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Feeling the Yam Suf Once More!

There’s no doubt about it: The “Reed Sea” is truly impressive, even as high up as the Israeli port city of Eilat. (You might recall that the outside world calls it the “Red Sea,” but “Reed Sea” is a more faithful rendition of “Yam Suf.”)

Actually, Eilat is at the northern terminus of the Mifratz Eilat—or, as most maps call it, the Gulf of Aqaba (so named after the Jordanian city of Aqaba, basically the site of ancient Etzion Gever, which sits across the mifratz from Eilat).

About three years ago, I wanted to visit the “Reed Sea” again after a 47-year hiatus, for I was but a bachur when I last witnessed it. Furthermore, I knew that Pesach was less than three months away, and I longed to feel the expansiveness of the Yam Suf as perhaps our forefathers had. Indeed, the Yam Suf that impinges on Eilat—a city which hosts at least one yeshivah today, as well as a frum community under the aegis of Harav Hecht—is merely the Eastern Branch of the Yam Suf (Yam Suf Hamizrachi). The other side of the Sinai Peninsula is bordered by the Western Branch of the Reed Sea (Yam Suf Hama’aravi). It is on the western shore of the Western Branch where we entered the Yam Suf. Still in all, the Reed Sea is the Reed Sea, and just to realize that in a certain place in its long expanse our forebears entered upon its seabed, Egyptian forces in hot pursuit, was enough to send shivers down my spine.^[1]<
Really, everything about the Yam Suf, when considered properly, is spine-tingling. A case in point: I was fortunate to have witnessed the undersea corals that literally populate the seabed of the Yam Suf—and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the pioneering work that was done within the last twenty-five years of discovering the purported coral-encrusted “remains” of the wagon wheels of the ancient Mitzriyim who were drowned in Keriyas Yam Suf. (I actually purchased a CD detailing this discovery from the Living Torah Museum in the Catskills about five years ago.) Again, this discovery was made off the shores of the Yam Suf Hama’aravi—but what of it! Since the Yam Suf in its entirety is anyway shaped like a huge letter Y, one can easily assert that everything is connected.

Everything is connected? Indeed it is. And that is precisely the point of this week’s pre-Pesach article.

Let’s face it: There is no experience in the whole wide world that matches the intensity of a Pesach seder. Perhaps the reason for this is that on the nights of Pesach we don’t just act as if we were leaving Mitzrayim: we really are leaving it. Harav E. E. Dessler points out that time does not revolve around man; instead man moves (as though through a metaphysical dimension above the three to which we are accustomed) to stations which exist in a universe apart from the mundane.^[2] Accordingly, when we arrive at the tachanah (station) of Pesach, we really are preparing to leave Mitzrayim once again—not just “as if we were preparing.” The same, of course, could be said about our experience one week later at Keriyas Yam Suf: On Shevi’i Shel Pesach, we’re back again at the Yam Suf, the Divinely-sent Pillar of Cloud protecting us from our Egyptian enemies who have surrounded us on all sides.

Yes, we’re back. Back at the Yam Suf once again. No sir, this is no psychodrama, no didactic tool. We’re back all right—but this time with feeling!

Questions or comments? I may be reached at hillyarm@yeshivanet.com. Chag kasher v’sameach, my dear Marine Park readers. See you all by the Yam Suf!

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1. I am deeply indebted to the scholarly work of Harav Dan Schwartz and his kunteres mappos, entitled Eileh Mas’ei. Harav Schwartz avers that we travelled in an arc (like a rainbow) in the midst of the dried-up sea and exited the Yam Suf on the very same side that we had entered. ↑

2. See Michtav Me’Eliyahu, Volume II, “Pesach” (under the heading “Shoresh Nitzchiyus Yisrael”), p.21. Harav Dessler attributes this thought to Harav Tzvi Hirsch Broyde of Kelm. I am also indebted to Rabbi Leibel Silverstein, who informed me that the Kiddushas Leivi also expounds upon this thought. ↑