BESHALACH 1988

In the Torah portion B'Shalach we learn about the song the Jewish people sang after the Egyptian army was destroyed when the waters of the Red Sea came cascading down upon them.  Immediately afterwards we learn that the Jewish people went for three days without water, and they came to Moroso.  "Moroso" in Hebrew means "bitter".  They were not able to drink the waters because they were bitter.  "And the people complained against Moshe saying, 'What shall we drink,' and Moshe cried to G‑d, and G‑d showed him a tree and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweetened there, and G‑d gave for them a law and a judgment and there He tested them, and He said, 'If ye will follow My voice and do what is upright in My eyes and you will listen to My commandments, then all the diseases I placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you because I am G‑d Who cures you'."  This is a very strange portion.  The reason it is strange is because if the Jewish people were lacking water and Moshe was instructed to throw a tree into the water to sweeten it, what does this have to do with laws and judgment? And also, why does G‑d say if you are going to listen to My voice that "all the diseases that I brought upon Egypt I will not bring upon you?" What does this have to do with them not having potable water?

It seems to me that this Torah portion is talking about something else.  You know, life is very difficult.  Sometimes we are called upon to make very bitter choices.  For example, sometimes an employer has to fire people who are incompetent, a very unpleasant task.  Sometimes teachers have to fail students.  Sometimes parents even have to turn their back on their children in order that they can grow.  A mother came to me the other day very distraught.  She had just turned her son into the police.  She had to.  He was a thief and a robber, and unless she turned him in he may have become a murderer, but it hurt her terribly to do that.  There was a book which came out recently called Tough Love which says sometimes the worst thing you can do for a child is to continue to support him and make excuses for him.  I have often advised parents sometimes to cut off their children completely from financial support.  Only in this way will their child be able to assume responsibility and realize that acts have consequences.  In life we cannot always be the good guy.  Sometimes we have to be the bad guy, too.  We all know that we have to discipline children sometimes, and it hurts terribly to discipline them.  We do not allow them to go to certain parties.  We confine them to their room, and sometimes we even have to spank them, and it h terribly to do these things, but we know that unless we do them our children will not grow up correctly.  Many times teenagers have come to me and said, "Rabbi, when I grow up I am not going to do what my parents do," but when they do grow up they do exactly what their parents did, because parents are called upon to make a judgment.  Sometimes you cannot trust your teenagers to go do a party.  You are afraid that they will be subjected to peer pressure that they cannot withstand and then they get filled with alcohol or drugs or even have a baby.  It is difficult sometimes t tell people no, and it is difficult sometimes to enforce discipline.  I remember one of the first jobs I had was working for a man who did not like to do anything unpleasant.  He had me fire workers because business was down and workers had to be laid off.  It was my job to lay them off.  If credit was cut off from companies it was my responsibility to tell the companies that their credit was cut off.  If papers were going to be served on somebody for non-payment it was my job to arrange that.  Later on I found I should have had a salary five or six times what he gave me, a very meager salary.  Of course, I did not stay in that job long.  I did not like it.  Sometimes, too, we have to fight back.  I remember as a kid I hated to fight.  My parents said you have to fight if they attack you.  I said I did not want to fight.  I was always big so it really was not a problem of my winning.  It was just that I hated to do it.  I hated to hurt people, but I had to do it otherwise I would be badly beaten.
In life sometimes we have to do very taught things, bitter things.  When the Jewish people came out of Egypt they were not the people in Egypt who had to discipline others.  They had the Egyptians to do that.  Of course, the Egyptians abused their power, and that is what people have to work on carefully, too, to make sure that anytime they act tough that they do it with restraint.  We know that parents have to discipline children, but it should not lead to child abuse.  We know that the state has to incarcerate criminals, but it should not lead to brutality and wanton killing and maiming, but sometimes the state has to get toughs.  If riots break out they have to be put down.  In the United States when riots broke out in Newark, Newark was surrounded by tanks and soldiers went in with live ammunition.  Sometimes you have to get tough.  It is unfortunate, but you have to get tough.  The Jewish people, when they left Egypt, found that now they had the job of being the policeman, too.  That is why they complained about the bitterness, and G‑d showed Moshe a tree.  What does a tree stand for in Hebrew? It stands for the Torah, for the tree of life.  That is why it says He gave them laws and then He tested them.  One of the laws that G‑d gave us at Mora, the rabbis say that G‑d gave us the laws of Shabbos, the law of Dinin, of just civil procedure and criminal code, that G‑d gave us also honoring our parents, and some say the law of the red heifer.  We had to learn that we had to use power, but we had to use power with restraint.  Shabbos teaches us that it is not just money that is important.  We do not just favor money.  Sometimes we have to give up money for other values.

