the Philistines had blocked after his death (Genesis 25:15). The Rashbam suggests that they had blocked Abraham’s wells so that his son would not be able to inherit the land after his death.
This comment offers an invaluable insight into the Philistines’ ideology: The Land of Israel is a dry country, water is at a premium here. Wells, providing clean, flowing water, benefit everyone.
Yet the Philistines’ hatred for Isaac and his family - more importantly, for the ideology he represented - was so visceral that they were willing to sabotage his wells, damage their own sources of precious irrigation, in their efforts to prevent Isaac’s children from inheriting the land.
Decades ago, Nehama Leibowitz (Russian Empire, Germany, and Israel, 1905-1997) noted: “Water means life for man, land, and animal, for the immediate place and the whole neighbourhood.... What did [the Philistines] mean by [blocking the wells]? Surely they were cutting off their nose to spite their face and withholding benefits from both themselves and their cattle! But, in addition to stopping the wells up, they filled them with earth so that no one would be able to know that there had been a well at that spot and that no water should flow again from there. Why did they want the land to be desolate?” (Studies in Bereishit/Genesis, Toldot 1).
Professor Leibowitz (she earned the title Professor but never used it, preferring the title מוֹרָה, “teacher”) then cites the commentary Haketav Vehakabala and the Midrash to suggest that the wells were symbolic: water symbolises Torah, “the wells signify the wells of the true faith which the Patriarchs caused to flow and which the forces of desolation and idolatry stopped up”.
G-d had promised the Land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants forever, and they felt themselves part of the Land. They loved it, cherished it, nurtured it, beautified it, developed it, built it up.
They dug wells and tended the Land.
The Philistines were foreign invaders. The very name Philistine is the Anglicised version of the Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּי, P’lishti, a cognate of פּוֹלֶש, polesh, meaning “invader”. They had invaded Canaan a generation or two earlier, coming from the Aegean islands in the Mediterranean Sea. They had come there purely for economic gain and felt no inherent connexion with the land, which was why they could sabotage it with equanimity.
Isaac’s parents, Abraham and Sarah, had come to Canaan at about the same time as the Philistines. Abraham and Sarah, still Abram and Sarai, had come there purely for spiritual reasons, to imbibe the sanctity of the Land, and therefore were intimately connected with the Land - which was why they endeavoured to improve it as much as they could. For our Patriarchs and Matriarchs, building the Land, digging wells, paving roads - these were all as much spiritual as physical projects.
מוֹרָה Leibowitz continues:
“Today, in the age of Jewish renaissance in the homeland where wells are being literally dug in the land of our forefathers fructifying the desert areas of the Negev, we can appreciate the greatness of the Patriarchs who combined their dissemination of the true faith with the practical reclamation of the soil by digging wells and watering the ground”.
In the more-than half-a-century since מוֹרָה Leibowitz wrote these words, the Children of Israel have brought life-giving water and vegetation to ever-greater areas of our ancestral homeland.
Israel is the world-leader in desalination; we have recently begun renovating the Kinneret by pumping desalinated sea-water into it - the first such project in the world. This initiative will likely not only rejuvenate the Kinneret, but also the River Jordan flowing out of the southern edge of the Kinneret, all the way to the Dead Sea, 105 km (65 miles) south of the Kinneret.
(Due to the winding course of the river, meandering its way through the contours of the Jordan Valley, the River Jordan makes the journey some 250 km [155 miles] long.)
It is this symbiotic connexion between the Jewish nation and the Land of Israel that has revived both the nation and its Land: As the Land has welcomed its nation back home, so the nation has rejuvenated the Land.
Meanwhile, a thousand kilometres east of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is running dry. This vast country, the 17th biggest in the world, is gripped by an unprecedented drought.
Is it just coincidence that Iran was struck by drought immediately after attacking Israel?
Having realised that 50 days into the expected rainy season Iran was still dry, with water-rationing already in force, the Imams of Iran instructed the faithful to pray for rain last week.
The results were almost immediate: the rains began falling…in Israel! “I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse, and all the families of the earth will be blessed on you” (Genesis 12:3).
Meanwhile in the south of Israel, in the Gaza region, the Arab occupiers were devastated by the flood-waters which inundated the area.
Ironic, really: over two years ago they attacked Israel in what they called the Al Aqsa Flood, and now, measure-for-measure, suffer the consequences of an actual flood.
The Torah records that Noah’s flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month (Genesis 7:11), and the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 11b) records two opinions of when this was: according to Rabbi Yehoshua this means the 17th of Iyyar, according to Rabbi Eliezer this means the 17th of Marcheshvan.
The majority of opinions agree with Rabbi Eliezer (Targum Yonatan to Genesis 7:11, Rosh Hashanah 2a, et al.), suggesting that last week’s flooding in Gaza coincided with the seventh day of Noah’s flood.
Water has been a defining component of Israel’s history, from Noah’s flood through the lives of our Patriarchs to our own time.
Whether direct Divine intervention or the results of our own efforts, water has been an integral component of every stage of our history. “There is no water other than Torah”, and now our enemies are facing the judgement of water.