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Smack in the middle of the narrative of the story of the Jewish people’s departure from Egypt, the Torah decides to pause and present to us the mitzvah of wearing teffilin. Why does the Torah choose to do this, especially at the very moment we have all been waiting for; the climax of the exodus. It seems like a rather unnecessary pause in the story?

The Ramban, Nachmonides, on the spot comes forward with an answer. The Ramban states that the entire purpose of the exodus from Egypt and the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea was solely for the mitzvah of tefillin. He explains that the boxes of tefillin contain within them the passages from the Torah recount the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore, tefillin should be worn every day in order to remind ones self about the miracles performed for the Jewish people, especially since miracles are not done in front of our eyes on a daily basis. He adds that a box is placed on the brain in order to logically comprehend the rare occurrence performed in from of our eyes, and therefore perceive the act as a miracle. He also states that a box is placed by the heart, in order that the miracle should permeate the body and trigger emotion and excitement from the miracle that was witnessed; that the person should be affected by such an act. The Ramban concludes by calling the remembrance of the splitting of the sea the “root of Judasim and Torah”, a profound and exalted title.

According to the Ramban, the role of a miracle is to serve as support and as a “reminder” to mundane situations in everyday life.

There are two distinct moments in time. The first being the point in time where God performed a miracle, and the second time being our everyday normal life. Our goal is to inject moment A, the miracle into regular nature, and refer back to the original moment where God’s divine hand was clearly at work. We must always focus ourselves and constantly refer back to that moment, hence the purpose of the Pesach seder, where we pass on our mesorah to our children and keep our miracle alive.

The Rambam, Maimonides, has a completely different understanding of the philosophy behind the miracle that took place at the Red Sea. To the Rambam, the phrase “God changed nature” has no meaning and is absurd. According the Rambam, everything is nature. There is not Moment A and Moment B. God did not chance nature’s course in any direction in order to perform this event. The splitting of the sea was initially programmed into nature from the beginning of time. The only difference between what we refer to as a miracle and what goes on every day is simply a difference in how frequent this act occurs. One is routine to seeing a flowing ocean, however is not accustom to seeing a sea split. God therefore occasionally lets nature act in rare occurrences in order to astonish people and catch their attention.

The ramifications of the Rambam’s definition of a miracle is enormous. What the Rambam is essentially saying is that everything in the history of the world, miracle or everyday life, emanates from the same point. If the only thing separating a miracle and the mundane is irregularity, that this implies that everything stems from the direct hand of God. There is no true distention between miracles and nature. It’s all the same thing.

With this in mind, the significance of the miracle of Kriyat Yam Suf according to the Rambam has a completely different meaning than that of the Ramban. The point of the splitting of the sea was to serve as a wakeup call towards the rest of the world in order to show that there is someone constantly running the show. That when a person looks at the sky, a bird, a moose, they refer back to the miracle of the sea, where the divine hand of God was revealed, and appreciate that there is a constant force behind nature.

This is one of the main reasons why there is a commandment to eliminate the nation of Amalek. Directly after the Jews were saved from the Egyptians openly through God’s hand, Amalek had the nerve to attack them. This shows that Amalek decided to ignore the open act of God and have enough courage to challenge the Jews. This attribute of blindness and insensitivity towards God’s open hand is the opposite message God is trying to portray. One should be cognizant of God’s constant control over nature, and therefore let to the commandment to eradicate such an insensitive nation.

Through the Rambam’s understanding, one can understand the entire essence of prayer. When one approaches tefilla, one must have in mind that his prayers will be heard, and therefore potentially have some type of effect on the world. A person is forced to expand their reality and accept God’s divine hand in the world. This action requires the proper sensitivity and understanding of the role God plays in the world. This is the meaning of when Chazal states that God is constantly recreating the world every second. God is always controlling and having His impact on everything, therefore giving our prayers an opportunity to have a sensitive impact.

One may go through their entire life without ever being able to raise their eyes above nature and truly identify its source. The key is to strive to reach the point where one acquires this sensitivity towards life and invites God into their daily life.

Guest post by Vicky Tobianah

This month is the month of Shvat and the parshat hashavuah is Beshlach.

