It is difficult to believe that if we only follow Hashem’s rules then Hashem will take care of our needs—that we can place our entire survival in Hashem’s hands. Our instinct to survive is so great, the drive to protect our children is so powerful, and the notion that Hashem will focus on such an infinitesimal creature like a single man is so counterintuitive, that we struggle to place our very survival in Hashem’s hands. This struggle is at the heart of Parshas Beshalach.
The story that unfolds is quite puzzling. At the time they raced out of Egypt, the Jewish nation had just gone through a year like there never was and never will be. They witnessed miracle after miracle, watching firsthand as Hashem displayed His awesome might to Egypt and the rest of the world. The nation could have had no doubt that Hashem was all powerful, that Hashem controlled nature, and that Hashem was “on their side.” And yet, within the very first week after leaving Egypt, sandwiched between the Sea and the Egyptian army, they panicked and complained bitterly to Moshe as if suddenly they couldn’t imagine that Hashem would figure out some solution to their predicament. How could that be? Did they suddenly forget all the supernatural events they had witnessed over the past year?
And the mystery persists. The nation is saved, incredibly, through the splitting of the Sea. So amazing is this singular event that the Jewish people spontaneously break into song. Not just any song, this song is a shir, which is extremely unique and rare; the Medrash teaches that there have been only ten of these throughout all history. A shir emerges upon a sudden realization and understanding of the way Hashem works, how every single event, every moment, has a purpose and fits into a master plan, Hashem’s plan, a plan that strikes a perfect balance of justice, a plan that makes everything right. The shir reflects a moment of inspired and unbridled joy, a moment when we see that even though our day-to-day existence seems random and filled with frustration and injustice, the reality is that Hashem’s world works in total harmony. Things that made no sense before suddenly make total sense. The world is, after all, perfect. This joyous realization, though very rare, erupts in a shir. The moment the Jewish nation saw the dead Egyptian army at the side of the Sea, they reached this lofty state and burst into their shir.
But then, just as abruptly, it appears as though the nation reverted to its lack of belief, its mistrust in Hashem. Just three days later, they again seemed to lose all faith. Not just once, but repeatedly. The story told in Beshalach is startling. After setting out every word of their song testifying to the nation’s unrestrained and unqualified belief in Hashem’s total supremacy, the Torah goes on to recount three separate episodes, each one depicting a nation with little faith when confronted with a lack of water or food. Over and over, the Torah appears to tell us that, even though this nation witnessed and experienced Hashem’s miracles and even though they “believed” in Hashem, they just could not get comfortable that Hashem would provide their basic needs. How is this possible?
The key to unraveling this mystery is to understand the different levels of belief and to appreciate the process that the new nation was undergoing. Sure, they had witnessed miracles of monumental proportion, miracles unparalleled before and never to recur. These miracles taught the Jewish people of Hashem’s almighty power; absolutely nothing could impede Hashem, of this they had no doubt. And they sang. And they believed.
But that was the Almighty of the “big picture,” the Creator who could easily alter nature and make a slave nation into a free nation. But how about tending to the minutiae of each person’s existence? They struggled to believe that Hashem would really be involved in each man’s search for food and water, in each man’s daily drive to feed and protect his family. They asked “hayesh Hashem b’kirbeinu im lo,” is Hashem in our midst or not? Their question was not whether Hashem was all-powerful, but whether Hashem would continue to involve Himself with every little detail of their survival.
This is a very different level of belief, a level even more difficult than “simply” believing in an all-powerful Creator. Placing your trust in Hashem for every element of your survival requires perhaps the greatest strength of character because the stakes on a personal level cannot be higher. This level of belief, totally foreign at that point in mankind’s spiritual evolution, was what the Jewish nation struggled to achieve as it wandered through the desert. The threats to its survival confronted in the desert were Hashem’s way of enabling the Jewish people to learn this brand-new lesson: that each individual’s means of survival is provided by Hashem.
To assist in this process, Hashem gave the nation the prototype of Shabbos. The Jewish people were commanded not to collect or prepare food on the seventh day; this was the earliest and most basic form of Shabbos and served to inculcate this new lesson: that each individual must trust entirely in Hashem for his every need, that we must submit to the will of Hashem, including as relates to the manner by which we are permitted to pursue our instinct to survive and to protect our families, and that we mustn’t be driven to break Hashem’s rules even by the gripping fear that we will be unable to feed ourselves and our families. The Jew in the desert who broke the rules and went to look for food on the seventh day said, in effect, that he needed to and that he could provide for his own survival without constraining himself by Hashem’s instructions. Such a Jew basically turned his back on Hashem, mistakenly believing that he, not Hashem, controlled his own destiny.
And this was the lesson for the Jewish nation as it wandered through the desert. Yes, after witnessing the most awesome of miracles, Jews knew full well that Hashem presided over all of nature. But they needed to learn a more difficult lesson: that Hashem is, in fact, living with us “in our midst,” that each individual must submit to Hashem’s will, and that Hashem, and not any of us, ultimately decides who will eat and who will not. That we mustn’t allow those strongest of drives—the drive to survive, to protect our families, to succeed, or anything else—to cloud our understanding of these fundamental principles, and that we have Shabbos every week to remind us of this most basic and pervasive Torah concept.
A resident of Teaneck, Mark Hoenig is a senior partner at the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Mr. Hoenig is the author of Back to the Beginning–Pathways to Jewish Identity, a compilation of 48 thoughtful and provocative divrei Torah exploring each weekly Torah portion.
By Mark Hoenig
