Beshalach: Struggles

Beshalach: Struggles

Beshalach is filled with struggles.  The Israelites struggle for their liberation,  they flee to the desert, where every need - water, food, water - is a challenge.  They strive with an eternal, matched enemy in a  war that goes on forever. 

The liberation is like the adolescent launch.  The protector and enslaver, the Pharaoh,  sends them off .  It has become too irksome to keep this people, too destructive.  They leave on their expedition, their road trip and they become obviously lost.  When the parent-like Pharaoh hears of their blunder, he sets out to rescue them, and thus recapture them. 

Confronted by the overwhelming forces of the old regime, the young rebels try  to do the impossible- and they succeed! They cross the sea, but the stodgy, heavy chariots cannot .  They are stuck in the mud and destroyed by time, the perpetrator of the inevitable. 

Now, the young nation must find water, potable water.  They fond biter water, but there is a technology to sweeten it, to heal the water.  Gd would be their healer

What about food? They are 5 meals from starvation.  Where are the Ramen noodles? The fast food they ate in Egypt? Where does one get food in the desert?  Wherever  and however Gd provides it.  Quail, Manna, food that is not under human control.  Getting food looks like a human struggle, it is really a gift from Gd.  Say a bracha. 

Water is again a problem.  Moshe looks like the master of water.  Gd tells Moshe to take the staff. the staff that turned the water of Egypt to blood, the staff that seemed to split the waters of the Red seas.  This time, Moshe is told to hit the rock. Water gushes  from a stone

Finally there is Amalek, the eternal enemy.  When the staff is raised, Israel prevails, when it is dropped, by the aging Moshe,  Israel falters, Amalek rises.  Is the magic of the staff the faith and confidence of the soldiers?  Or is there an element of  the power of the staff?

 Or should these ideas be confused?