A Sine of the Times – Beshalach

וַיַּסַּע מֹשֶׁה אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל מִיַּם סוּף וַיֵּצְאוּ אֶל מִדְבַּר שׁוּר וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִים בַּמִּדְבָּר וְלֹא מָצְאוּ מָיִם (שמות טו, כב).

Parshat Beshalach describes what is probably the greatest supernatural miracle ever to occur in history, the splitting of the Red Sea, and following it, the song of praise sung by Am Yisrael – Shirat HaYam. For this reason, this Shabbat is also called Shabbat Shira.

This parsha also highlights one of the most startling paradoxes in the Torah, which uncannily reflects current events and the state of Am Yisrael today. By delving deeper into the secrets of Beshalach, we will hopefully obtain a greater understanding of the exciting times we are living through.

In previous shiurim we discussed how יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם and the Ten Plagues were a reenactment of the six days of Creation. No generation before or after (so far) has ever experienced a larger, or more varied, series of supernatural miracles on a scale of the generation of the Exodus.

To be exact, every facet of our natural world is a miracle, the rising and setting of the sun, photosynthesis, sight, rain, rainbows, etc. They are all miracles, but they are miracles dulled by familiarity, to such a degree that they have become the "norm". A supernatural miracle is not necessarily of a greater scale than any of the natural miracles that we experience every second of every day, but because it is a deviation from the natural order, something we have not yet, or seldom encountered, we tend to regard it as a "miracle".

The generation of the Exodus were witness to HKB"H's altering the laws of nature on a daily basis, beginning a year prior to the Exodus (משנה עדויות ב, י). It was an irrevocable revelation of HKB"H's Shechina, culminating at קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף and Har Sinai, where Am Yisrael had an unfiltered view of the Shechina, בְּאַסְפַּקְלַרְיָא הַמְּאִירָה. The Yalkut Shimoni (שמות, רמד) says that even a maidservant at קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף achieved a level of prophecy greater than that of the prophets Yechezkel or Yeshayahu.

It all began when HKB"H sent Moshe back to Egypt and gave Moshe certain "signs" to show the זְקֵנִים – his staff turning into a snake, his hand becoming leprous and instantly recovering. These are not run-of-the-mill, daily sights one sees - they are supernatural. Upon seeing these miracles and Moshe revealing the "codeword" for the Geulah – פָּקֹד יִפְקֹד, the passuk says וַיַּאֲמֵן הָעָם... (שמות ד, לא) - the זְקֵנִים conveyed this to the rest of Am Yisrael and they believed in Moshe's authenticity, that he had been sent by HKB"H to redeem them. A moment of revelation and faith.

However, the very next passuk says וְאַחַר בָּאוּ מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֶל פַּרְעֹה... (שמות ה, ט), that Moshe and Aharon went to confront Pharaoh. Only Moshe and Aharon? What happened to the זְקֵנִים? Rashi (ibid.) says that as they approached Pharaoh's palace, the זְקֵנִים dropped out, one by one, out of fear. Pharaoh's palace had 400 entrances and each was guarded by lions, bears and other wild animals (ילקוט שמעוני, שמות, קפא), to prevent unauthorized entrance.

One passuk beforehand we have an "epiphany" and a short passuk later, a "nadir" - מֵאִיגָּרָא רָמָא לְבֵירָא עַמִּיקְתָא. The passuk said וַיַּאֲמֵן הָעָם didn't it? What happened to that? Do you believe or not? "We believe, sure we believe, but - without the lions and bears. First let's see Moshe and Aharon get into the palace and see what happens. If they succeed, we will follow!"

In the beginning of our parsha Am Yisrael is finally set free from Egypt, Pharaoh sends us on our merry way, north east, towards the Suez Canal and Eretz Yisrael. Then HKB"H says to Moshe "I am going to play a trick on Pharaoh. I want you to do a U-turn and head back towards Egypt. Pharaoh will think you are lost and confused. This will cause him to regret his decision to set you free and he will chase after you!"

Moshe tells Am Yisrael to stop in their tracks and do a U-turn. Am Yisrael could easily ask questions. "Hang on, did we leave something behind? Why are we going back?" But no! The Mechilta says that they asked no questions and believed Moshe implicitly אֵין לָנוּ אֶלָּא דִּבְרֵי בֶן עַמְרָם (רש"י, שמות יד, ד).

The ruse worked, Pharaoh mustered his entire army and set out in hot pursuit.

