BESHALACH: Writing our Song

Write for Yourselves this Song


At the very end of the Torah, the last mitzvah we're taught is that every Jew must write his own Torah scroll:

וְעַתָּה, כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת-הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת, וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת-בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם

And now, write for yourselves this song and teach it to the Children of Israel -- place [the song] in their mouths (Devarim 31:19).

There, at the end of Torah, the Torah itself is called a "shir," a "song."


To the uninitiated, this may could be seen as a bit odd.  The Torah may be true, and carefully written, and with interesting narratives sprinkled throughout, but at the end of the day, it is a book of law*.  Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Bill of Rights -- not even the Magna Carta -- has anyone had the thought to score and make into a musical (to my knowledge).  And lawyers, although renown for their "song and dance," are rarely known to actually break out into song and dance.  In fact, it is probably safe to say, that law is the exact opposite of music, and if so, who is the Torah trying to fool over here?


*This is the underlying premise of the first Rashi on the Torah, asking why should the Torah open with narrative?  It should open with the 1st mitzvah given to the Jewish people as it's essence is a book of law!




Between the heart and the mouth


Two and half million Jews were trapped between the sea and the Egyptian Royal Guard.  


Only 20% of Jews in Egypt had worked up the courage to paint their doorposts red and walk out into the wilderness on that fateful morning seven days prior, following a pillar of cloud during the day, a pillar of fire at night, and the promise of redemption given to them by Moshe.  They had put all chips in the middle.  They were up to their nose in the sea of commitment with no way back when the fierce waters split and rose like stained-glass windows at their sides.  As they crossed to safety, the Egyptian troops on the other shore were lured into the seabed amidst a thick fog, thousands of tons of water silently threatening to tumble.  


The entire Jewish nation saw G!d that day.  For those moments, as the Almighty waged war against Egypt like toy soldiers, all the plot threads came together: Why did the plagues have to take so long?  Why did we have to loan our neighbors' jewelry?  Why did G!d lead us to a dead end?  Why did we have to suffer all those years?  Disparate painful memories clicked together like a gigantic puzzle.  Jews saw the slave drivers who had whipped them day after day, and the soldiers who had slaughtered their children, flung by the waves to come crashing onto the shores at their feet.  Fears were transformed into faith.  Despair turned into ecstasy.  The blinders were removed and the Big Picture was revealed.  There was a Plan all along.


70 year-old Moshe, the leader of our nation, responded to this revelation with song.

אָז יָשִׁיר-מֹשֶׁה וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת-הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת, לַה', וַיֹּאמְרוּ, לֵאמֹר

Your trusty Artscroll translation of this will read something like:

Then, Moses and the Children of Israel sang this song to Hashem and they said saying (Shmot 15:1).

If this is all you have to go on over here, we're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but you've been robbed.  You're missing the heart of the verse, the heart of the parsha, and arguably the heart of the Torah itself!  The passuk does not just flatly tell us that Moshe sang.  A rigorous, precise translation should render it: "Then, Moshe will sing [and the Children of Israel]..."  


What does this seemingly insignificant, finicky grammar correction mean?  A whole lot.  


The camera pans over the whole scene -- millions of Jews watching, eyes alight and jaws dropped as the Almighty Himself waged war on the sea.  

"Israel saw the Great Power that Hashem did with Egypt, and the nation was in awe of Hashem..." (14:31).

 Then, in the very next verse, the camera dollies in at high-speed on Moshe.

אָז, "Then," 

There is a freeze-frame to capture the moment...

יָשִׁיר "he was about to sing [and sang]"

...the moment right before Moshe opened his mouth to sing.  Rashi describes the camera of Torah's eye zooming all the way into Moshe's heart, bringing the subconscious emotions of the Jewish leader under the electron microscope of the Torah:

"Then, as he saw the miracle, it arose in his heart to sing..." (Rashi).

For some reason, this is the microsecond the Torah wanted to vignette for us -- the rising of song in Moshe's heart...we have to ask ourselves: why?


