Becoming the Nation of Israel, living by the code of Israel

Dedicated to the speedy recovery of: Mindel Hannah bat Chaya Gittel

It is hard to imagine, looking down at the windswept desert floor far below, what it must have been like 2000 years ago, to be a Jewish rebel soldier atop the isolated fortress of Masada. What kept you going, as you gazed down at the might of three Roman Legions, bent on your destruction?

In the year 70 CE, with the Temple (the Beit HaMikdash) in flames, Jerusalem breached and destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Jews dead, and hundreds of thousands more sold into slavery, the Romans announced that the great revolt had finally been put down. They even minted a coin to communicate their victory to the entire Roman Empire. The coin, known as ‘Judea capta’, shows a woman, meant to be the Jewish people, cowering at the feet of a Roman legionnaire. The Jewish people were defeated; the war was finally over. The only problem was, the Romans were wrong.

Two hundred Jewish rebels and their families slipped away from the fighting and escaped to the fortress of Masada.

Word of a pocket of Jewish fighters still ambushing patrols in the desert reached Rome. They could not afford for the word to get out that they had been wrong and that the revolt was not really over. And so the Senate dispatched what would eventually amount to three full Roman legions to defeat the Jewish resistance at Masada. Fifteen thousand men; the sheer size of such a force must have been terrifying.

What must it have felt like, to see a cloud on the horizon to the north one day, growing larger and larger, to realize with a sinking feeling that this was no ordinary cloud, but the dust raised by the feet of thousands of legionnaires, coming to destroy you.

Two thousand years ago, facing the might of the Legions of Rome, a small group of Jewish men and women took a stand. What gave them the courage to resist?

In this week’s portion, Be’shalach, the Jewish people are leaving Egypt, and the Torah points out the two routes the Jews can take to get to Egypt. The shorter, way will take the Jews up the coast through the Sinai desert to Israel. Hashem chooses the long way around, through the Red Sea to the east, then up through the Sinai desert and north through Edom and Moav (today Trans-Jordan) and then back west across the Jordan River into Israel. Why does Hashem choose this much longer, and more arduous route?

“G-d led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, though that was near, for G-d said: ‘Lest the people relent when they see war and return to Egypt. And so G-d turned the people through the desert of the Sea of Suf (Red Sea).” (Shemot 13:17-18)

Hashem knew that encountering the Philistines, three days north of Egypt, and confronted with a military campaign, the Jews would panic and head back to Egypt.

Yet, just then,the Jewish people find themselves in exactly the scenario G-d seemed to want to avoid! They arrive at the Sea of Reeds (Yam Suf) and soon see the entire Egyptian army bearing down on them. With nowhere to go, they are, as G-d predicted, terrified.

This should be no surprise, but Moshe’s (read G-d’s) response is surprising: “And Moshe said to the people: ‘Do not fear (Al Tira’u), stand and see the salvation that G-d will do for you this day, for as you have seen Egypt this day, you shall not see them again any more forever. Hashem will fight for you and you will hold your peace.” (14:13-14)

How can the Jewish people be expected not to fear? Especially considering the fact that Hashem has already pointed out that the people will see war and be afraid, why does Moshe (and G-d) expect them not to fear? Furthermore, if Moshe is telling the Jewish people not to be afraid, one wonders why? Once the Sea splits, it won’t matter whether the Jewish people were afraid or not, because the Egyptians will be wiped out.

Since Hashem’s response to their encounter with war, and their desire to return to Egypt, is to split the Sea and vanquish the Egyptians Himself, why couldn’t Hashem have done this with the Philistines, just as He did the Egyptians?

We are meant to become a “Mamlechet Kohanim Ve’Goy Kadosh,” a “Kingdom of Priests (teachers) and a Holy Nation.” Every nation has its mission. Ours is to be an Or La’Goyim, a Light unto the Nations.

To do that, three things have to happen:

1.We have to get to Israel, because every Nation needs a land. Only in a land can we be seen as a separate entity and have an ethical impact on the world as a Nation.

2.Before we can become a nation in our land, we must first receive the Torah. To become an ethical people who can be a role model of what ethics are meant to be, we have to have an objective source for those ethics, and there is only one truly objective source in this world: the Torah.

3.But before we can do any of this, we first have to become a Nation. And that is the theme of this entire portion.

In this week’s portion, after 200 years of Egyptian slavery, the Jews are not really a Nation; they are just a collection of ex-slaves, with a very pronounced slave mentality. With that, the first challenge that comes their way will send them packing back to Egypt. Which is why G-d cannot take them straight to Israel; they need a National therapy session!

When Moshe tells the Jewish people: “Do not fear” (“Al Tira’u”), it is not a command, or a challenge; it is the entire point.

You cannot be a slave in Egypt for so long without being affected by the Egyptian way of thinking. In Egypt, it was very simple: might makes right. This is the nature of paganism, which worships nature, because in nature the strong survive, and the weak perish. And Egypt was the theological center of this philosophy.

And this ideal of ‘might makes right,’ a natural outgrowth of paganism, is exactly what the Jewish people came into the world to undo. And it is why they have to leave Egypt to receive the Torah.

Part of the problem with the Exodus from Egypt itself, was that while G-d gets the Jewish people out of Egypt, He ends up teaching them that Egypt was really right all along. Because they only get out of Egypt by virtue of ten plagues, which, if looked at the wrong way, might demonstrate to the Jewish people that in the end, Pharaoh was right. G-d proved that he was stronger, so he won.

In other words, for the Torah, the Jews are about to receive, to be accepted as objective and eternal truth, Egypt and its philosophy, must be destroyed in the eyes and hearts of the Jewish people. Only then will they be the Jewish people they are meant to be.

Thus, when Moshe tells the Jewish people “ Al Tira’u,” rather than ‘do not fear,’ it may mean, do not be in awe, and do not continue to see Egypt in the way that you have; Tira’u being from the root ra’ah, which means to see. And that, perhaps, is why Moshe continues there (14:13) by saying that the Jewish people will no longer see the Egyptians in the way they have until now.

At the Sea of Reeds, the Jewish people learn that war isn’t about who has the stronger army. War is in the hands of heaven, and Hashem, not the chariots of Pharaoh, decides the outcome.

And the Jewish people begin the journey of learning how to become the free men and women they are meant to be, unraveling the slave mentality they carry in their hearts, one day at a time, for the next forty years.

Today, more than ever, as we journey along the road of becoming, after 2000 years of exile, the Jewish people we once were, let us remember that in order to be able to give all that we have to give to the world, we have first to succeed in transforming ourselves into the Nation we are meant to be: the Nation of Israel, living by the code of Israel, ultimately, in the land of Israel.