Parashat Be'Shalach, Exodus 13:17 - 17:16

This week’s portion – Be’Shalach, roughly translated to “when [Pharaoh] sent [the People of Israel] away” – is extremely visual. It tells the story of the first days and weeks of the Exodus – the departing from Egypt – but is written more like a screenplay, a compilation of visual images. Indeed, some of the most dramatic sites ever envisioned (and later attempted to be captured by Cecil B. DeMille’s wonderful “The Ten Commandments”) are reported here in great detail: The parting of the (red) sea, the drowning of all of Pharaoh’s cavalry, the “pillar of cloud” walking in front of the People of Israel in the day, and the “pillar of fire” by night. Not for naught it was said that “what the lowliest of slaves had actually seen by the (red) sea, even Prophet Ezekiel hasn’t seen in his grandest of visions.”

But beyond those amazing visions, the intertwined nature of this week’s portion may best be summed up by the opening lines of the poem “My Father” written by Israel’s national poet, C.N. Bialik:

“Strange were the ways of my life and puzzlement ruled their direction,

Between the gateways of purity and vile their circles have moved as one,

The sacrosanct has intertwined with the profane and the glorious with the loathsome wallowed …”

(my translation, which does not do justice with the sublime original).

Indeed, alongside the most beautiful vision of divine miracles, the Children of Israel are quick to remind us of the mundane, frustrating, and – somewhat unbelievably – faithless lives of this recently-freed nation of slaves. My two short comments today would relate, first, to the notion of “how quickly we forget,” and then – in close relation – to the false question of “the proof of the existence of God.”

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi . . .

Right after God commits these wonderful miracles – the parting of the sea, the drowning of the enemy’s cavalry, etc., etc. – we find the newly-freed nation, not surprisingly, in an abiding mode: “And Israel has seen the wondrous hand which God laid upon Egypt, and the people have seen God, and they believed in God and in Moses his slave.” (Exodus 14:31). To loyal readers of this blog, this classic move – of first showing God’s great powers and then the result of believing in Him – should sound familiar. Indeed, the Father of our Nation, Abraham, was first said to “believe in God” right after God promised him that he would receive all the best in this world (Gen. 15:6). But, God usually doesn’t end there – believing in Him when things are good is easy; what happens when things don’t go so well? (Just ask Job]. God then tests Abraham, asking him to sacrifice his beloved son (Gen. 22:1). Abraham’s belief is not shaken – perhaps even strengthened – by the ordeal. But God also tests Abraham’s descendants, with much less success. The same people who just witnessed some of the greatest miracles ever recorded, are now threatening to soon stone His slave Moses (Ex. 17:4), and are wondering “whether the Lord is present among us or not” (Ex. 17:7).

Indeed, in Latin we learn that “thus passes the glory of the world,” or, in modern English usage, “how quickly we forget.” But why is that? What caused the people to turn their heart away from God so quickly?

Though many answers were offered to this question, I would like to offer one from an area near and dear to me: the great outdoors. Despite the fact that the People of Israel were slaves in Egypt – and thus used to hard labor in the hot desert sun – they were not used to walking in the desert. As you may recall, they were walking the entire first night, and then – without mentioning any break – continued to walk onward for days; but they didn’t have, nor did they see, any clear indication of a water source. Their first Divine test, therefore, was a direct, very concrete one: A fear of dying in the desert of dehydration, or a total belief in God: “And they went three days in the desert and they have not found any water” (Ex. 15:22); “And they were encamped in Rephidim, and there is no water for the People to drink” (Ex. 17:1). Viewed that way, it’s not untenable to assume that very reasonable people – perhaps even among readers of this blog – would turn agnostic in the face of such a test.

But what is also fascinating is not merely the fact of the people’s rapid turn of heart, but rather the content of their grievances. Only a short period has passed since these slaves complained (wonderfully) to Pharaoh about the dismal conditions of their employment: “Straw you failed to provide to your slaves, yet bricks you order us to make! Thus your slaves are being beaten. . .” (Ex. 5:16); only a short time has passed since God himself confesses to Moses that He has “heard the crying of the Children of Israel that are slaving under Egypt” (Ex. 6:5). Yet all of sudden, Egypt seems like Paradise, and these same people complain to Moses: “How we wish we were dead at the hand of God [here in the desert; unlike] in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the pot of meat, where we have eaten bread until we were full – and now you have taken us all out to this desert to starve this entire congregation to death.” (Ex. 17:3). What is happening here? How can their memory be so short?

The answer is well-researched today. Economist and psychologists – mainly Kahnman & Tverski (the former received a Nobel Prize in economics for his research on the subject) – remind us that we prefer what is available to us – even if it is extremely detrimental to us – to something we have no familiarity with. (Oversimplified, this is what they called the “availability heuristics” in their seminal 1973 article published in Science magazine.) Think for a second about your own life: would you prefer the known and familiar – even if you do not particularly like it – or to venture off to a new start, somewhere you have never been before? The quintessential paradigm here is – just like in the Bible – your workplace: Most people complain about their workplace, yet very few leave on their own accord. Is that the “People of Israel” syndrome?

Can you “Prove” that God Exists?

Here I want to make a very short, but crucial point on the great issue of Faith. Many times, ever since the fourth grade, I hear a lot of people tell me: “If you prove to me that God exists, I will then – and only then – believe in God.” Two things are wrong with that claim: First, as we have seen in this week’s portion, “proof of God” has nothing to do with faith: That lowly slave on the sea has seen, in her own eyes, the glory and mighty of God like no one before or since, and yet the People of Israel turned away from God in a heartbeat, as soon as things became difficult in the desert. In contrast – and this is Leibovitz’s point – for many generations Jewish people who have never seen God and never imagine that they would ever see him, died while reciting the Sh’ma rather than convert to another religion. That alone goes to show that the relation between so-called “proof” and the belief in God simply doesn’t exist.

But on a deeper level, the sentence itself – “prove to me X, and then I will believe in X” is simply a non-sequitur. If one chooses to believe in something, than they must relinquish any desire for proof that that thing exists; otherwise, there is no room for belief. By the same token, if something is proven to you, you can’t be said to believe in that thing; rather, you simply know, or aware of its existence. Thus, you can not believe that the table on which I’m writing this blog exists; you simply know it. Similarly, you can’t know that Federer will win the Australian Open on Sunday (against Andy Murray), but you – or I, for that matter – believe in it.

Indeed, belief and proof are mutually exclusive. You either believe in something, or you know it exists. You can stop asking for proof of God, therefore, and simply ask yourself do you believe in Him?

Shabbat Shalom,

Doron