By Rabbi Pete Tobias

The seventh day of Pesach is, according to legend, the day when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. It’s the moment when Moses held out his rod, the waters parted and then the Israelites (600,000 men plus their wives, their offspring, a mixed multitude plus lots of sheep and cattle) miraculously crossed on dry land. Then having reached the other side, the waters returned to drown the pursuing Egyptian army. Whether it’s Charlton Heston with his arms outstretched, or the cartoon images in Prince of Egypt, we’ve all seen representations of this remarkable event. And it’s an event that’s celebrated on the Seventh Day of Pesach.

In some Chasidic synagogues in Eastern Europe many decades ago, water would be poured onto the floor in some kind of dramatic reconstruction of this ancient miracle. Certainly in every shul this coming weekend, Exodus chapter 15, the Song of the Sea will be read. It’s a brutal poem – a victory chant of the triumphant God of the Israelites vanquishing his enemies – and I use the male pronoun deliberately here. ‘Adonai ish milchamah, Adonai sh’mo – The Eternal One is a man of war, the Eternal One is His name!’ proclaims verse 3 of this chapter, set out in every Torah scroll as a visual representation of the waves of the sea consuming the flailing Egyptians and their horses and chariots.

There are few sections of the Torah that have ever brought tears to my eyes but this was one of them. I was at a retreat with my fellow Reform Rabbis over a quarter of a century ago and one of them gleefully sang a version of Shirat ha-Yam at our morning service. I walked out because I could not comprehend how such a description of human suffering could be celebrated so joyfully.

To my relief, the ancient Rabbis of Jewish tradition had similar reservations about this. We read in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 39b) ‘At that time the ministering angels wanted to sing a song of praise to the Holy One, ever to be blessed: but God restrained them, saying ‘My creatures are drowning in the sea, and you would sing before Me!’’ Even God, depicted in the Torah as seeking vengeance on Pharaoh, is shown in Rabbinic thought to be appalled by celebration at a moment of such suffering.

But if it’s any consolation to those troubled by the jingoistic language of this weekend’s Torah reading, the events depicted probably didn’t happen anyway. The section of water that the Israelites crossed is referred to in the Bible as ‘Yam Suph’. This literally means Sea of Reeds and refers to a shallow marshy area close to the Nile Delta, relatively easy to traverse on foot. But of course that doesn’t make for such dramatic moments as the one described in the Torah or depicted in movies like The Ten Commandments or Prince of Egypt. Celebrations of the brutal deaths of our fellow human beings should have no place in our world.

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