This week we meet a portion that is rich in visual impact. It should look great in the movie version as we have the Egyptians chasing the Israelites, the parting of the sea, a celebratory poem, and dances. We read the Mi Camocha and rejoice with Miriam and her timbral. The stage is being set for the Sinai event.
Yes, there is so much to unpack here. But let’s take a look at a verse that gives us another opportunity to see it in a way that speaks to so much of life. In 15:23ff we read that after the Sea of Reeds event the Israelites set out only to “march three days into the Wilderness and found no water. They came to Marah and could not drink of the waters of Marah for they were bitter”. These waters of Marah were bitter as the word marah says. Now notice a different reading attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, quoted by Rabbi Abraham Twerski. The Baal Shem Tov “interprets the first verse with the pronoun they referring to the Israelites rather than the waters” (“Living Each Week”. P.141) Twerski notes that “a person who is depressed may complain that everything he eats has a bitter taste. In these instances, the bitterness is not in the food, but in one’s taste perception”
Do we know people like this? Do we know people who, as they age, become bitter, refusing to see the gift of life as precious and fragile? Are we aware people who choose to merely exist, waiting to die, rather than choosing to live, regardless of what life has handed them? Yes, each of us encounter losses and each of us, as we age, need to figure out ways to deal with these natural, and at time unexpected changes. Does this view of life as marah speak to the self-centered focus of an individual rather than a person who sees their life within a larger, more transcendent context?
Twerski, in his commentary, writes that the mitzvot and Torah can be guidelines or pathways to reduce that bitterness. In an age when we are witnessing such a rise in mental health issues, we need to be aware of the bitterness of perception. This is a real disease of the soul that threatens so many of us. We need to drink from the waters of gratitude and give thanks that we have life, the opportunity to engage and the chance to live and love.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Richard F Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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