BESHALACH 1992

In the Torah portion Beshalach we have the beautiful song that Moshe Rabbeinu sang after the Egyptian army was swept away by the returning waters of the Red Sea.  Moshe immediately sang it after we learn "and Israel saw the great hand which G‑d had done against the Egyptians and they feared the Lord and they believed in G‑d and in Moshe, His servant."  Immediately afterwards it says, "Then Moshe will sing."  The rabbis learn from this that this is the intimation of the future also.  It says "then Moshe will sing".  Of course, there are grammatical reasons also for using the future tense.  It can also mean a continuance tense, "and Moshe continually sang", but we see that the word "Oz" is used here.  The word "Oz" in Hebrew is used when there is great joy and jubilation.  We see that Joshua used also the same expression "Oz" when he sang a song after the Jewish people entered the land of Israel.  The word "Oz" then stands for this great jubilation.  It is hard to understand, though, why later on in this song we learn in verse 15 how it says, "Then they were afrightened the chieftains of Adam" and it used the word "Oz" again.  How could that word "Oz" there signify joy?

Also, after Moshe concluded his song then it says, "And Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the drum in her hand and they went all the women after her with their drums and dances and Miriam sang unto them: 'Sing unto G‑d, for He is highly exalted.  The horse and the riders He has thrown into the sea.'" Why was it necessary that Miriam should sing a song after Moshe sang a song?  Why is Miriam here identified as the sister of Aaron?  Why isn't she also identified as the sister of Moshe?
If we look carefully here at the text perhaps we can understand the answers to these questions.  Miriam is a symbol of hope.  Miriam was the prophetess who made sure that the Jewish people did not give up hope in Egypt.  The rabbis tell that at the time of her father, Amram, divorced her mother, left her mother because of the decree of Pharaoh Miriam protested.  Pharaoh had decreed that all the boys should be thrown into the river.  Amram approached his wife, Yecheved, and said, "We cannot stay together anymore because it is wrong to produce children who will just be killed."  Since Amram was a great man in Israel all.  the men in Israel followed his example, but Miriam protested.  Miriam went up to her father and said, "Father, how can you do such a thing?  Pharaoh has only decreed against the boys.  You have also decreed against the girls."  Her father listened to her and went back to his wife and all the other men of Israel went back to their wives.

Unfortunately, throughout Jewish history it has been the case that many Jews have given up when they have seen persecution, when they have seen terrible problems confronting them, but this is not the way that the Torah wants us to behave.  It wants us always to face the future with hope and with confidence.  Even though we may suffer losses we will leave the future of the Jewish people up to G‑d.  We will do what we have to do.  Perhaps the young men who were going to be born would be saved.  Maybe Pharaoh would die.  Maybe someone would be found to hide them.  It is up to G‑d to help us.  We should never give up hope.  Miriam symbolized the women.  The rabbis say it was the women in Egypt who never gave up hope.  The men many times gave up hope, but it was the women who never gave up hope, and it was only because of the merit of the women that the Jewish people were able to leave Egypt.  In fact, the rabbis say that they even left Egypt early.  They did not stay the full 400 years because it was through the efforts of the women that the Jewish people maintained hope, and, because of this hope, their slavery was shortened.  They also say that when the Jewish people wandered in the desert it was not the women who worshipped the golden calf, It was the men who worshipped the golden calf.  The men had given up hope that Moshe would return.  The men had decided that they needed a new direction, but the women would not worship the golden calf.  The men had to take their gold earrings and gold bracelets by force, and, because of this, the women were rewarded by a special holiday which is known as Rosh Chodesh, that the women do not have to work on Rosh Chodesh and that that is a special women's holiday.  That's why in many synagogues there are special women's minyans, women's prayer groups, on Rosh Chodesh.

