March 21, 2010

Israel and Egypt at the Sea

by Daniel E. Levenson

 

One of the difficult issues the Jewish people have always faced is how we relate to the other nations and religions of the world. Within Judaism itself there is often a struggle between the particularistic (we have a special relationship with God, and we are his chosen people) and the universal (the God we worship is the same God who created everything and is worshipped by other people in different ways). This question of how Jews and non-Jews interact is one that has been with us since Avraham first heard the call and set out on his journey to the land that God promised him.

In the ancient near east there were a wide variety of cultures and religious traditions, each with its own mode of thought, and as the Israelites emerged as a people, it is not surprising that they too came up with their own way of seeing the world, which happened to stand in contrast to the dominant worldviews around them. This was a process – there were times, for example, when the Israelites as a people, or individual Israelites, got along quite  well  with other groups. Moshe for example, has a great relationship with his Midianite father-in-law, Yitro ,and Joseph is lucky enough to forge a solid bond with pharaoh when there is a famine in Canaan. But of course there are many times when the relationship is not so cordial, as we saw in this week’s parsha, B’Shallah, in the book of Exodus.

This parsha recounts the moment of leaving Egypt, and of the difficulties entailed in that process, including the pursuit of the exiting Israelites by the Egyptian army at the orders of Pharaoh, who has changed his mind about setting Moses and his people free. In fact, the whole process of leaving Egypt is fraught with divinely designed difficulties which seem to be set in motion by a God who is not entirely sure that the Israelites will make it to freedom through human leadership alone. It was not enough to send the plagues and Moshe as a spokesman to get the Israelites out of bondage, it seems that god wanted to make sure that the Israelites would remain on the path to freedom, and not turn back to Egypt once they had left. Implicit within this, I would also argue, is the desire to guarantee that a final break will be made between the people of Israel and the land of Egypt.

 

We see from our theTorah that this conflict about how to relate to non-Jews has been with us since before the days of Moshe rabeinu, that it is something we have a very hard time getting away from. There is no question in my mind that the move from slavery to freedom for the Israelites was a positive thing, or that the cruelty of pharaoh was an affront to human life and dignity, but it has always bothered me that God would encourage the Egyptians to pursue Israel, only to destroy them in the sea. And while the text itself is silent about the death of the Egyptians, there is a midrash which comes to tell us that the angels wanted to rejoice upon seeing the destruction of the Egyptian army and that God rebuked them for expressing a desire to celebrate the deaths of the Egyptians, for they too were creations of God.

This is one reason I like this week’s parsha so much, because it highlights the tension between the particular and the universal. It asks us to think about the faithfulness of a God who would deliver the Jewish people from slavery and smash its enemies completely, and at the same time to realize that the Egyptians were human beings too, that they were also creations of the divine.  As I think about the situation in the Middle East today, this is a tension I feel very deeply and one that often comes to mind as I consider the complex ways that theology and religion influence and interact with the political conflicts of the region.  Being a Zionist is something I am quite proud of, and I do feel, especially when I am in Israel, that there is a special bond that exists between the land, the Jewish people and God, but at the same time I cannot lose sight of our Arab and Muslim cousins, who are also created in the image of God. It is not an easy tension to contain, but it is an important one.

Daniel E. Levenson is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Vilna Review. He was educated at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Harvard University. He is presently a student in the Rabbinical School at  Hebrew College.