Throughout the centuries, it remains the most popular and publicized miracle of all time. The splitting of the Red Sea – which, for us, was tantamount to the splitting of the atom – was a monumental moment that secured our liberation from slavery and resulted in the sinking of the Egyptian forces.
The Haggadah waxes poetic over how many “mini-miracles” were a part of this event, with Rabbi Akiva maintaining that no less than 250 separate miraculous plagues struck Pharaoh’s army at the sea. It remains a custom to stand and sing the Shirah, the “Song of the Sea,” on the seventh night of Passover while facing a body of water, as well as the next day at the Torah reading.
In fact, the very reason that Passover has “bookends” of full holidays at each end is due to this event; while the first day celebrates our exit from Egypt, the last day commemorates the miracles at the Reed Sea.
What baby boomer cannot still picture Charlton Heston’s Moses raising his staff over the water as the waves divide, while Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh watches incredulously as his chariots plummet to a watery demise [in the epic 1956 film The Ten Commandments]?
Though the vast majority of Jews, if not the world, accept the parting of the sea as direct evidence of the hand of God, there will always be skeptics who doubt its veracity. After all, there is no hard evidence of it really happening – notwithstanding the phony video that seems to surface every year of Egyptian armor being “discovered” by divers at the site. Non-believers have a host of “rational” explanations for what the Bible says took place, if they acknowledge that it occurred at all:
- Moses led the Israelites through the water on a sand bar at low tide, while by the time the Egyptians pursued us, they were caught by a high-tide.
- We were dressed lightly and so made it safely across, while the weight of the chariots and the golden saddles adorning the Egyptians’ horses plunged them to the bottom.
- This was a classic case of “mass hysteria,” whereby all the Israelites – who perhaps had just dined on some very potent, hallucinatory maror (bitter herbs) or haroset (sweet condiment) – imagined that this was really happening.
- After centuries of being told this “fable,” it became ingrained in the collective Jewish mind, so that fiction eventually morphed into fact.
Belief in miracles
NONE OF this bothers me, even though I “believe with a full belief” in the veracity of the Torah as God’s revealed truth. If you want to believe that we were freed from slavery by “natural” means, we are basically saying the same thing because nature is God, and God is nature.
When a tree blossoms, essentially without any help from us, and produces delicious, nutritious fruit, that is a miracle. When babies are born, and life blossoms, that is a miracle, even though it occurs millions and billions of times. When the super-computer we call our brain is able to transform the world with amazing innovations, that, too, is a miracle. As the Talmud (Taanit 25) succinctly puts it, the fact that oil burns may be labeled “natural,” but it is absolutely miraculous!
Our sages tell us that outright miracles were once the order of the day, particularly during the period of the exodus, because the low self-esteem of the enslaved Israelites necessitated a potent “shot in the arm” to restore their faith and self-confidence.
But as time progressed and we became more spiritually secure, we would not be “spoon-fed” these wonders. They would still exist, to be sure, but they would now be couched and concealed within seemingly natural, rational trappings; it would be our challenge to discover and discern their emanation from the Almighty.
Just as the Torah is not written for dummies – and its all-encompassing wisdom must be diligently mined, like gold – so, too, we must struggle to adjust our spiritual vision so that we can see God’s glory wherever we look. “Forcing” a miracle upon us is not only somewhat of an insult to our religious capabilities, but it robs us of our freedom of choice, for we have no alternative but to admit that there must be a God.
HAVING SAID this, however, I would suggest that there are exceptions to the above. There are times in history when events are so glaringly miraculous that we cannot help but be compelled by what is happening before our eyes.
When our small nation is consistently able to hold at bay – or convincingly defeat – a much larger enemy bent on destroying us, that’s not “natural.” When beepers go off simultaneously and render thousands of terrorists unable to wage war, that is not natural. And when great empires rise and fall over the centuries while we outlast them all, that, too, is not routine, expected or natural. That is God periodically reminding us that when necessary, the “normal” rules of the universe may be suspended so that our eternal journey may continue unimpeded.
I think that Passover in general, and its seventh day in particular, is the perfect time to appreciate “the miracles that are with us daily,” as we say in the Amidah prayer, and proclaim that we do not take these blessings for granted. And so I declare:
I am thankful for the miracle of life being granted to me: Dayenu, that would have been enough. I am thankful for the miracle of being given a marvelous wife and family: Dayenu, that would have been enough. I am thankful for being given a small dose of intelligence, so that I might occasionally write something intelligent: Dayenu, that would have been enough. I am thankful for the miracle of being able to live in the reborn State of Israel: Dayenu, that would have been enough. And I am thankful for the opportunity to live in historic times, on the verge of the Great Redemption that we have long awaited: Dayenu, that would have been enough.
If you say those words and close your eyes, you might actually see the sea being split.
The writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana. rabbistewart@gmail.com