Two Minute Torah Podcast

Beshallah 5771 by Joanne Palmer

Hi. I'm Joanne Palmer, editor of CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism, and this is Koach's Two-Minute Torah.

There is so very much going on in Parashat Beshallach, the most absolutely Technicolor of all the brightly colored parshiot that make up the book of Exodus.

At its heart is the song of the sea, that triumphant, actively triumphalist song that marks the rebirth of the children of Israel. Written in irregular, weaving columns in black ink on the white scroll of the Torah, as if the columns on either side are the waves and the one down the middle the Israelites, it conjures up the birth canal of the Reed Sea and decants us on the other side, where even women are allowed to sing.

Before the passage through the pent-up walled sea, the parashah describes the Israelites' flight from Egypt, armed (and footed) with Joseph's bones. It talks about hardened hearts and rods and snakes as it leads to the hardened walls of water that stay erect for the Israelites and collapse on the Egyptians. Sometimes hardness is good in these passages, and sometimes it is not.

Most of the rest of the parasha, though, is tiresome. The Israelites complain, Moshe complains, God complains. "If only we had died!" the people whine. Moshe and Aaron whine back at them, and eventually God, like a stressed-out overwhelmed parent who knows better but does what he shouldn't do anyway, appears to them in a cloud to mediate. The Israelites get manna, a strangely controlling food that demands that they follow the rules - when they do not and try to save it overnight it becomes infested with maggots and stinks, as the text unappealingly tells us.

There is a lesson here in dailiness for us. Our lives have peaks - the Israelites have just crossed the Reed Sea, and although they don't know it yet they are heading for Sinai. And they have valleys, times of great grief. Most of life, though, is lived in between those peaks and valleys. As the existence of the annoying phrase "I can't complain," which means of course I can complain, in fact I am complaining right now, shows, to complain is human - and, it seems, also to complain is divine. But most of life is daily, and our job as people - and as people, moreover, unlikely to be confronted with God in a cloud, attempting to make things better - is to live it, despite its irritations, with grace.

As always, in loving memory of Shira Palmer-Sherman, z'l