Parshas Beshalach: Oh Food

“Mom! What’s for dinner?” Oh, how so many women dread that question. Taking care of a family seems to require making this same decision over and over and over – although many households have solved this by having a static weekly menu so that the question becomes moot. If it’s Monday, it must be leftovers…(not to ignore “taco Tuesdays”).

 It seems that in the Midbar, that “beloved” cry was transformed from “Ma” to “Mo” – “Hey Moshe, what’s for dinner? I’m staaaarrrrvvvvinnnnnngg!” Ok, really, they said: “If only we had died by God’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death” (16:3). But, we all know that if they were modern day teenagers it’s kind of the same thing because, like modern day teenagers, they weren’t starving. They hadn’t even been out of Mitzrayim that long. What they were “starving” for was a sense of security, which was difficult since, at this point, they were a very insecure people.

 Like many a modern mother, Hashem held them to the words of their complaint, that they had “sat by the pots of meat” and ate their fill of bread. Why didn’t they say that they ate meat? Why use such odd phraseology as “sat by the pots of meat”? As every human being knows, food is often about far more that the desire of our mouths. Walking into a house where a brisket is in the oven or some chicken is roasting brings one a sense of hunger, yes, but also a sense of premeditated pleasure. Food is a multi-sensory gift to our goofs, our bodies.

 The night before the mahn, the camp was covered in quail – a short statement in the Torah that is easily overlooked in the midst of the far greater miracle that was about to take place. The night before the mahn, they prepared succulent dishes that must have filled the camp with the same overwhelming pleasure as sitting by pots of meat. Good things are coming – yum, yum. It was to be their last sensory culinary experience, for the next day “there was a fall of dew about the camp. When the fall of dew lifted, there, over the surface of the wilderness, lay a fine and flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.” The manna had arrived.

In a most fascinating situation, while the “fine and flaky substance” is first mentioned in 16:14, it is not named until pasuk lamed-aleph (31). During those 15 or so pasukim, the Toah explains the rules of manna, about the fact that it will be gathered and brought to their tents in quantities of one day’s need, about the pointlessness of holding it overnight since it would not keep, and, most significantly, about the double portion before Shabbas.  Only after a week’s worth of mahn exhibiting its miraculous measurements of precisely the right portion for each household and the wonderous double fall of Shabbas, is the heavenly “bread” named. “The house of Israel named it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey.”

 After a full week, the women of nation threw up their hands. How many times could they call up nd yell “Come and get your, um, er, stuff that fell on the ground”? How often could they say, “Alrighty, seed-like food for supper!” The ground-fall needed a name and some of the oldest commentaries on the Torah note that the Torah’s use of word “the house of Israel,” beis Yisrael, means that it was the women who named the food (Mechilta).

 This is significant because it underscores the important role that women play in the spiritual life of Bnei Yisrael. As Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsh notes:

 Getting and keeping the feeling of being happy and contented with moderation, trusting in God and His providing, is above all dependent on the women of the household accepting this spirit, and on their care of and adherence to the spirit of living. It is therefore significant that it was just the women who first recognized the Manna as the gift from God to each individual of his due sufficiency, and by giving it the name Manna fixed this idea so that it should constantly be taken to heart.

 

The flesh of the quail, as pleasurable as it may have been, was fleeting because it fed the goof – thus why the complainers remembered sitting by the pots. It was a sensory seeking experience and one that often led to simply wanting more. The bread, however, they ate until they were full. They ate until they were satisfied. The Manna was equivalent to the bread they missed, to the foundation of a home. When they named the bread of the wilderness Manna, which comes, some say, from the interrogative Mah – What, they were highlighting the fact that every time one ate it, one had an elevation of the spiritual seeker in that one had to wonder at the wondrousness of what it was.

 Or perhaps even the women in the desert named it after the perpetual family call of  “What’s for dinner”….

 Wishing you all a wonderful Shabbas.

Parshas Beshalach - The Constant Response

Dedicated to a Refuah Shelaima for Moshe Aaron ben Nacha Itta.

There are so many topics in this week’s parsha that one could make relevant toward the state of the Jewish people today. One could explore that idea of purposeful confusion, of how Hashem led Bnei Yisrael in a roundabout path in order to lead the Mitzrim after them, just as Hashem leads our people on a circuitous route through history. One could talk about feeling cornered by an enemy (enemies) and needing a clear path forward. And, one could write about the need for two arms in battle - the physical fighting force and the spiriYtual fighting force. 

I’m not going to write on any of those topics herein. 

