THEN THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL CAME INTO THE

MIDST OF THE SEA ON DRY LAND, AND THE WATERS WERE TO THEM AS A WALL FROM THEIR

RIGHT AND FROM THEIR LEFT.

(Shemot 14:22)

And the Lord led the sea with the strong

east wind – as described in the Torah,

the splitting of the Red Sea was a miracle combined with natural elements,

since if God had not wished to make any use of the forces of nature, what was

the strong east wind for? Scripture explicitly states that the Lord

led the sea with the strong east wind, and the RaShBaM

wrote: "The Holy One blessed be He worked in

accordance with natural processes, that the wind dries up and freezes rivers…

and the waters were to them as a wall – According to Ibn Ezra the waters

solidified and melted again after Israel passed through, as is written below: the

waters were heaped up; the running water stood erect like a wall (15:8). The

opinion of RaLBaG and Don Yitzhak (Abarbanel) is correct – "The waters were not high to

the right and to the left, rather the wind moved them there and kept them from

returning, as we see with waves that collect near the shore in a storm,

creating a path along which they crossed the sea as if on a bridge that spanned

it from side to side. Water piled up on both sides and could not flood the lane"

– here end the words of Don Yitzhak. The expression, as a wall, tells us

that water surrounded them from right and left, and not that they were like an

actual wall, even though the Song poetically states stood erect like a wall.

Clericus brings a proof text from Nahum's (3:8)

rhetoric: which was situated among the rivers, with water around it-whose

wall was the sea and of the sea, its wall.

(ShaDaL 14: 21-21)

and the waters were to them as a wall – When Samael

went down and said before Him: "Master of the Universe, did not Israel

worship strange gods in Egypt, and yet You perform miracles for them!?" He

made his voice heard to the Prince of the Sea who became full of anger [hema] against them and wanted to drown them.

The Holy One

blessed be He immediately answered him: Most foolish

one in the world, did they worship false Gods of their own choice? Did they not

worship only out of servitude and madness? And you judge one who sinned

unintentionally as if he had sinned intentionally, and one who was coerced as

if he aced of his own free will!

When the Prince of

the Sea heard this, the anger towards Israel with which he had been filled was

redirected towards Egypt, for it is said and the waters returned – they

turned away from Israel and onto Egypt.

(Yalkut Shimoni

Beshalah 237)

A Festive Day's Roots and Branches

Mordechai Beck

It is tempting to identify Tu Bishvat with the current fad for environmentalism. For some

this ancient festival is, the American phrase, a

Jewish Arbor Day, on which tree saplings are planted. But, although it may be a

convenient analogy, it is, at best, only partially relevant.

Certainly, Jewish tradition promotes nature. The God of Eden is the

first gardener. Nature is a central motif in attracting the wandering Children

of Israel to the Land flowing with milk and honey.

The Torah upbraids us to protect trees, even in time of war. Sparing the

vegetation is not merely an expression of concern for the welfare of the planet's

green belt; it is rooted in the knowledge that the children of Adam and Eve are

themselves "like the tree of the field." (Deuteronomy

20:19).

This primal biblical simile reflects the fact that, in the words of the

Israeli poet Natan Zach, human beings, like their

arboreal counterparts "aspire upwards" as well as "thirst for

water." One implication of Zach's poem is that humankind cannot be

satisfied by mere existence. It yearns to transcend itself, to experience more

than the boundaries of flesh and blood. It is the yearning for transcendence

which informs this most earthly of our festivals.

According to tradition, Tu Bishvat

is hinted at in the law promulgated in the Book of Deuteronomy regarding the

giving of the tithes from the produce that "the field brings forth year by

year." This source sends the rabbinic mind chasing parallels and analogies

in order to fix a single date whereby tithes from one year are not confused

with those of another. It is a day of judgment over the coming year's fruit, as

is Rosh Hashana for mankind, and similarly comes but

once a year in the annual cycle.

Thus Shevat 15th appears in Rambam's

compendium of laws. No mention is made of eating fruit or tree planting, nor of any special celebration. The day is referred to in

the chapters dealing with tithes and not with the laws governing festive days.

Scholars suggest that the day was probably marked by farmers during the

biblical and Temple era – and was then forgotten. Documents from the Cairo Genizah reveal a day of significance in the Gaonic period (sixth to tenth century CE), marked by

especially composed piyyutim, hymns based on

hints and texts from the Hebrew classics.

Sixteenth-century sources show that Sephardi

communities were wont to indulge in the eating of fruit on Tu

Bishvat.. Yet despite this

precedent, it was among Ashkenazi Jewry that the day grew into a significant

religious event. It was these Eretz Israel-inspired

communities that forbade fasts on this days, or the recital of tachanun (penitential prayers) – two sure signs of a

festive mood.

