Netvort Beshalach 5773:        The Staff of Life

By Rabbi Joshua (inclinationally known as the Hoffer) Hoffman

!!!!! With thanks to the Almighty, beginning our sixteenth year!!!!!

            During World War II there was a joke going around anti-Nazi circles, in which Hitler ym”s is standing at the English Channel, wondering how his troops can pass over and invade England.  Suddenly, Moshe appears, and tells him that it is too bad that he had been so cruel to the Jewish people, because otherwise I could have helped you. When we were in Egypt I had a special staff given to me by God, and when we were in a bind, I would lift it and we would be saved. For example, when the Egyptians were chasing us into the sea, I lifted this staff, the seas split, and we walked right through. Hitler ym”s then grabs Moshe by the neck and says “Where’s that staff?”, whereupon Moshe answers, “It’s in the British Museum.”

            Of course, the staff Moshe used had more significance than a mere museum piece.  The Rabbis tell us that the abbreviations for the plagues were etched into the staff, indicating that it was an instrument for performing miracles. Rav Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, in his Kedushas Levi, says that the Hebrew word for staff – mateh – comes from the word “lehatos,” to bend, indicating that God bends nature when he sees fit. Rav Mordechai Gifter zt”l, in his Pirkei Torah, offers a more nuanced approach, adding an additional message conveyed by that staff. 

            Rav Gifter zt”l cites the verse in Parshas Beshalach which says that after the sea split and the Jewish people passed through, God told Moshe to stretch his hand over the sea so that its waters come back over the Egyptians (Shemos 14:26). Why asks Rav Gifter, was there a need for Moshe to stretch out his hand? Once the Jews crossed over and there was no longer a need for a miracle, the waters would naturally return to their place. Rather, he says, Moshe, by stretching out his hand, was indicating that nature itself is a miracle and without God’s active intervention, it will not function. Once the miracle of the splitting of the sea occurred it would be a miracle for it to return to its former place, and that could only happen through God’s will. 

            Even though the people had observed many miracles already, initiated by Moshe stretching out the staff on which the plagues were etched, their beliefs had to go a step further, and encompass the notion that nature itself is a miracle. In order to inculcate this belief within them, they had to physically witness this truth. That is why Moshe needed to stretch his hand, with the staff in it, over the sea even after it split. 

            An analogy for the need to constantly witness God’s mastery over nature as well as the additional notion that nature itself is a miracle can be brought from the laws of Shabbos.  A person who uses a cane to walk is allowed to walk with it in a public thoroughfare on Shabbos if he cannot walk at all without it. The reasoning behind this law is that if he cannot walk without it, it becomes part of his body, a kind of third leg. The continual use of the staff, or cane, similarly demonstrated God’s relationship to such an extent that it inculcated this belief within the people to the extent that it became part of them, teaching them of the wonders and miracles that God performs for us each day, as articulated in the thrice-daily prayer of the Shemoneh Esreh.