In this week’s parasha, after leaving Egypt and witnessing the splitting of the Red Sea, Bnei Israel sing Shirat Hayam. In Hebrew, the word “Lezamer” means “to sing” which shares the same root as the word “lizmor” which means “to prune.” The fact that they come from the same word comes to teach us a lot. When we prune a bush we are removing old, dead growth that is inhibiting its growth; we’re shaping the bush to bring out its own beauty. The same thing happens to us with song. When we sing, we “prune” away the excess baggage that we carry around, revealing our essence. The harmony of music releases the disharmony within us. Thus we fill Shabbat with song. We revel in the pleasure of getting rid of the excess, the disharmonious things that have accumulated during the past six days, leaving us, as “Shalom Aleichem,” the first song of Shabbat says, with a feeling of shalom — peace. After leaving Egypt, and witnessing miracles, Bnei Israel sing this song together, in unison, knowing that they finally had peace, finally were harmonious with G-d’s protection.

In the Torah’s definition, a “song” is a profound and unusual spiritual phenomenon (and according to Mechilta 15:1, there were only ten songs from the beginning of Creation to the end of the Scriptural period.) So what does the Torah consider song? In our normal days and activities, we often fail to recognize the hand of G-d present in everything we do, and we even wonder how it is possible for the unrelated phenomena around us is part of some Divine plan. We see suffering and war going on and it causes us to question how it could be the work of a Merciful G-d. However, rarely, we receive a flash of insight that makes us realize how all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. At such times, we understand how everything that occurs in this world is part of G-d’s plan, and the result is song, for the Torah’s concept of song is the condition in which all the seemingly unrelated and contradictory phenomena do indeed become a coherent, merciful, understandable whole. At the sea, Moses and the Jewish people understood their situation as never before. The suffering they endured at the hands of Pharoah, the worsening of conditions when Moses initially tried to help them, the hopelessness they felt when they were surrounded by Pharoah, the sea and wilderness… all these doubts and fears disappeared when the sea split. As we learn in Mechilta, even a maidservant at the sea received a higher degree of revelation that that of the prophet Ezekiel in his heavenly vision (Ezekiel 1). To the Jews at the sea, creation became a symphony, a song, because they could understand how everything unrelated and incomprehensible fit into G-d’s divine plan and all these events led up to the greatest of all miracles. Once they attained this realization, they also become convinced that all the events of the past and future that they still did not know were part of G-d’s plan. Midrash Tanchuma teaches us that because they believed (as we see in the verse before the song begins), they could sing. Only when creation became harmonious could they translate it into human song. This elevated status that brought the song was shared by the whole nation. Moses led the song, but the entire nation, not only its prophets and leaders, could rise to this state of prophecy.

This shirah is special because whenever Israel repeats it throughout the generations, it is as if they have sung it for the first time. Why? Because all the other words of the Torah were said by G-d while Israel listened, and here, with this shirah, Israel sang to G-d and G-d listened. At that moment, Israel’s soul was elevated to the highest state of exaltation and Israel’s heart was filled with Torah. Interestingly enough, Bnei Israel sing this song of Torah before they were even given the Torah at Mount Sinai. From the strength of the shirah which they sang, joy and song were implanted in the hears of Jews until the end of generations. Whenever Israel is delivered from the hands of her enemies, we are inspired to sing and praise G-d for bringing salvation to us, rather than praising us for having persevered. The Shirah begins with the words “And they spoke” and this tells us that the song they spoke allows us to continue saying song in all the generations to come.

The shirah was sung by them in perfect faith, not just because they had just seen G-d perform miracles and wonders. Israel did not begin to sing until she recognized that the bondage and affliction which she had suffered and would suffer again in the future were all signs of G-d’s eternal lovingkindness. And then Israel knew that there is no joy or life other than with having faith in Hashem as it says in the Shirah:

o וַיַּאֲמִינוּ, בַּיהוָה, וּבְמֹשֶׁה, עַבְדּוֹ
o אָז יָשִׁיר-מֹשֶׁה וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת-הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לַיהוָה

The shirah sung at the sea was voiced in its proper time and place - at the moment when all Heaven and earthly creation were filled with song declaring G-d’s greatness. At that moment, when the glory of G-d filled the world, Israel burst into song and that is why it says “Then” - Az. Then - at that precise moment, not before and afterwards. Had they delayed their shirah, then the rest of the universe would not have responded in song, for the impression of what just happened would have already been gone. Had they sung their song earlier, when they left Egypt, they would have been told to give thanks to Pharaoh who set them free, but to be careful because his armies still exist and might come after them. However, now, when all of Pharaoh’s horses had drowned in the sea, and he had been left without strength and pride, now was the best time for the shirah.

