Parshas Beshalach
Seeing the Hand of God
The miracles performed by God through Moshe and Aharon, the apex of which is
reached in this week’s parsha by the splitting of Yam Suf and the final
deliverance of the Jewish people from the oppression of Pharaoh and the
Egyptians. We are then further witness to the miracle of the manna falling
six times a week to sustain the Jewish people in the Sinai desert and the
ongoing miracle of water supplied to millions in that arid climate.
With all this, the Jewish people are trained and accustomed to a completely
miraculous supernatural existence and way of life. They are, to a certain
extent, lulled into believing that this is always the way things will be.
Their passive role in all of these events is somehow the norm that will
always be expected of them.
In the name of God, Moshe told them at the Yam Suf that God would fight
their battle with Pharaoh and that they might remain quiet and passive in
the ensuing struggle. It is this experience of constant visible and
recognizable Divine intervention on their behalf, during the forty year span
of residing in the desert of Sinai, that makes preparation for entry into
the Land of Israel so difficult , as we will read later in the Torah.
A dependent society that is accustomed only to supernatural intervention
will find it difficult to suddenly change and become self-reliant and
independent. From this vantage point of practical living, the rabbis of the
Talmud constantly reminded us not to rely solely on miracles.
Through the long and bitter centuries of Jewish exile amongst the Christian
and Moslem nations of the world, the Jewish people somehow survived - barely
so, but survive we did – in nothing short of a miraculous fashion. Powerless
and defenseless, despised, hated and ridiculed, Jews nevertheless
persevered, convinced that Divine intervention would somehow guarantee their
continuance - individually and nationally.
Because of this enforced condition of passivity, Jews waited for
supernatural deliverance from their plight. The hand of God, so to speak,
acting almost invisibly and through seemingly natural forces and occurrences
in the last century, changed these dynamics of Jewish life. Passivity now
gave way to activity and great human effort and sacrifice.
God’s miracles were always present with us but much of the Jewish nation
girded its loins to struggle on its own for independence, self-reliance and
national realization. The fact that these efforts proved successful is
itself nothing short of miraculous. Viewing the Jewish world at the
beginning of the twentieth century, who could have imagined what that Jewish
world would look like a scant one hundred years later.
There are those who refuse to see the hand of God, so to speak, in these
remarkable events. And there are those who refuse to see that positive human
effort and initiative were necessary to bring this wonder about. But the
truth is that both factors were and are present in the events of Jewish life
today and will continue to be so in our immediate future as well.
Shabat shalom.
Rabbi Berel Wein
