Miller's Musings Parshas Beshalach: When Impossible is Nothing and Belief is Everything

בס''ד

The power of a song and the profound depth found within singing, is a theme discussed recurrently in Torah sources.  After witnessing the most miraculous of events, the splitting of the sea, the Jewish people erupted into a song of praise to G-d.  That they chose that moment to do so, is testament in itself to the divine nature of this action, when done correctly.  So given that this was a fitting response to their salvation, the questions arises as to why they left it until now to react in this manner?  Would their redemption from Egypt not have been reason enough?

Ultimately the answer must come down to a fundamental difference between the events of the Exodus leading up to this event and the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea, which is in fact what the Sfas Emes suggests.  Whereas the ten plagues were remarkable in the way they exhibited Hashem’s absolute mastery over the world and nature, they only showed that; Hashem’s mastery.  All who experienced them had to acknowledge that He was the Creator of the universe, His was the true power and He was the sole determinant of what took place in the world.  The splitting of the sea however took us one step further and one level higher, in demonstrating that through our actions and our good deeds, we too can bend the forces of nature to our will and override the natural laws.  The Jewish people’s fulfilment of G-d’s commands up to that point and their forging forward into the sea, was what ultimately decided that a miracle of this proportion should take place.  It was this knowledge of the power that they wielded that led them to react with songs of praise to the One who had endowed them with this potential.

If we imagine ourselves for one moment with the raging sea ahead of us and the brutal enemy behind, what choice would we make? The reality is that faced with such a situation most would turn to despondency and despair.  Yet the message from our Parsha is that all hope is never lost and no matter how desperate and impossible matters seem, there is always a chance for deliverance and there is always a choice open to us. To resign ourselves to our fate or to move forward in the knowledge that doing what we know to be right may just be that which turns everything around, no matter how unlikely and inconceivable it might seem.  That faith, that knowledge and that course of action is what we need to carry us forward through the most impossible of moments so that we decide our own fate and bring about the miraculous.

*May the harmony of Shabbos lead us to songs of appreciation*

לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם 

לעילוי נשמת שרה יעל בת גרשון