Printable PDF available here. Previous years’ pieces on Beshalach are available here and here.
Rav Kook (Based on Ein Ayah, Gemara Berachot 50a)
At the Yam Suf, even fetuses in their mothers’ wombs recited song. As it is stated in the chapter of Psalms that describes the Exodus from Egypt: “In assemblies, bless G-d, the Lord, from the source of Israel (lit. מקור ישראל)” – “source” is an allusion to the womb. (Gemara Berachot 50a)
This teaching of our Sages is strange and hard to make sense of. Is it meant to be taken literally? Did the fetuses really join in the Song of the Sea, like some strange in utero concert? Also, why do the Sages teach that unborn children participated specifically at this juncture, as opposed to any other miraculous or transcendent moment of Jewish history? Indeed, we don’t find the gemara or midrash asserting that fetuses were part of the giving of the Torah or praised G-d for any other miracle.
To resolve this puzzle, we need to investigate some fundamental aspects of Jewish identity and religious development. Israel’s national identity is rooted in awe and love of G-d (lit. יראת ה׳ ואהבתו), and these in turn are cultivated through various channels. A significant part of our spiritual development is self-driven. By accepting the Torah and living according to its precepts, we refine our dispositions and elevate our souls. Chinuch is another layer or component of our religious development. Our parents and communities educate us to aspire to Torah life. They train us to claim the inheritance that prior generations have bequeathed to us as our most precious treasure.
However, we also have an innate predisposition to a connection with the Divine, one that has nothing to do with our own actions or those who educated us. It is nature, not nurture. Every Jew possesses a soul drawn from the G-dly source of Israel (lit. מקור ישראל – the same phrase from Psalms cited by the gemara), and is possessed with an innate yearning for spiritual perfection and rejoicing in G-d. Not everyone succeeds at manifesting these yearnings, and sadly many Jews are not even consciously aware of them. But embers of spiritual passion smolder within every member of Israel.
When did Israel become aware of its own uniqueness? As a nation, when did we first encounter the embryonic potential that lay within us? The answer is that it transpired shortly after the Exodus, at the Yam Suf. At that point, of our own spiritual conduct was nothing to boast about. Before Moshe split the sea, we complained bitterly and demonstrated a lack of faith. Outwardly, our Sages even teach that we were indistinguishable from the Egyptians, and that the ministering angels could not understand why G-d chose to save us but drown our former masters. Similarly, we had minimal chinuch or training to speak of. It was barely a week before that we had performed our first mitzvah – the korban pesach – and witnessed G-d crush the might of Egyptian empire through the death of their firstborn.
But the fetuses in the womb had not even witnessed this. Their only connection to the world of G-dliness and spiritual truth was the fact that they’d been conceived by a Jewish mother and father. And yet Our Sages teach that even they participated in the Song at the Sea. Presumably, this is not meant to be taken literally, but to highlight the spiritual potential that comes from nature, as opposed to nurture. In other words, our Sages are not interested in teaching us about literal fetuses, but rather our own very real embryonic potential. The most profound and sublime Divine ideals are the birthright become of every member of Israel, no matter their background or prior choices.
Food for Thought
Sefas Emes (Beshalach): Then Moses and the children of Israel sang. After the exodus they became instruments to give witness to the Creator. As it states, “the people I formed for Myself that they might declare my praise (Is. 43:21). The midrash quotes the verse, “G-d lifted me out of the gruesome pit, the slimy clay, and set my feet on a rock, steadied my legs. G-d put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our G-d. (Ps. 40:3-4). The meaning of “new” is that it forever carries this power of renewal. It can never be forgotten by the souls of Israel. It was not a throwaway that [our sages] established that we should sing this song each day. Israel’s faith [at the sea] was the this saving act would last for all generations…this song and the attachment to the Divine have been implanted in the Jewish soul forever. But until the exodus from Egypt they were not able to call it forth. Only after this was the longing for G-d revealed…thus on every Shabbat the soul and desire are set free. That is why Shabbat is “in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt” [and why we sing G-d’s praises on that day].
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Covenant and Conversation, Ha’azinu 5777): There is something profoundly spiritual about music. When language aspires to the transcendent, and the soul longs to break free of the gravitational pull of the earth, it modulates into song. Jewish history is not so much read as sung. The rabbis enumerated ten songs at key moments in the life of the nation. There was the song of the Israelites in Egypt (see Is. 30:29), the song at the Red Sea (Ex. 15), the song at the well (Num. 21), and Ha’azinu, Moses’ song at the end of his life. Joshua sang a song (Josh. 10:12-13). So did Deborah (Jud. 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2) and David (2 Sam. 22). There was the Song of Solomon, Shir ha-Shirim, about which Rabbi Akiva said, “All songs are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.” The tenth song has not yet been sung. It is the song of the Messiah.
