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The Flint Water Crisis and The Flow of Torah
Sheets of a Torah scroll that were returned to Jewish hands from Poland earlier this year. Photo: Fromthedepths.org
The Talmud has a fascinating origin story for Rabbi Akiva, one of its greatest sages. His formative years were not spent in the study halls, but rather as a shepherd in the Judean hills. One day, as he tended his sheep, he observed how the constant drip of water onto a rock over a long period of time had worn it away, leaving a groove in its surface.
It was an “Aha!” moment for him. He realized that if something as soft as water could make an impression on something as hard as rock, then the teachings of Torah could surely penetrate his heart. With this realization, he immediately committed himself to a life of Torah study.
Rabbi Akiva would go on to become the formative rabbinic leader of his age, whose impact on Judaism is felt to this day. This remarkable story illustrates the power and persistence of water, a force that shapes and sustains life, and serves as a metaphor for Torah, spirituality, and the essence of faith.
In the Western world, water is considered as readily available as air—until it isn’t, and then all hell breaks loose. Recently, Flint, Michigan, passed a grim milestone—ten years since its water supply became so contaminated that residents have been forced to rely on bottled water for their daily needs.
Flint was once a thriving industrial hub known primarily for its involvement in the automobile industry, particularly as the birthplace of General Motors. This bustling city was home to a resilient community, largely composed of working-class residents, whose lives were shaped by the rise and fall of the automotive manufacturing sector.
The water crisis began in 2014 when the city switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River to cut costs. This ill-conceived decision led to the leaching of lead from old pipes into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents to toxic levels.
The health implications were devastating, particularly for children, who suffered from developmental delays and other serious health issues. The crisis revealed deep systemic failures and a breach of public trust, as officials repeatedly downplayed the severity of the contamination.
The long-term impact on residents of the Flint water crisis has been severe and multifaceted. Prolonged exposure to lead-contaminated water has resulted in numerous health problems, particularly among children, who have suffered from developmental delays, learning difficulties, behavioral issues, and a range of physical health problems, including kidney damage and impaired growth. The constant stress of dealing with contaminated water has also led to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and PTSD within the community.
Economic difficulties have compounded these health issues, with residents facing significant medical expenses, the need to purchase bottled water, and declining property values. The educational setbacks are notable, with a significant increase in the number of children qualifying for disability services due to the cognitive and behavioral impacts of lead exposure, straining the resources of local schools.
One of the most profound impacts has been the loss of trust in public institutions. The mishandling of the crisis and subsequent cover-up efforts eroded confidence in local, state, and federal authorities, making it difficult for residents to trust future public health and safety communications. Despite recent improvements in water quality and the completion of over 97% of lead service line replacements, skepticism about the safety of tap water persists among residents.
Earlier this week, restoration work began to repair lawns and sidewalks at over 1,800 homes in Flint where lead service lines have been replaced. The city, in partnership with the state, is funding this restoration, which is expected to cost over $4.5 million and will be completed by next August.
Despite these efforts, Flint has been ordered to pay $62,000 in attorney fees due to contempt of court for missing deadlines related to service line replacements. Thousands of lives have been scarred, political careers have ended in disgrace, billions have been spent—simply because of an interrupted and impaired water supply. It truly makes you think.
This situation brings to mind an episode from Parshat Chukkat – when the water supply for the Israelites in the wilderness suddenly ceased after the death of Miriam. The nation complained bitterly to Moses, and after consulting God, Moses sought out the rock that was the source of the spring water and ensured that the water began to flow again. But in the aftermath of this incident, God informed Moses that he had acted improperly and as a result would not lead the nation into Canaan for the conquest of the Promised Land.
The commentaries disagree about Moses’ “sin” – what did he do to deserve such a devastating consequence? According to Maimonides, Moses’ failure was rooted in his impulsive anger at the Israelites in the face of their desperate pleas for water. This lack of insight into the impact of not having water reflected a detachment that was not merely an error, but revealed a failure of leadership and a lack of empathy.
But there is a deeper metaphor here – the one that Rabbi Akiva stumbled upon so many centuries later. Just as society cannot survive without a ready supply of pure water, the Jewish people need a continuous flow of Torah, so that the rock of their material existence is dented by the spiritual impact of the water that steadily drips into their consciousness.
