The Never-Ending Song

The Never-Ending Song
D’var Torah for Parashat B’shalach
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman


As far as miracles go, they don’t get any more spectacular than the one we read about in this week’s Torah portion, B’shalach, Exodus 13:17—17:16. The parting of the Red Sea is nothing less than spectacular, a magnificent demonstration of history in the making.

I am tempted to call it a miracle of God’s doing, but it’s more than that. Yes, the miracle is partially the result of an eastern wind that God raises and causes to blow all night long. But it is also a masterpiece conducted by Moses as he holds his staff like a huge baton, stretched out over the vast and deep body of water, pointing at some indefinite point between heaven and sea.

The wise Rabbis of the first century added yet another element to the story of this miracle.

It wasn’t enough, the Rabbis taught, that God made the eastern wind blow; it wasn’t enough that Moses held his staff out over the water. One more player was needed to make this wonderful miracle take place. The Midrash teaches that as the Israelites were arguing over who would go into the Red Sea first, one person grew impatient and led the way, jumping into the water yet before dry land appeared. This was Nachshon ben Aminadav, the chief of the tribe of Judah. Thus, as the Rabbis retell this story, it took three to make the miracle happen: God, Moses, and a representative of the people. It’s an important addition to the Torah’s perspective, a lesson that sometimes we tend to overlook.

Like all miracles, the parting of the Red Sea is a fantastic story. Whether it happened exactly as described in the Torah or perhaps was embellished by generations of storytellers and wandering minstrels is not clear. However, the symbolic truth behind this miracle cannot be doubted. How else explain the miraculous survival of the Jews through the centuries? The Jewish people outlasted every tyrant, every empire from the ancient Egyptian, Accadian, Assyrian and Babylonian down to our own times. Yes, it’s a history that is drenched with blood—Jewish blood. Each eon is marked, like Cain, by its own catastrophe, whether it was the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem, the crusades, blood libels and pogroms, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, or our own modern-day Nazi Holocaust. Yet, despite the bloodshed and destruction, like a phoenix, the Jews always reappeared, miraculously alive, on the other side of destruction. Our life force was not diminished by the terrible ordeals we went through. In fact, we emerged from each devastation renewed, with far greater energy and vigor than ever before.

How else describe this miracle of endurance, this amazing parting of the tides of history? Is there some other—can there be some other?—more powerful vision than this, the parting of the Red Sea, to describe our survival despite all our oppressors?

It’s a miracle our people have always held before our eyes like some huge signpost. It is nothing less than the very foundation on which our faith in God rests. We have relied on this miracle to rally us forward, to drive us fearlessly into the unknown future without any regard for the dangers that lay around us. Time and again, we saw proof that this miracle was true.

But this blind reliance on God’s saving power was also sometimes a stumbling block before us. When we relied on prayer, hoping for a miracle; when we cowered in dark basements even as murderous marauders set fires to our villages and homes; when we believed that at any moment the Messiah would arrive and lead us, singing triumphantly, through miraculously parted waves, onward to some mysterious, peaceful and blessed land, leaving far behind us the terror and savage oppression that we knew all too well.

Too often through our long history, we forgot the lesson the Rabbis tried to teach us so long ago: That miracles sometimes require more than faith and prayer; sometimes they also call for action.

It’s a lesson even God would have us learn.

As this week’s parasha, B’shalach, opens, the Israelites seem trapped. Having just left Egypt, they find themselves surrounded: To either side of them lies the unforgiving wilderness. Ahead is the impenetrable Red Sea. And coming up from behind are Pharaoh, his horses, chariots and best soldiers. He can’t possibly know, however, what we, the readers of this story, are told at the very beginning of the parasha: That the trap is not for the Israelites; rather, it’s an ambush being laid by God for Pharaoh. The Israelites don’t know this either, however, and they cry out to Moses. Moses relays their cry to God, and God responds with this telling command: “And Adonai said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward’” (Ex. 14:15).

If there is any lesson that could be drawn from our modern-day Holocaust, it is this: That there is a time to pray and cry out, and there is a time to take action.

Sitting passively and hoping that the Messiah will come and save us is useless. It isn’t that we don’t believe in Redemption. We do. But this won’t happen by just sitting and complaining. Redemption—the age we Jews pray and hope for, a time of peace, equality and justice for all—isn’t going to just happen while we sleep. We have to get there step by step, deed by deed. The Red Sea may have tossed and stormed, its waves whipped into frenzy by the night-long, fiercely blowing east wind. Its waters may have even begun to gather as Moses gave the direction with his staff. But the Red Sea did not part until Nachshon ben Aminadav, chieftain of the Tribe of Judah, took action and dove into the water. Only then did the miracle we were hoping for come true.

Our three-plus millennia survival is, indeed, a miracle. We are still walking on dry ground, with two towering, thundering walls of water at either side of us. At any moment they might collapse in—or so it seems. But they are held, despite all odds, despite all laws of nature, physics and history, trembling and powerless against our on-going, never-ending song: The Song of the Sea. Mi Chamocha ba’eilim Adonai: Who is like you among the Divine Beings, O God!

How? Who knows! It’s a miracle.

©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman