Parashat B'shallach (Exodus 13:17 - 16:18)

by Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith of Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue

Summary
In B'shallach, the story of the flight of the Israelites is resumed.  They do not make the journey to the Promised Land via the shortest route, ‘by way of the Land of the Philistines’, because they would’ve faced much more opposition.  So, they travel a much less defined route ‘by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds’.  But at the edge of the wilderness, God then orders the Israelites to change their route so as to cross the Sea of Reeds itself.  The idea is to lure Pharoah and his army into a trap not to mention the Israelites bearing witness God’s miracles.  The plan works and Pharoash’s army is destroyed.  The Israelites celebrate  --the Song at the Sea--  but then they soon start whinging and quarrelling about the lack of food and water. 

Commentary

One of the places where the Israelites complain is called ‘Marah’.  The water tastes bitter to them.  One classical view is that the water was not actually bitter but that the Israelites felt fear and therefore projected their own bitterness onto whatever they tasted:  ‘Why did you bring us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with them?’

At Marah, the first gulps of freedom taste bitter.  The Israelites are in a spiritual and emotional void as well as a geographical desert.  Moses and God have the daunting struggle of shaping this rabble of slaves into something more than a nation of chronic kvetchers.  The task is to nurture the better side of human nature:  to limit greed and aggression; to apply law and morality; to keep peace; to insure that values of justice and compassion prevail. 

I always find it interesting that the redactors of the Torah text chose to show openly this negative side of the Israelites.  Perhaps the most important reason to teach history  --or foundation myths--  is to demonstrate values such as patience, sharing and altruism and how important it is to live by these ideals. 

Usually, history has been largely taught in a way that emphasises ‘great’ cultures and the push to modernise.   Being truly ‘civilised’ actually has little to do with technology or so-called sophistication.  People who come to consider their groups as especially victimised or somehow superior are incapable of reaching out to others as equals.  I appreciate the honesty of the Torah in presenting the Israelites as unwilling to pay the price to become free.  They are unable to think of anything other their own immediate gratification not to mention learning how to shake off their self-pity, anger and need to blame others.

Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith

Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue