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There is a great
difference in the perception of a momentous historic event, between the
generation that actually experienced it, was witness to and perhaps even
participated in it, and later generations who know of the event through
tradition and history. The facts regarding events can be transmitted from
one generation to the next, even for thousands of years, but the
emotional quality, the pervading actual mood and atmosphere present at
the time never survives the passage of time and distance from the event
itself.
Perhaps nowhere is
this truism more strikingly evident than in the drama of the salvation of
the Jewish people at the shores of Yam Suf. At the moment of Divine
deliverance, Moshe and Miriam and the people of Israel burst into exalted
song, registering their relief and triumph over the destruction of their
hated oppressors.
This song of
triumph is so powerful that it forms part of the daily prayer service of
Israel for millennia. But, though the words have survived and been
sanctified by all generations of Jews from Moshe till the present, the
original fervor, intensity and aura of that moment is no longer present
with us.
The Pesach Hagadah
bids us to relive the Exodus from Egypt as though we actually were
present then and experienced it. But it is beyond the ability of later
generations do so fully and completely. We can recall and relive the
event intellectually and positively in an historic vein but the emotional
grandeur of the moment has evaporated over time.
We are witness as
to how the events of only a century ago – the two great World Wars, the
Holocaust, the birth of the State of Israel, etc. – have begun to fade
away from the knowledge, memory and recall of millions of Jews today, a
scant few generations after these cataclysmic events took place. In this
case, it is not only the emotion that has been lost but even the actual
facts and their significance – social, religious and national – are in
danger of disappearing from the conscious thoughts and behavior of many
Jews.
In light of this,
it is truly phenomenal that the deliverance of Israel at Yam Suf is so
distinctly marked and remembered, treasured and revered in the Jewish
memory bank. The reason for this exceptional survival of historic memory
is that it was made part of Jewish religious ritual, incorporated in the
Torah itself, and commemorated on a special Shabbat named for the
event. It thus did not have to rely on historic truth and memory
alone to preserve it for posterity.
Religious ritual
remains the surest way of preserving historical memory, far stronger than
May Day parades and twenty-one gun salutes and salvos. Ritual alone may
be unable to capture the emotion and atmosphere of the actual event but
it is able to communicate the essential facts and import of the event to
those who never witnessed or experienced it. The song of Moshe, Miriam
and Israel still reverberates in the synagogues of the Jewish people and
more importantly in their minds and hearts as well.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Berel Wein
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