Torah Thoughts:
B'shalach
(Exodus 13:17-17:16)

Submitted by Leila Gal Berner
email address: LGBerner@aol.com

In the parsha for this coming Shabbat, Parashat B'shalach, we recall one of the most critical moments in our people's journey from bondage to freedom. We have just left Mitzrayim, the taste of slavery still fresh in our mouths, and almost immediately we face our first challenge as a free people.

There we stood at Yam Suf, teetering on the edge of liberation, not knowing what awaited us on the other side, what challenges we would face. There we stood, hardly a people united with one common impulse, hardly a community with one collective sense of mission.

Yosef Albardani, the chief chazzan of the Great Synagogue of Baghdad in the tenth century, tells the story of that moment to us in his poem, "The Three Factions." (see poem in T. Carmi's The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse)

So - there we stood, divided between those who saw no future but death in the Sea's hungry waters; and those whose terror so gripped them that they preferred returning to the safe and the familiar -- even if it meant bondage; and those who said, "let us go forward and fight the battles we must fight and face the challenges we must face -- with God's help."

We know that our story has a happy ending -- we did indeed take the plunge, we crossed the Sea, we moved forward into the wilderness, we stood at Sinai, we became a nation, we entered our Land.

But our journey was not easy or simple - we could not take the shorter route - "derech eretz Plishtim." As Rambam explains in the Moreh N'vuchim, we needed to take the longer route, one which would give us time to mature as a people, a journey that would toughen us for the difficult task of building a united nation, a path that would give us strength to face challenges and wisdom to open our minds to change and innovation.

It seems to me that this chapter has powerful meaning for us as we consider the place of women in the rabbinate.

The first generation of women rabbis stood at the Sea, uncertain as to their next steps. Though these female Nachshons did indeed "take the plunge," they were very unsure of what lay ahead on the other side. Some chose to remain in relative safety, emulating the traditional male model of rabbi (these are what my colleague, Rabbi Joy Levitt has called the "Navy Blue Suit" model of women in the rabbinate). Others chose to develop a new model for which there had never been a suit tailored, a model that was more authentic to their identities as women -- perhaps they could be compared to Albardani's "third faction," who said "let us give battle" -- let us face the challenge in new ways -- with God's help.

There is yet another parallel, I think. Just as women rabbis stood at the Sea, so too did our male colleagues stand there as well - some afraid of the future this new reality would bring, others welcoming it and embracing the possibilities of a more egalitarian rabbinic leadership, some insisting on a return to "Mitzrayim," the safe and the familiar. We all stood at the Sea -- women and men - the bold and the fearful.

And we now are here representative of the second generation of women rabbis -- having journeyed far through the wilderness, but not yet in the Promised Land. The prospects for the future exciting -- and we approach them not without trepidation, but also with a full measure of optimism and greater wisdom gained from the journey until now.

Let us move full circle -- from Albardani's tenth-century poem to a twentieth-century midrash on the crossing of the Sea by my colleague, Rabbi Ruth Sohn:

I, Miriam, stand at the sea
and turn
to face the desert
stretching endless and still

My eyes are dazzled
The sky brilliant blue
Sun burnt sands unyeilding white.

My hands turn to dove wings
my arms
reach for the sky
and I want to sing
the song rising inside me.

My mouth open
I stop.
Where are the words?
Where the melody?

In a moment of panic
My eyes go blind.
Can I take a step without knowing a Destination?
Will I falter?
Will I fall?
Will the ground sink away from under me?

The sing still unformed --
how can I sing?

To take the first step --
to sing a new song --
is to close one's eyes
and dive into unkown waters.
For a mement knowing nothing, risking all --
But then to discover

The waters are friendly
The ground is firm.
And the song --
the song rises again out of my mouth
come words lifting the wind.

And I hear
for the first
the song
that has been in my heart
silent
unknown even to me.

Michael Walzer, in his excellent book, Exodus and Revolution, reminds us that the message of the first Exodus is

"First, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; third, "the way to the land is through the wilderness." There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching."

As we continue to deepen our understanding about our place as women in the rabbinate, I pray that we will each have the courage to hear the song that is in our hearts, and that women and men together will have the wisdom and the optimism to join together and march, hearing each other's voices, listening well and gaining wisdom from each other.