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 keeping up of the remembrance of Amalek as far as 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 Us Eternal Life: A Proper Ordering of 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 [hidden from you], for it is said: for these words are secret and sealed to 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 poor people, saying, "All is well, all is well," when nothing is well (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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