In the 17th century the anonymous rabbinical author of Chemdat Yamim (The

Choicest of Days) reinstated, as it were, the Gaonic

celebration of the day. A native of Safed, the rabbi –

possibly the mystically inclined Binyamin Halevi –

compiled a source book for the day, Pri Etz Hadar, (The Tree of

Goodly Fruit), whose popularity spread quickly around the Mediterranean

basin, providing the standard text for an annual ceremony that echoes the

Pesach Seder.

The rabbi's inspiration was a heavenly voice which apparently assured

him that a celebration of the fruits of the Holy land would generate an increase

in divine outpouring and thus bring redemption closer. The author defines the

30 fruits typical of Israel, which were to be eaten in a kabbalistically

formulated order, alongside the drinking of four cups of wine.

For Rabbi Yitzhak Meir, the founder of

the Hassidic dynasty of Gur, the very date of the New

Year for Trees is pregnant with meaning. In his Sepher

HeZchut he observes that the opening lines of

Deuteronomy recall that it was on the first day of the eleventh month – Shevat –

that Moses "began to expound the Torah." From that time on, Rabbi

Yitzhak writes, the tree of Torah has been growing and nourishing the people of

Israel with its fruit. This, he adds, is proof enough of the continuing

veracity of the Torah's eternal teaching.

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Eiger of Lublin saw a natural

link between the 45 days needed for a new tree to "take" to the

ground and the same number of days from Shevat 15th to the beginning of

Nisan, the month of the exodus from Egypt. For him this parallels the process

of redemption, which begins with a seed of awakening and eventually burgeons

into a fully-grown plant. Even with the rough winds and weather of winter, the

seed continues to develop, pushing itself upwards spontaneously until it is

released into the world. However much a person fails, the cycle of nature

offers a model of renewal and creativity, even through hardship and

destruction.

It is recorded that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai was pressed by his

student, Rabbi Eleizer ben Arach, to reveal the mysteries known as the "the

workings of the Divine Chariot." No sooner had he assented than a fire

descended from heaven and enveloped the trees in a nearby field. The trees

burst into song: "Praise be the Lord from the

earth…the fruit trees and the cedars. Halleluyah!"

For Rabbi Yohanan, tree planting took

precedence, even over greeting the Messiah. Perhaps since he lived through the

terrible epoch in which the Temple was destroyed and messianic hopes were high,

his declaration about the need to finish planting a tree is more than just a

rhetorical flourish. His advice stems from a deep sense that redemption has to

start with us. The tree is, therefore, an apt metaphor: it draws on both heaven

and earth for its sustenance – as does the human being.

In death, we may become one with "the rocks and stones and trees."

But in life, we have the unique opportunity to connect our lowliest passions –

even our subterranean ones – with our finest and most elevated yearnings."

Mordechai

Beck is a Jerusalem-based artist and writer.

The Third Temple

will not be Built by Humans

You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain, the

place You made to dwell in, O Lord.

(Shemot

15:17)

…but the future Temple to which we look

forward is already built and set-up, and shall be revealed and brought from

heaven, for it says the place You made to dwell in, O Lord.

(Rashi

on Sukkah 41a)

I will utterly

obliterate the keeping up of the remembrance of Amalek

The

remembrance of Amalek – It is not Amalek

who is so pernicious for the moral future of mankind but the remembrance of Amalek, the glorifying of the memory of Amalek that is the danger. As long as the annals of

humanity cover the memory of the heroes of the sword with glory, as long as

those that throttle and murder the happiness of mankind are not buried in

oblivion, so long will each successive generation look up in worship to these "great

ones" of violence and force, and their memory will awaken the desire to

emulate these heroes, and acquire equal glory by equal violence and force. Only

when the divine laws of morals have become the sole criterion as to the worth

of the greatest and smallest of men, and no longer in inverse proportion but in

direct proportion to greatness and power do the demands of morality grow, and

the greater and more powerful a man is, the less any lapse in the laws of

morality is excused, then, and only then will the reign of Amalek

cease for ever in the world. That this is the final goal of God's management

and direction of the history of the world is expressed here after the first

weakening of Amalek, I will utterly obliterate the

heavens reach. So also in Psalms 9:7, the thought is poignantly expressed,

that only with the doing away with the remembrance of devastations and

conquests will the perpetrators of those deeds disappear, their remembrance

is lost.

