This week’s Parashah is BeShallach. It tells us the story of leaving Egypt, getting to the Red Sea, crossing it and then complaining! Sort of typical for the rest of the Torah, something great occurs, the Israelites feel entitled and are waiting for God to do something, complain when this something.
We also have the “Song of the Sea” in this Parashah. I want to focus on this today. Moses and Israel sang a song to Adonai, saying “I will sing to Adonai” is how it begins. The verse starts out as a plural and turns into a singular. Each Israelite sang his/her own song, their voices came together and it was as an individual that the song originated. This, to me, is how prayer works best. We do a lot of communal praying and it has to be each person singing their own song.
How do we do this? We each bring our voice, our joy, our sorrow, our fear and our faith to each and every prayer. We do this by not allowing group think, not allowing our voice to be shouted down nor silenced by ourselves. Each of us has a unique word of Adonai to bring to the world and we get to sing it. Crossing the Red Sea was another of Israel’s spiritual awakenings. The experience of it was individual and the response had to come from each person. So too for us, we each have to respond in our own way in our own voice to the experience of Adonai helping us, saving us, giving us clarity.
Their awareness is told in the next verse: “Adonai is my song and my salvation, this is my God”. Realizing the personal nature of being saved and the source of our inner song is critical to our continued growth. God being my song is my experience of knowing that I am but a trusted servant of God and a trusted servant for other people. The individual experience is shared with everyone else so we know that we need each other, none of us is better or worse than anyone else and we get to share our song, our salvation and our own personal experience of God.
This year, between writing on the Prophets each day and this week’s Parashah, I have a new experience of “God of my understanding” that is in the 12-steps. Each Israelite defined God for her/himself. We cannot have the same understanding of God since each of us has a unique relationship with God. Which also means that I am not to judge your understanding, experience, relationship with God and not compare me to you, mine to yours. Taking comparison and competition of out my daily way of being in the world allows me to appreciate and embrace “my God” more and more each day.
“I will praise God and I will exalt God” is the ending of this verse. What an order! How can I say this? Yet I do each morning in our prayers. What does it mean to exalt God? I have to hold God in the highest esteem, I have to continue to raise God up. I do this by raising myself up, my actions are held to a higher standard and I grow each day to meet these standards one grain of sand.
How do I praise God? I have to live a life of gratitude and respect. I get to respect God’s creations; climate, nature, other human beings, etc. I do this by remembering that everyone is created in the Image of God. I remain grateful for the people who love and support me and I learn to be grateful for the people who want to destroy me, compete with me, and don’t like me so much. Being grateful for all of life’s experiences is the best way to praise God.
Each of us needs to grow our individual voice, spirit and being. Only then can we join together as the Israelites did on the other side of the Red Sea. We all have crossed the Red Sea, some of us many times, and we will have to cross others. We do it as individuals with others. This is the truest experience and definition of Community, in my opinion.
I have been blessed with my own voice and I sing my own song, sometimes too loudly and too off key, as Harriet reminds me. I pray that we all continue to sing our song and join with the songs of each other to create the symphony that God desires. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Mark