“Az Yashir” means “and they chose to sing.” The Torah uses the future tense to show us that they decided to sing then. Rashi tells us from this we can learn that they will again sing in the future when G-d brings the dead back to life in Messianic times, and we will sing G-d’s praises once again.

So, for the rest of this coming month, and year, I wish you all a month filled with understanding that in times when things are difficult and you do not understand why these events are occurring to you or how they seem to fit into some divine plan, I hope we can all find some way to understand that there is a bigger picture being created that may not make sense in the present, but hopefully will soon to come. I hope we can all learn that perhaps one day we will be lucky enough to merit to see the world in accordance with G-d’s divine plan, harmonious and unified as a nation. Chodesh Tov.

“Hold on, so let me get this straight,” I demanded in a voice choked by disbelief, “you’re saying that there is absolutely no way that I can start at York University this coming semester?”
“No, I’m sorry,” responded the bored voice on the other end of the phone, as if my future wasn’t hinged on the outcome of this conversation. “Your application has been forwarded on to the following semester. Have a great day.” Click.

And that was it. I hung up the phone and heard a nervous chuckle escape from my tightened chest, a chuckle that soon developed into full-blown laughter. I had accidentally sent in my transcripts three weeks late, and as a result of this minor oversight, “the Faculty of Arts at York University was full”. My ‘plan’ had been to start at York in January 2008 - until this happened. Well, that’s not really true. My ‘plan’ had actually been to start at McGill in September 2007 - until Shanah Bet happened. Well, that’s not exactly true either. My ‘plan’ had originally been to start at Western in September 2007, until ‘my year in Israel’ happened. And that’s not completely true either, but for Sanity’s sake, I’ll stop here and allow your imaginations to wander.

In this pivotal moment, instead of berating myself for my stupidity or panicking in the face of the Unknown, I threw my head back, stared heavenward and laughed. In this timeless moment, I saw past, present and future bound together as one. I suddenly understood that all of the confusion, challenges and choices of the last few years of my life had lead me to this fateful moment – so I called my mom and told her I was making aliyah. I’m not joking.

On top of this story being simply great, it is also completely relevant to this week’s parshah. Parshat Beshalach contains one of the most miraculous events in Jewish History. More amazing to me than the splitting of the sea, is the moment directly following it: “…And the nation feared Hashem, and they had faith in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant.” The Jewish people have a long and well-documented history, yet proclamations of national faith as pure and definitive as this are few and far between, thus begging further investigation.

There is a midrash claiming that from the time of creation until the splitting of the sea, no man had never before sang a song in praise of God - not Adam, nor any of our avot. What is it about this event that brought Am Yisrael to an unprecedented level of Emunah and immediately inspired in us song that has since than been immortalized in our prayers every morning? The Slonimer Rebbe suggests that, at this moment, Am Yisrael understood on a deep and profound level that all of the suffering, pain, and tears of the last 210 years of slavery were ultimately for the good. God’s love of Am Yisrael was so clear that the drowning of babies and the backbreaking labor were immediately forgiven, and B’nai Yisrael burst into a song; a song about the past, the future and the present all rolled into one.

“The Song at the Sea” contains within in traces of the cyclical nature of Jewish history and our relationship with Hashem. It hints to the future geulah and reminds us of a time where, despite national tragedy and a seemingly upside down world, we had a pure and perfect faith that it was all for the good. So too, there will come a time when the challenges and horrors of the last three thousand years of Jewish History make sense and reveal themselves to be Hashem’s disguised mercy. Just as I have no idea how my own life plans will turn out, I would never be so arrogant to claim that I have any inkling of how God’s Plan will turn out. I cannot begin to speculate on how our knotted past will untangle itself and emerge as a beautiful bow on our present (and future), yet all that we can (and must!) do is strengthen our emunah that even if we don’t understand it right now, one day we will.