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Faith feels exceptionally close to the surface for me right now.
This week, Torah has felt alive and immediate. Written for this moment — when the war feels unresolved, when every body is brought home from Gaza, and we are waiting: to see who will govern, how they will politic, if there will be more war with Iran, more reckoning of the last two years. The air itself feels tense and heavy.
This very week that we brought home the body of Ran Gvili z”l, the last hostage in Gaza, the weekly Torah portion, Beshalach, calls out to us directly — by mentioning bringing Yosef’s bones home to the land of Israel on their way out of Egypt. It continues in the next breath to mention that for the Children of Israel in the Torah, were “moving on from Sukkot” — which in the text has one meaning (literally, their next stop in the wilderness was a place called “Sukkot”), but rereading it this week gave that line a whole other meaning, as we finally have a small step of closure from the fateful Sukkot that was capped not by the usual rejoicing of Simchat Torah, but October 7, 2023.
The Exodus story that Parshat Beshalach narrates for us has actually been on my mind for months, as I have been working on producing a new Haggadah. I have been immersed in the text, reflecting on the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and slavery.
I often imagine the dramatic scene: having been finally set free by Pharaoh, they were chased all the way down to the edge of the Red Sea, surrounded by blazing fire and mystical clouds. Thinking they were close to death and at a dead end, in the last moment, the sea miraculously split, and they walked between tall walls of water until they reached the other side, all the while being chased by Egyptian chariots.
When every last Israelite reached the other side, they looked through the walls of the........