Most certainly justice should not be tainted by monetary considerations.  We also learn that in order to use force in society you have to have just laws and that is what Dinin stood for.  Honoring our parents speaks about the fact that we have to all realize that everyone is the carrier of a tradition and we have to treat them with respect.  Other rabbis say that the law that was given there was not honoring our parents but the law of the red heifer.  The red heifer's ashes were used to purify people who were ritually unclean so they could enter the Temple, but the red heifer had a peculiar characteristic.  It made clean those who were unclean and made unclean those who were clean.  In other words, anyone who had a hand in preparing the ashes of the red heifer became unclean, while the ashes of the red heifer cleaned those who were unclean.  This is to teach us that many times those who wield power become unclean, that even though they are needed to wield power in society, yet they are forced to do things that make them unclean, that hurt their conscience.  It is difficult to wield power.  It is very difficult.  Life has its bitter side, and when we use power we have to use it with restraint, with the Torah.  That is why G‑d says, "I will not put upon you all the sicknesses that I put on Egypt.  The sicknesses of Egypt came from abuses of power.  If you will observe the Torah, then these abuses of power will not come upon you."

Today in Israel we are witnessing the down side of power, the bitterness of power.  The riots cannot be allowed to continue.  Israel is forced to put them down.  Israel did not cause this problem to occur.  After all, Israel has been criticized roundly every time she had tried to solve the refugee problem and relocate these people.  The UN passes a resolution saying that Israel is trying to annex the areas.  In my opinion, Israel should annex the areas and give everyone complete rights and resettle the people and treat them in a humanitarian way no matter what the United Nations says, but when riots break out they have to be put down otherwise they will lead to anarchy and the destruction of all civilization.  In the United States, too, we had to put down riots, and throughout the world riots have to be put down.  Israel was unprepared and did not have rubber bullets and water cannons prepared.  However, how that she is acting she is acting in a proper way.  How can you put down riots if you do not use bullets except with batons? In Northern Ireland they use batons.  In Israel, itself, there are many orthodox Jews who had batons used on them when the rioted protesting different things about violations of Shabbos, etc.  The only way you can put down riots, unfortunately, is by force.  You have to use restrained force.  Anyone who randomly beats should, of course, be punished.  It is a difficult situation.  The press has had a field day.  One report say 200 people broke their bones.  That may be so, although rubber bullets also break bones, but if there are 25,000 soldiers there and they are all wantonly beating people there would not be 200 bones broken but there would be 25,000, 100,000, or 200,000 bones broken.  Israel now is caught up in the bitter side of power.  Let us hope and pray that they will learn the lesson of this Torah portion, that they will use power wisely by never being corrupted by money, power, and influence, that they will enact just laws that everyone can subscribe to and hold to because they know they will be treated fairly and equally, and that they will realize that power corrupts and will be very careful in using power, always using it in a restrained way.

I am reminded of the story of the kindergarten teacher who was absent so the class had a substitute for a few days- When she came back to class she said, "Well, how did you like my substitute? One little boy raised his hand and said, "Well, she's not as smart as you.  She had to play the piano with two hands." Freedom has two characteristics: an up side and a down side.  It requires us not only to develop the positive aspects of man but also to contain the negative aspects.  Sometimes it is a bitter experience.  Let us hope, though, that we will always sweeten it with the Torah so we will never allow these unfortunate, tough decisions to be done in an abusive or bad way.  Let us hope that peace will soon come to Israel because justice, in its fullest sense, will be enacted, that laws will be fair, and that the Arabs will see that their best interests would be in making peace with Israel.