Torah as Mirror — Week 15 (Beshalach)
There are moments when explanation stops helping.
Not because nothing happened —
but because something already has.
The Song of the Sea: “Blessed We Are”
After the Crossing
The Song of the Sea: “Blessed We Are”
This week’s Torah as Mirror opens with song.
Beshalach holds Shirat HaYam — the Song of the Sea — sung by a people who crossed before they understood, and sang because silence could no longer hold them.
I’m sharing my own voice singing “Blessed We Are” (written by Peia) as the opening of this week’s teaching.
You don’t need to understand first.
Just listen.
Watch the Video: “Blessed We Are” — written by Peia, sung by me, Tim Imbach, Carrie Kwasnik on vocals and guitar, Amelia Brown on drums. At the Shabbat Dinner Club
Opening
There are passages we survive before we understand them.
And when we finally emerge, silence can no longer contain what has passed through us.
That is where this week’s Torah brings us.
I know this place.
There have been times in my own life when something fundamental had shifted inside me — my sense of dignity, my boundaries, my clarity about what I would no longer contort myself around — while the external conditions had not yet changed. I had not returned to what was, but I had not fully arrived either. What stayed with me was not drama, but the quiet loneliness of being on the far side of a crossing, waiting for life to reorganize itself.
The Torah Story
The people have already left Egypt.
They have already been pursued.
They have already entered the sea.
Midrash adds a detail the Torah leaves implicit.
The sea did not part when the people prayed.
It did not part when they cried out.
It parted only when someone entered —
when the water was already rising.
God opened the way.
The people still had to meet it.
Encounter came first.
The opening followed.
By the time the waters close behind them, the Torah does something unexpected.
It does not explain the miracle.
It does not analyze the crossing.
It does not tell us what this means.
It sings.
“Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song…”
Shirat HaYam is not commentary on what happened.
It is what happens next.
The song comes after passage, not before it.
After danger.
After survival.
After the body has crossed something the mind has not yet organized.
Song is what happens when survival loosens its grip and meaning rushes in to fill the space.
Looking Through the Lenses
When we look at this moment through what we know about human experience, the song makes deep sense.
After prolonged threat, the nervous system seeks release.
After sustained vigilance, expression becomes necessary.
Voice returns when there is enough safety for it to return.
Experience comes before meaning.
Integration follows action.
Bodies navigate danger, constraint, and access without idealized assumptions of capacity.
Expression is not ornamental — it is adaptive.
From a sacred psychological perspective, sound becomes a vehicle for coherence.
What could not be spoken finds another way through.
And in Kabbalistic language, shirah arises when constriction loosens —
when life force can move again after being held tight.
The people do not sing because they understand.
They sing because silence has done all it can do.
Personal Resonance
I think about this often, because I sing.
Not to perform.
Not to persuade.
Not to explain myself.
I sing because there are moments when sound is the most faithful form of speech I have.
For me, singing is not an escape from meaning.
It is how meaning settles into the body once words have finished their work.
Turning the Mirror
Torah as Mirror turns this song toward us and asks something gentle and exact.
Where has silence exceeded its capacity?
What in you is ready for expression —
not justification, not defense, not translation?
Not every crossing brings immediate understanding.
But some crossings bring song.
And when song comes, it does not ask permission.
Integration is not permanence.
It is the moment fear loosens enough for truth to move.
I return to this portion whenever I need to remember that clarity does not require completion — that something real can happen even when the structures have not caught up yet.
The Hinge
Week 15 is the hinge.
Not the end of struggle.
Not the arrival of answers.
But the moment when survival stops speaking
and a truer voice passes through.
No covenant can be received until a people knows — somatically, not theoretically —
what it feels like to be held while entering what is next.
Without this song, law would arrive as pressure.
Without this pause, structure would feel like control.
Blessing
Some blessings arrive as words.
Others arrive as sound.
Others arrive as image.
This is the blessing of this week.
Not because everything is resolved,
but because coherence has returned.
If you are in that in-between place
after survival, before form
you are not behind.
The way has already been opened.
You are allowed to enter as you are.
May you recognize the places where silence has done enough.
May you trust the expressions that arrive before explanation.
And may you receive the blessing that is already here.
I see you.
I bless you.
I’d love to know — are you in a “before the song” moment right now, or an “after the song” one?
Artwork — The Sea After the Song (oil pastel)