The Torah only uses two pasukim to discuss Miriam’s song: “Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took her timbrel in hand, and all the women followed her with timbrels and dancing. Miriam led them in responsive song, beginning, ‘Sing to God for He is most exalted; horse and rider He cast into the sea’” (Shemos 15:20-21).

One could wonder about the fact that it doesn’t state that Miriam and the women sang, but rather that Miriam led them in responsive song, and that song repeated teh words of Moshe’s song. Stated that way is sounds like a negative, like a trope that can be parsed as women being simple followers rather than powerful in their own right. This, of course, we know is not true. 

Thinking a little deeper, there is another interesting distinction between the two songs. Moshe’s song begins: Az Yashir - and there are many discussions about the grammar here, about the use of the future tense form of the noun (not to mention singular, but we will not go into that here). The song was sung and the song will be sung upon the ultimate salvation. Here now, and then - 1, 2.

Miriam’s song, however, is immediately thereafter. It says and she answered, but perhaps the answering was a way of stating that it isn’t now and then, it’s constant. Miriam took here timbrel and the women all followed with their instruments. Sing a song unaccompanied and it is beautiful; sing a song with a full accompaniment and it resonates new depths. 

Miriam and the women responded to the song taught by Moshe and that response, perhaps, demonstrates that the song was not just for now and then, but that it must resonate through our lives. They took it up with timbrels and dancing, with their whole being - physical and spiritual.

This Dvar Torah is being written in Yerushalayim, where I am visiting my daughter in seminary, and so I have our young women particularly in mind. These young women have come from all over the world to learn how to make Torah sing in their own voices. It is a different experience than the young men who come here to study in Yeshiva, who sit and learn and delve int ot he gemara. The education they are receiving at Seminary is meant to take them from the defined lanes of high school into a world where they will become the foundations of the Yiddishkeit of their future homes. They are not learning theoretical concepts or delving into the complex arguments under the law, but rather, they are formatting a constant response as the teachers push them to build themselves as individuals. In these Seminary programs there is plenty of music and dancing and expressions of joy because these women are learning how to live Torah.

This Dvar Torah has no specific takeaway conclusion, as I so often like to include, but rather it is a salute to our young women and their teachers…and to all women who remember that it is the women who bring the constant response and who make the Torah sing in their lives and in their homes.

Parshas Beshalach – What About the Walls

Dedicated to those who remain as hostages, may they know freedom soon, and to the brave chayalim who are fighting for Bnei Yisrael.

 In this week’s parsha we read, about the incredible events that took Bnai Yisrael through the Yam Suf. The description is vividly familiar – waters parted, dry land on which to walk, an army bearing down behind, and walls of water on either side. When we hear of the walls of water, many of my particular generation might conjure up, a little too easily, images from Spielberg’s Prince of Egypt, which was a beautiful imagining but not necessarily how one should learn Torah.

 There is something very significant about the way Bnei Yisrael walked through the Yam Suf. It is not just that they crossed on dry land, but that the waters formed a wall for them on their right and on their left. This idea was so important that the Torah mentions it twice in the span of a few verses, in Shemos 14:22 and 14:29.

 There are, of course, the practical understandings brought down in the commentaries. In between pasuk 22 and 29, the Torah describes how the Egyptians entered the Sea and how the waters came crashing back down on them. The second mention of the walls of water is to emphasize the fact that there were still Israelites in the Sea, that Bnei Yisrael hadn’t fully crossed, but that the water remained parted where they were walking.

 The repetition of these words, however, brought forth thoughts about walls. Walls are protection; they are security. One might ask why the Torah goes through the effort of stating that the wall formed on their right and on their left. Why was it not a wall before them, like a shield preventing water spillage from before them? Why was it not a wall behind them for a sense of security?

 The most obvious answer is that the Egyptians needed to feel that it was possible for them to follow Bnei Yisrael. This was the way to guarantee their final ultimate demise. As to why not before them… the fact that this is not stated indicates that the Sea split in one grand motion.

 There is a beautiful metaphor within the imagery of the splitting of the Sea, within the significance of the walls forming to the right and to the left. The way forward is the miracle, the path made by the Divine.  The way backward is not an option. And on either side are walls of water. The water creates a path; it gives shape to the way that the mass of people needs to move forward. In Jewish tradition, water is symbolic to Torah.  The Jewish people are blessed to have the opportunity to surround themselves with Torah and thus be able to find the path forward in life.

 It is easy to wonder how the people perceived those walls? They must have been stupendous, miraculous. And if you were willing and wanting to perceive the miracle… what joy and splendor awaited.  But what about those who found it so awesome as to be terrifying, perhaps to those of the erev rav whose faith was so negligeable. Then what did those walls look like?

