Just Keep Singing!

This is a good weekend. Today is my sister’s birthday, coinciding with Tu Bishvat and Shabbat Shirah. The weather is warm, like the world knows we should be celebrating this auspicious day. During an otherwise run-of-the-mill weekend, there are many reasons to praise G!d, to remember that he has been good to us.

The Israelites also had reason to thank G!d. He had taken them out of the land of Egypt, the land of their slavery, just as he had promised. Since Pharaoh and the Egyptians didn’t make it easy, he had also brought plagues upon their oppressors to remind them who was in supreme power, ensuring the release of the Hebrew slaves. Yet G!d knew the minds of the people – that they might easily give into fear and doubt that their salvation was true. Perhaps this is foreshadowing – since we know from the story the many doubts they allowed to take hold of their minds and hearts. However, the first hint occurs in the first verse of this parsha:

“Now when Pharaoh had let the people go, G!d did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, even thought it was near; for G!d said, ‘The people might change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.'”

So, G!d leads the people by way of the Red Sea, which of course also leads them into a place of fear and doubt when they are pursued by the Egyptian army. Perhaps most of us are not pursued by physical enemies in the same way the Hebrew nation was on their retreat from Egypt, but surely many of us have experienced the presence of spiritual or mental enemies which are as forward movement-choking as the armies of Pharaoh. During these times, we may be consumed with doubt – in ourselves, in G!d, in others who we thought would help us. The Israelites, having just been set free from four hundred years under the thumb of Pharaoh, were understandably rattled that they were being chased and gained upon by their just-previous oppressors.

Now that we repeat the story every year, we can tell you that G!d saves his people – by splitting the sea, letting them all through, and covering Pharaoh’s army in the suffocating waves during their pursuit. After this episode:

“When Israel saw the great power which the L!rd had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the L!rd, and they believed in the L!rd and in his servant Moses.”

The trust of the people in their ultimate leader and in their human leader, along with the inclusion in and witness of a great miracle, led Moses and the people to sing a song of praise to G!d. This sone is repeated in Deuteronomy, and can be seen used in Psalms, as well as in Deborah’s song of praise in Judges (this week’s haftarah). The themes of praising G!d’s deliverance are not forgotten throughout the Hebrew canon. That is why the Shabbat of Parashat Beshalach is called Shabbat Shirah – we remember the great song of Moses after one of the most memorable miracles in scripture.

The rest of this week’s parsha includes the story of water from a rock, and the story of the war against Amalek. The last verse promises a war upon Amalek from generation to generation, one of which we are well aware even today.