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the open countryside between 
towns where you can feel the 
breeze and hear the song of 
birds. Shabbat is utopia, not 
as it will be at the end of time 
but rather, as we rehearse for it 
now in the midst of time.
God wanted the Israelites 
to begin their one-day-in-
seven rehearsal of freedom 
almost as soon as they left 
Egypt, because real freedom, 
of the seven-days-in-seven 
kind, takes time, centuries, 
millennia. The Torah regards 
slavery as wrong, but it did not 
abolish it immediately because 
people were not yet ready for 
this. 
Neither Britain nor America 
abolished it until the 19th 
century, and even then not 
without a struggle. Yet the 
outcome was inevitable once 
Shabbat had been set in 
motion because slaves who 
know freedom one day in 
seven will eventually rise 
against their chains.
The human spirit needs 
time to breathe, to inhale, to 
grow. The first rule in time 
management is to distinguish 
between matters that 
are important, and those that 
are urgent. Under pressure, the 
things that are important but 
not urgent tend to get crowded 
out. Yet these are often what 
matter most to our happiness 
and sense of a life well-lived. 
Shabbat is time dedicated to 
the things that are important 
but not urgent: family, friends, 
community, a sense of sanctity, 
prayer in which we thank God 
for the good things in our life, 
and Torah reading in which 
we retell the long, dramatic 
story of our people and our 
journey. Shabbat is when we 
celebrate shalom bayit — the 
peace that comes from love 

and lives in the home blessed 
by the Shechinah, the presence 
of God you can almost feel 
in the candlelight, the wine 
and the special bread. This 
is a beauty created not by 
Michelangelo or Leonardo but 
by each of us: a serene island of 
time in the midst of the often-
raging sea of a restless world.
I once took part, together 
with the Dalai Lama, in a 
seminar (organized by the 
Elijah Institute) in Amritsar, 
Northern India, the sacred 
city of the Sikhs. In the 
course of the talks, delivered 
to an audience of 2,000 Sikh 
students, one of the Sikh 
leaders turned to the students 
and said: “What we need is 
what the Jews have: Shabbat!” 
Just imagine, he said, a day 
dedicated every week to family 
and home and relationships. 
He could see its beauty. We can 
live its reality.
The ancient Greeks could 
not understand how a day of 
rest could be part of Creation. 
Yet it is so, for without rest 
for the body, peace for the 
mind, silence for the soul, 
and a renewal of our bonds of 
identity and love, the creative 
process eventually withers and 
dies. It suffers entropy, the 
principle that all systems lose 
energy over time.
The Jewish people did not 
lose energy over time and 
remains as vital and creative 
as it ever was. The reason is 
Shabbat: humanity’s greatest 
source of renewable energy, the 
day that gives us the strength 
to keep on creating. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan 

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of 

the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His 

teachings have been made available to 

all at rabbisacks.org.

continued from page 43

A WORD OF TORAH
SPIRIT

A Partnership 
Covenant 
T

his week’s Torah 
reading begins with 
Moses and the peo-
ple of Israel at the shore of 
the Reed Sea. God reminds 
Moses to be confident, 
exclaiming that 
Moses can lead the 
people across the sea, 
asking, “Why do you 
cry out to Me? Tell 
the Israelites to go 
forward. Lift up your 
staff and hold out 
your arm and the sea 
will split …” (Exodus 
14:15-16)
The angel that 
had been with Israel 
and the pillar of 
cloud moved behind 
the people (Exodus 14:19), 
Moses held out his arm 
and the water split (Exodus 
14:21), and “the people 
of Israel went into the sea 
on dry ground, the waters 
forming a wall for them on 
their right and on their left.” 
(Exodus 14:22) 
In the classic rabbinic text 
Shemot Rabbah 21:10, our 
rabbis ask: “If the Israelites 
went into the sea, why 
does the Torah tell us on 
dry ground? And if on dry 
ground, why does the Torah 
say in into the sea? What 
we learn from this is the sea 
was not split for them until 
they entered up to their 
noses, and then it became 
dry land for them.” 
Moses and the Israelites 
had come so far, and yet, 
just before stepping for-
ward and lifting his staff, 
Moses was unsure. Would 
the sea part? We can learn 

from this midrash that the 
people didn’t know for sure, 
but they were willing to 
try. They stepped forward 
together and that’s when the 
miracle happened. 
The exodus from 
Egypt, including cross-
ing the sea, was mirac-
ulous; God changed 
nature to pull us out of 
bondage. In fact, Rashi 
teaches us that it was 
revelatory, in Exodus 
15:2 all of Israel saw 
God before them. The 
Israelites, our ances-
tors, crossed the sea; 
we crossed the sea. We 
made the choice. 
When we live our 
values, when we fulfill 
mitzvot, we demonstrate 
our obligation to each other 
and to our eternal covenant. 
This parshah reminds us 
that covenant is a partner-
ship: God split the sea, but 
Moses had to lead and the 
people had to step forward. 
We each make choices; we 
have the gift of Torah and 
the mitzvot to enliven our 
lives; and, the Torah teach-
es, when we move through 
the sea together redemption 
is possible. 
I pray, just as our ances-
tors cried out to God 
together and moved for-
ward together, we, our 
diverse and multifaceted 
Jewish community will 
continue to cry out to God 
together and move forward 
together. 

Rabbi Davey Rosen is interim CEO of 

the University of Michigan Hillel.

TORAH PORTION

Rabbi Davey 
Rosen

Parshat 

Bashallach: 

Exodus 

13:17-17:16; 

Judges 

4:4-5:31.

