{"id":47745,"date":"2019-01-19T18:41:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T16:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=47745"},"modified":"2022-08-14T14:13:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T11:13:25","slug":"and-the-desert-strikes-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/and-the-desert-strikes-back\/","title":{"rendered":"And The Desert Strikes Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":50634,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[788,640,397,435],"acf":{"old_id":"47745","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36423,"related_cahpter":"137","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Bereft of his sister, tired of the dunes, Sinai and Pharaoh a distant memory, Moses strikes the desert itself","content":"<p style=\"direction: ltr;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The heat of the desert is more than a climate; it\u2019s a sensibility, a personality, and an adversary. It is so bright it\u2019s blinding, and so sharp it cuts light into glittering shards, serrated at the edges. The endless length of the horizon swallows up the shortness of a breath, or of a life. The landscape is its own kind of rolling ocean, fathomless and undulating with the swell of a space indifferent to any human specks unfortunate to wander across its vastness. The desert strips to the bone, and dresses us in gaudy garments of delusion and delirium. It\u2019s a hard place, an archaic habitu\u00e9 little altered by civilizational rouge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today\u2019s chapter links the death of Miriam to the absence of water, all strained through sand. It\u2019s a parched and tense chapter, with death and draught closely allied. The human condition is a precarious thing in the desert, the margin for error vanishingly small, survival itself reduced or clarified into a kind of miracle. The people\u2019s invocation of \u201cseeds, figs, vines, and pomegranates\u201d is probably best seen as a hallucination, an incantation towards color and variety most acute when luxury becomes its own necessity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is no coincidence that it is in this troubled context that Moses loses his temper and strikes the rock. Bereft of his sister, tired of the dunes, Sinai and Pharaoh a distant memory blasted by time and discord, Moses strikes the desert itself. But the desert strikes back, because every expenditure of energy and effort in that unforgiving place is a debit withdrawal on your chances of survival. The angry do not survive the desert, because anger is an unaffordable extravagance. The physical blow is followed by two others- denial of passage through Edom, and the loss of his brother. Moses is judged harshly for striking the rock, but the sound of wood on stone resonates with the force of all those who have raised arms against a pitiless and inhospitable world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>image:\u00a0 by Abraham Bloemaert, 1596 &#8211; https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=57384537<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":47746,"id":47746,"title":"Moses_Striking_the_Rock_MET_DP145411","filename":"Moses_Striking_the_Rock_MET_DP145411.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Moses_Striking_the_Rock_MET_DP145411.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/and-the-desert-strikes-back\/moses_striking_the_rock_met_dp145411\/","alt":"","author":"50634","description":"","caption":"","name":"moses_striking_the_rock_met_dp145411","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":47745,"date":"2019-01-19 16:40:40","modified":"2019-01-20 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