Shabbat shalom ... a week late!

Pivotal moments in our lives are etched into our memories like photographs. We can return to them most any time, and we can place ourselves in the scenes preserved like they were yesterday. Many of us take pictures or movies of these events so that we can document them for future reference and experience them over and over again as we view the records. Some of us write about our experiences in journals, capturing the emotions and the details that might be lost over time. Our Torah records important times by expressing them in poetry or song, as seen in this week’s reading, Parashat B’shallah, which tells of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to a long-awaited freedom from Egyptian slavery.

Shirat ha-yam, the Song of the Sea, is situated in the middle of the Torah reading. The reading begins with the Israelites fleeing from Egypt after the devastation of the tenth and final plague, the death of all of the first-born in Egypt. God leads the people on a convoluted path in order to avoid encountering the Philistines, which might have caused the Israelites to panic and turn back to Egypt out of fear of attack. They eventually reach the Red Sea, where they proceed to cross to safety when they realize that the Egyptians have had a change of heart and are pursuing them to bring them back to Egypt. At the end of the Torah reading, the Amalekites wage war with Israel, and the people are forced to do battle to fend them off.

The experience of our ancestors as described in our parashah reflects the way we experience life, as well. Sometimes there are positive moments – victories and accomplishments – while other times there are disappointments and even danger. In our parashah, the highlighted moment of redemption is embedded within accounts of trial and difficulty, and if you pause to reflect on it, you realize that the crossing of the Red Sea is successful, while the attacks on our people are not. Perhaps we can seek to understand our own lives the same way: there may be times of difficulty, loss and failure, but there just might be opportunities for redemption embedded within them, if we can only open our eyes and discover them.