In Parashat Nitzavim we read about the price paid when whole tribes and streams shrug it all off and say — why should we care about others: “and he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.”
After Moses describes how anyone might say to himself — I will do whatever I want, why should I care about others — there comes a cryptic phrase that this past Shabbat I understood for the first time in my life:
“Lema’an sefot ha-rava et ha-tzeme’a” — “that the watered be swept away with the thirsty.”
The commentators struggled with these difficult words, and no interpretation ever sat right with me as the plain meaning.
And then, while walking around Moshav Ein Yahav in the desert, I saw it:
the acacia mistletoe steadily devouring the acacia tree.
The acacia mistletoe (harnug) is a parasitic plant. That is, it has no roots in the ground; it sucks its water and nutrients through little rootlets it sends into the acacia tree. In other words — it steals their food…
The mistletoe is very green and thoroughly sated. It does not look like a desert plant at all. Why should it care — it takes the acacia’s water. The acacia tree, by contrast, is far more “thirsty.” It invests in deep roots and has water-thrifty leaves so as not to lose moisture.
The acacia mistletoe is very common across Sinai and the Arava, and there is no doubt that the people of Israel saw it thousands of times during their wanderings in the desert.
But what happens after a few years of the mistletoe drinking from the acacia without restraint? It grows and grows and covers the acacia tree, and in the end it simply kills the acacia.
And what happens when the acacia dies? The mistletoe dies along with it.
Across the Arava stand dozens of such silent, dead trees, where you can see how the dead mistletoe and the dead acacia were buried together.
This, I believe, is the phenomenon Moses is speaking about:
“Lema’an sefot (bring to an end, to death) ha-rava (the watered one — the mistletoe) et ha-tzeme’a (the thirsty one — the acacia).”
The context of the verses explains the moral well: if a family or a tribe walks in the stubbornness of its heart and does whatever it wants without regard for the community as a whole, it will end up bringing destruction upon the whole — and ultimately upon itself as well. Like the acacia and the mistletoe, a phenomenon Moses knew beyond any doubt.
The fate of the mistletoe, which kills the acacia and dies together with it, became a parable showing the terrible price that society as a whole pays when people say “I will walk in the stubbornness of my heart.”
