JOSHUA DID AS MOSES HAD TOLD

HIM, TO FIGHT AGAINST AMALEK; AND MOSES, AARON, AND HUR ASCENDED TO THE TOP OF

THE HILL.

IT CAME TO PASS THAT WHEN MOSES

WOULD RAISE HIS HAND, ISRAEL

WOULD PREVAIL, AND WHEN HE WOULD LAY DOWN HIS HAND, AMALEK WOULD PREVAIL.

NOW MOSES' HANDS WERE HEAVY; SO

THEY TOOK A STONE AND PLACED IT UNDER HIM, AND HE SAT ON IT. AARON AND HUR

SUPPORTED HIS HANDS, ONE FROM THIS [SIDE], AND ONE FROM THAT [SIDE]; SO HE WAS

WITH HIS HANDS IN FAITH UNTIL SUNSET.

(Shemot 17:10-12)

A True Leader Feels his

People's Suffering and Identifies with Them

When the public is burdened

with sorrow do not say: "I shall go to my home

and eat and drink, and I shall be at peace." If he does do this, Scripture

says of him: And behold, joy and happiness, slaying cattle and slaughtering

we will die." (Isaiah 22).

What is written next? And

therefore, swear] that this iniquity shall not be atoned for you until you die.

So far regarding those of moderate character, but of the [truly] wicked

it says: Come, I will take wine, and let us guzzle old wine, and tomorrow

shall be like this, [but] greater [and] much more" (Isaiah 56).

What is written next? The

righteous man has been taken away.

Rather: A person should join

the public in its sorrow. Thus, we find that Moses joined in the public's

sorrow, for it says and Moses' hands were heavy and they took a rock and

placed it under him and he sat on it (Shemot 17). Could it have been that Moses did not have

a single cushion or a single chair to sit on? Rather,

Moses said the following: "Since Israel are

in sorrow, I too shall join them in sorrow." And anyone who joins in the

public's sorrow – will find merit and see the public's consolation.

(Ta'anit 11a)

The Sound of Crying Out and the Sound of Song

Menachem Klein

The parasha is full of surprising reversals. The Israelites are

expelled from Egypt

and turn on their heels; they stand before the danger of drowning in the sea,

of hunger and thirst – and they are miraculously saved. The national mood

changes quickly from depression to elation and back to complaining and

continuing lack of faith in God. The slaves who have just been freed are deemed

incapable of facing the Philistines: God did not lead them [by] way of the

people reconsider when they see war and return to Egypt," and yet they are

successful in battle against Amalek. What can we

learn from these reversals and contrasts?

This

week's parasha is multi-vocal. These voices appear

and reappear throughout the parasha. Of course, the parasha's dominant voice is that of the masculine Song of

the Sea and the accompanying women's singing. This is a public song of

thanksgiving, a song of togetherness. It is the song of a choir in which order

and harmony are preserved. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel – the

verb sang appears in the singular.

However,

other strident voices are heard in the parasha. In

contrast to the Song of the Sea's unusual unity – the one-time voice of

response to the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea – the parasha presents the recurring voice that arises from the

throats of sons and daughters of Israel. The usual, everyday voice

of the Israelites shouts and protests, it is a voice of complaint, rebellious

and demanding. And the Children of Israel cried out – the crying

out is described in the plural in order to express the mix of protesting and

shouting voices. And the people complained, and the entire community

complained – these also use the plural form of the verb. Things come to

such a pass that Moses himself cries out, whether we understood him as joining

in the people's outcry or as merely passing on the people's outcry to God's

ears. And the Lord said to Moses: "Why do you cry to me?"; And

with this people? Soon they will stone me!"

When

the Israelites were caught in a vise between Pharaoh's army and the sea, they

cried out of their grave crisis – and receive an order to be silent. The

Lord will fight for you, and you shall be quiet. But the people did not

fall silent. They sang the Song of the Sea. It was precisely out of the silence

which united them and ended their shouting that there arose the unusual event

of their singing in unison.

One

does not sing in daily life. Usually, the Israelites related to their leaders

by way of complaint, grumbling, and shouts. Moses points this out repeatedly

while rebuking the people in the book of Devarim. In

contrast, the Torah presents God as one who speaks or talks. God always speaks,

and He commands Moses to speak instead of crying out. And the Lord spoke to

Moses: "Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the

Israelites…" Despite the cries of Moses and the Israelites, God answers

them and relates to their troubles. It is precisely against the background of

their cries that God's speech to them and concern for them becomes salient. There

is a flow and a connection between cries and speech, between grumbling and

response, between the harmonious song and the everyday cacophony of voices.

The parasha deals with another line of tension;

the tension between water and earth and between sea and land. The waters of the Red

Sea threaten to drown the Israelites, and the safety of dry land

is their refuge. The miracle of the splitting of the Red

Sea exposes the dry land and throws the water aside. The dry land

is exposed with the help of the staff, which is itself part of a tree that grew

on dry land. The tree overcomes water. This motif repeats itself in the story

that follows immediately upon the Song of the Sea. The bitter and undrinkable

waters of Mara threatened to kill off the Israelites with thirst. The tree – a

typical symbol of dry land – sweetens the water. The water did not sustain the

tree and sweeten its fruit. Quite the opposite: the tree sweetened the water. And

sweetened.