Am Yisrael see 600 Panzer tanks approaching from the south west and what do they do? They start to complain! הַמִבְּלִי אֵין קְבָרִים בְּמִצְרַיִם לְקַחְתָּנוּ לָמוּת בַּמִּדְבָּר מַה זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ לָּנוּ וכו' (שמות יד, יא). Hang on a second, a short moment before we said that they believed Moshe implicitly and followed him blindly. What happened to that? "Sure, we believe Moshe implicitly, but that was before the tanks!"

Another epiphany followed by a nadir.

HKB"H then performs the greatest supernatural miracle in the history of mankind (so far - in the impending Geulah the miracles will be even greater than that). During קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף Am Yisrael achieve the highest degree of prophecy possible, an astounding revelation of HKB"H's Shechina in vivid 3-D (perhaps 4-D).

Walking through the sea in 12 lanes, one for each tribe, separated by transparent walls of water, resembling sapphire. Treading on dry, level paved stone, not squishy sea sand. Not one person getting wet from even a single drop of water. Thirsty? Just stretch out your arm and place your cup into the walls of sea water to your left or right and it is filled with fresh drinking water. Feel like a snack? Reach into the walls of water on either side and draw out any fruit you can imagine, from a multitude of trees in the walls of water. Fill your lungs with a breath of fresh air, not the sulfurous sea smell, HKB"H infused the air instead with the beautiful scent of Gan Eden.

Am Yisrael burst into song.

Have you ever been in a choir? I was in the Yeoville shul choir when I was 8-years-old, back in Johannesburg, South Africa. In order to get the tunes right we had to meet once during the week for an hour, so that everyone could practice the correct harmonies and diction. At Yam Suf you have 3 million people spontaneously bursting into song, each one singing in perfect harmony and each uttering exactly the same words, with no prior practice! How is that possible? The answer is it was a prophecy and HKB"H put the words into their mouths, just like with every other prophet.

What a life changing moment! What an epiphany!

Just a few psukkim later, however, Am Yisrael again complain at Marah. There is no water to drink. What happened to the epiphany? Even just the memory of the fresh water they drank while crossing Yam Suf should have been enough to sustain them and quench their thirst, but no! "Yes, we had total faith, there was drinking water in the walls of sea water on either side of us. But that was yesterday. This morning there is no water, just this foul-smelling, brackish pond in Marah!" Another nadir.

Am Yisrael continue on to Har Sinai, where HKB"H appears to them again בְּאַסְפַּקְלַרְיָא הַמְּאִירָה. They hear the first 2 commandments from HKB"H directly, some say all 10 (שיר השירים רבה פרשה א אות ב). It is a historic, supernatural event, unprecedented since the 6 days of Creation. The greatest epiphany ever to occur to Am Yisrael.

A short 40 days later, when Moshe is "late" descending from Har Sinai, Am Yisrael sink to their lowest point as a nation when they sin with the egel! The lowest nadir of all the nadirs. But you were just at Har Sinai – you heard HKB"H Himself speak to you! What has changed since then? Where is your faith? "Yes, we heard HKB"H Himself with our own ears, it was very uplifting - a life changing experience! But that was a few weeks ago, when Moshe was here with us, now he isn't!"

And on it goes, throughout sefer Bamidbar. The story of the birth of our nation is a series of epiphanies and nadirs, crests and troughs … very much like a sine wave.

The question is "How is it possible? How can someone who has just experienced the highest spiritually uplifting experience a human being can possibly imagine, descend to the opposite pole of the magnet a short time after?"

The Mefarshim give many answers – It was not Am Yisrael, it was the erev rav. Am Yisrael still had their slave mentality that took 40 years in the desert to shed. It was only a small group of "elites" who, like Korach, thought that they were better than everyone else and above the law. The spies were afraid of what leaving the spiritual "cocoon" of the Midbar and entering the physical reality of Eretz Yisrael would do to Am Yisrael … etc. etc. They are all right.

However, the fundamental answer to explain the paradoxical "sine wave" pattern of Am Yisrael's behavior, not just the generation of the Midbar, but throughout all the generations since, is not the above.

The answer is much simpler. To achieve perfect faith requires work, a lot of work. So much work in fact, that very few have actually achieved it in their lifetimes.

Epiphanies are great, miraculous, stunning, mind blowing, conception altering, life changing … but they are short lived. They are like being struck by lightning. Nobody who has been struck by lightning and survived to tell the tale, will ever forget that in their life. The question is – "What does that jolt of electricity do to you, not to simply serve as a memory, but - to change the rest of your life?"

For an epiphany to change the rest of our lives, requires a lot of work on our part, fundamental work on our very essence – who we are, what we believe. Often it requires a "rebirth", rebuilding ourselves again, from the ground up. It often requires negating our former self and hardest of all, for any human being … admitting to ourselves that we were wrong. This is the concept of a ba'al teshuva.