We also learn later on during the time of the spies that the women did not listen to the evil report of the spies.  Only the men listened to the evil report of the spies.  Miriam was always a source of hope.  Miriam never gave up.  In fact, it was thanks to Miriam that the rabbis say that a well of water followed the Jewish people in the desert because this well of water signified hope, signified not giving in to difficulties.  It signified always being optimistic in the fact of all sorts of problems.  Miriam here is referred to as the sister of Aaron and not the sister of Moshe because Moshe gave up hope.  Moshe, after he had slain the Egyptian and came back the next day and found two Jews fighting and he remonstrated with them and they said, "Are you going to kill us as you killed the Egyptian?" and Moshe said, "Surely this thing is known," and he fled Egypt.  The rabbis interpret that to mean that he understood now why the Jewish people were in slavery.  If they could not get along with themselves, they deserved slavery.  He gave up completely on the Jewish people, and, according to the Medrash, he even became the king of Abassinia for a while and then he went to Midian and he married a non-Jew and even agreed, according to the Medrash, to raise his oldest child as a non-Jew.  It was only later that he came back to Judaism.  He had given up on the Jewish people.  Miriam never gave up and Aaron never gave up.  They stayed together with the people during all the slavery.  Miriam was the symbol of hope.

That, of course, explains, too, why when Moshe starts the song he starts out with the word "Oz Yosheer" because the word "oz" stands for "Emunah".  It is only because you have faith, you have confidence in the future, you have hope that you can have the Zion, the arms, the necessary wherewithal to resist the temptations and the persecutions of the present.  Moshe sang this song when he saw that the people believed in G‑d and that they had this "Emunah", this faith.  "Oz", the rabbis explain, can also mean "Achtus".  Only when the Jewish people are united do they have the proper "zion", the proper equipment, the proper weapons in order to combat all their enemies.  Moshe was very happy to sing this song at this time because at this particular time the Jewish people had recaptured a faith and he, himself, had recaptured, so he understood well their feelings.  Later on when it says "then they were frightened" in that instance the Aleph stands there for "Adeeshus".  They were indifferent.  They no longer had the faith.  Their will had disintegrated.  Their weapons ended up to be no good.

