Pesach - Lessons of the Song of the Sea

You're listening to the weekly para podcast with Ari Goldwag recorded with Hashem's never- ending assistance in Israel 5785 2025. This week's para we don't read the para this week. We are going to read the seventh day of Pes. We're going to read from the song of the sea. Am Israel is at the point of getting out of Egypt. Par is chasing after them with 600 chariots, men in chariots experiences an awesome revelation. As they walk into the sea, the sea splits and miraculously they're able to walk through on dry land and the Egyptians follow after them and are drowned. I'd like to share with you a thought from Arashivas. He's also in his hagada, but it's also he has a whole section on the paras in here and he gives us an incredible insight into what gula looks like, what redemption looks like. He points out that the very beginning of the song at the sea is they started singing this song and this is what they said. I will sing to God for he has done amazing things. He has done things that we're all proud of. Things that make him great and and high above everyone. of he took the horses and the riders and he caused them to have their downfall in the sea. Now points out, we'll read it inside shortly, but he points out that this is clearly a theme that goes through the song. It's also the main or the only thing really that when the women sing the song, they also only sing about the fact that the horses and riders were thrown into the sea. They they came to their final fate in the sea. And the question is why is the beginning the beginning of something is always the focus? It's the foundation of it. Why is the foundation of a song of the sea about the fact that the the horses and chariots and the riders were pummeled in the sea? What is the idea? What is the teaching here? Let's read it inside. This is the main part of the song. This is the first verse. We find inside of it. As we continue in the song, we go, we review this theme a number of times, the chariots of Pharaoh and his mighty legions were thrown about in the sea shall. And the choicest of his of his men, they were drowned in the sea. And the sea of reeds, you blew with your with your wind and you covered them with the sea. He rocked the entire song of Miriam is only this. He points out in contrast is very interesting. When Israel comes, Mosher Rabbin his father-in-law and he comes to join the Jewish people, bring Mosha's wife, his two sons. So what does he talk about? When he talks about the experience that he had looking as an onlooker, he speaks about the fact that they tried to cause your downfall. Hashem, Hashem, blessed is God that he saved you from the hands of Pharaoh and his men. The very thing that they tried to do was done to them. There was a mida, a measure for for measure. The the Egyptians tried to cause the downfall of the Jewish people with water. They threw their firstborn children into the sea. the boys, I'm sorry, into the sea into the Nile and they were destroyed with water. Their downfall came with the water. This concept is the concept of measure for measure that they were judged with. So this is something that Isra was amazed by. He saw the measure for measure. When you see that something happens precisely according to what the person has done wrong, they receive a punishment very very clearly in in in a parallel way to what they did wrong. So that punishment we say wow. We say wow. When you see that come out it's so clear. Hammon tries to hang he builds these huge gallows to hang Mori the Jew upon and he is hanged upon those gallows. Think we can think about today the Iranians how they're building a nuclear weapon which they hope to destroy people of Israel with and in return they're going to be destroyed through that they themselves will have their downfall. Right? So that's me the Canadian mea when you see something so clearly that's an awesome measure formeasure punishment. It's it shows the great clear judgment of Hashem. It shows that those who do wrong, they receive wrong back in a clear way. And that's what saw that's what he mentions. But it's interesting the way that our sages and the commentaries on the on the song when they speak about the song, they don't talk at all about the mida. They don't speak about the measure formeasure aspect that's going on here. We could explain that it's only Israel who saw things from an observer's point of view. He wasn't a slave himself in Egypt. So he sees everything with a certain coolness. He sees it from outside. He sees it with an objective view. But the children of Israel, they themselves experienced the destruction. The the their spirits were broken by the gullus, by the exile. They felt it on their bodies. They felt it in their spirits. Their honor was lowered. They had an experience which was very different than what Israel saw. They had experienced Hashem's quiet for 210 years. They were lowered. Their honor was was decimated. Their they were treated like like you know like bulls of burden, beasts of burden. And Hashem didn't say a word as it were. Nothing was done to stand up by Hashem for the honor of the Jewish people, right? It means that Hashem stood up for Israel's honor. Hashem showed who really is the good one, who really is the chosen nation. So when Hashem when God stands up for our honor after so much time of being under the boot of those who are spiritually depraved. It was through the destruction of these 600 chariots all of these chariots of Egypt. This was the very power that the Egyptians used. They had to rule over others. How did they have that power? They they were a they were a world power at that time. It was through these 600 chariots their it manifested their power. What did Hashem do? Hashem took their honor which was represented by these chariots and he dashed it. He smashed it. He destroyed their honor. He decimated it by having them have destruction in a very unusual way. Right? If you think about it, how are chariots going to be destroyed? We wouldn't think that they would be destroyed in the sea. That's a very weird place to find to find your end. How did you end up there? It's like imagine you hear that uh Nisalla instead of getting killed by by Israeli bombs. So he he drove one day and and his driver accidentally lost control of the car and flew out over a dock and into the sea. That's like that's a real biz. That's a real embarrassment for him. Well, he gives an example here in parenthesis. Let's say we would hear about the destruction of of a uh of a great military power in our times. We would expect to hear that they were destroyed in a normal way. The tanks were blown up by by passing airplanes. The