Sweet Water
Beshalach, 5776
Shmuel Herzfeld
I get to be inspired every day by the amazing people that I meet in our shul. This past Thursday I got inspired by an amazing 9 year-old girl. She has taken it upon herself to wake up early and come to our 630 minyan every Monday and Thursday morning in order to hear the Torah being read. She usually comes with her dad, but her dad was out of town. On Thursday it was freezing cold, the roads were filled with snow and ice, every school had a delayed opening by 2 hours, but who do I see walking through the doors of our shul at 630 am (she was brought by a neighbor) in order to hear the Torah, this amazing girl! She inspires me so much! She represents the future of our people! I am so honored to be able to daven with her on Mondays and Thursdays!!!
The source for reading the Torah every Monday and Thursday morning is based upon this week's parashah.
First our Torah portion tells us about the splitting of the sea.
It was a transformative moment for every participant. The Mekhiltah says that at that moment, “ra’atah shifchah al ha’yam mah she-lo ra’ah yechezkel ve’sha-ar neveim, the simple maid had a prophetic vision at the sea that even surpassed that of Yechezkel” (15:2).
The splitting of the sea is followed by the beautiful shirah of Moshe and Miriam.
But after that things take a turn for the worse.
The Jewish people travel through Midbar Shur and they spend three days without water (15:22). When they do find water in Marah, it is bitter and undrinkable. So they complain to Moshe who cries to Hashem. Hashem shows Moshe a tree that he throws into the water and it turns the water sweet. At that point the Torah tells us that Moshe gave the Jewish people certain laws, which are called, “chok umishpat.” Moshe tells the people that if they do what is right in Hashem’s eyes (hayashar be-einav) then Hashem will not visit upon the Jewish people the same plagues that He has brought upon the Egyptians (15:24-26).
There is a literal way to understand this short passage and then there is a deeper approach offered by the Midrash.
Literally, this is about the Jewish people not having water in a desert and then getting water in a miraculous manner from God. With the gift of water—an essential element to life, the Jewish people also receive certain basic laws that are also essential to the welfare of society.
On the level of midrash, the rabbis say that this passage is not simply about water, but rather it is about Torah.
Mayim (water) is a metaphor for Torah.
The Talmud explains that these verses mean that just like we cannot live without water for more than three days, so too, we cannot live without Torah. Therefore, the prophets arose and decreed that the Torah must be read every Monday and Thursday so that we never go more than three days without Torah (Bava Kamma, 82a).
What laws were taught to the Jewish people at Marah?
The Talmud in Sanhedrin tells us that the Jewish people were taught laws of commerce (Sanhderin, 56b).
The charge to do “hayashar be-einav” is understood to be a command to engage faithfully in business practices. As the Mekhiltah comments on these words: “kol mi shenoseh ve-noten be-emunah ruach habriot nocheh heimenu, whoever engages honestly in business will be pleasing to the world and it will be considered as though he has kept the entire Torah.”
Here is my own understanding of these midrashim—my midrash on the midrash.
The Jewish people had just experienced an incredible spiritual revelation at kriat yam suf. But as they moved from the splitting of the sea and started walking through the desert, they experienced a spiritual desert. It is not so easy to go from seeing God with absolute clarity at the splitting of the sea to walking through a desert and seeing only sand.
And so for three days they were looking for water; i.e. they were searching for spirituality like they felt at the sea.
Even when they finally did rediscover their spirituality there was an enormous problem. The water that they found was bitter.
The spirituality that they felt at yam suf, was pure spirituality. And pure spirituality is like many things that are pure—extreme and inflexible.
As they tried to apply the great spiritual revelations that they had felt at yam suf there was a gap between the spirituality that they remembered and now sought and their current existence.
Spirituality meet reality. It wasn’t a perfect fit. It wasn’t working in their daily life. There were problems with the application of spirituality to their daily lives in the desert.
The water was bitter.
They needed Moshe to teach them how to make the spirituality sweet. Moshe threw a tree into the water. A tree represents the Torah (etz chayim). Moshe taught them how to make the Torah sweet. He taught them how to adapt the principles of the Torah to life in the desert.
The hardest place to apply the principles of the Torah is in the everyday business world. The principles of the Torah are not always a perfect fit. There sometimes needs to be an adjustment. If they are always applied the same way, then the Torah might, God forbid, be seen as bitter.
Moshe teaches them how to make the Torah sweet. He gives everyone the basic principles of chok umishpat, laws of business. As a guiding force he reminds them that they must always do what is right in the eyes of Hashem.
The implication is that if the waters are bitter then that is not what is right in the eyes of Hashem.
Our sages have always understood this idea that if the words and the concepts of the Torah were always applied literally we run the risk of the Torah becoming bitter, Gd forbid. While the words of the Torah are divine and eternal, built within their divinity and eternality is the mechanism to make adjustments known as takkanot. These takkanot were necessary to make sweet again the parts of the Torah that had become bitter.
Our prophets first and then the rabbis all made adjustments.
The Talmud records takkanot that are made by Moshe, Yehoshua, Dovid, Shlomo, and Ezra. (See for example, Megillah 32a, Ketubot 80b, and Bava Kamma, 82a.)