We won’t ever know, and so we must delve into the metaphysical understanding of krias Yam Suf.

Sometimes in life we feel like we are stuck, that we are trapped in situations that are harmful to us spiritually. And sometimes we are, and we must remove ourselves, must hurry forward. Many times, however, we need to take a look at the walls and see their source, and understand that everything that occurs is part of Hashem’s plan, is the Mayim Chayim of life.

Wishing you all a beautiful Shabbas.

Parshas Beshalach - Life Patterns

 This week's parsha is Parshas Beshalach. It is an exalted parsha that captures some of the most important moments in the formation of the Jewish nation - specifically, the crossing of the Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds) and the singing of the great Shira (song). And yet, interestingly enough, it is also a parsha full of downfall and disappointment. All too often the Israelites balk at challenges both simple and exaggerated. 

One might think that when Hashem set down the Torah, He would have separated these events, and yet no sooner is it recorded in the Torah that Miriam lead the women in song then it is written how Bnei Yisrael travelled three days and were unable to find water. These two events are side by side in Shemos 15, verses 20 - 22. The rest of the parsha - two more perakim - follow a similar pattern: great wonder, discomfort and worry, distress, Divine resolution with great wonder, and repeat. 

If we are really honest with ourselves, much of what we read about inParshas Beshalach is beyond our understanding. Seas parting, water spurting from a rock hit by a stick, and manna from heaven all sound quite supernatural (as, indeed, they were in the purest meaning of the term). Nevertheless, many of us read the reactions of Bnei Yisrael with a "holier than thou" attitude of "Well, if I saw such miracles, I wouldn't complain like they did!"

The oft quoted "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," is a deep truth. The face is, sadly, that even those who know history well fall into familiar traps. The Torah in general, and Parshas Beshalach in particular, does not hold back in reminding us how easily we err - how almost natural it is for us to trip over our own feet. But it does this by also being completely open about the fact that the topography of life is hills and valleys, that life can be challenging. 

From singing for joy at their miraculous salvation, it only took 3 days for an undertone of complaint to begin. The Midrash says this was the Erev Rav, the add-ons who joined Bnei Yisrael as they left Mitzrayim. But even the most faithful must have been shaken when the war band of Amalik snuck up from the rear and attacked, when Bnei Yisrael survived because their leaders pushed themselves through the spiritual challenge. 

There are seventy levels of learning the Torah. We read it as history, as parable, as a rule book, as a book of doctrine...We read it as our national story, as our family's story, and as our personal story. The Torah does not smooth the edges. It is a book that tells us an aweful lot (well, everything, really) about real life. and real life is bumpy. Life is miraculous salvations followed by unexpected disappointments and continual repetitions of variations of the same. 

Perhaps the question is perspective. Do you perceive life as mostly bad with moments of good or mostly good with some moments of challenge? Perhaps it does not matter so long as when you are in those challenging moments you raise your hands upward and give Hashem the opportunity to lend you strength and at your height of joy you remember to raise your voice in praise and sing out those positive feelings.

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Rivka bas Golda and L'iluy nishmas Dovid Chaim ben Shmuel Yosef HaCohen.

Parshas Beshalach: Miracles in the Mundane

Song is both the product of inspiration and a means by which one inspires others. We glorify songs because of how they make us feel, because they are built of language and sound that moves our soul. This duality of being both the product and the cause of inspiration is a fascinating aspect of the shira we refer to as As Yashir that is recorded in Chapter 15 of Shemos.

Az Yashir is the song that Moshe and Bnei Yisrael sang after their salvation at the Yam Suf (the Sea of Reeds). One can only imagine the adrenaline that fueled the emotions of the Israelites as they turned back and saw not only that behind them was a large body of water even though they themselves were totally dry, but that on the far side from where they had come Pharaoh lay wasted among his destroyed cavalries. The night had truly been one of miracles; and yet, it is interesting to note, the shiraseems to begin with the seemingly least miraculous aspect of the night – horse and rider thrown into the sea.

In celebrating the miraculousness of their survival, one might expect the Israelites to have immediately lauded the sea splitting beneath their feet or even its crashing back down upon their pursuers, but horse and rider thrown into the sea seems the most mundane part of the miraculous night. Of course, it was the last step in the destruction of the Egyptian kingdom, once the most powerful nation in the world, but the water of the sea creating walls with paths of dry land still seems to overshadow it.

