Exodus 13 :17 – 17:16. Beshalah.
This Torah portion concludes the epic of liberation from slavery. The triumphant splitting of the sea is followed by an explosion of joy reflected in the Song at the Sea (shirat ha-yam). However, Rabbinic Judaism reproves this joy. A Talmudic passage attributes these words to God addressing the angels:
“The works of My hands are drowning, and you wish to sing?” (BT Sanhedrin 39 b).
Moreover, several scriptural injunctions make it an important prinicple :
“If your enemy falls, do not rejoice…” (Proverbs 24:17).
Gloating is not part of Jewish moral teaching. However, it is a natural human inclination. As Shamai Leibowitz recently remarked, this inclination is reflected in the addition one finds in most prayerbooks: the phrase “in great joy” appended to the biblical text of the Song at the Sea.
This human inclination is also a sign of unfreedom. The song was sung by Hebrew slaves immediately after their liberation from centuries of bondage. More importantly, this liberation did not arise from their own yearning, let alone their struggle for freedom. It was a project “from above” entrusted by God to Moses and Aaron. The people had internalized their unfreedom. They were no more enthusiastic about leaving Egypt than the Pharaoh was about letting them leave.
Even after freedom was imposed upon them, they longed to return to Egypt whenever they encountered hardship, such as a lack of food or water. This Torah portion recounts several such instances of this sort. But the desire to return was evident even before they crossed the sea:
“As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites caught sight of the Egyptians advancing upon them. Greatly frightened, the Israelites cried out to God. And they said to Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness’?” (Exodus 14:10-12)
These passages suggest that imposed freedom is rarely appreciated. Moreover, is freedom truly the supreme value in life?
One may question this by considering another biblical episode. A slave master frees his Hebrew slave after the maximum six-year period of bondage allowed by the Torah. The slave is free to go – but only if she leaves behind the family he built during his years of servitude. Under these conditions, the slave refuses to leave:
“I love my master, my wife and my children: I do not wish to go free…” (Exodus 21:5)
Here, love appears to be a stronger value than the desire for freedom.
Georges Moustaki provides a compelling illustration of this dilemma between love and freedom in his song “Ma Liberté”. His song is a hymn to freedom, which he cherishes and preserves at all costs. Yet, in the end he confesses:
“I betrayed you [freedom] for a prison of love and its beautiful jailer.”
At the very end of Beshalah we encounter the episode of Amalek, a tribe that attacked the weak and weary among the Hebrews (Exodus 17: 8-16).
Amalek becomes the archetypal enemy whose total destruction is explicitly commanded:
“Now go, attack Amalek, and destroy all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!” I Samuel 15:3.
As usual, Talmudic sages mitigate this extreme commandment, arguing that since the invasion of the Holy Land in the 8 th century BCE, which scattered and intermixed nations, identifying Amalek is no longer possible. (BT Berakhot 28a) Thus, Amalek has been reinterpreted as the internal enemy – the evil that every human must strive to eradicate within themselves.
Nonetheless, the Judaic liturgy insists on remembering this commandment:
“Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19)
Those who read biblical texts literally, contrary to Jewish tradition, have used this long-lapsed commandment to justify acts of mass violence. Many Holocaust and genocide scholars, including Israeli ones, have classified such acts as genocide. Videos show Israeli leaders invoking Amalek as they call for indiscriminate violence, while soldiers chant “Amalek” as they gloat over the destruction and suffering they bring about.
This hatred contradicts fundamental principles of Judaism and exposes how unfree these politicians and soldiers are. They are enslaved by fear, worshiping “the Jewish state” – which, for them and their many fans worldwide, has become the supreme value, overriding all moral considerations. This absolute belief in a segregation-based political structure is truly idolatrous.
And yet, there is hope. The fundamental declaration of Judaism, Shem’a Yisrael, proclaims:
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
This solemn rejection of idolatry is framed in Jewish prayerbooks by references to love: being loved by God and loving God. Once the shackles of Zionist ideology fall away, the centrality of love will become clear to all – leading to a true freedom, freedom rooted in equal rights, that demands no sacrifices of either love or life.
