Beshalach

פרשת בשלח

In this week’s parsha the Yam Suf splits. The Jews cross over on dry land to safety and the Egyptians drown. The Jews are officially out of slavery. To celebrate this, they sing to Hashem something we call “shira.” We sing this “shira” everyday near the end of p’sukei d’zimra. The Midrash Rabba 24:4 tells us how dear this song was to Hashem. From the beginning of time G-d was waiting for someone to sing shira. He created Adam, but he didn’t sing shira. He saved Avraham Avinu from the burning furnace, but he didn’t sing shira. He saved Yitzhak from being slaughtered, but he didn’t sing shira. He saved Yaakov from Esav’s angel, but he didn’t sing shira. Only at the Yam Suf was shira sung. Hashem said, “Ahhhh… This is the moment I’ve been waiting for!” We see from here how incredible Hashem’s joy was at this moment. But a question we have to ask is, what’s the big deal? It’s not like Adam, Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov didn’t praise Hashem or thank Him. Adam HaRishon even wrote the famous “Mizmor Shir L’Yom HaShabbos”! What’s so great about the shira that the Jews sung at the Yam Suf?

There’s a very perplexing Hazal in the Gemara Brachos 50 that says that even the babies who were still in their mothers’ stomachs sang shira. What is that all about? And what is Hazal trying to teach us? Rav Reuven Fine answers that shira does not mean merely singing a song. It’s something that comes from a much deeper place. When someone lives in this world, the revelation of G-d is not something that is so easy to access. So when someone witnesses a tremendous revelation of G-d, an event where he sees the Divine Hand clearly present in his life, it can affect him in such a profound way that every fiber of his being pines to shout out the praises of G-d. The uplifting feeling such a person experiences can be so great that the powerful desire of wanting to sing G-d’s praises makes the words come out on their own. The romantic drive of the Jewish people towards Hashem was so great at this moment that even the fetuses were affected and sang praises to Hashem from the depths of their souls. This is what made the shira so dear, and completely unprecedented throughout all of history until that point.

Rav Fine adds that he finds it strange that in the siddur we refer “Shiras HaYam” as a “Shira Hadasha,” meaning a new song. Why do we call it new? 3,300 years later, there’s nothing so new about it. Rav Fine answers that our siddur is revealing a brilliant truth. Part of the real beauty of Shiras HaYam is that even today a person can connect to this song’s unique wellspring of inspiration, even to the point that he can reach the same high as those who sang it the first time. The Mishna Brura 51:17 says that anyone who sings Shiras HaYam with the same joy as if the miracle happened to him is forgiven for all of his sins. The Mishna Brura is explicitly telling us that we can reach such a level of shira that we can even turn into new people, having our sins forgiven. Therefore, we should try our best to understand the beauty of this tefilla and relive it.

It’s important to add that a Jew shouldn’t only sing shira during p’sukei d’zimra. Really, the ecstasy that comes from looking at the wonderful world around us and all the incredible things that Hashem does in our lives should be a new cause for shira. Every bracha we make and every time we daven is really a new opportunity to sing to G-d in thanks for all the good He does for us. It has been said that people who stood close enough to the Vilna Gaon when he davened could hear a small but beautiful melody accompanying his Shmoneh Esrei. The power of shira is so great that the Gemara in Sanhedrin 91 says that anyone who sings shira in this world merits to sing shira in the world to come. We see from here that if we truly connect through shira, the Gemara is promising us the world to come!!!

Something interesting to know is that Torah is also called “shira”. In parshas Haazinu the verse says “כתבו לכם את השירה הזאת”  .  Hazal tell us that this verse refers to the writing of a Sefer Torah. Why does the Torah call a Sefer Torah a song? To answer this, we can bring the Yaavetz in Pirkei Avos. The Yaavetz asks a powerful difficulty on a Midrash in Eicha 2 . The Midrash says that during the period of the 1^st Beis HaMikdash, Hashem was able to tolerate the Jews doing terrible sins such as idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and murder. But there was one thing Hashem couldn’t forgive. Bitul Torah. The Yaavetz asks why. Is Bitul Torah really worse than killing somebody? To answer, the Yaavetz brings a parable of a king who had a servant. One day, the servant was negligent in preparing the food of the king. For such a transgression, the punishment should have been death. However, the king pardoned the servant because the servant also played music for the king when he was sad. The king said that as long as his servant played music for him, he didn’t have the heart to kill him. Explains the Yaavetz, the same is true with us. Even when we do horrible sins that should warrant our destruction, as long as we continue learning the Torah, Hashem still has affection for us. Learning Torah is so dear to Hashem that even when everything else seems to be going wrong, when Hashem hears us learning He renews His love for us as if He heard us singing shira to Him. In Hashem’s eyes, a Jew’s Torah is shira.

So what is it about learning that brings Hashem to love us as much as if we sang shira? I had a Rebbi who once told me that someone who doesn’t feel uplifted by his learning has to work on himself. It can’t be that the Torah is uninspiring. So if one learns and doesn’t feel uplifted, it must be because the
Torah isn’t being learned the way it should be. Torah should uplift you and change you. The Midrash in Eicha says that if the Jewish people just learned the Torah the way they should, the Torah surely would have inspired them and returned them to good. This is what the Torah was designed to do. Just as one who sings shira is uplifted in such a miraculous way that he becomes a new person from that day onward, Torah too can bring a person to a stage of total renewal and transformation. This is what G-d wants and this is really what is so beautiful about shira and Torah.

May we all be zoche to sing shira in this world and the next!!!