TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Beshalach
February 4, 2023 | 13 Shvat 5783
Torah: Exodus 13:17-17:16 Triennial: Exodus 13:17-15:26
Haftarah: Judges 4:4-5:31
God is Not the Giving Tree
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Every year during the Passover Seder, we recite the Vehi Sheamda: For not only one enemy has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up to destroy us. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands. It s a line that rings true. From the times of the Tanakh until this very day, we can identify attempts to destroy us in every generation. Yet, we survive. We are still here. A continuous propensity to be almost completely wiped out is not a characteristic a nation would likely choose for itself. As Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, I know we are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can t you choose someone else?
In the Exodus story, God does choose someone else. The Egyptians, by the time of our parashah, had already lived through the plagues. Ten times, they had been chosen to suffer. Five times, Pharaoh changed his mind, refusing to give in to the Israelites demands. But the last five times, it was God who chose to make Pharaoh s heart heavy, not permitting him to follow his own instincts to send the Israelites out. Egypt suffered these ten times at the hands of the Israelites. Egypt lost its children at the hands of the Israelites. But it is still not enough. In our parashah, God taunts the Egyptians. The Israelites turn back towards Egypt, stopping in order to confuse the Egyptians, to convince them that the Israelites are lost. God stiffens Pharaoh s heart one last time so that Pharaoh and his army pursue the Israelites. We know the ending. Pharaoh and his army are drowned in the sea. God is honored, made kvd, through the deaths of the Egyptians, just as God had once made heavy, kvd, Pharaoh s heart. God chooses the Egyptians, makes them suffer through the plagues, and ends them with total destruction. When God chooses someone else, it does not work out well for them. God chooses us to save us from destruction and God chooses the Egyptians to destroy them. We find this sentiment in the dual purposes of the plagues – God explains that the plagues teach Egypt that God is God and teaches the Israelites the same thing. For the Egyptians, that knowledge is a threat. For the Israelites, that knowledge is deliverance.
The Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael (14:19:1), complicates this notion. Interpreting the formation that the Israelites and the pillar of cloud assume in order to survive the onslaught from the Egyptians as they cross the sea, the Mekhilta tells a series of parables. It compares the angel of God and Israel to a man and his son, walking down a road on a journey. Just as in the Vehi Sheamda, multiple adversaries rise up to threaten the son. Each time, the man moves his son out of danger, shielding him with his own body, saving him from robbers, from wolves, and from the sun itself. It s a curious comparison. Unlike the case of God and Israel, the man has not brought these hardships on his son on purpose. But in both cases, safety for the dependent comes from a reliance on their progenitor to provide. The midrash goes on, beginning to describe some of Israel s complaints. Using proof texts from Hosea, Psalms, and Proverbs, the midrash describes how God provided for Israel, sacrificed for Israel, even when Israel asked too much, even when Israel complained and went astray. It tells the same story as Shel Silverstein s The Giving Tree, the provider gives all that their selfish dependent asks for, even as it cuts into the very being of the provider.
God won t end up as a stump as does the giving tree. In order to be able to defend us in every generation, God needs to survive as well. The midrash concludes that when the angel of God came to defend us from the Egyptians, a decision had not yet been made as to whether the angel was there to defend us or to destroy us. In all other places that an angel of God appears, that angel is called an angel of HaShem. Here, it is called an angel of Elohim. The midrash explains that Elohim is associated with judgment and so the angel came here to judge us. We do not get an automatic pass in every generation. Just because God has saved us before, does not mean God will save us again. When we pass from reliance on God to complaint against God, even as God provides for our complaints, we call the covenant into question. God can choose to destroy us or to save us from destruction.
A Woman s Arsenal is in Her Home
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
Home is a place in which we should feel safe. But in this week s haftarah, with its three female characters, home is a very dangerous place. Most of the haftrarah takes place in the open: The northern Israelites are oppressed by the Canaanite king and his head of army Sisra. Devorah, a leader, assigns Barak, a man from the north, the task of battling the Canaanites. Barak will go only if Devorah agrees to be at his side despite her warning that a woman will win the war. As the Canaanites lose, Sisra flees to the tent of Yael the Kainite who is neutral, hiding there. Yael proceeds to kill Sisra with a tent peg and the war is decisively won. The event culminates with an epic poem by Devorah.
Dr Yair Lipshitz of Theater Arts at Tel Aviv University (929 Judges 5 Heb) observes that in the Bible women are usually portrayed inside the home. This makes Devorah, a judge and a leader who is found under a tree in an open public space, somewhat unusual. Nonetheless, Devorah herself describes the other two women in their homes, and they act from there: Yael, the unexpected heroine who should not have been involved in the war at all due to the neutrality of her tribe, is a tent dweller, which makes her action possible. Sisra s mother (appearing towards the end of the epic poem), the mother of the leader of the enemy, is in her chambers in the palace surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, adding a yet-unheard voice.