Perhaps, however, the seemingly supernatural miracle was just too much for Bnei Yisrael to process. Also, of all the happenings of the night, seeing the destruction of the cavalry was the final act, and so remained that which was foremost in their minds.

Az Yashir, is also a song for the future. Based on the unique grammar of the words “Az yashir Moshe u’vnei Yisrael…Ashira la’Hashem – Then Moshe and the Children of Israel will sing…I shall sing.” It is understood that the shira is also a song that will be sung in the future. If that is the case, what might we be able to learn from this verse praising Hashem for hurling horse and rider into the sea? This question might even be strengthened by the fact that we no longer live in an era of cavalry, so even imaging a cataclysmic was – God forbid – we don’t imagine horses and riders. Therefore, we must find in this a different understanding.

Moshe’s shira started with the most immediate miracle, even if it was the most mundane, because the gratitude and the amazement would be universal, it was so fresh and so powerful in their memories. The actual splitting of the Sea was awesome – and thus perhaps too overwhelming for some people to process. By starting with the miracle that followed the dictates of nature (horses and armed riders in the middle of a sea have little chance of survival – disregarding how they got into that sea), Moshe was leading the greatest whole of the people with him to be inspired. Thus he declared and they repeated: I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and rider He has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and might; He is become my deliverance. This is my God and I will enshrine Him; The God of my father, and I will exalt Him.”

Past or future, supernatural or mundane, God is in everything and it is our job, as individuals and as a nation, to see the miracles in the mundane and to praise their true source.

Bad Blind/Good Blind (Parshas Beshalach #2)

There are many questions one might wonder about after the departure of Bnei Yisrael from Mitzrayim. For instance, what did Mitzrayim look like as the freed slaves paraded out of the territory. Devastated and decimated, one can only assume that Egypt had the feel of a war zone. Even beyond the damage of the plagues, well over a million of the residents of the land were leaving (a mass of 600,000 men plus the women and children, elderly and very young). The fact is that it doesn't matter that they had been the enslaved “outsiders,” because the sudden departure of that many human beings - even if they were not fully part of the society they were part of the economy - is going to have devastating effects on the nation.

In all of this, surrounded by his country laid waste and his populace in mourning, Pharaoh catches word that the Israelites had changed their direction in the wilderness (based on the understanding that Pharaoh saw Hashem’s redirecting Bnei Yisrael toward the Yam Suf as a means of avoiding Amalek and Philistia at war as a sign of the Israelites fleeing in fear, a comment I saw by the Alsheich and several other commentaries), and Pharaoh appears to immediately perk up at the idea of pursuing them. This is an interesting instance of blindness on Pharaoh’s part, one might say it is one of his constant faults. Pharaoh seems blind to the suffering of his people. All he can see is having been bested by this God of the Israelites.

In a completely different way, the fleeing Israelites also suffered from blindness. They left Egypt triumphant and riding on wave of honest, emergency-driven emuna. Once away from Egypt, they were surrounded by the Ananei Hakavod, the cloud of glory and a pillar of fire. Wrapped in such protection, Bnei Yisrael could focus on discovering who they truly were - getting In touch with the spiritual heritage they had just barely held onto through generations of servitude.

The clouds of glory, however, may have also prevented them from being aware that the Egyptians were pursuing them until, as the pasuk says, they lifted up their eyes and behold Egypt was upon them! You might say it would have been better for them to have seen the Mitzrim in the distance, but the truth was that there would have been little for them to do but panic and wallow in self pity. Instead, when they saw the army suddenly behind them, their days in the cloud paid off, at least initially. They saw the Mitzrim and they immediately called out to Hashem. They prayed instinctively. They understood that their ultimate salvation would come from the Divine hand. Only afterwards, as fear began to take over, did they turn to their emotions and let their fears become complaints. But because they had prayed to Hashem first and instinctively, neither Hasher nor Moshe responded to their complaints with anger. Because their first instinct was to pray, when Moshe told them to look forward, they could - some with more bravery and faith than others, but all of them did so nonetheless.

Had the Israelites not had that time to connect spiritually, they might have crumbled before Pharaoh, whose dominance and megalomaniac power over their lives until so recently must have had traumatic impact on their souls. Had they had more time to worry and fret over the pursuing army, they would have talked themselves off of the path to spiritual freedom.

The Tree of Life (Beshalach)

“Eitz chaim hee lemachazikim bah…It’s the tree of life to them that hold fast to it…” This has always been one of my favorite verses in davening. Torah is the tree of life, but we must actively grab on to it. This act of holding fast is what I relate to as faith, which is a prominent theme in this week’s parsha, Beshalach; one that is connected to a eitz, a tree. 

