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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.