the boats that they were using to try to destroy the to to shoot their missiles at their enemy the enemy aircraft came in and destroyed those boats. But but let's say things were were different. Let's say the the in we I'm sorry I said something a little wrong here. Let's say you would hear that the the the boats the military boats were sunk. So that makes sense. And the tanks were destroyed by by aircraft, military aircraft. That would make sense. But let's say things were the opposite. Let's say you heard that the tanks drowned. The tanks ended up in the water and they were and they were destroyed there and the and the boats were destroyed by by uh mines. We never heard of such a thing. The very strangeness of it, the way that they came to the destruction was something unusual. They were destroyed in the sea. That's not a place where they should be. They fell off a cliff. What a biz. What a an incredible embarrassment for them. So you see that Hashem raises up the honor in the moment when it comes time for Amisel's honor to be raised up. Hashem raises it up in a way that's an incredibly zan and embarrassment to to our enemies. Think about the beepers. That's that's amazing. That's that sounds like this. So, so now let's come back to there's a really fundamental difference between the way that Israel saw the whole story and the Jewish people saw the whole story for the people of Israel. For the Jewish people, it wasn't a time of learning something and contemplating something. It wasn't an intellectual exercise in trying to understand Hashem's great salvation. Had an emotional experience. They were joyful. They were raised up. What an incredible thing Hashem has done for us. Look at how Hashem has stood up for our honor and redeemed us. Wasn't part of the story. Didn't experience the lowering of the of his honor through this whole story. So his view of everything as we said before was very cold and calculating. He saw oh wow God acts measure for measure. He saw things from a purely intellectual way of seeing it experienced it in an emotional ecstatic experience. Now what happens after this immediately after this? So they traveled to Mora. They traveled to a city called Now listen to this. This is an incredible concept, an incredible idea. The incredible idea is that we know that when Israel came to a certain place, so they needed water. They were thirsty. And the waters in that place where they came to was very bitter. And what was done in order to sweeten those waters was something very unusual. Mosher Rabbin was commanded to take a particular piece of wood, throw this wood into the water, and then the water became sweet. Now, what was unusual about this story is that the the wood that he used was a bitter wood. It was the kind of wood that was bitter. He threw something bitter into water that was bitter. And the miracle was that although something bitter should make something else bitter more bitter, it should have added to the bitterness. The place was called mara which means bitter. That was not the result. The result was that you took something bitter and it counteracted the bitterness somehow. The maj says the way of hem is so different from the way that human beings do things. If you want to make something sweet, let's say something's very salty, you add as much sugar as you can. Want a cup of coffee, you want it to be sweet, you add the sugar. And you might want to add two times the amount of sugar to the amount of coffee you put in. But Hashem does something different. And it's an incredible lesson. Hashem, he wants to cure something that's bitter. So he uses something else that's bitter. Okay? Something that's bad. He takes something else that's bad. He throws it into the thing that's bad. Because he wants you to see when it's when it's appropriate for us to see the miracle. He wants us to see the miraculous way that Hashem interacts with us is that he takes something that seems like it should be the opposite and he gives it to us and it somehow sweetens things. There was a particular story with Shia. I'm not familiar with the story so well, so I'm going to do my best here. Where he was told to take or he was told he told others to take and he was to take a uh figs and he was to place them on a particular kind of wound. The thing is like this. If you have an open wound and you put figs on it, it causes the wound to get worse. Okay, it said the instruction here was a spiritual instruction. The instruction works in the opposite way that you would think. He took something which should cause damage to a wound, put it on the thing that was damaged, which was the wound, and the miracle occurred. saying in that there was a miracle that happened again similar idea where there was waters that were that were bitter. They took a bitter piece of wood and they threw it in and somehow it it it it sweetened the water. Sorry. They put in not not a piece of wood. They put in salt. He put salt into water and makes the water salty but it had the opposite effect. Unbelievable explains there. We see the point here is Hashem wants us to know that the miracle is the opposite of nature. When you have a miracle it's the opposite of the way things should ordinarily be. There are moves to nature in nature. So certain things if you do them there are natural consequences. If you want to make money you can't throw money away right? If you want to make money in a natural way you can't give charity. That is throwing away your money. But if you want to live in the world of miracles, it's the exact opposite. The more money I give away, the more money Hashem sends me. The way is that the very thing that God uses to cause a wound is the very same thing that he uses to heal the wound. Just like it was when was sick. He had these boils. So gave him the the he gave him the figs and that's what cured him. And the the salty water, the waters of were cured by the salt. We find when people were were wounded by snakes, they were bitten by snakes in the midbar in the wilderness. So they were given they were they were told to look at a snake on a pole, the famous snake on the pole. And that's what cured them as our sages tell us. The idea is that look at the snake. You want to be cured of the snake, but you need to look at the snake. That's the that's what I need to do. I have to go back into the place of the trauma, back into the place of destruction, back into the place of the the the place that I was wounded. That's where I find my healing. Yes, that's the teaching. The teaching is I need to go back into the pain. That's where I find the healing. This is a deep psychological vort but it's a spiritual vart. It's a spiritual