Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Beshallah Exodus 13:17-17:16

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - “The nations heard and were seized with trembling.. all the inhabitants of Canaan melted... The Lord will reign universally and eternally” (Exodus 15:14, 15, 18).

If the Egyptian experience was the most seminal in the development of the nation of Israel, then the splitting of the Reed Sea (Yam Suf literally translated is Reed - not Red - Sea) was the climactic zenith of that major historical event. The Song of the Sea has been memorized by Jewish children in Day Schools from time immemorial, and we even recite it as part and parcel of our daily, Sabbath and Festival Morning Prayer Service. And what emerges with exquisite clarity from this magnificent paean of praise to G-d is that our message of freedom is meant not for Israel alone but also for the entire world; Pharoahs, despots and even more localized communal rulers must understand that only one Lord rules the world and all of His children must be free! That is the point of the verses quoted above.

And if the Jewish people was born - albeit in miniature but certainly in potential - with the “Covenant between the Pieces” (Genesis 15) when Abraham, the founder of our faith-family- nation, was promised progeny and a land with borders, then it would be correct to say that the Israelite people was reborn as a nation with a mission to the world when we emerged from the Reed Sea freed from slavery, unscathed from harm, and inspired with a message for the world: (Birth or rebirth is always associated with water: the fetus is surrounded by amniotic fluids, the mother’s “water breaks” as a sign of imminent birth, and therefore conversion as well as baptism features immersion in water) . Indeed, the Song of the sea concludes with a vision of our planting a seat for the Divine, a Temple to the Lord, on the mountain of our inheritance (15:17,18), the very Temple towards which our Prophets tell us that the Gentile nations will rush, and will learn from our Torah the message of G-d’s design of universal peace, freedom and tranquility (Isaiah 2, Micah 4).

Paralleling our national birth and rebirth is the birth and rebirth of Moshe Rabbenu, Moses the greatest prophet of our people, Moses the one individual who understood and communicated G-d’s eternal Torah to Israel and the world. And if we study carefully Moses’ emergence onto the stage of history, the parallels to the miracle and message of the splitting of the Sea will become inspiringly apparent.

The initial birth of Moses is described in the first four verses of the second chapter of the Book of Exodus: A man from the house of Levi takes a wife from the house of Levi; she conceives and gives birth to a son, whom she hides (from the Egyptian police) for three months. When he couldn’t be hidden any longer, he was placed in an ark smeared with clay and pitch, and the ark was set afloat “in the reeds” (besuf) of the Nile River; his sister Miriam was stationed nearby to see what would happen.

The re-birth of Moses begins when Pharoah’s daughter goes down to bathe in the Nile, her maidens walk along the river, and “she sees a basket among the reeds (hasuf); she sends her maidservant,” takes the Hebrew baby, takes pity on him, and allows Miriam to find a Hebrew wet-nurse for him.

Pharoah’s daughter has not given birth to Moses, but she does save his life!

And in saving his life, she endangers her own life. After all, her father Pharoah has ordered all Hebrew baby boys to be cast into the Nile; in rescuing this Hebrew infant, she was defying her father’s decree. History confirms that totalitarian despots never hesitated to execute their closest family members who dared rebel against them. Indeed, the Netziv (Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, author of the HaAmek Davar Biblical Commentary) suggests that once Pharoah’s daughter saw the floating ark, and suspected the existence of a Hebrew baby within it, she sent away her closest maidservant (Exodus 2:5) so that when she-Pharoah’s daughter - would rescue him, no one would witness the event to inform her father of her crime (the Bible had already testified that her other maidservants had left her to walk along the edge of the Nile). Pharoah’s daughter emerges as the courageous heroine of the moment!

This fortunate rebirth concludes with the giving of a name: “And the lad grew, and she (the wet-nurse, Yoheved, his biological mother) took him to Pharoah’s daughter; he became for (Pharoah’s daughter) a son and she called his name Moshe. And she said, ‘It is because I drew him out from the water’ ” (Exodus 2:10). Once again, I believe the Netziv provides the truest interpretation of this verse. The Egyptian word Moshe means son (Hebrew ben); Pharoah’s daughter names him “son,” her son, because she earned her motherhood by her having risked her life for him. Since she drew him forth from the Nile River, in defiance of her father’s orders, she could claim him as her son.

At this point in the narrative, there is no verbal connection whatsoever between the name Moshe and the Hebrew verb meshitihu, to draw out; after all, the name is Egyptian and the verb is Hebrew. However, the Writer of the Bible is clearly making reference to the double-entendre inherent in the name: Moshe the son (in Egyptian) will also draw forth (Moshe, in Hebrew) his people, the Israelites, from Egyptian servitude as well as from the Reed Sea. Just as the daughter of Pharoah drew forth (and saved) the Hebrew child from thereeds of the Nile River, so will the adult Moshe draw forth and save his nation from the Reed Sea; and he who learned the courage to rebel against evil totalitarian laws of servitude from an Egyptian princess will communicate a Torah which will eventually teach the entire world to have the courage to be free - even if it means putting your life on the line!

Shabbat Shalom.