RABBI MICHAEL WHITMAN

Delivered by Rabbi Whitman at The Adath on Passover, 2007.

Why doesn’t Passover last just two days (outside Israel and one day in Israel)? The first part of the Holiday celebrates the exodus from Egypt. The second part of the Holiday celebrates the splitting of the Red Sea. To encompass both events, Passover lasts eight days (seven days in Israel). But why does the splitting of the Red Sea require its own Yom Tov celebration?

Without question it was an outstanding miracle. But there are many miracles that do not have a Holiday established in their honour. The salvation of the Jewish People by the splitting of the sea evokes the majestic song of deliverance - “Az Yashir” - which is now incorporated into our daily prayers. But we already have a magnificent prayer – “Hallel” – that is evoked by the exodus. Why do we need another? We do see at the splitting of the Red Sea the punishment of the Egyptians, as their soldiers drown in the sea. But we certainly already see the punishment of Egyptians in the first part of Passover, with the plague against the first born. What is added by the second part of Passover?

This answer is provided by Dr. Martin Luther King, in a sermon he preached in 1956, based on a single verse in the Torah.

It is clear from the Torah, and it is just as clear from history and from our own experience, that evil is a reality in this world. The Torah shows us, in almost every narrative, the opposition of Good and Evil. In the Garden of Eden, there was permitted fruit and forbidden fruit. At the time of Noah, and Abraham, and in Egypt there were those who engages in persecution, immorality, and selfishness while, on the other hand, there were those who engaged in spirituality, freedom, and kindness. The human condition, at its most fundamental level, is a struggle between Good and Evil. And the most basic lesson the Torah has to teach, not only Jews but all humanity, which is repeated over and over in countless ways, is that Good eventually emerges victorious. Evil, though it may prosper, is ultimately doomed. As William Cullen Bryant wrote, “Truth, crushed to the earth, will rise again.”

The struggle that expresses this most clearly for us is the narrative where our identity as the Jewish People is born, in Egypt. In the Torah, Egypt represents Evil in the form of humiliating oppression, ungodly exploitation, and crushing domination. Israel represents dedication to the One God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – a God Who teaches morality and spirituality.

The struggle between them is not just political. It is not just a class struggle of suffering slaves rising up against their masters for their freedom. It is that – but it is also much more. Pharaoh and Moshe both understand their struggle is over the ability of Good to triumph in this world.

So, even after God intervenes and Pharaoh frees the Jews, the Egyptians make one last desperate attempt to prevent the Jewish People from leaving, and they corner Israel against the Red Sea. They must make this attempt because if Israel really leaves Egypt, Egypt doesn’t just lose their slaves. They lose their understanding of the world.

And the sea splits, the Jewish People go through, the water closes over the Egyptians, and they drown. But that is not the end of the story. That is not the lesson we are to take from this narrative. It’s the next verse: “And Israel saw Egypt dead upon the shore.” (Exodus 14:30)

We don’t celebrate the death of our enemies. That’s not what this Holiday is about. Israel crosses the sea on dry land and looks back and sees – and they had to see it with their own eyes – the death of Evil.

They saw the purpose of their leaving Egypt. They saw, when they looked back at the shore, that there is something in the very nature of the universe which ultimately comes to the aid of Good in its perennial struggle with Evil. They saw, when they looked back at the shore, the truth of the poetic words of James Russell Lowell, when he wrote:

Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways in the future.
And behind the dim unknown
Stands God,
Within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.

We live surrounded by prejudice and small mindedness. We see around us today attitudes of bigotry and hatred, and acts of terror. We watch as Israel, the most moral of nations, is vilified and harassed. When that frustration and fear and anger rise up within us, remember what we celebrate at the end of Passover. The reason Passover lasts seven days (or eight days in Israel) is to encompass this realization, expressed in the words of Dr. King, “Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed, and that man, by the grace of God, can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love.”

“And Israel saw Egypt dead upon the shore.” See, on this Holiday, the possibility and the promise of the death of evil on the shore of the Red Sea, and celebrate what we have given the world.