idea. That's the Okay. So let's sum up so far what we have before we finish off here. We have one more concept my going to share. We have we have two ideas. First idea is experienced it themselves. Israel was looking at it from the outside. We had a surreom. We experienced Hashem standing up for our honor and we had a a a an emotional praise of Hashem. Yes. Sees things measure for measure. He sees there's a lesson to learn but he sees it in a cool and calculated way. We also see that there's a concept of the miracle expresses something deep spiritually and that is that the very thing that we go into the difficulties the mistakes that we make the the gullus the exile that we're in which seem to be bad which seems to be destructive those very things somehow lift us up spiritually they have the potential to lift us up in a miraculous faith. He says like this, besides for this, there's also a lesson here of measure for measure. We see here that the reason that they threw a a piece of wood that was that was bitter into the water that was bitter is specifically because it's bitter. If they weren't bitter, you wouldn't have needed a bitter piece of wood. The point here is, as we've been speaking about the whole week, I am the one who cures you. I'm sorry. All the troubles that I experience, all of the difficulties that I go through, all of the challenges are only there for me to become greater spiritually, to rise up, to become a greater human being. They're there to cure me. This is where learned the lesson. Yes, we're already figured out. This is where we see that there's a measure for measure situation. It wasn't appropriate for them to learn that lesson when it came to the splitting of the sea. They didn't have to experience Hashem was doing kindness to we didn't have to learn the lesson of mida tasting bitter waters and then learning that in order to get out of the bitterness I need to bring something bitter to it. That's how I experience Hashem's spiritual salvation is through the bitterness. That wasn't the the lesson that needed to be learned when they were having that ecstatic moment at Yamash can add that we see that with the song that they sang at that time which we're going to all sing tomorrow because tomorrow we celebrate and remind ourselves of that song of that salvation of how Hashem raises up the honor honor of am. Think about how low we were during World War II and how much Hashem has lifted up amil over the last 75 77 years. How much has Hashem lifted us up as a nation given us back our national honor? But he says that that song at that time with that ecstatic song as Hashem raised up our honor it was the moment that at this point it made sense for them to go into the land of Israel at this point and to destroy and to conquer all those who would try to stop them. They were all trembling in fear. They were all wishing to do peace treaties with the people of Israel. It could have been it could have been if Moshe would have led Amish. We wouldn't have made mistakes with the golden calf with the spies. We could have gone walked right into Israel. Mosher would have been Msiah. We would have built the the final base amish right there and then we would have lived forever. Each person under his gean speaking of takas gaffnite you see right behind me my gean my grape vine each one under his fig tree don't have a fig tree in my backyard but we do have a new raon tree which growing beautifully but what stopped it what stopped us from walking into msiach's times in those times it was the sin An amazing thing. Our enemies were running after us. They wanted to destroy us. And you don't have to think that far in the past, just about a year and a half. They're running after us to destroy us. Still in the present moment, they're running after us to destroy us. But what was the result? It was because of the fact that they they ran after us to destroy us. If not for the fact that they have been stuck in that small space, Egyptians on one side, the water on the other side, nowhere to go. If not for that, we're stuck. We're so we're crushed. But that was the moment that resulted in this song. It came out that the most difficult moment for AM is in that period which we celebrate tomorrow is is the reason for the song and they saw themselves as lost. The awesome the awesome positive experience that they had with the with the song of the sea was a result of that difficult moment that they experienced. And you can translate that to today's times. And as the things continued, as the story continued, they went from from the splitting of the sea and they walked over to they came to the place with the bitter waters. They didn't have anything to drink. But that experience as well that purified them so they could get the lesson of measure for measure that Hashem uses something bitter to sweeten the thing that's bitter. If we've done what's wrong, think about it. We did a we did the the punishment is not there to destroy us. It's to it's to purify us. It's to clean off the sin. We also learned that Hashem is our healer. Hashem heals the bitter waters and Hashem heals our souls. Performs miracles for us. It's specifically from that difficult and and harsh experience that all the good comes from. From bitter things come sweet things. of this teaches us that every situation that we find ourselves specific situations general situations individuals is as a whole that it's always for our good and everything intends for us to have a positive experience ultimately from I want to bless you and ask you to bless me should help us to take these messages to to recognize the miracles that he's doing for us all the time. Hashem should help us to see these miracles in our lives. Hashem should help us to recognize that the darkness in our lives, the challenges in our lives, the bitterness in our lives ultimately is there for us to learn from and to come out with a sweet result. Hashem loves us so much. May Hashem help us to see that love, to see how all the bitter situations ultimately really are positive situations. And may Hashem help us to merit to see the how he raises up and exalts us the honor of this nation who has been embarrassed and shuffle and lowly for so many thousands of years. May Hashem help us to see the raising up of Israel's honor and the resulting downfall of the enemies of am. And may we all sing together the future song. May that future song be now. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful Shabas and a wonderful Yantiff. This podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you. For more podcasts like this, please visit www. at arrigoldwag.com or search on iTunes Ari Goldwag. [Music]