(Rabbi

S.R. Hirsch on Shemot 17:14, Levi translation)

He Planted In

Preferences

Rabban Zakai ben Gamliel would say: If you

have a sapling in your hand, and they tell you: "Behold, the Messiah [has

arrived]!" – first plant the sapling, and then go

out to receive him.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan, b version, 31)

Rabbi Shmuel

taught in the name of Rabbi Yehudah: If someone tells

you when the redemption will come, do not believe him, as it is written, for

it is a day of vengeance in My heart (Isaiah 63:4). My heart did not reveal it to My mouth, to whom shall My mouth reveal it?

Rabbi Brekhiah

and Rabbi Simon said in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: I have given you three indications of [the

location of] Moses' grave, for it says, he buried him [1] in the valley[2] in the land of Moab, [3] near Beit-peor

(Devarim 34: 6), but even so, no one knows his burial place to this day (loc. cit.). If no mortal can come to know

that for which I have given several indications, how much more so is the End

the time of the end (Daniel 11: 9).

(Midrash Tehillim 9)

But those who fool themselves and

say that they will stand in their place until the Messiah arrives in the West

country (Morocco), and then they will go forth to Jerusalem – I do not know how

they will avoid this sh'mad [religious

persecution and campaign of forced conversion]. They transgress [against the

Torah] and cause others to sin. The prophet, may peace be upon him, said of

their ilk: They offer healing offhand for the wounds of My

(Jeremiah

8: 11). For there is

no set hour for the Messiah's arrival on which we can depend, and say that it

is near or far. And the obligation to fulfill the commandments does not depend

on the Messiah's arrival – rather, we are [simply] required to occupy ourselves

with Torah and commandments, and to try to fulfill them perfectly. And after we

do what we are required to do, if God grants us or our grandchildren to see the

Messiah – that will be even better. And if not – we have lost nothing, but

rather gained by performing our obligations.

(From RaMBaM's Iggeret

Hashmad, pg. 66 in the RaMBaM

La'Am edition of Iggrot

HaRaMBaM.)

Readers Reply

My friend Pinchas Leiser wrote the

following in his article which appeared in the Va'era

edition of Shabbat Shalom:

If so, it seems to me that the authentic aspiration of the Jew at prayer

must be to connect with the Promising God, the God of faith Who

is beyond our abilities to describe, of Whom it is written in Sifrei Ha'azinu (307): The God of faith –

Who had faith in the world and created it."

This demand for pure faith, without connection to events, is not easy.

The allure of changing historical events into the finger of God (as the

Egyptian wizards would have it) is powerful in every generation.

In addition, once enticed in this direction we are subject to the real

dangers of faith or love which are "dependent

upon something" (teluya bedavar) and a "cheap" theological

interpretation of history in terms of human needs be they individual or

national.

I think that two

worries led Pinchas to make these statements: 1) fear

that Judaism might become an instrumental religion, i.e., a religion directed

towards the currying of earthly favors from God and 2) dismay with approaches

that are so sure of their understanding of God's ways in history that they even

depend upon that understanding as a basis for making political decisions. I am

also troubled by these two phenomena.

Nevertheless:

Gratitude is one of

the foundations of a good relationship, be it a relationship between human

beings or a relationship between human beings and God. Someone who refuses to

see the "finger of God" in history keeps himself from being able to

recognize God's beneficence in our world. After 2,000 years of Exile, the

Jewish People returned to the Land of Israel and established political

sovereignty there. Are we required – in the name of "pure faith" – to

remain silent and not thank God for His role in the re-establishment of our

independence upon our own soil, just in order to avoid the danger of giving a "cheap"

theological interpretation to historical events?

And furthermore: If

we refuse to recognize the contribution of "the finger of God" to the

success of the Zionist project, how are we to avoid the sin of My strength and the might of my hand has

accumulated this wealth for me?

Berel Lerner, Kibbutz Sheluhot

Pinchas Leiser, author of the article, comments:

I thank my friend Berel Lerner for his reply, which clarifies my statements.

There is no doubt

that gratitude, alongside the duty to "make a blessing for the bad"

just as we "make a blessing for the good," constitutes a large part

of our appropriate religious reaction to events. That is to say, we should "bend

our knees" and lend meaning to all of the events in our personal and

public lives. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I certainly recognize the

importance of our return to the Land of Israel and the importance of the

establishment of the sovereign State of Israel; I am grateful to God, Who let

me live at this time and in this place. I believe that this recognition

obligates us to build here a society based on fairness and justice, kindness

and compassion, as expressed by the verse, You shall remember that you were

a slave in the land of Egypt: therefore, I command you to do this thing

(for instance: not to cheat the stranger, the orphan, or the widow). "The finger of God" points to the path that we must

travel, but it does not wait upon us to serve us and it does not require us to

stray after dangerous messianic hallucinations.

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