Miriam’s rock was a spring that symbolized a pure and life-giving source of spiritual nourishment. The nation’s urgent thirst for Miriam’s water should have been seen by Moses for what it was – the need for the springwaters of Torah to flow continuously, without break, so that the spiritual existence of God’s chosen nation could continue uninterrupted.
Reflecting on the lessons of the Flint water crisis and its biblical parallel in the water crisis after Miriam’s death, we see that water is not just a physical necessity but also a profound symbol of life, trust, and the intricate relationship between a community and its leaders. Just as the Israelites’ survival depended on the continuous flow of pure water from Miriam’s well, so too does the well-being of any community depend on the integrity and purity of its foundational resources, whether it is empathetic leadership or steady spiritual nourishment.
For the Jewish people, this means maintaining a steady and untainted flow of Torah, free from personal agendas and self-indulgent needs. We need it to guide and sustain us through all challenges, ensuring a future rooted in trust, resilience, and enduring faith. Rabbi Akiva’s insight—that consistent, pure Torah study can shape and sustain us—illustrates how the steady-drip approach to Torah has helped the Jewish people endure and thrive despite numerous challenges.
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Flip through the digital edition of the Fall 2024 print magazine from The Canadian Jewish News
We’ve produced a collection of feature articles four times a year since 2022. The next edition of this magazine will appear in mid-December, and look out for a reimagined publication with a name of its own in 2025. Get future copies delivered to your door as a thank-you for donating to The CJN.
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No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report
Anti-Zionist Harvard students taking part in a sit-in organized by a student group which favors the Islamist terror group Hamas. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Harvard University disciplined virtually no one who was accused of perpetrating antisemitic harassment or participating in a “Gaza Solidarity” encampment last academic year, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce alleged on Thursday.
As evidence supporting its claims, the committee cited documents obtained during its ongoing investigation of Harvard University, which was prompted by a succession of antisemitic incidents in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel as well as allegations of antisemitism going back years. According to the committee, “not one of the 68 Harvard students referred for discipline conduct related to the encampment is suspended, and the vast majority is in good standing.”
Neither, it continued, were any of the students who chanted antisemitic slogans on campus property punished. Essentially slapped on the wrist, they were “admonished,” a verbal measure which, Harvard acknowledges, is not recorded in their records as a disciplinary sanction.
“Harvard failed, end of story. These administrators failed their Jewish students and faculty, they failed to make it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, and in this case, Harvard may have failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities to protect students from a hostile environment,” US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “The only thing administrators accomplished is appeasing radical students who have almost certainly returned to campus emboldened and ready to repeat the spring semester’s chaos. Harvard must change course immediately.”
The Algemeiner has previously reported that Harvard University was amnestying students charged with violating school rules which proscribe unauthorized demonstrations and disruptions of university business. During summer, it “downgraded” disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard and roiling the campus for nearly five weeks.
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to restore order and dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents on campus in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, interim president Alan Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated by participating in the demonstration.
Harvard then began suspending the protesters following their rejection of a deal to leave the encampment, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before then, Garber vowed that any student who continued to occupy the section of campus would be placed on “involuntary leave,” a measure that effectively disenrolls the students from school and bars them from campus until the university decides whether they are allowed back. The disciplinary measures were levied one day after members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) created a sign featuring an antisemitic caricature of Garber as Satan, and accused him of duplicity.
During Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in May, reports emerged that some students had been banned from graduation and receiving their diplomas.
However, Harvard and HOOP always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters and an embarrassment to the university. Indeed, after the suspensions were lifted, HOOP proceeded to mock what they described as their administrators’ lack of resolve. Unrepentant, they celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”
The past year has been described by experts as a low point in the history of Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most important institution of higher education. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas across southern Israel, the school has been accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism, while important donors have suspended funding for programs. In just the past nine months, its first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist; Harvard faculty shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media; and its protesters were filmed surrounding a Jewish student and shouting “Shame!” into his ears.
