Beshalach, When He Sent Them Out

✦  All insights are drawn from articles by Karen Berg and Rav Berg published by the Kabbalah Centre.

Freed from Egypt, the Israelites find themselves trapped: the sea in front of them, Pharaoh's army behind them. They cry out, and the Creator answers Moshe directly: "Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward" (Shemot 14:15). The Kabbalah Centre's teaching "The Power of Self-Worth" points to a detail easy to miss: before the water opened, a man named Nachshon didn't wait for anyone else to decide. He walked into the sea with total certainty, with no physical proof yet that the ground would hold. The sea didn't split so people could walk in. People walked in, and that's when the sea split.

Rav Berg taught this same idea from his own life. In 2004, he suffered a near-fatal stroke. Waking from the coma, his first thought was a test: "Will I break down and say, 'God get me out of this,' or am I going to say, 'I'm going to get myself out of this?'" Months later, against all medical logic, he was teaching again. In a separate teaching, "Connecting To Mind Over Matter," Rav Berg says the same tool is available to all of us through the 72 Names revealed in this very portion (Shemot 14:19–21): "When we are of the consciousness of certainty, we can get rid of doubt."

Once they cross the sea, the Israelites don't only celebrate, they sing. Moshe and the people sing the Song of the Sea (Shemot 15:1); Miriam takes a timbrel and leads the women, separately, in song and dance (Shemot 15:20–21). Karen Berg, in "A New Chapter," teaches that this song was about more than a military victory: "They sang and rejoiced for the people they had now become." She goes further: "What drowned in the sea was not the Egyptians, but the old versions of the Israelites", their addictions, fears, and the walls around their hearts. The sea worked like a womb, a new consciousness was born, and the song is what confirmed the birth.

Singing, here, isn't only an emotional reaction to good news, it's a spiritual tool that seals a transformation already underway. Karen Berg's instruction fits the moment exactly: "Let it all go. You are a new person."

But the portion doesn't end on the spiritual high. After the sea, after the song, after the bitter water sweetened at Marah, after manna and quail fell from heaven, Amalek attacks (Shemot 17:8). Joshua leads the fight on the ground, while Moshe stands on the hilltop with his hands raised, Aharon and Hur hold his arms up when they grow tired (Shemot 17:12). The text is direct: "when Moshe held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed" (Shemot 17:11). Rav Berg teaches, in "Connecting to Certainty," that Amalek is a code, not only a nation, the letters of amalek carry the same numerical value as safek, the Hebrew word for doubt. "Amalek is merely a metaphor for doubt and uncertainty," he writes. This is the very same generation that had just seen the sea split and manna fall from heaven, and still complained days later. The Opponent doesn't need new evidence to show up: it shows up especially right after the miracle, right when we feel most secure. Keeping the hands raised means keeping our consciousness connected to certainty even after the spiritual high has already passed, because that is exactly the gap where the Opponent gets louder.

1 · Phrases for Contemplation

2 · Takeaways

3 · Action Plan · 7 Days