Addict Torah: B'Shallah 2023/5783

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Ibn Ezra on Exodus 13:17
(1) AND IT CAME TO PASS WHEN PHARAOH HAD LET THE PEOPLE GO...the reason God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines was that it was close. God thus led them via a distant way so that they would not witness any war and say, Let us make a captain, and let us return to Egypt (Num. 14:4). (3) We know for certain that the Lord knows the future. God knew that the people would repent if He led them by the way of the land of the Philistines. Scripture reads, Lest peradventure the people repent because the Torah employed human terminology so that those who study will understand.

Eruvin 53b
One time I was walking along the path, and I saw a young boy sitting at the crossroads. And I said to him: On which path shall we walk in order to get to the city? He said to me: This path is short and long, and that path is long and short. I walked on the path that was short and long. When I approached the city I found that gardens and orchards surrounded it, and I did not know the trails leading through them to the city. I went back and met the young boy again and said to him: My son, didn’t you tell me that this way is short? He said to me: And didn’t I tell you that it is also long? I kissed him on his head and said to him: Happy are you, O Israel, for you are all exceedingly wise, from your old to your young.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 200, Kindle edition
Yet, here, the Torah makes a point of God’s not taking the obvious route. Instead, a dubious, unmarked route is chosen, for reasons that are related to a repressed desire. So far, we have had no evidence of such a desire; it is the omniscient God who first speaks of it, as though it were self-evident. Through this opening speech at the moment of redemption, we understand that the Israelites, even at this moment, are ambivalent about the movement to freedom.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 204
“Their crooked road into the wilderness gives them, paradoxically, a freedom to think, to ask their subversive, sarcastic questions. It gives them, also, the outrageous freedom to “zigzag,” not only geographically but intellectually, emotionally. The road that is akuma threads through places of vision and faith and, adjacently, through places of doubt and revision. It makes possible a journey that is like a graph curve (a modern Hebrew meaning for the word akuma), zigzag lines joining highs and lows.”

Rabbi Cantor Allson Wissot, Bitachon - Trusting the Path, in The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 101, kindle edition
How do we know we are heading in the right direction? Sometimes our path is so winding and long that it feels like we took a wrong turn somewhere. Even the giant signposts that once indicated that we were on the right path ultimately only go to show that up until that moment, we were headed in the right direction. Similarly, the Children of Israel experienced the walls of water, an extraordinary miracle, as a sign that so far, everything had gone well. But then what? After the experience of an extraordinary miracle, how can we know in which direction to turn?

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 559, Kimdle Edition
Only the bones of Joseph remained in Egypt until the Israelites went out of the land, for the Egyptians guarded them in their royal treasure chambers. Their magicians had warned them that whenever Joseph's bones should be removed from Egypt, a great darkness would envelop the whole land, and it would be a dire misfortune for the Egyptians, for none would be able to recognize his neighbor even with the light of a lamp.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p 400
To be a proper leader of Israel, Moses acquired the strengths of Joesph his ability to provide people with food as well as with spiritual guidance and his capacity to forgive people who had wronged him.

Baal Shem Tov, cited in RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim, Torah and Commentary, p. 402.
Often in life, we think we can escape our problems by running away, only to find our problems running after us.

Frida Kahlo, in a letter to her friend Ella Wolfe
I tried to drown my sorrows, but those bastards learned how to swim.

Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, p. 244-245
The inner feelings of the Israelites, their subconscious subservience to Egyptian overlordship is mirrored in the very wording of their grumbling...'Egypt' is an eternal refrain in their mouths...better to be buried in the graves of a familiar country, than to die in the unknown. Egypt was a 'house of serfdom.' But better to serve the Egyptians than to live in a strange clime. Later, Egypt became a land of the fleshpots, of onions, garlic, and fish.

Rabbi Alan Lew, z'l translation of Exodus 14:13-15, in Be Still and Get Going, p. 2, Kindle Edition
But Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. Collect yourselves and see the salvation which Adonai will make for you today. . . . Adonai will fight for you and you will be still.” Then Adonai said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to just get going."

Sotah 37a
...Rabbi Yehuda said to Rabbi Meir: That is not how the incident took place. Rather, this tribe said: I am not going into the sea first, and that tribe said: I am not going into the sea first. Then, in jumped the prince of Judah, Nahshon ben Amminadab, and descended into the sea first, accompanied by his entire tribe, as it is stated: “Ephraim surrounds Me with lies and the house of Israel with deceit, and Judah is yet wayward toward God [rad im El]” (Hosea 12:1), which is interpreted homiletically as: And Judah descended [rad] with God [im El]. And in this regard, the tradition, i.e., the Writings, explicates Nahshon’s prayer at that moment: “Save me, God; for the waters are come in even unto the soul. I am sunk in deep mire, where there is no standing…let not the water flood overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up” (Psalms 69:2–3, 16). At that time, Moses was prolonging his prayer. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him: My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me? Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, but what can I do? God said to him: “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward. And you, lift up your rod and stretch out your hand” (Exodus 14:15–16). For this reason, because Nahshon and the tribe of Judah went into the sea first, the tribe of Judah merited to govern Israel, as it is stated: “Judah became His sanctuary, Israel His dominion. The sea saw it and fled” (Psalms 114:2–3).

Patricia Carlin-Neumann, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 106, Kindle edition
The daredevil confidence of this Nahshon contrasts sharply with another vision of this moment ( M’chilta, B’shalach 5). Huddled together, a terrified crowd looks behind at the Egyptians and forward toward water. As they yell, “I don’t want to go into the sea!” Nahshon jumps up in fear; losing his footing, he falls into the waves. Overcome with terror, he cites Psalms, “Save me, O God, for the waters have reached my neck” (Psalm 69:2). Here, Nahshon—a fearful, drowning man—cries for God’s help.

Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, cited in RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 404
When Pharaoh died, he was stationed at the gates of the underworld, where he would greet tyrants of a later generation with the words 'Why did you not learn from my example?'

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 739, Kindle Edition
The dividing of the sea was but the first of ten miracles connected with the passage of the Israelites through it. The others were that the waters united in a vault above their heads; twelve paths opened up, one for each of the tribes; the water became transparent as glass, and each tribe could see the others; the soil underfoot was dry, but it changed into clay when the Egyptians stepped upon it; the walls of water transformed into rocks, against which the Egyptians were thrown and dashed to death, while before the Israelites could slake their thirst; and, finally, the tenth wonder was, that this drinking water was congealed in the heart of the sea as soon as they had satisfied their need. And there were other miracles, besides. The sea yielded the Israelites whatever their hearts desired. If a child cried as it lay in the arms of its mother, she needed but to stretch out her hand and pluck and apple or some fruit and quiet it.

Muriel Rukeyer, Searching/Not Searching, in Breaking Open
Miriam: The Red Sea
High above shores and times,
I on the shore
forever and ever.
Moses my brother
has crossed over
to milk, honey,
that holy land.
Building Jerusalem.
I sing forever
on the seashore.
I do remember
horseman and horses,
waves of passage
poured into war,
all poured into journey.
My unseen brothers
have gone over;
chariots
deep seas under.
I alone stand here
ankle-deep
and I sing, I sing,
until the lands
sing to each other.

Baal Shem Tov, 18th c.
Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.

Rabbi Dr. Sue Reinhold, The Final Crossing: Parashah Beshallach and the Other Side, Lecture, January 2008
The Sea of Endings, it seems, in this moment, was also the Sea of Beginnings. Or as Zornberg puts it, “On the threshold of death, the Israelites experience, most viscerally, the restoration to life.”[1] Many commentators ascertain that the Sea of Reeds is a metaphor for a birth canal, a narrow body of salt water through which the Israelites press through in order to be born. What does a baby feel in the warm and salty womb? What does it feel in the birth canal? How does it feel when it comes out into the bright and unfamiliar light of the “dry ground”? It cries! How do we feel at times as we change and grow over our many years and make passage from our Egypts, our Mitzrayim, our narrow places?...So all along in this journey, there are opposites held in tension. The sea is the land. The ending is the beginning. Near death becomes birth. Can’t you think of things in your life that at the time seemed like endings, but were really the beginning of something else? And how closely linked are death and birth? The seven days we sit shiva are in reference to the seven days of creation, and as Rabbi Jane has pointed out to me, these seven days reference the creation of something new – a world without that actual person in it, and a world with her memory in it.
[1] The Particulars of Rapture, p. 215

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 407
Legend has it that the angels wanted to sing songs of praise, but God told them, 'Wait, and let Israel sing first. Humans are able to praise only when they are inspired. If we do not give them the opportunity, the desire will pass.'

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 413
The purpose of religion is not to explain life's bitterness but to sweeten it, to make it more palatable. The Midrash envisions Moses asking God, 'Why did You create brackish water in your world, a liquid that serves no purpose?' God replies 'Instead of asking philosophical questions, do something to make the bitter waters sweet.'

from Rabbi Dr. Sue Reinhold, The Final Crossing: Parashah Beshallach and the Other Side, Lecture, January 2008
How many times have we undergone a challenge, a scary but positive transition, a move towards the light, away from darkness, and found ourselves compelled to step back into what is comfortable and known, even if we know it includes pain? How often have we ourselves bound ourselves in community and decided collectively that the past was better merely because it was what we knew? The longing for Egypt, for the familiar pain instead of the uncertain future, strikes me in modern parallel in my modern sage Bono’s lyric – he’s the lead singer of the rock band U2: “Don’t you worry about the day, the day the pain it goes away? I know I miss mine sometimes.” The fact that this lyric of Bono’s resides in a song titled Xanax and Wine is an indicator of some of our modern ways of staving off the fear of an uncertain world. In the end, the Israelites in this moment are not sensing joy at freedom. The Israelites are not weighing the contrast between slavery and freedom. They are weighing the contrast between the familiar and the unknown. We are like this too.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 362, Kindle edition
And they all lived happily after.
For about a day.
Now the Hebrews commence what will be forty years of wandering in the wilderness. And forty years of grumbling, complaining, and muttering dissension. In swift succession we are shown three separate incidents of complaining and possible insurrection, and there will be more to come. How is it possible that the Hebrews, who were singing God’s praises so ardently in the Shirat Ha’Yam, turned so quickly into the doubting, kvetching masses who could accuse Moshe with “You have brought us to this desert to starve this entire congregation to death” and could ask at Rephidim, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 364, Kindle edition
A nation of slaves is not refashioned in an instant by a display of divine power.” Faith is not the product of externals; it has to be planted like a seed and nurtured within your heart. It will grow slowly, not in the fires of the miraculous, but in the sun and rain of daily life. And faith has as one of its components doubt. Doubt is not the same as fear or lack of trust, which is what the Hebrews have before they enter Yam Suf. Doubt is the probing that makes it possible to sustain a thoughtful but not unquestioning attitude to the Holy.

Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, v. 1, loc. 3239
More convincing, I think, are the words of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167), who maintains that God is testing Israel’s ability to tolerate “needing [God] each and every day” (commentary to Exod. 16:4).83 Dependence can be difficult, Ibn Ezra realizes, especially when one has heretofore been dependent upon a merciless tyrant. But God wants to teach the people trust, and genuine trust will require the embrace of healthy dependence.