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Today is אחרון של פסח, but I want to look at yesterday: the day of קריעת ים סוף:
Note the sequence of events: Moshe tells בני ישראל to just sit and watch, and ה׳ says, “No, they need to move”:
And then Moshe is told to raise his staff. If אין להם אלא ליסע שאין הים עומד בפניהם, then what is the נטה את ידך על הים? I would assume it’s like the raised hands from later in פרשת בשלח:
The implication is that what prompted the miracle of קריעת ים סוף was בני ישראל jumping into the sea. There’s a cute װוֹרט about this:
I am looking for a real source for this, but I’ve heard a number of times that the second כָּמֹכָה starts with a dagesh is that בני ישראל were singing the שירה as they went in, and by that verse they were up to their necks and had to sing with a closed glottis, hence כָּ rather than כָ. (The תורה שלמה cites manuscripts that say the first was sung by Moshe, and the second sung by Pharaoh as he was drowning. The מנחת שי quotes the מדרש לקח טוב that the change represents the praise going from a שפה רפה to a פה מלא.)
And we all know the story: Nachshon the prince of Yehudah jumped in first. But the way the gemara presents it is more complicated. It starts with a pasuk about the history of Israel:
The פשט is that the first kings came from Binyamin and Yehudah. But the gemara, midrashicly, reads רֹדֵם as “went down” and רִגְמָתָם as “stoned them”:
That’s a lot less positive than the usual image, but explains another well-known aggadah:
Having 12 separate paths may have been the only way to keep the peace, but it does illustrate the positive side of the argument: everyone had the faith to jump in the sea.
The gemara continues by citing a few contrasting psukim:
And then explains an otherwise incongruous pasuk in Hallel:
In the eyes of רבי יהודה, Nachshon jumped into the sea before the commandment, when the rest of בני ישראל were arguing about what to do, as Moshe was saying התיצבו וראו את ישועת ה׳. We could reconcile the versions and say that after the commandment, the rest of בני ישראל were so eager to obey that they started fighting over who should go first. And only then does the sea split. Unlike יציאת מצרים, the miracle of קריעת ים סוף was not the unambiguous work of ה׳. As פרקי דרבי אליעזר says, וראו הב״ה מהלך לפניהם ועקבות רגליו לא ראו (in contrast to the famous Footprints in the Sand poem):
Rav Yosef Carmel (Eretz Hemdah Institute) uses this idea to explain a well-known aggadah:
חזקיהו feels he can’t sing שירה, since he has nothing to add. He wasn’t involved in the ישועה:
Today, the eighth day of פסח. In Chassidic thought, this marks the day of the revelation of משיח:
There are two models for how building the בית המקדש will occur:
It is up to us to decide whether the Temple falls from heaven or not. יחזקאל says וְאִם נִכְלְמוּ; if they are ashamed and want to make amends. It is a far greater זכות to be actively involved in our own salvation.