44 | JANUARY 25 • 2024 J N 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.