These takkanot are basically adjustments of the Torah—the Torah was given to us with the recognition from its inception that at times discrete takkanot would be needed to prevent unjust situations which might arise out of a result of a literal application of the principles of the Torah.
In the daf yomi these past few weeks we have been studying the fourth chapter of Gittin. This chapter is filled with takkanot that the rabbis made so that the Torah not become bitter.
Here are some of the most famous adjustments that are described in our current chapter of Talmud study:
1) Pruzbul (Gittin 36-37).
2) Takkanot regarding slaves (gittin 41). Kofin et rabbo mipnei tikkun olam, we force a master to free a half slave.
3) Retroactive annulment of marriages known as hafka’at kiddushin (Gittin 33).
Here is a short explanation of these takkanot.
The Talmud tells us that pruzbul comes from the words, pursah demiltah, an adjustment of the matter.
According to biblical law a person’s loans are wiped away at the conclusion of the Sabbatical year. This is called shemitat kesafim, the shemittah of money. Related to this is a positive commandment to forgive the loan and a negative prohibition against collecting the loan. One who says that I will not lend money because I am concerned that I will not be paid back is in violation of two negative commandments (based upon Devarim 15:9).
The Talmud tells us that pruzbul is a takkanah for the rich and for the poor. Hillel saw that the rich were being hurt because they were not being paid back, and the poor were being hurt because no one was lending them money. In other words, he saw that the sweetness of the Torah was becoming bitter and so he made the takkanah of a pruzbul. In doing so, he brought sweetness to the Torah.
A second example of takkanot relates to adjustments made concerning slavery. The very idea that the Torah condones slavery is itself a bitter drink. In my daily podcast on these pages when I talk about the concept of an eved, I hold back tears as I say the word eved. How can our holy Torah allow for an existence, which we know to be barbaric and cruel? Clearly this is a concept, which we cannot tolerate in any shape or form today. To me the fact that the Torah allows for the concept of slavery is a case of bitter waters that must be made sweet.
The Talmud tells us that it is a biblical prohibition to free a Canaanite slave, as it states, “leolam bahem taavodu, you shall work them forever” (Vayikra 25:46).
But our chapter discusses situations in which we force the master to free the slave. While the Talmud does not abolish slavery it clearly moves us in that direction.
Thus, we read about a situation (Gittin, 38b) in which a slave is freed in order to complete a minyan! So too, we are told (Gittin, 39a) that a slave who puts on tefillin is seen as a free person. This shows that a slave is recognized as a spiritual being more than a piece of property.
We also read (Gittin 41a-b) about a situation in which a slave is half-freed. The Talmud tells us that in this case there is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Originally, Beit Hillel said that the slave should work for himself one day and the other day work for his master. But Beit Shammai responds to that: “Takantem et rabbo va-et atzmo lo takantem, you have helped the master but the slave has not been helped.” The reason for the problem is that the slave is in legal limbo and thus cannot marry a free person or a slave. Thus, the Mishnah says that Beit Hillel recants his original ruling and agrees that we must force the master to entirely free his slave.
Thus the concept of slavery too is an example of a situation where the waters became bitter and the rabbis of the Talmud made an adjustment in order to sweeten them.
A third example relates to agunot. The chapter is filled with examples of adjustments that the rabbis made in order to help agunot. Perhaps the most famous and radical is that the rabbis annulled marriages retroactively.
This is known in the Talmud as the concept of hafka’at kiddushin. It literally is a retroactive annulment of a marriage and was employed in order to protect agunot. This concept appears five times in the Babylonian Talmud and was used in Geonic times by Rav Yehudai Gaon.
As the Jewish people became entrenched in our long exile, we latched onto survival mode and became very afraid to give up on any aspect of our tradition. As a people we became more concerned about our survival and less concerned about any bitter waters. We also weren’t living in one place with one central authority and thus takkanot became practically impossible.
In theory today, we might have more flexibility for takkanot, with the Jewish people living on the land of Israel—but in practice such a concept is not even close to happening.
For example, in 2002, in the journal Tradition, R. Shlomo Riskin suggested a communal takkanah to bring back the concept of hafka’at kiddushin in order to solve the agunah crisis. Unfortunately for agunot everywhere, this idea went nowhere.
As a practical matter we are in all likelihood not going to see the reinstitution of takkanot anytime soon. But let’s not kid ourselves into believing that because we don’t make takkanot that means that sometimes the waters aren’t bitter.
The concept of slavery in the torah is a bitter water. The current crisis of agunot is a bitter water. There are other examples as well.
We should not pretend that such bitterness doesn’t exist. Even worse we shouldn’t pretend that the fault lies with those people who recognize the bitterness for what it is—undrinkable water.
The fact that we have not solved these bitter problems is not the fault of the Torah. The Torah gave us the tools to do it. The fault lies with us.
What do we do about the bitter waters that we see around us?
On an individual level every good posek understands that it is the job of the posek to find the sweet waters through daring and sensitive individual rulings.
The hardest question is to what extent to we apply this approach to psak on a communal level. Here we must approach everything on a case-by-case basis with great caution and seriousness. But even as we exercise caution and restraint, we must also be aware: if we as a people are forced to drink bitter waters then we run the risk of dehydration.
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