A number of years ago in the backyard of my home in New York I planted a plum tree, pear tree and apple tree. When we purchased the trees the people at the nursery told us that it would be at least three years before those trees would bear fruit. Unfortunately we moved out of that house about 18 months after the trees were planted and never got to enjoy their produce. So on this day of Tu Bishvat, a celebration of trees and what they mean to our planet, I realized that trees and freedom (a subject of this week's parasha) have a lot to do with each other in the sense that they both take time to grow. How is this so?
Once the Jews and the others who joined them left Egypt they would once again be faced with this reality, “could Pharaoh try to take us back into his evil treatment as slaves again,” unspoken words they may have wondered, but dare not utter. Freedom comes with a price. Just look at the daily Israeli news at the rising numbers of young IDF men and women who have given their lives in order for the nation to live in freedom, safe from terror and hate. Freedom is never free; there is always an associated cost. Israel’s freedom from slavery also was not free either. But freedom is something that also takes time to grow and mature, just like trees, meaning that we come to learn that freedom is a mindset and just not a right. Still in the end, for those now free slaves, they begin their travels knowing that the price of their freedom may be losing it once again.
We read in this week's sedra, parashat Beshalach, while being pursued by the Egyptians from behind and facing the Sea of Reeds before them, they say to Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?” (Ex. 14:11). In response, according to one Midrash (Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 14:11), they respond, “We would be sorry for our slavery in Egypt, our death in the desert is harder for us than our slavery,” meaning it would be better to labor and die as slaves in Egypt then to die as free people in the wilderness. The Talmud (Arakhin 15a) reacts to the graves in Egypt differently. Talmud tells about Israel’s two lessons from the sea, “one [was] when the Jews descended into the sea, and one when they ascended from the sea.” Upon their descent they learned to not let their fear control them, upon their accent they began to learn that they were truly free.
Rabbi Arthur Green compares Israel's descent and ascent into and from the sea to a child who does not want to take the medicine from a parent, to that same child who gets better, only to understand why their parent made them take the medicine in the first place. Likewise after leaving Egypt the only way the Jews could see the hand of God that led them to freedom was by completing the journey through the sea. Let’s not read that the wrong way. This is not some arbitrary test that God is putting the people through to measure their faithfulness and allegiance to this God who took them out of Egypt, but a change of world view. The healing from the medicine taught the child that the parents gave the medicine for a good reason, but the child had to be healed first to see that. In the same way, it was not until Israel crossed the sea that they realized on the other side that they were free.
Understanding their freedom (as opposed to just being free) as they stood at the seashore, they sang “Shirat HaYam“ or the Song of the Sea that was a joyous celebration of their newfound freedom. Yet being free and understanding they were free were not the same, and once they recognized that they would truly be free. W. Gunther Plaut (Modern Jewish Commentary on Torah) wrote that Israel's freedom was not just to celebrate the virtue of being free but was “the foundation of [their] spiritual life.” In other words Israel’s “right” of freedom was about others, just not themselves, and that is the part they would need to grow to understand.
In the book of Judges (Jud. 17:6) we read that they each did what “was right in their own eyes,” but that is not a “right” of freedom according to Torah. In Torah what is “right” begins with loving our fellow person like ourselves, how we treat parents, raising our children in the ways of our traditions and values, visiting and caring for the sick, attending funerals and going to the house of Shiva, celebrating with those who are due honor, making our spiritual lives of prayer and learning just as important as taking care of our physical health, being there for those in need, going the extra step for the sake of others, caring for our larger Jewish community family and just not our own as if we live in a vacuum. Our right of freedom, just like a tree, grows and matures in its support and tikkun for those around us, which is the idea of “right” in Torah. That is the song of freedom we sing, just like they sang when they crossed the sea.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam Ruditsky
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