The

staff served Moses once again in the parasha when he

used it to hit the rock in order to take water from it. The two earlier stories

– that of the splitting of the Red Sea and

that of Mara – mention water, but there the water was evil and injurious. Here,

in contrast, we have a story about a lack of water. As in the earlier stories,

the solution takes the shape of a tree; the staff hits the stone and brings

forth water from it. The water did not bring the tree – rather, the tree brings

the water. The natural order of cause and effect is reversed. Such is the

nature of miracles and so the routine is broken.

The parasha relates to yet a third tension; that between memory

and the present. We are commanded to remember miracles in general and the Exodus

from Egypt

in particular. The parasha deals with memory in two

different places; the commemoration of the manna and the commemoration of the

battle with Amalek. Moses instructs Aaron, take a

before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. Following the

battle with Amalek, God tells Moses: Write this as

a remembrance in a book. In both cases, God commands the

institutionalization of memory. This is done by using a text or a sample of manna.

That is to say, the memory is placed inside a jar or between two book-covers as

something closed and defined while a different reality takes hold around it. Memory

exists within a space of forgetting. There is tension between remembered

historical events and the present, just as there is tension between unusual,

miraculous events and everyday routine. A persistent miracle is no miracle at

all, but rather part of the ordinary. Memory which is not history is the

present, so of course it is not memory. No wall of iron divides between the

poles of miracle and nature, of cause and effect, of history and memory. This

is not a matter of dichotomous extremes, but rather of complementary aspects. Nature

gains its lawfulness from the miraculous no less than the miraculous gains its

authenticity from nature. The shouting and bickering of routine everyday life

are illuminated by the Song's temporal uniqueness. The Song, in turn, can only

stand out against the background of disharmonious noise.

The

generation of the wilderness ate manna daily. They needed no jar to remind

them. Those who fought Amalek had no need for a book.

Only the later generations, for whom the manna and the battle against Amalek were no longer matters of personal experience needed

to read the book and view the jar of manna. It was not the case that everyone

was always viewing the jar of manna or reading the book. They lived the present

in the present. A memory which is always activated is not a memory. There can

be no memory without forgetting, and the past cannot survive without a present

that is different from it. The other context and everyday life are the jar in

which the manna is preserved, just as they constitute the book's binding. On

the one hand, the binding sets limits to text and memory. On the other hand it

keeps memory alive and places it within the contemporary context.

The

splitting of the Red Sea and the Song of the

Sea – like the tree which "grew" water in the desert – are not parts

of our lived experience. We do not eat manna and the battle against Amalek is no longer relevant for our generation. All we

have left is the commandment to remember. Memory does not bring back the past

and set it up in place of the present. The present delimits the past and is

different from it. The presents gives the context, it processes the past and

preserves a sample or a short text from it.

Dr. Menachem Klein, a member of the editorial board of Shabbat

Shalom, teaches in the department of Political Science of Bar Ilan University.

Readers Respond

Regarding "And the Crooked shall be Straight" (Vayigash issue)

I think that the presentation of Jacob as a

professional cheater points o a simplistic and superficial take on the subject and

does not reflect the Jewish understanding of Scripture.

Two principles guide the understanding of

Scripture:

1) The eternal truth of the Torah.

2) Beyond the personal stories, the stories of

the patriarchs reflect a broad national-historical process, which is part of

the encompassing process of divine providence. Those stories must be

interpreted in light of that broader process. For example, Jacob wound up in Laban's house in order to marry his daughters and create

the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Another example: the sale of Joseph paved the way

for the exile in Egypt

and the redemption from it and from all of the other exiles in their wake. Jacob's

biography must also be interpreted in the light of these principles.

I shall broaden the discussion

of truth.

Human truth – in contrast to

the absolute divine truth that guides the Torah – is limited by its very

nature, in accordance with the limits of human understanding. That is why

certain conditions apply to it and in certain cases the Sages permit one to

lie. These are:

1) For the sake of peace, such

as when God told Abraham that our mother Sarah did not laugh at his old age,

but rather at her own age when she was told of Isaac's future birth. One is

also permitted to say that an ugly article of clothing is attractive in order

to avoid insult.

2) In order to protect human

life. For instance, one is permitted to lie to a terminally ill person if true

knowledge of his condition would further damage his health.

3) Precision of times. We see

that Moses referred to the time of the plague of the first born as being around

midnight even though God had announced the time as being precisely midnight.

4) Measure for measure. As the

verse from Psalms (18:26) puts it: With

crooked one, You deal crookedly. That is how Jacob dealt with the cheating Laban – he took his family and ran away from him after Laban had cheated him out of his wages and switched Rachel

with Leah.

5) Lastly: In the war against

paganism, idolatrous rites or a false ideology (remove the false path from

me – Psalms

119), as the default option

when honest means fail. Abraham and Rachel destroyed their parent's idols at

the price of having to lie. In this way they paved the way to monotheism, which

is the foundation of the Jewish faith.

