We sang
Shirat Ha Yam, the Song of the Sea, today, and although this Shabbat is known
as Shabbat Shirah, the fact of the matter is that this song is sung every day
during Peseukei D’zimrah. The Zohar
states, “Whoever recites the Song of the Sea every day with proper kavannah
(intention) will merit saying it in the World to Come.” It is a song that we are to recite as if we
too are present by the water’s edge while the Egyptian troupes are bearing down
upon us. Not only are we to acknowledge
that G-d saved the Israelites, we are to feel as if we are standing with those
who were being saved.
On the other
hand, the Talmud expresses some reservations about singing this song with too
much joy. It relates the story that when the heavenly angels wanted to sing
praises to G-d after the splitting of the sea, G-d silenced them. Why?
It was because the redemption of the Israelites came at the expense of
the Egyptians who drowned in the sea.
The loss of human life saddened G-d.
This Talmudic point of view mirrors the actions we take on Pesach when
we take wine out of our cups while reciting the ten plagues.
Rabbi
Abraham Twerski asks, “Why does G-d welcome the praise of the Israelites when
he rejected that of the angels?” He points out that we can find the answer to
this question by looking at the verse in the Torah immediately preceding the
Song. The verse says, “Israel saw the
great hand that HaShem inflicted upon Egypt; and the people revered HaShem, and
they had faith in HaShem and in Moses, His servant.” In other words, the parting of the waters
left the Israelites with a solid sense of faith in G-d and Moses. Their
salvation came in a way that they had not expected. When the waters parted and they walked
through to the other side while the pursuing Egyptians drowned, their song was
a praise for G-d and an acclamation of their faith in Him. The angels, on the other hand, did not have
their faith enhanced by the miracle of the splitting of the sea. The miracle
did not elevate their faith. G-d forbade
them to sing, because He understood that their song would have merely been in
praise of His destroying the Egyptians.
“The praise by the Israelites was an expression of their having achieved
a greater awareness of G-d’s majesty, and this type of praise was
welcome.” (Prayerfully Yours by
Twersky)
It is this
very awareness that the Song of the Sea was a praise borne out of increased
faith in G-d that instructs us to rise as we recite it on a daily basis as well
as when we hear it read during parshat Beshallach. Listening to it is supposed to evoke the
sense of terror experienced by our forefathers as well as the awe that resulted
as they walked through the towering walls of water.
Of course
there are questions that arise knowing that some had to suffer in order for
others to have their faith strengthened.
A parable was told by the Maggid of Lublin to answer such a question.
“A young
mother died after giving birth to a child, and a wet nurse was engaged to nurse
the infant. After a bit of time, the
infant became quite sick. A doctor
examined the infant and prescribed a number of medications. The father was appalled. “There is no way we can get all those medications
into the baby, “he said. “Don’t fret,”
the doctor said. “The baby does not have
to take those medications. The wet nurse
will take them, and they will be transmitted to the baby when he nurses.” When the wet nurse heard of this she
protested, “I don’t want to take those bitter-tasting medications. I’m not the child’s mother. It’s not my responsibility to enable the
child to recover. If that is what is
expected of me, I quit! Get yourself
another wet nurse.” “You’re wrong,” the
doctor said. “You see, the child’s
illness is due to germs which you transmitted to him. You behaved in a dissolute manner which
caused you to become infected, and you passed on the disease. It is very much
your responsibility to be the vehicle for the cure.”
The faith of
the Israelites, nurtured by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was even held onto
strongly by Joseph when he was in Egypt.
It was only after Joseph’s death, when a new Pharoah arose who enslaved
the Israelites, that Israelite faith became eroded by the hundreds of years of
working in Egypt and associating with the pagan culture there. The story I just related by the Maggid of
Lublin was trying to point out that it was not wrong that the Egyptians had to
be the vehicle for restoring the Israelites faith in G-d. It was part of their responsibility for
having eroded their faith in the first place.
As modern
day Jews, it can be difficult to imagine the high level of shared faith that
the Israelites experienced at the moment of their redemption. For us as a group, that sense of certainty
seems to have been eroded. Several
months ago, the Pew Report on Jewish Americans shared the following results:
Seven-in-ten U.S. Jews believe in God or a
universal spirit (72%), including one-third (34%) who say they are “absolutely
certain” about this belief. Eight-in-ten Jews by religion say they believe in
God or a universal spirit, including 39% who are absolutely certain about this
belief. Among Jews of no religion, 45% believe in God with 18% saying they are
absolutely convinced of God’s existence. Most Jews see no conflict between
being Jewish and not believing in God; two-thirds say that a person can be
Jewish even if he or she does not believe in God.
Belief in
God is much more common among the general public than among Jews. Even among
Jews by religion, belief in God is less common than among members of other
major U.S. religious groups. And Jews of no religion are more skeptical of
God’s existence than is the religiously unaffiliated general public.
Though most
Jews express some doubt about God’s existence, certainty about God is nearly
universal among Orthodox Jews, 89% of whom say they are absolutely convinced of
God’s existence. Far fewer Jews from other denominational backgrounds share
this level of conviction.
What would
lead us to have a higher level of conviction in the existence of G-d? How can we continue to wrestle with G-d (as
the name Yisrael indicates) and still maintain faith? These are some thoughts I
think are worthy of discussion.
Shabbat
Shalom.
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