Lucky for us, half a millennium ago, the Maharal of Prague also asked himself this question.  His answer is a both a gem unto itself, and a key to unlocking all of Judaism:

"...It should have just written, "Then, Moshe sang" -- why did [the Torah] have to extend itself and tell us "it arose in his heart to sing...and then he did so?"

The following can be suggested as an answer: the cause of song is in the heart because when simcha-joy reaches the hearts of tsaddikim righteous people, song [automatically] arises in their hearts, and there is no doubt that [the Jews] sang with all their hearts...not that they had to force themselves to sing...because were this the case, it would [be impossible for it to be] a song from [true] joy.  Rather, the song that is with joy begins with a great happiness in the heart, and [overflows into song]."

Simcha-joy is free flow from one's inner desires outwards into their physical expression.  From the toddler who gleefully learns to walk, to the basketball player who shoots the three-point swoosh to win the game, to the professional who finished executing the project she had planned for months -- their joy comes from watching their desires expressed.  Like spontaneous song or dance, it is the freedom and smoothness of expression that epitomize joy.  The hindrances along the way can produce frustration, sadness and ultimately despair.    




Awkward beginnings that end in song


The Song at the Sea was the first national prophetic experience we had as a people.  It came at the completion of the first of seven weeks on our way to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai, and can therefore be seen as a prelude and "priming of the pump" to the giving of Torah.  As such, we have to stop and meditate on the power of what we've uncovered above.


It is a common qualm to look at the keeping of mitzvot as a recipe for a robotic lifestyle.  How can you remember all those laws?  Doesn't it bother you?  Don't you feel constrained?  Don't you wish you could just do whatever you want?  Indeed, the parent or friend looking on at the beginner in Judaism will without-a-doubt observe as he mechanically tries to re-mold his life around 613 new rules.  He clumsily struggles through the prayers, self-consciously eats his unsliced tomato and cucumber at the non-kosher restaurant with the family, and not-so-suavely avoids getting kissed by the Russian ladies in shul who have smooched him since he was a kid.  


Let's call a spade a spade: Baalei Tshuva (Jews who become more religious later in life) are awkward.  


At least at first!  But of course, new rules, by definition, make for awkwardness.  Every athlete is awkward when he picks up his first basketball, or baseball bat, or tennis racket.  The body has a way it does things, and it takes time and practice to accustom it to do things differently.  Every parent knows that if he wants his son or daughter to someday be a concert violinist, he better purchase some good earplugs in the interim because it will be painful -- at least at first!  


Integrating mitzvot into one's life is no different.  As the Maharal was careful to point out, it is specifically "in the hearts of tsaddikim righteous people," who have pushed through the hard work -- it is in them that song spontaneously emerges.  


סוף מעשה במחשבה תחילה "What is last in action, was the first in thought."  We sing this Friday night in Lecha Dodi.  We began by mentioning that the last mitzvah -- the last action the Torah asks us to fulfill is to go back and re-write the whole Torah for ourselves.  And specifically there, at the end, the Torah is referred to as a song.  Only once we've been through all the individual parts of Torah sequentially -- seen all the mitzvot -- one-by-one -- can we go back, with the Big Picture in mind, and put them all together as a "song."  This was the thought the Almighty wanted to put in our hearts before we received the Torah.  Two and a half million Jews sang in unison at the sea, not because they were externally forced to do so, but because their hearts genuinely overflowed with the joy of the moment.  Of course, that first-time joy does not last forever.  It was a spark -- a sneak preview of what life is supposed to look like.  It is as if the Almighty would release the shackles holding back that young violinist's hands on his first day, and allow him to play a virtuoso sonata for him to see what is at the end of the tunnel of years of playing scales.


This is the pattern we see throughout Torah and mitzvot and the entire Jewish calendar.  Although we stand in reverence in front of the open ark on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, on Sukkot we take the Torah out and circle the bima 7 times, and on Simchat Torah (lit. "the [holiday of] Joy of Torah"), our feet leave the ground as we dance with the Torahs -- the same Torahs that were one to fall, everyone present would have to fast -- we dance with them.  This is the image we want to keep alive -- the spontaneous song and dance that the Almighty wants from us.