Parashat Beshallah 5786

Lighting the Way

A D’var Torah for Parashat Beshallah

By Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)

In our busy, often digital-driven lives, we tend to forget to pause and take note of the wonders of creation around us and above us.  Yet, opportunities abound: when we pray the words from the morning liturgy “yotzer or u’vorei hoshekh” (“Creator of light and Fashioner of darkness”), we might pause and look out the window; when we are out at night, we could look up and take note of the phase of the moon, reflecting on its connection to the Hebrew month. Taking the time to watch the sun set can be a wondrous and profound experience – the sky slowly changing color as the sun gradually sets behind the horizon and disappears, and the colors continue to change until it is finally fully dark.

Often, we’re too involved in the business of our daily life to stop and take note.  We may feel as if we are slaves to our obligations or to our worries; we forget to look up.

When our biblical ancestors were actual slaves in Egypt, one imagines that they wouldn’t have had the time or the inclination to pause and look up.  When we think of them, we tend to use words and phrases like “downtrodden” or “beaten down”.  Perhaps though, just perhaps, some might have looked up at the sky and dared to hope for a better future – hardly imagining that a better future was indeed in store for them.

In this context, our Torah portion Beshallah begins, five verses in, with the following words with regard to the newly liberated Israelites who have just been led out of Egypt:

וַיהֹוָה הֹלֵךְ לִפְנֵיהֶם יוֹמָם בְּעַמּוּד עָנָן … וְלַיְלָה בְּעַמּוּד אֵשׁ …

לֹא־יָמִישׁ עַמּוּד הֶעָנָן יוֹמָם וְעַמּוּד הָאֵשׁ לָיְלָה לִפְנֵי הָעָם:

יהוה went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, … and in a pillar of fire by night, …

The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

(Ex. 13:21-22)

As beautiful as this sight must have been, what exactly was the intention of placing these amudim, these pillars in the sky?

Rashi writes: “This tells us … that the pillar of cloud handed over the camp to the pillar of fire and the pillar of fire handed it over to the pillar of cloud — that before the one set the other rose (Shabbat 23b).”

It is as if the amudim are acting as guardians of the Israelite people. Thus the sky was never empty of Divine Guidance and Protection.

This notion of protection is reinforced a few verses later, when Pharaoh has once again changed his mind and sends chariots to chase after the Israelites and bring them back.  In Exodus 14:19 we read that the pillar of cloud “shifted from in front of them and took up a place behind them” – acting as a Shield of Protection, placed in such a way that the approaching Egyptian army could not see the Israelites.

As for the pillar of fire, this is not the first time that fire has played a significant role in the Exodus narrative. We recall that Moses first encountered God amid a burning bush. (Exodus 3:2)

The unconsumed fire through which God first spoke to Moses has now become a full-on pillar of fire for all the Israelites to see.  This public display acts as a visual declaration that the Presence of God is no longer limited just to Moses; everyone has collective access.

Unfortunately, even as a free people they would have had to remember to look up in order to perceive these signs of the Divine Presence.  Later in the narrative, in Parashat Ki Tissa, Moses will depart from the Israelites in order to commune with God at the top of Mount Sinai; without their leader the people will become restless and afraid, and they will demand the building of a golden calf as a substitute deity.

If only they had looked up and noticed the ever-present pillars of fire and cloud!  Imagine if they had just taken a moment to watch the hand-off from cloud to fire in the evening, or the transfer of fire to cloud in the morning – perhaps they would have recognized that they had in fact not been abandoned at all.

Much later, when Nehemiah recounts to God the many sins of the people while in the wilderness and in the promised land, he mentions this moment, and declares that although the people had made for themselves a golden calf,

וְאַתָּה֙ בְּרַֽחֲמֶ֣יךָ הָֽרַבִּ֔ים לֹ֥א עֲזַבְתָּ֖ם בַּמִּדבָּ֑ר….

“You, in Your abundant compassion, did not abandon them in the wilderness.

The pillar of cloud did not depart from them to lead them on the way by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to give them light in the way they were to go.”

(Nehemiah 9:19)

The amudim reflect Divine Compassion.

By placing the pillars of cloud and fire ahead of the people at the outset of their journey, it is as if God is saying to them, “I know there will be times when you will forget Me, when you will disobey My commandments, when you will lose faith in Me.  I know that.  And I will be angry with you. Yet – know this – I will never abandon you, for My Compassion is greater than my anger.”

In our time, we do not have Divine pillars to guide us. We do, however, have the whole world of creation, the world of natural light and natural darkness and all that is contained within. It is up to us to choose to take note.

May we as b’tzelem Elohim — beings created in the Divine image – may we strive to act as beacons of compassion as we go through our lives in this fiercely beautiful and complicated world.