This principle also applies to

Jacob taking the blessings instead of Esau; he did this in order to bequeath

them to the People Israel, in keeping with God's historical plan. If, God

forbid, Esau had received the blessings, the plan would have been disrupted,

causing a national and spiritual catastrophe to the Jewish People. Isaac, who

had grown up in a good environment was seduced by Esau's feigned observance of

the commandments. Rebecca and Jacob's less savory family background taught them

to see through Esau's pretense and to recognize his wickedness and the

spiritual danger he posed. They also realized that the blessings were meant for

Jacob. Perhaps, when Rebecca dressed up Jacob in Esau's clothing she was trying

to hint to Isaac that he should not judge a book by its cover, but rather by

its contents. Indeed, Isaac learned to accept that message. When Jacob's identity

was revealed by his good manners, by the fragrance of Eden that wafted from him, and especially by

his voice; his mentioning God's name – his faith in personal providence, then Isaac

consciously gave him the blessings.

Jacob deserved to receive the

blessings; he had clearly purchased the first-born status from Esau. Esau's

claims regarding Jacob's double deception in stealing both the first-born

status and the blessings were baseless. In addition, even Esau's angel

confirmed that Jacob received them fairly, and in order to clear his name of

any dishonest connotation, he changed it to Israel. (By the way, Jacob's name

derives from the fact that he grasped Esau's ankle [akev]

in order to exit his mother's womb first and win the right to officiate in the

Temple service – and not from the word akov – "dishonesty")

Tzipi Leader

Pinchas Leiser, editor of

Shabbat Shalom, comments

I thank Mrs. Tzipi Leader for her reactions to Aviad

Stollman's article. Her comments present a different

point of view and relate to the stratum of divine providence in the stories of Bereishit in a way similar to the words Joseph spoke to his

brothers: you planned to do me ill, but God planned it for the good… (Bereishit

50:19).

The truth is composed from many

different strata; "There are seventy aspects to the Torah." In

addition to the attempt to understand the divine plan behind the stories of the

Torah there is also room to learn from the deeds of the fathers which are signs

for the sons. In that sense "The Torah speaks in the language of humans."

The Sages and traditional Torah

exegetes did not shrink from sometimes taking a critical stance towards the

Patriarchs in order to learn lessons from their deeds.

This principle is exemplified

by the comparison made by the Sages between Esau's cry upon his discovery that his

brother had cheated him and Mordechai's cry (Esther Rabba

8). Similarly, the RaMBaN and RaDaK did not hesitate

to criticize our Mother Sarah for having treated Hagar harshly.

The RaMBaN

writes: "Our mother did transgress by this affliction,

and Abraham also by his permitting her to do so. And so, God heard her [Hagar's]

affliction and gave her a son who would be a wild-ass of a man to

afflict the seed of Abraham and Sarah with all kinds of affliction." (Chavel translation).

The RaDaK

adopts this line of interpretation…"and this whole story was written in

the Torah in order that people learn good characteristics from it and keep away

bad character traits.

The providential process does

not absolve people from being morally responsible for their deeds. Our

ancestors were great and honest people, as the NeTziV

refers to them in the introduction to his commentary on Bereishit,

which he calls Sefer HaYashar

able to learn from their deeds, the Torah also tells us of their occasional

failings.

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards

its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel

  $700

• English edition distributed via email $

  100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to

appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.

In Israel, checks

made out to Oz VeShalom may be sent to Oz VeShalom-P.O.B. 4433, Jerusalem

91043. Unfortunately there is no Israeli tax-exemption for local donations.

US and British tax-exempt contributions to Oz VeShalom may be made through:

New Israel Fund, POB

91588, Washington, DC 20090-1588,

USA

New Israel Fund of Great Britain, 26 Enford Street, London W1H 2DD, Great

Britain

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE NEW ISRAEL

FUND IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING DONATIONS UNDER $100.

PEF will also channel donations and provide a tax-exemption. Donations

should be sent to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317 Madison Ave., Suite 607, New

York, New York 10017 USA

All contributions should be marked as donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project.

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement

dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to

promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts which have

always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep

attachment to the land

of Israel and it no less

views peace as a central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the

religious and the national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It

maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a fair and just

society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an

imperative.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom's

programs include both educational and protest activities. Seminars, lectures,

workshops, conferences and weekend programs are held for students, educators

and families, as well as joint seminars for Jews, Israeli Arabs and

Palestinians. Protest activities focus on issues of human rights, co-existence

between Jews and Arabs, and responses to issues of particular religious

relevance.

5,000 copies of a 4 page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah

reading are written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot

Shalom and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are

sent overseas via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom's

educational forums draw people of different backgrounds, secular and religious,

who are keen to deepen their Jewish knowledge and to hear an alternative

religious standpoint on the subjects of peace and social issues.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom fills an

ideological vacuum in Israel's

society. Committed both to Jewish tradition and observance, and to the

furthering of peace and coexistence, the movement is in a unique position to

engage in dialogue with the secular left and the religious right, with Israeli

Arabs and with Palestinians.