Parashat B'shalach - Making Meaning or Reading Madness

     רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat B'shalach

Exodus 13:17-17:16

By Adam Ruditsky

     In our last two parshiyot, Va’ayra and Bo, we were greeted with the human journey of the Hebrews in the backdrop of some really amazing wonders to behold.  At the beginning of B’shalach we read about Pharaoh’s response to what happened; ויהי בשלח פרעה את העם, “and it happened that Pharaoh sent the people” to go into the wilderness and worship their God.  It would only be a short time after their release that Pharaoh would also say, “What is this that we have done that we have sent away Israel from serving us?”  Pharaoh responded to what he had encountered in the same way he had before, with God giving him over to the hardness of his heart.  As Pharaoh sought to give meaning to what he experienced, which concluded with the death of his own son (and in their myth a generational son of Ra the sun god), Pharaoh would once again lead his people down a destructive path.
     Moses, like Pharaoh, responds to the act of God at the splitting of the Red Sea although in song, thus we read, אז ישיר משה ובנ ישראל השירה הזות ליהוה, “then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord;” something that seems to be contrary to what we learned last week from Proverbs 44:10 that says “if your enemy falls, do not exult.”  Rashi wants to make meaning to how Moses reacted saying it was to the miracle itself (as opposed to the deaths), hence Rashi teaches us that the exaltation by Moses and Israel “applies to anything that cannot be done by another,” or other gods.  Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell comments on Miriam’s response to the miracle of the sea by saying that her strength should be understood in the backdrop of “the Near Eastern tradition of woman warriors,” yet her voice is the same prophetic voice that convinced her parents regarding Moses despite Pharaoh’s decree to kill all newborn males (cf. Mid.Exodus R. 1:13).  The future guided her and was the basis of why she responded in song.
     While Moses and Miriam may have had positive reactions to what they had experienced, the rest of the people are another matter.  There are 6 bewonderment acts of God in this parsha; (1) the pillars of cloud and fire, (2) the splitting of the waters, (3) the waters of Marah turn sweet from their bitterness, (4) the mana from heaven, (5) water from a rock and (6) Moses’ raised arms help to defeat Amalek.   In each case the people respond with the same negativity, thus after the pillars of cloud and fire lead them in the wilderness, they still responded to Moses by saying “Is it because there are not - enough graves in Egypt - that you brought us to die in the wilderness?”  They did the same after the parting of the sea itself.  Three days later they needed water, yet after they had experienced the pillars of cloud and fire that led them to the very parting of the Sea of Reeds, it says; “the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?”  The story tells us that Moses threw a particular tree into the bitter waters and they became sweet, hence the people were nourished although conspicuously missing was any type of graduate or thanksgiving.  What made the redactors of these texts write about these big moments?  Whatever they experienced they then communicated in a way that spoke to the reality of their world.
     After Israel walked through the dry sea floor they sang in their song, ימינך יהוה נאדרי בכח ימינך יהוה תרעץ אויב, “Your right hand, Oh God, is majestic in might, your right hand, Oh God, crushes the enemy.”  Israel could not sustain this response and I am sure the up and down reactions in part caused our tradition to look beyond the plain meaning of the text.  As such, the Rabbis concerned themselves not with what necessarily happened, but gave the texts new meaning.  In Bava Kamma 82a we read that the waters that were made sweet alluded to the Torah, thus we cannot go more than three days without being nourished by Torah, which is why we read Torah on Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbat.  Yet what about the miracles that were always followed by doubts.  The Talmud picked up on this as well, hence “the provision of one’s daily bread is as difficult as the splitting of the Sea of Reeds” (BT. Pesachim 118a).  Here, the issue is not the miracles themselves but how the people reacted to a God that they could not see.  Rabbi Alison Wissot looks at this through the eyes of בטחון, or trust.  Yet for Rabbi Wissot this type of trust does not just come because of a miracle seen, it is a trust of choice. We live in a world of uncertainty, mystery and doubts, so belief in God does not inevitably translate to a person’s ability to trust.  In Israel’s case regarding the Exodus, their inability to trust God was rooted in fear and doubt, something that received too more power in the end.
     As we interact with these texts we are also being asked to give them meaning.  In a couple of months we will read these stories again during Passover where we are admonished to walk in our ancestors’ footsteps as we encounter their slavery as our own.  Really?  How many of us have experienced that type of slavery, yet, we all have our own Egypt.  The Passover Seder asks us to give meaning to someone else’s history, and that is what our Torah parsha is also asking us to do. What is the same, however, are the fears and doubts that we all embrace even though our stories and big moments will differ.  How can making meaning out of what we encounter speak to the madness that may surround it?  I think that is something our text is asking us to think about by looking within and beyond as well as on the surface and down deep.  Without meaning it's hard to make our way forward, and sometimes, meaning has to be discovered or even rediscovered.

Shabbat Shalom!