We see the same thing today where Russia, the second mightiest power in the world, is now seemingly helpless.  They have not lost any of their weapons.  They have all their weapons, but what did they lose?  They lost their faith in their ideology.  They no longer have the will to use these weapons.  They no longer feel it is important to use these weapons.  They do not have any ideal to defend.  They, themselves, do not feel that their system is worth defending.  They want to attract western investment.  They want to ape, so to speak, western forms so that they can have something that is worthwhile defending.  They still have the weapons and if some Russian leader could once again inject into them the feeling that they have something to defend and something to give to the rest of the world, those weapons will become mighty again.  As I have mentioned many times before, the greatest defensive weapon that was ever created was the Chinese wall, the Great Wall of China.  It was never breached.  In fact, it can even be seen from the moon, but China was conquered many times even though the wall was never breached because the gatekeepers were bribed.  They did not see any sense anymore in not allowing the invaders in.  There was no will to defend the country.  There was no will to make sure that the country would be better off without foreigners than with foreigners in control.  The same thing happened, too, to these mighty men of Adam.  Their will was broken.  They still had all their mighty weapons but they did not have any will power to use the weapons.  A person must have the will to persevere.  Of course, we know that in America Judaism took a nose drive, primarily because the women no longer felt Judaism was necessary and that, of course, was primarily because they were given a good public school education and were not given a very good Jewish education.  In fact, the men were not given a very good Jewish education either, and when the women decided that Judaism was not worth keeping, then Judaism went into decline.  We know when the women gave up mikvah, when they gave up kashruth, when the women because of their public school education decided that the synagogue should look more like a church, then, of course, Judaism went into a great decline.  It was only because of the strength of the women, the rabbis say, that the Torah will be kept.  It is the women that give the hope and confidence to the men to continue.  Without the women the men do not have that strength, do not have that will to continue.  It is a known fact that kashruth in America is really maintained because of a few women.  In every family you can point to almost someone in your family that it was thanks to this women who would give up many things but they would not give up kashruth, and because they would not give up kashruth, kashruth stayed in America.  Unfortunately, many women gave up many things.  In a traditional home the woman controlled the sex, and, of course, the mikvah means that she controls the sex, and they controlled the purse strings, the money, and the man was given an aliyah, which probably was not a bad tradeoff, but in America today we see that there has been a renaissance in the women who are interested in Judaism and we must give credit to the ultra orthodox.  They were the first ones to realize that it was only because of the women that Judaism could remain strong, and, therefore, they are the only ones who really started yeshivas for girls, Most Jewish education, at least beyond the high school level, was almost non existent for both boys and girls, but they insisted that all their girls go on past high school to what they call seminaries or Jewish girls yeshivas, and they have and because of that there has been a turn around.  Miriam was a representative of this type of feeling, that it was the women who caused Judaism to survive.  That is why she sang after Moshe sang, because Moshe was the intellectual.  Moshe was a man who would not really keep to the religion unless he could understand every little detail of it.  He left the religion and then came back.  Intellectuals are very fickle, even the Jewish intellectuals.  Look how many of them went over to socialism and to other isms before they finally came back to Judaism.  We know, too, that in Israel in the 1973 war when after Israel won a great battle, in fact, the victory in the Yom Kippur war of 1973 was much greater than the victory of the Six Day War, because we were caught off guard.  It looked like Israel would not have the necessary resources to throw the enemy back, but it did.  Not only did it throw the enemy back but it was just a few miles from Damascus and Cairo, and if it would not be for big power intervention Israel would have completely dominated both these countries.  But after the war a great depression set in in Israel.  Why?  Because the ideology of Israel was found to be false.  They lost their will..  What was their will?  The will was that if we would have a state of our own there would be no more anti-Semitism.  We would be loved and appreciated just like every other nation.  That was a false premise.  Jews are not hated because we are not a nation like all other nations.  We are not hated because we were homeless and rootless.  We are hated because of the ideals of our faith, which say that everybody has to be moral, that right makes might, not might makes right.  Therefore, after the 1973 war the people in Israel no longer believed that having a state would save them from anti-Semitism.  It may make it easier to defend themselves against anti-Semitism, but it would not save them from anti-Semitism, and, therefore, they had to go back to their Jewish roots.  They had to go back and see what our tradition teaches.  There has been a great religious revival in Israel.  Half of Shamir's cabinet is actually Shomer Shabbos, There are a lot of religious people in the Labor Party as well as the Likud.  We see that the most important thing in life is the will power that a person has, the belief that he has.  If a person has hope, if a person has belief in his ideals, then that person can overcome all sorts of obstacles.  Then he will be able to use the weapons that are in his hand in order to ward off assimilation and persecution, but without this faith, without the belief that his ideals are true and right, then he is going to have a difficult time, no matter what his weapons are in warding off assimilation and persecution.  Miriam was a symbol of this great hope.  She has such faith.  She had such will power to endure everything because it was worth it because the ideals of Judaism and the Jewish people were so beautiful and so wonderful and the world needed them so much.  Therefore, after Moshe sang Miriam had to sing because Miriam never stopped singing.  Miriam was emblematic.  Miriam was a representative of all the women throughout Jewish history who have believed with deep faith that Judaism was right and that Judaism was needed in the world, and because of that Judaism has survived.

That is why on this Shabbos Shira, which is dedicated to AMIT Women, we salute the women of AMIT because they are continuing in the same tradition as Miriam.  It is thanks to them and their efforts that hope is maintained, that belief is maintained, and because hope and belief are maintained Judaism will continue and the Jewish people will live.  Let us all hope and pray that we will continue to have this belief and continue to have this hope so that the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.

I am reminded of the story they tell about Rip Van Winkle, who, after he woke up after 20 years, was greeted by the people of the town who arranged a big banquet for him.  They asked him, "Would you like some roast beef?" He said yes.  They asked, "Would you like some apple pie?" He said yes.  They asked, "Would you like some coffee?" He said, "Please make mine decaffeinated, not regular, because regular coffee keeps me awake,"