by Rabbi Joshua Knobel
Nearly three millennia ago, our ancestors celebrated their liberty on the banks of the Reed Sea. Their Song of the Sea, which we venerate this Shabbat, reveals their delight in victory, extolling God, the “Man of War,” for “shattering the foe” and “consuming the enemy like straw.”
Nearly one millennia later, our sages taught that the heavenly hosts also celebrated the victory of the Israelites. So dreadful was the bitterness of enslavement that the angels themselves cheered the slaughter of the Egyptian captors. God, however, rebuked them, asking, “My creatures perish, and you celebrate?”
Though God’s chastisement is reserved for the angels, the implication for humanity is clear. Even when we stand convinced that our cause is just – whether we struggle against injustice or delight in freedom’s triumph – all of God’s creatures, even those we hold responsible for enslavement, deserve our empathy. Judaism demands that we champion freedom and justice without dehumanizing the perpetrators of injustice.
It is difficult to act at once with empathy and with conviction, yet such is our task – to embrace empathy without drifting toward indifference and to embrace zeal without drifting toward narrow-mindedness.
Once we have achieved that narrow balance, then we may truly venerate the Song of the Sea, not as a song of war, but as a song of freedom for all humanity.
