This week’s Torah portion has so much to offer that I barely know where to begin. This is one of my favorite aspects of Torah; it has so much wisdom, and so much to offer. Even in the things we find most mundane, as well as the ones we find most inexplicable.

This week it begins with something that we find completely inexplicable, the story of the red heifer. First, it had to be perfect. Then, it was slaughtered and burned, the ashes mixed with water, and used to purify someone who had come into contact with a dead body.

It’s important to recognize that these people were ritually impure, not physically impure. Perhaps they had become depressed by helping prepare a body for burial, or taking care of the burial itself. Maybe thoughts of their own mortality crept into their mind. 

The paradoxical thing about the red heifer is that the person who prepared the water of purification, himself became impure by performing the ritual. Which makes no sense. 

Or maybe it does. Maybe, when you are doing hard work on behalf of others, you can do a little damage to yourself. You might be more than willing to do the work for them, but it’s still hard, and it’s still takes something out of you.

That’s why we are always reminding caregivers to put time and energy into self-care. Because after a certain point, they’re no good to the other person. They’ve depleted themselves. They gave too much.

Rabbi Nathan Cardozo wrote movingly this week about being depleted, and how we refill ourselves.

He wrote, “There are matters in life that surpass reason. I cannot explain why I love my wife, why I am deeply impressed by nature, why I am moved by music, why the night sky with its millions of stars overwhelms me, or why I am overcome with emotion when holding a newborn baby with all its tenderness and sweetness…. All these experiences are extraordinary. They belong to an all-together different category than what reason can touch or relate to. They are rooted in something within us that creates a need “to look up”— an awareness of that which is radically different.”

His comment about looking up reminded me of one of my favorite stories. It’s a midrash, a story that isn’t in the Bible but one that someone dreamed up to fill in a gap.

It takes place while the Children of Israel were walking on dry land across the Reed Sea after God had separated the waters for them to pass.

In the middle of the vast crowd of humanity were two men, named Shimon and Ruben. They were walking together, and they were complaining.

“Oh no, there’s mud on my sandals and my robe!” Said one.

“Watch out! There’s donkey poop on the ground.”

“Ew, a dead fish.”

“This is awful!”

“Disgusting!” agreed the other.

Eventually, they reached the other side, only to see Miriam and the women dancing, playing their timbrels, and singing. They marched up to Miriam in a huff, and said to her, “What are you so happy about?”

Miriam looked at them calmly and replied, “You missed it. You missed the greatest communal miracle of all time, because you forgot to look up.”

Sometimes, we become so mired in our own sorrow and self-pity, so dragged down by injustice and unfairness, that we forget to look up. We miss the miracles all around us.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a little water of purification sprinkled on us, like fairy dust. Absent that, it’s on us to keep looking up. Or, as Stephen Dubner says at the end of every podcast, “Take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too.” And remember to look up.