Day 15: Turn Around
One of God’s first instructions to the Israelites after taking them out of Egypt is to “turn around” (Ex. 14:2). Contextually, this command is directional; the Israelites are marching one way, and God tells them to turn back and proceed in a different direction. But it can also be understood spiritually. The Hebrew term for turning around, vayashuvu, is the same as the word for repenting. Seen from this perspective, God is instructing the Israelites to repent, to do teshuvah, as an early step in the process of preparing to receive Torah at Sinai. Teshuvah is about being aware of and learning from our mistakes, accepting responsibility for our failures, and affirming our ability to grow. It is predicated on the notion that we have choice, free will, moral agency; that our future is not dictated by our past or present, or even predetermined on high; it is, in many important ways, up to us, dependent on the choices we make. The ability to receive Torah requires the recognition that while we may rarely be in control of our circumstances or what others do to us, we can always control what we do in light of those circumstances, how we think about what we have done after we've done it, and what next step we will take. In order to make it to Sinai, in other words, we first have to turn around.
Day 16: Extremists for Love
As the Israelites are trapped between the Sea of Reeds and Pharaoh’s army, they cry out to Moses for instruction. Moses, in turn, cries out to God for deliverance. God responds by saying, “Why are you crying out to me?! Tell the Children of Israel to go forward” (Ex. 14:15). On its surface, this is a baffling command. Go forward? Where to? If the Israelites march forward, they’ll walk right into the sea! Was God ordering a suicide mission? Strange though it may seem, the answer, in a sense, is yes. As a potential partner in the covenant, God wanted to know -- and more importantly, God wanted Israel to know about themselves -- whether they were fully committed, whether they were invested all the way, whether they would be willing to stake their very lives on their godly purpose in the world. In telling the Israelites to go forward, God is asking whether the Israelites are prepared to devote themselves fully to the cause of godly justice, love, and human dignity. And we who are today offered the covenant are perpetually asked the same question.
Day 17: Now You’re Just Showing Off
On its surface, the dramatic climax of the Exodus narrative – the Splitting of the Sea – seems to be unnecessary. Couldn’t the story simply have ended with the Israelites leaving Egypt. Is God just showing off here? What does this story add? Before the Sea actually splits, God prepared Moses for the events that were about to unfold, telling him, “I will gain glory through Pharaoh and through all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Infinite” (Ex. 14:4). Everything that had happened to this point in the narrative had been merely to liberate the Israelites from enslavement, freeing them “from the oppressions of the Egyptians” and delivering them “from their labors” (Ex. 6:6). However, the purpose of the Exodus was not freedom, but redemption, exchanging one state of being for another. In this case, the Israelites needed to exchange subservience to Pharaoh for loyalty to God, the Egyptians needed to exchange their disposition to dominate for awareness of human equality, and God needed to exchange the old, oppressive world order embodied by Egypt for the new, just world order that would be modeled by Israel. These exchanges couldn’t have happened if God had simply taken the Israelites from Egypt. The Sea was the definitive demonstration of divine dominion that makes the revolution at Sinai possible.
Day 18: How God is Revealed
God remarks to Moses that the events at the Sea of Reeds will enable God to “gain glory through Pharaoh and through all his army” (Ex. 14:4). What need does God have for glory? And how will splitting the sea help God gain it? The medieval French commentator Rashi explains, “When the Holy Blessed One exacts retribution from the wicked, God’s name is magnified and glorified” (Rashi ad. loc.). In other words, God’s greatness is revealed to the world through the presence of justice. The Splitting of the Sea affirms to all who witnessed it -- and all who in subsequent generations will learn about it -- that justice is one of God’s defining features, and therefore God’s greatness is diminished in the presence of injustice. We advance God’s presence in the world -- indeed, we make the world more godly -- whenever we make the world more just.
Day 19: Wade in the Water, Children
When the Israelites are trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Sea of Reeds, God commands them “to go forward” (Ex. 14:15). God orders the Israelites to march into the sea, despite not yet having told them about the miracle that was to occur. Some traditions go even further, contending that God doesn’t split the sea until the Israelites have waded into the water up to their nostrils (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Parashat Beshallah). Why doesn’t God perform the miracle before telling the Children of Israel to go forward into the sea? Because living a life of Torah, which is at its core about possibility, about fashioning lives and building a world that do not yet exist, requires having the courage -- and the faith -- to step forward into the unknown without being certain how things will turn out, recognizing that just because something hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t happen at all. Only when Israel, and we, can overcome our fears and summon the bravery needed to wade into the untested waters are we truly ready to receive, and live lives of, Torah.
Day 20: Learning to Lift Up
Walking through the split Sea of Reeds must have been no less terrifying than standing on the shore, trapped between the seemingly impassable sea and Pharaoh’s charging army. How did the Israelites know the walls of water wouldn’t come crashing down on them at any moment, just as they ultimately fall upon the Egyptians? The answer, of course, is that they didn’t know, and they were therefore very afraid, indeed. According to a midrash, the Israelites told stories as they marched through the sea, comforting and calming one another to ease their fears and encourage them onward (Midrash Tanhuma, Parashat Beshallah). Perhaps this was one of the purposes of the miracle in the first place, to teach the Israelites that the way we make it through life, which is always uncertain, is with the loving company of friends, family, and community; and that each of us therefore has an obligation to provide comfort and support to others. Creating a community of mutual responsibility is the essence of covenant. To prepare for Sinai and everything after, the Israelites, and we, must learn to lift up others.
Day 21: Missing the Miracle
According to legend, as the Children of Israel are walking through the split Sea of Reeds, amazed by God’s great miracle, two Israelites were thoroughly unimpressed, fixated instead on the muddy ground beneath their feet. The pair kvetched and complained about having to trudge through the muck as they walked through the parted waters. For them there was no miracle, only mud. My teacher, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, concludes the story by suggesting that these two Israelites might still be wandering around the wilderness somewhere, looking down at their dirty feet, lost and grumbling. How many of us let muck of life distract us from the “miracles that are with us, every day,” as the daily prayerbook puts it. We complain more than we praise. We focus more on negatives than positives. The mundane and trivial receive more attention than the awesome. And, like those two Israelites, the more we fixate on the mud, the more mud becomes all we see, and the more lost we become. Only those Israelites who were able to remain mindful of the miracle merited to receive Torah. Similarly, only those of us who can manage to pay attention to the miracles in our lives, however small or subtle they may be, and not get distracted by the negative and the mundane, or lost in a self-perpetuating cycle of cynicism and banality, will experience divine revelation.