The fourth perek of Pirkei Avot begins with a list of things that pertain to the number ten. It begins with the concept of ten מַאֲמָרוֹת/סְפִירוֹת, followed by a series of sets of ten - epiphanies and nadirs, crests and troughs – a sine wave.

The reason that the list begins with the ten סְפִירוֹת (spheres), is because a sine wave is in fact - a sphere, a circle. A sine wave is the linear manifestation of a circle. If you take any fixed point on a circle, attach a pen to it, rotate the circle one full cycle, while feeding a sheet of paper under the pen in a straight line - the resulting plotted curve will be a sine wave. See this video. [see below]

The conventional way of viewing our lives is linear, from birth to death. This is the pattern of a sine wave (crests and troughs), ups and downs. Although we recognize that the downs are inevitable and inescapable, most of us would prefer to have more of the ups and less of the downs. I know of very few people who would welcome and look forward to the downs.

In the time of Mashiach and the Geulah, the only individual korban to persist will be the Toda. The question is why will we need to bring a Toda in the time of the Geulah? A Toda is brought either by someone who returns from a sea voyage, someone who returns from a journey in the desert, someone who recovers from a serious illness or someone who is freed from prison. In the time of Mashiach none of us will need to undertake a sea voyage or a journey in the desert, not to make parnasa nor to visit a relative. We will all have more parnasa than we can handle and all our relatives will be here in Eretz Yisrael. We will no longer suffer illness or imprisonment. R' Shlomo Kluger (חכמת התורה, פרשת צו) says that we will bring a Toda in the era of Mashiach to thank HKB"H for all the good and bad we had during our lives, which in retrospect we will come to understand was not bad at all, but good.

To have perfect faith, one has to view life as a circle, not a sine wave. A person who understands that the sine wave pattern of life is in reality a circle, realizes that there are no downs and no ups, they are all part of the same, integral circle! A person with such a realization will thank HKB"H for both the ups and for the downs, since they are both part of the same circle of good that HKB"H gives us, כָּל דְּעָבִיד רַחֲמָנָא לְטָב עֲבִיד. The purpose of a trough is that we will lift ourselves up to the next crest, which will be higher than the one before it.

There were only three people in history that achieved this level of faith – Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, the Avot.

This is the essence of שִׁירָה. In Aramaic שִׁירָה means - a circle. For example, when Eliezer meets Rivka at the well and places the circular bracelets on her arms וּשְׁנֵי צְמִידִים עַל יָדֶיהָ (בראשית כג, כב), Onkelos translates it as וּתְרֵין שֵׁירִין עַל יְדַהָא.

שִׁירָה is closure of a circle. Shirat Hayam was closure of a circle for Moshe. Shirat Hayam begins אָז יָשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה (שמות טו, א). Why begin with the word אָז? R' Bachyei says it is closure of a circle for another אָז. In parshat Va'eira it says וּמֵאָז בָּאתִי אֶל פַּרְעֹה לְדַבֵּר בִּשְׁמֶךָ הֵרַע לָעָם הַזֶּה (שמות ה, כג). Moshe told Pharaoh to free Am Yisrael and the result was that conditions became worse for them – they now had to make their own bricks. Moshe said "Look what's happened! Things are worse since I have arrived". This was a trough, a nadir for Moshe, a lack of faith.

HKB"H said to Moshe (שמות רבה ו, ד) "How I miss the Avot. They had perfect faith and never questioned me! Moshe, you are not seeing the full circle, just the trough!" After קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף Moshe finally saw the whole picture, the full circle, and therefore began Shirat Hayam with אָז, thus closing the circle.

Someone brings a korban Toda to give thanks to HKB"H, to sing praise to Him for the miracle. While your boat is sinking, it is hard to see that anything good could come of it and sing praise to HKB"H. However, when HKB"H sends a young woman to dive down and save you from drowning, the same woman who will later become your wife … only then, in retrospect, can you see that things had to happen in that way – it was all for your benefit כָּל דְּעָבִיד רַחֲמָנָא לְטָב עֲבִיד. This is the essence of שִׁירָה.

After that brief introduction, we can now begin the shiur.

In the last thirteen months, Am Yisrael has experienced a series of epiphanies and nadirs, approaching the scale of יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם.

On Simchat Torah תשפ"ד, October 7, 2023, we were struck by a lightning bolt when Hamas invaded Israel in the south and wreaked a mini-Holocaust. How does one view this event? As a crest or a trough? I do not know anyone who regards October 7 as a crest.

During קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף, there was an enormous קִטְרוּג against Am Yisrael. The ס"מ said to HKB"H "Why are You going to drown the Egyptians and not Am Yisrael? הַלָּלוּ עוֹבְדֵי עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה וְהַלָּלוּ עוֹבְדֵי עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה (ילקוט שמעוני, שמות, רלד).

Moshe davened to HKB"H. What was HKB"H's response? מַה תִּצְעַק אֵלָי דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִסָּעוּ (שמות יד, טו). It will not help to daven, with such a legitimate קִטְרוּג, there is nothing I, HKB"H, can do. The only way to escape the דִּין is - וְיִסָּעוּ, mesirut nefesh. Advance into the sea until the water is up to your noses, in that way I can cancel the קִטְרוּג.

On October 7 there was an enormous קִטְרוּג against Am Yisrael and this is why Hamas attacked. The קִטְרוּג was so great that the intention was that not only Hamas would attack from the south, but that Hezbollah would simultaneously attack from the north. Iran together with its proxies had been preparing this two-pronged invasion for years. We only discovered the extent and imminence of this threat when we later conquered southern Lebanon. If that had been the case, there would not have been 1697 deaths and 251 hostages taken on October 7, but perhaps five times that number or more, if Hezbollah had wreaked the same carnage in the north.

The only thing that saved us from that disaster was the mesirut nefesh of all those brave souls who, without being called and with no regard for their own lives, rushed south to try save as many lives of Am Yisrael as possible. It was their mesirut nefesh that diminished the severity of the דִּין and saved thousands of lives on that day. Nothing else can explain why Hezbollah did not attack at the same time as Hamas.

October 7 was definitely a "trough", but as a result of it, we ended up preventing a far greater disaster that could easily have befallen us in the north. Mixed in with the bad - was also the good.

Since October 7 we have had many "crests", many triumphs over our enemies, down south, up north and in Iran, with exploding beepers, assassinations of leaders, destroying of Iran's air defenses, etc. that rank on a similar scale to the Ten Plagues.

All these lightning bolts, crests and troughs, you would think that it would do something to Am Yisrael, that it would change peoples' conceptions. To be sure, there are many in Am Yisrael, including myself, who have changed themselves as a result of these overt revelations of HKB"H. However, there remain many who were initially shocked, who were later astounded, but remained exactly as they were before October 7, with the same conceptions, with the same agendas. To change requires too much work and not everyone is capable of remaking themselves from the ground up, or admitting they were wrong.

This might mistakenly lead us to believe that Am Yisrael is in an irreparable mess right now, with a divide that cannot be bridged. We look at many of the left-wing secular Jews and wonder "How can we wake them up and change their conceptions?" The truth is that these secular Jews are insecure and afraid. They know deep in their hearts that they are not abiding by HKB"H's Torah and therefore they think that He is not watching over them and protecting them. They think that the only way to accomplish anything is if they do it themselves, without relying on HKB"H. This is obviously not true. It was this generation of secular, left-wing Jews who established this country with incredible mesirut nefesh and this has lessened the קִטְרוּג. HKB"H is watching over all of us, the secular left wing, the religious right wing – ALL OF US!

The good news is that "we ain't seen nothing yet!" The Geulah "train" has left the station and is steaming ahead. The miracles that we are about to see, will eclipse anything we have ever seen or heard of. They will even eclipse even those experienced in Egypt during the Exodus. They are coming even though we are not worthy הַלָּלוּ עוֹבְדֵי עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה וְהַלָּלוּ עוֹבְדֵי עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה. They are coming, not because HKB"H owes us anything, but because He made a promise to the Avot, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, to glorify His name and because He loves us - וְזוֹכֵר חַסְדֵי אָבוֹת, וּמֵבִיא גוֹאֵל לִבְנֵי בְנֵיהֶם לְמַעַן שְׁמוֹ, בְּאַהֲבָה.

Anyone watching the news this week can no longer doubt that Mashiach is imminent. We have been so bogged down in our own "mess" for so many decades, with no light at the end of the tunnel, no way to break out of the self-defeating patterns we have repeatedly found ourselves in. This week HKB"H sent a מֶלֶךְ כּוֹרֶשׁ with a solution that nobody could have ever dreamed of and with the clout to actually make it happen. Suddenly, in an instant, the whole scenario is turned around 180°. This is the Geulah, כְּהֶרֶף עַיִן - the impossible suddenly becomes possible.

This is not the time for the blame game, it is not time for "I told you so". It is time for reconciliation within Am Yisrael, an outpouring of love for our fellow Jew and unity. This is what HKB"H is waiting for, to finally bring us full circle, so that we can all sing שִׁירָה to Him.

Shabbat Shalom

Eliezer Meir Saidel

Machon Lechem Hapanim

www.machonlechemhapanim.org