“Bittersweet” Parashat Beshalach 5786
“You are my sword, Your love is its own reward.” – Bittersweet by The Hudu Gurus, 1985
The Jews leave the Egyptian Army behind them in the Reed Sea and head into the desert. After three days of travel, they end up in Marah, where their water supplies run out. The only water they find is Shemot [15:24] “bitter”, and so they turn to Moshe for some roadside assistance. Moshe bumps their complaint up the chain [Shemot 15:25-26]: “[Moshe] cried out to G-d, and G-d instructed him concerning a piece of wood, which he cast into the water, and the water was sweetened. There He gave them a statute and an ordinance, and there He tested them. He said, ‘If you hearken to the voice of G-d and you do what is proper in His eyes, and you listen closely to His commandments and observe all His statutes, all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I am your healer.” Rashi[1] quotes the Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin [56a] that teaches that the Jewish People did not thirst for physical H2O, but, rather, for Torah, which our Sages liken to water[2]. The Talmud asserts that at Marah, G-d gave the Jewish People an assortment of laws: laws governing Shabbat, the Red Heifer[3], and laws of jurisprudence.
Why does Rashi, who claims to always bring the most straightforward explanation, not interpret the verses, well, according to the most straightforward explanation? The water ran out, the only water source in the vicinity was not drinkable, and so G-d performed a miracle to purify the water. Recall that the Jews had just seen G-d split the sea – also with a stick – such that purifying unpotable water should have been a simple ask. Nevertheless, I believe that Rashi nailed it. When Moshe splits the sea, he does so with his [Shemot 14:16] “staff (mateh)”, the same staff that he used multiple times before to perform wonders, but when he purifies the waters at Marah, he does so with a plain old piece of “wood (etz)”. The word “etz” is an unmistakable allusion to the Torah from the Book of Parables [3:18] that refers to the Torah as a “Tree of Life (Etz Chaim)”. And now that you mention it, the words “[G-d] instructed (va’yorehu)” sound a lot like the word “Torah”. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
I would like to put a different spin on Rashi’s interpretation. Rather than an injection for a nation that needed Torah right here, right now, the story of the bitter waters at Marah served as a simulation for receiving the Torah. Let me explain. Missile developers live in a world where every second of flight is expensive, where every test is a public event, and where every mistake leaves a crater, such that the real heavy lifting is done long before a missile ever sees daylight. The industry leans on high‑fidelity simulations – massive digital ecosystems that model aerodynamics, propulsion, guidance, and the thousands of tiny interactions that make a missile behave the way it does – because tens of millions of simulations can be run for the cost of a single real shot. That said, flight tests still matter. They are the moments of truth, the data points that let us tune and calibrate the simulation so that the digital missile and the real missile tell the same story. Forty-two days after they crossed the Reed Sea, the Jewish People would be receiving the Torah at Sinai. There would be no second chances. What happened at Marah was a simulation to make sure they got it right when they needed to.
The key to this explanation lies in the “sweet” part of “bittersweet”. When Moshe throws the stick into the water, the Torah tells us “va’yimteku ha’mayim”, translated above as “the water was sweetened”. This translation, while appearing in nearly every translation found on the Sefaria site, is incorrect. The correct translation of “The water was sweetened” would be “va’yumteku ha’mayim” using the passive-causative (huf’al) form. The word “va’yimteku” is in the simple (kal) form and should be translated as “The water was sweet”. By using the kal form, the Torah suggests a transformation of the water itself. It isn’t just that the bitterness was masked – like with sugar – or “neutralized” – like with an antidote – by the tree. Rather, the very nature of the water was altered so that sweetness became its new internal identity.
We can take this a step further by suggesting that it was more than just the water that changed at Marah. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, commenting on the verse [Shemot 15:23] “They came to Marah, but they could not drink the waters of Marah because they were bitter,” suggests that it was not the waters that were bitter, but, rather, the Jewish People. When a person is bitter, everything tastes bitter. Only when the people themselves were “sweetened” did the water begin to taste sweet, as well. This begs a question: What was the source of their bitterness? They had just been irreversibly freed from bondage. They were the beneficiaries of some of greatest miracles ever seen on earth. So their canteens were dry. What’s the big deal?
Isaiah Berlin, a twentieth-century philosopher, draws a sharp line between negative liberty, the freedom from external coercion, and positive liberty, the freedom to shape one’s own destiny. Moshe’s demand to Pharaoh [Shemot 9:1], “Let my people go,” begins as pure negative liberty. It is a call to remove the crushing weight of slavery so the people can simply breathe again. But the Torah immediately transforms this into positive liberty: “Let my people go so they might serve me”. Their freedom is not just escape from bondage. It is the ability to serve G‑d, to build a nation with purpose. And this freedom comes with a certain amount of baggage. At first it came easy: All they had to do was to slaughter a Paschal Lamb and eat some matzo. The hard part was yet to come: At Sinai, they would receive another six hundred or so commandments that would affect every single facet of their lives. Were they ready for this kind of freedom? Or would they, to quote the humourist, Dave Barry, ask, “For this we left Egypt?” How they responded at Marah would give a very good indication of how they would respond at Sinai. It would give them one last chance to get things right.
At Marah, the nation discovered that freedom is not a destination. It is a test range. The water was not only made drinkable. It was declared sweet, and the people were asked to become sweet enough to taste it. That is how simulations work. You do not press the red button to feel powerful. You press it to see whether the system is honest. If the telemetry says you are perfect but the target is still standing, you did not run a test. You ran a fantasy. Marah was not a fantasy. It was telemetry. It told them that the complaint line was still open, that their reflex was still bitter, and that Sinai would demand new reflexes.
So Moshe throws a piece of wood, a hint of the Tree of Life, into the pool, and the text says the water was sweet. The Rebbe reminds us that sometimes the problem is not the pool. It is the palate. At Sinai the same pattern will repeat. Sound, smoke, and law will pour down the mountain, and the people will learn that negative liberty can open a gate, but positive liberty builds a road. A nation cannot live forever on the taste of miracles. It must choose the taste of purpose.
Which brings us back to the words that framed this journey. You are my sword. Your love is its own reward. Bittersweet. To love G‑d is to accept a sword that cuts away our bitterness and reveals the sweetness that was always there. The staff becomes wood. The sea becomes a path. The desert becomes a classroom. And the water becomes us.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5786
Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Shlomo ben Esther, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.
[1] Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known by his acronym “Rashi,” was the most eminent of the medieval commentators. He lived in northern France in the 11th century.
[2] The Talmud in Tractate Bava Kama [82a] interprets the verse in Isaiah [55:1] “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…” to be referring to Torah.
[3] The Vilna Gaon asserts that Rashi misinterpreted an acronym and that “Red Heifer” should be replaced with “honouring one’s parents”. The Red Heifer is a weighty subject, not something you’d teach a novice.
