Bashalach: Splitting

The centerpiece of this very complex parsha is the splitting of the sea.  This was the great, public miracle that finally liberated the Israelites by drowning the enemy army and put a body of water between the newly free  Hebrews and the treacherous Egyptians. The splitting of the sea marked the new era, an irreversible process, a singularity had occurred. Now there was no way back. 

Belief in this story is an Orthodox Jewish article of faith.  The song of the sea is repeated in the morning service seven days per week.  Gd made a miracles so great that it was convincing to all who heard about it.  Now, on our times, it is reproduced as a movie illusion.  Now, in the modern era, we either struggle to harmonize it with our understanding of physical laws or struggle with its improbability ( at least as portrayed by Cecil B DeMille)  

There are other splittings that have had enormous impact. They violate the senses, but the scientific religion of our time makes them articles of faith. 

The splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen was a miracle (but a reproducible miracle)  that revolutionized the understanding of the world.  The discovery that electricity, the wonder energy that we all take for granted ( who granted it to us? Volta,  Faraday, Tesla)  could interact with water and a separate this liquid into two gases, twice as much hydrogen as oxygen, reformulated the understanding of the composition of the world.  Water was no longer an element ( it had been for 3000 years), it was a compound.  Gases could chemically combine to make this remarkable liquid. 

The splitting of the atom meant that the most fundamental particle of identity  could be subdivided. What had been thought of as one now had parts, it was less of a one.  In addition, this fission, this parting  process, released enormous energy.  That energy now endangers the world and provides energy without releasing greenhouse gases.  This process of splitting the atom has its own priesthood and temples ... and demons

The splitting of DNA , at first with restriction enzymes and now with Crispr/Cas9, has let humans edit the stuff of life. Now we share in evolution, can humanize the products of animal immune systems, fix what nature has broken and, much more often, break what nature has made nearly perfect. 

All of these splittings are wonderous and dangerous. 

May their recollection bring us to wisdom and unity.