Life of Spud

There is a story buried in the middle of the Torah that most readers — religious and secular alike — tend to rush past. It involves siblings, jealousy, a mysterious illness, and a divine reprimand. It is taught in synagogues as a cautionary tale about speaking lashon hara (malicious speech), or as a lesson about prophetic hierarchy. But read carefully, with fresh eyes and intellectual honesty, and the story of Miriam, Aaron, and Moses in Bemidbar (Numbers) 12:1–16 is something else entirely. It is an open-and-shut case of racism — encoded in the text, confirmed by its imagery, and all but proven by the nature of the punishment itself. What the Text Actually Says The chapter opens with a striking verse:  "And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on account of the Kushite woman he had married, for he had married a Kushite woman." (Numbers 12:1) Notice something? The Torah doesn't just tell us that Moses married a Kushite woman. It tells us twice . The repetition is not ...