According to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard has repeatedly misrepresented its handling of the explosion of hate and rule breaking, launching a campaign of deceit and spin to cover up what ultimately became the biggest scandal in higher education.
A report generated by the committee as part of a wider investigation of the school claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult its members when Jewish students were subject to verbal abuse and harassment, a time, its members felt, when its counsel was most needed. The advisory group went on to recommend nearly a dozen measures for addressing the problem and offered other guidance, the report said, but it was excluded from high-level discussions which preceded, for example, the December congressional testimony of former president Claudine Gay — a hearing convened to discuss antisemitism at Harvard.
So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being an accessory to what the committee described as a guilefully crafted public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.
Currently, the university is fighting a lawsuit which accuses it of ignoring antisemitic discrimination. The case survived an effort by Harvard’s lawyers to dismiss it on the grounds that the students who brought it “lack standing.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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If Eric Adams Steps Down, New York City’s Next Acting Mayor Will Be an Anti-Israel Critic
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Photo: Screenshot
The next acting mayor of New York City might be a left-wing activist and staunch critic of the Jewish state.
US prosecutors charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday with soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery. Adams’s potential departure from office could prove consequential for New York City’s estimated 960,000 Jewish residents, representing roughly 10 percent of the Big Apple’s population, and supporters of Israel living in the city.
If Adams resigns as a result of the federal charges against him, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is widely expected to step into the mayoral role as his replacement. A review of Wiliams’s social media history reveals a pattern of denigrating Israel, raising questions over whether the public advocate would defend the city’s Jewish community.
Williams has condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza as a “war crime” and criticized the US Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in July.
“Aside from basic humanity, under accepted [international] Law Benjamin Netanyahu is quite literally, at this moment, engaged in [international] war crimes/human rights violations,” Williams posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Instead of Congress trying to stop it, they gave a platform.”
Williams issued a statement on Oct. 11 of last year, four days after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, lamenteing the terrorist attacks on the Jewish state before calling on Jerusalem not to retaliate and shifting attention to alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.
“We can, we have to be able to, at once grieve the hundreds of innocent lives taken in Israel, and oppose the escalating violence of retaliation, the endless war, the systemic violence and oppression of Palestinians too often ignored, excused, or condoned,” Williams wrote.
On Oct. 14, one week after Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Williams condemned “shameful” New York elected officials that “won’t even mention [Palestine] or [Gaza].”
Five days later, less than two weeks after the largest single-day mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Williams called for an immediate “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Israel had not yet launched its military offensive in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza to dismantle the terror group’s military capabilities and free the 251 hostages kidnapped from southern Israel on Oct. 7. He also drew an equivalency between Israel’s military operations to the Hamas atrocities.
“The moral compass of our leaders shows stunning irregularities,” Williams wrote on Instagram.
“On point in condemning horrendous attacks on Israel and demanding hostages be returned,” he added. “[Yet, failure] to recognize the [United Nation’s] description of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, let alone support de-escalation and ceasefire.”
On Oct. 24, Williams declared Gaza a “humanitarian crisis” and added that “all of us who rightly condemned Oct 7 on Israel should be rightly demanding a [ceasefire] now and before any ground invasion.”
Israel began striking Hamas targets after repelling the Oct. 7 invasion but did not launch a ground offensive into Gaza until Oct. 27.
In February, Williams appeared at a press conference conducted by the “NYC 4 Ceasefire” coalition to demand an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. During the event, participants referred to the Gaza war as a “genocide” and honored Palestinian “martyrs.”
“We have gathered here today to show city-wide support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide in Palestine,” said Jawanza Williams, organizing director of left-wing activist group VOCALNY.
Williams harbors ties to the vehemently anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America group (DSA). In a 2018 interview with the left-wing media outlet Jacobin, Williams said, “I have no problem saying I’m a Democratic Socialist.”
Williams has solicited an endorsement from the group while running for office in New York City. DSA has routinely praised Hamas’s so-called “armed struggle” against Israel. The group issued an explicit endorsement of Hamas, stating that the terrorist organization is a cornerstone in the “resistance” against the “Zionist project.” DSA has also accused Israel of committing “genocide” and praised the Hezbollah terrorist group for attempting to pummel the Jewish state with missiles.
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