Three days after singing an exalted song of faith following the awesome miracle of the splitting of the sea, Bnei Yisrael were struggling with having found no potable water along their way. Finally, they found water but determine that it was undrinkable. The Torah states: “And they came to Mara, and they could not drink of the waters of Mara, for they were bitter. Therefore, the name of it was called Mara” (Shemos 15:23). It occurred to me as I read this parsha that the phrase “For they were bitter” (which is offset by a zakef katan : in the trope) might not have been describing the water, but rather the sentiments of Bnei Yisrael. (I then found this idea suggested by Daas Chachamim.) They couldn’t drink the water because they were bitter.

Why bitter? Let’s look at some possibilities about their emotional state. Three days, no water…what now! I found myself focused on the fact that the complaining began three days after the final destruction of Egypt’s power. We know that day three of a wound is considered the apex of pain (per Avraham’s bris), and perhaps for Bnei Yisrael there was a level of shock in the knowledge that there truly was no going back. (Regardless of the fact that they were now in the loving care of Hashem, Egypt was what they knew.) With the underlying anxiety of being forced into a major new mindset, the Israelites felt their most critical, their most fearful, and, thus, their most bitter for having not yet found water.

Another thought is that they had heard Moshe tell Pharaoh that they would be going on a three-day journey into the wilderness to serve Hashem, so perhaps some of them started keeping count anew after they saw Egypt vanquished, for now they were truly free. However, three days later they expected to be making camp and preparing for this service Moshe had described to Pharaoh. But their calculations, as happened later at Mount Sinai, were based on their own assumptions. Perhaps it was a combination of both, and perhaps all of that was subconscious, a state of anxiety that we all experience sometimes without knowing it.

They came to Mara and they murmured against Moshe, who turned to Hashem: “And Hashem showed him a piece of wood (eitz) and he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There He placed for him Chok and Mishpat (ordinance and law)” (ibid 15:25).

The eitz is Torah, which is comprised of chukim (ordinances for which there is no specific explanation) and mishpatim (laws that create a moral civilization). Water is life, for no creature can live without it. Life lived with bitterness – dominated by anger, regret, jealousy, etc. – misses the joy of living. A truly joyful life comes from grasping onto the Torah and holding fast to the sweetness it provides.

The verse concludes “Sham Nisahu,” which Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch translates as “There it tested them.” He explains that one way this phase can be understood is that “the people are the subject, and the Law the object of Nisahu viz. ‘There God gave it (the Nation) the fundaments of His Law, and there it (the Nation) proved or tested it,’ learnt to know the power of faithful carrying out of the Will of God, by the sweetening of the bitter waters.”

According to Rabbi Hirsch (an earlier comment on the same verse), a Torah life “requires complete confidence in the constant presence of God ever ready to help, and in the knowledge that carrying out His will, as expressed in the Torah, has the power to guide us safely and happily through the most desolate deserts of Life and to sweeten for us the bitterest draughts that Life can offer us. To induce such confidence was the preparatory work which was to be accomplished in the wilderness for the acceptance of the Divine Torah.”

Imagine the emotional work required by Bnei Yisrael. Commentators often speak of their continued slave mentality, which strikes me as terribly similar to a sense of low self-esteem. They left Egypt after a long sequence of open miracles, and yet they struggled to see themselves as part of the Divine cause. At the very beginning of the parsha we are informed that “God said ‘Perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war and they will return to Egypt’…[but] the Children of Israel were armed when they went up from Egypt” (13:17-18).

Even as God brought them out of Egypt, He understood how shaky their faith was. Their coming out armed was purely decorative, meaning they dressed the part of a nation that had been set free, but it was clear that they lacked the courage and fortitude that matched their gear (Hirsch). And yet if they truly had faith in the Divine intervention, which they had been privileged to witness over and over, they would not have armed themselves for they would have believed that God would protect them (R’ Bechya). And yet, according to the Midrash cited by Rashi, these were the most faith-filled of the Israelites, the 1/5 that were willing and able to follow Moshe (based on an alternate understanding of chamushim as fifth rather than armed).

The miracle of the splitting of the sea was a Divine intervention to drive awe and fear into Egypt and the rest of the world. The miracle at Mara was the first step in teaching the Children of Israel that having faith in Hashem would shield them even from the smaller trials of life and that His ordinances and laws were the necessary ingredients for a sweet life. Mara was the first in a series of complaints and interventions because we all know that honest faith requires not a leap but small, earnest, incremental steps. The first step is knowing that adding Torah (eitz) to life (mayim) is key to making life spiritually sweet.