The story is one of war, not the place where the Tanakh usually places women. While none of these women wields a sword, all of them are involved in the war. Once I asked a group of teenagers who is the cruelest of these women. A heated discussion ensued. Devorah leads a battle, but Yael breaks the trust of a guest who took refuge in her tent. Sisra s mother personifies the worried mother whose son went to war, but also the crass female partner of the potential-winner that takes pride in the pain inflicted by her warrior on the women of the other side. If the subject was male warriors, we might not have had an equally passionate debate. Perhaps we react so fiercely to cruelty and killing when they appear in women because of what women have come to symbolize and the backdrop of the home against which they are portrayed. Yael and Sisra s mother are found at home. The home is regarded as safe. It is to protect the home that people go to war, and it is the haven they want to return to. A home is a woman s turf.
In this story the Tanakh questions the concept of the home as a place of safety. In that safe space the instruments that make the home an inviting place may turn into murderous weapons in the hands of a woman. In Judges 9:53 a woman uses a mill stone to smash a warrior s skull. Here Yael uses a tent peg, the very tool that keeps the tent safe and standing, to strike the blow that will decisively settle the war. Both Sisra s mother and Jezebel (I Kings 21 and II Kings 9:31) prove that a woman in the palace is no less vicious or political in her words and thoughts than the leader that she is associated with. She is also the one who has raised the next generation of leaders and warriors and perhaps placed them on the throne. Beware of biblical women.
The Days of Preparation
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah
This week I was speaking with one of the teachers in the Bet Midrash of the CY, Matthew Anisfeld. Matthew is teaching the Laws of Pesah in his afternoon halakhah class. He mentioned to me that he finds it remarkable that most of Tractate Pesahim discusses what happens on the 14th of Nissan, the day before Pesah begins. We have bedikat hametz (the search for hametz), and biur hametz (destroying the hametz), and then later in the tractate we learn about the sacrifice, which was prepared and slaughtered on the 14th. While Pesah (as we know it) does not begin till the 15th of Nissan, the day of preparation is a ritual unto itself.
While slightly less prominent, the same can be said about Shabbat. Shabbat, of course, begins only at the setting of the sun (unless you re Rabbenu Tam, but I won t go into that here). Shabbat prohibitions begin after sunset. But anyone who has ever experienced Shabbat, or visited a home in which Shabbat was being observed, knows that Erev Shabbat, the day before Shabbat, is a ritual unto itself. The food must be bought and then cooked. The house should be cleaned. The table has to be set. Family that lives far away is sometimes called to wish a Shabbat Shalom. Everyone has to shower and put on nice clothes. A house preparing for Shabbat can be a chaotic place, especially for those with young children, but this too seems to be part of the Shabbat experience.
The origins of this actually lie in a reading of our parashah. Exodus 15:25 contains a hint that some laws are going to be given in our parashah when it relates, there He did set them a statute and a law. According to R. Joshua in the Mekhilta, a midrashic work on Shemot, the statute is a reference to Shabbat. And in the very next chapter we have our second encounter with the notion of Shabbat (the first was in Bereshit). But, before we are commanded to not collect the manna on Shabbat, we hear a commandment about what to do on the sixth day, And it shall be on the sixth day, they shall prepare what they have brought. Read this way, there are two days of Shabbat observance the sixth day in which we prepare and the seventh day in which we rest.
On Shabbat 117b R. Hisda uses this verse to create a normative rule that one must actively prepare for Shabbat, Rav Ḥisda said: A person should always rise early on Friday in order to prepare all of the expenditures for Shabbat, as it is written, And it shall be on the sixth day, and they will prepare that which they have brought (Exodus 16:5). A few pages later we read of how a few sages actually prepared for Shabbat. For instance, Rav Safra would roast the head of an animal, Rava would salt a fish, Rav Huna would kindle lamps, Rav Hisda would chop up beets. Others would prepare a large amount of wood for a fire. The fact that the Talmud mentions these practices implies that this is more than just cooking dinner. There is a ritual aspect to preparing for Shabbat it in itself is part of the mitzvah of Shabbat.
Following suit, towards the very beginning of the Shulkhan Arukh s laws of Shabbat, R. Yosef Karo codifies these passages into law (Orah Hayyim 250): A person should arise early on the sixth day to prepare for Shabbat; even if he has many servants to serve him he should find something small to do, for the honor (of Shabbat). We see this with Rav Hisda who would cut vegetables finely; Rabah and Rav Yosef, who would chop wood; Rabbi Zeira who would light the flame; and Rav Nachman, who would clean the house and replace the weekday cutlery with cutlery designated for Shabbat. We can emulate these people and one should not say: It is unbecoming of me, for this is the honor of Shabbat.
Today we might think of these behaviors as spiritual practices urging us to engage in a mindful preparation for Shabbat. In our day to day reality, it is easy to become dulled by the tiresome preparations for Shabbat. Who among us likes going to the supermarket? While some people do enjoy cooking, for many it s a chore. Cleaning the house is almost certainly an even less popular task. Perhaps some of these practices will become slightly less burdensome when we channel the joy felt by these sages in preparing for Shabbat, and when we think to ourselves that in our Shabbat preparations we are not just enabling Shabbat to happen we are actually performing a mitzvah in its own right.