Parashat B'Shallach (Exodus 13:17 - 17:16)
by Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
This week’s parashah, B’shallach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), relates what happened when the slaves finally went out of Egypt.
Jewish life and teaching is defined by paradoxes: on the one hand, Judaism seems preoccupied with particular rites and practices centred on the particular destiny of the Jewish people as the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, and of those who experienced liberation from ‘the house of bondage’ and met the Eternal One at Sinai; on the other hand, the ideas and values of Judaism flow from an understanding that as God is one, so the world is one – and humanity is one; each human being a unique ‘image of God’ (Genesis 1:27).
The collective and the individual; the particular and the universal: No chapter in the long odyssey of the Jewish people illustrates these paradoxes better than the tale of the Exodus from Egypt: the story of the Israelites’ redemption over three thousand years ago, as the slaves in North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries understood so well, carries the hope for all oppressed peoples; the story of a collective triumph, yet one that centres on the heroism of particular individuals: the midwives, Shifrah and Pu’ah, Miriam, and her mother, Yocheved, Moses and Aaron.
And there is another paradox: past and present. Can you think of any other tale, whose messages are as relevant today as they were at the time of the events they describe, long, long ago? It’s not just that, to our shame and sorrow, oppression is still rife in the world. The point is that the tale of the Exodus, can still teach us so much about the nature of oppression and liberation.
Just think of what we learn from it:
- Moses confronted Pharaoh: oppression is wrong and must be challenged
- The midwives, Shifrah and Pu’ah, and Moses’ mother and sister, Miriam and Yocheved, defied Pharaoh’s decree to exterminate the baby boys: for a people to be liberated, individuals need to find their courage and take the risk to be free
- Egypt was bombarded with a succession of ‘plagues’: the process of liberation from oppression involves conflict and struggle – and often, violence
- The slaves daubed their doorways with blood, and so saved themselves from the final plague: to become free the oppressed must participate in their own liberation
- ‘Let my people go that they may serve Me’: Liberation is not just about achieving freedom from oppression, but having the freedom to live in new ways
- The slaves left Egypt to journey through the wilderness: true liberation means transformation and making a new beginning in a new terrain
- The Exodus happened: liberation from oppression is always possible; the slaves, whoever they are, in every place and in every time, will go free
These are just some of the key lessons of the Exodus, which are as relevant now as they were then. But – and it’s a big ‘but’ – however much we repeat the tale of the Exodus, both during our weekly Torah readings, and around the Pesach seder table, have we learned them yet? And by ‘we’ I don’t just mean, Jews; the Exodus story has become part of the tale of humanity; not just ‘our’ story, it is familiar to the two and a half billion Christians, across the world today. As we recite the litany of tyranny in every place – and remember that before the poor people of Haiti were devastated by the recent earthquake, they were oppressed and impoverished by a despotic regime – aren’t we forced to acknowledge that we simply haven’t learned the lessons of the Exodus – at least, not yet…
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
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