Let’s take a moment and imagine being there. We have just borne witness to one of the most miraculous events in human history. God has split the Red Sea, and we and 2 million other former slaves have crossed on dry land. Meanwhile, our former masters, the Egyptians, are swallowed by the sea, and we know that they will no longer threaten us.
And we break out in song in praise of God and His miracles. Moshe leads us and the people in song, Miriam dances with a tambourine, and we pour out our heart to God, who has finally redeemed His people. This will be the moment our people celebrate on the Seventh Day of Pesach forever.
At some point, people stop singing. We hear the song die down somewhere else, and like one of the waves in the Sea, it spreads across the nation. As the song stops, something else takes its place. Because we can see what lies before us. The desert. The wilderness. The unknown. And that dread continues to spread throughout the Israelites. What does it mean that we are free? Didn’t Moshe say something about a land of milk and honey?
And then Moshe says the three most frightening words you could hear at that moment: “Alright. Let’s go.”
The very first verse following Shirat Hayam shows us this transition: Moshe led them into the Wilderness, where they found no water for three days.
Many retellings of the story of Pesach with the Song of the Sea, of the climax of the Children of Israel finally escaping from their Egyptian oppressors, and the song of praise they sing right after. Some retellings jump to Matan Torah at Har Sinai we read about next week, others jump to other Biblical events. But in the Torah itself, we are told of the immediate aftermath. We are told of a three-day journey without any water. And then we are told of three different events where the people complain to Moshe, followed by a battle with Amalek.
Why? Why do we need to know about the grumblings, the struggles, the failures of the people, if we can call it that, to believe in God and in Moshe, directly after the great heights of the Pesach story?
The Torah is not a hagiography, meant to only shower us with the wonderful actions of our people. The Torah wants to remind us over and over that despite the spiritual heights our ancestors reached, our ancestors were human; they made mistakes. And when we strive to be like them, that isn’t an impossible task. We have the capacity to reach the heights they reached, even if we are not perfect, because they were not either.
On the other hand, there might be more than that. The Parsha we read for the 7th Day of Pesach is from Sefer Shemot, Chapter 13 Verse 17 to Chapter 15 Verse 26. What is Chapter 15 Verse 26? Not the end of the Shirat Hayam, but rather, the end of the following story, of the bitter waters at Marah.
The rabbis did not make a mistake, God forbid, when assigning the Parshiyot. It is not a mistake that the Torah reading continues five verses past the end of Shirat HaYam. It is meant to remind us that when we commemorate the Splitting of the Sea, the anniversary of God’s great triumph, we cannot live in the happily ever after. We have to remember what comes next.
We aren’t allowed a moment to imagine that what comes next is smooth sailing, that the people will continue the faith that they expressed after the Miracle, and not revert to the complainers of before the miracle. The difficulties that occur after the Splitting of the Sea are not separate, they are part of the story.
And for us, our triumphs are not standalone events, but are combined with new problems, new issues to tackle. When we celebrate, we don’t celebrate the end, but the beginning. A bar mitzvah, a brit milah, a wedding, are all celebrations that predict future troubles, because life is not perfect. The Jewish phrase of congratulations is mazal tov, good luck. We always look to what comes next, even if it is more difficult than staying in the present.