Mystics go further and speak of the song of the universe, what Pythagoras called “the music of the spheres”. This is what Psalm 19 means when it says, “The heavens declare the glory of G-d; the skies proclaim the work of His hands . . . There is no speech, there are no words, where their voice is not heard. Their music carries throughout the earth, their words to the end of the world.” Beneath the silence, audible only to the inner ear, creation sings to its Creator.
So, when we pray, we do not read: we sing. When we engage with sacred texts, we do not recite: we chant. Every text and every time has, in Judaism, its own specific melody. There are different tunes for shacharit, mincha and maariv, the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. There are different melodies and moods for the prayers for a weekday, Shabbat, the three pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot (which have much musically in common but also tunes distinctive to each), and for the Yamim Noraim, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There are different tunes for different texts. There is one kind of cantillation for Torah, another for the haftorah from the prophetic books, and yet another for Ketuvim, the Writings, especially the five Megillot. There is a particular chant for studying the texts of the written Torah: Mishnah and Gemarah. So by music alone we can tell what kind of day it is and what kind of text is being used. Jewish texts and times are not colour-coded but music-coded. The map of holy words is written in melodies and songs.
Music has extraordinary power to evoke emotion. The Kol Nidrei prayer with which Yom Kippur begins is not really a prayer at all. It is a dry legal formula for the annulment of vows. There can be little doubt that it is its ancient, haunting melody that has given it its hold over the Jewish imagination. It is hard to hear those notes and not feel that you are in the presence of G-d on the Day of Judgment, standing in the company of Jews of all places and times as they plead with heaven for forgiveness. It is the holy of holies of the Jewish soul. Nor can you sit on Tisha B’av reading Eichah, the book of Lamentations, with its own unique cantillation, and not feel the tears of Jews through the ages as they suffered for their faith and wept as they remembered what they had lost, the pain as fresh as it was the day the Temple was destroyed. Words without music are like a body without a soul…
Faith is more like music than science. Science analyses, music integrates. And as music connects note to note, so faith connects episode to episode, life to life, age to age in a timeless melody that breaks into time. G-d is the composer and librettist. We are each called on to be voices in the choir, singers of G-d’s song. Faith is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise. So music is a signal of transcendence. The philosopher and musician Roger Scruton writes that it is “an encounter with the pure subject, released from the world of objects, and moving in obedience to the laws of freedom alone.” He quotes Rilke: “Words still go softly out towards the unsayable / And music, always new, from palpitating stones / builds in useless space its G-dly home.” The history of the Jewish spirit is written in its songs…
Rabbi Elchanan Shoff (Contemporary): We are taught that when one is being formed in the womb, an angel teaches him the entirety of Torah. When he is born, an angel hits him on the mouth, and he forgets that Torah… In fact, we are left to wonder why we even are taught the Torah in the womb in the first place. Would this not seem to simply be an example of learning for no purpose at all? The Jewish people left Egypt like a child leaving the womb. It was a time that the Jewish people were being born. The experience at the sea was not one that the Jewish people had earned. They had not spent the time working on themselves, and were not at the level of prophets. In fact, had they remained in Egypt one more moment, they would have sunk to depths from which they could not have been revived. This was the desperate need for urgency on the part of Hashem. And yet, the maidservant at the sea saw what even the great prophets never merited to see!
It was just like the time that an infant spends in the womb of his mother. The Jewish people were brought to great levels of understanding, which they did not earn or deserve. We will always look back to the exodus to know what it means to be a Jew, and we will mention it every day, and in so many of our blessings and prayers. The song that we sang at the sea was the song of the fetus. It is the song of pure potential. Nothing has been earned, and nothing is separating us from who we really are. That purity, what we are made up of, is something that must always be on our minds. We are not learning Torah and fulfilling its commands in order to change who we are, but rather to discover that information. It is fundamental that we remember that our job in this world is simply to peel off the garbage that is separating us from ourselves. You are a Torah. As your body was being formed of the physical cells, your soul was being formed as a piece of truth and nothing more. If you become lost, it is a Torah that became lost. And if you can peel through the layers that are hampering you, you will discover that you really knew all that Torah all along.
Questions for Discussion
- Rav Kook claims that the Jewish people possession a unique spiritual predisposition. How do you think he would explain the concept of geirus (conversion)?
- What is the role of song and music in Jewish religious life?
- What is an area of your life where you possess innate potential that hasn’t yet been realized? What can you do to change that, even just a little?
- Are there any dangers to the idea that Jewish people possess a unique spiritual predisposition?
- What is the proper balance between nature, nurture and training/chinuch in Jewish life?
