About once every four years or so, Martin Luther King Jr Day falls on the same weekend as Parshat Beshalach, the part of the Torah where the Israelites are finally allowed to leave Egypt and march across the Red Sea to freedom. Each time this confluence occurs, I find myself reflecting on the fitting intersections of the Jewish and secular calendars and of our Jewish and American sensibilities. Reverend King speaking for the civil rights movement of the sixties, drew on the language of spirituals, yearning for freedom. He used the narrative of the exodus from Egypt as a model and a metaphor for the struggle of his community to overcome discrimination and oppression. This narrative was inspiring not only to the African American community, but also compelling to the wider American public, and to the Jewish community who hold the same narrative fundamental to our identity including, notably, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Heschel famously said of his experience marching with King, “I felt my legs were praying.” I wonder if the Israelites felt that their legs were praying over the course of our parsha. Were they keenly aware, like Heschel, of the spiritual import of their movement? Were they too caught up in the practicalities of leaving to pay attention to their relationship with the divine? In this parsha, the fourth in the book of Exodus, the Israelites are marching into the desert, the unknown. When Moses started petitioning Pharaoh to let them go, his request was not outright freedom. He asked Pharaoh that they be allowed to go into the desert, a walk of three days, to worship God. As the plagues progress, it becomes clearer that once the people leave Egypt, there will be no going back. Pharaoh’s authority takes a hard hit in his stand-off with God. But is the premise that the Israelites are going into the desert to serve God really false? Or is it actually just a part of a bigger story?
In order to fulfil God’s mission, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses had to contend not only with Pharaoh, but with the Israelites own lack of faith. They were not immediately convinced that God had sent Moses to free them, and that it would work. Their default expectation was that they would live as slaves forever. When they do march out of Egypt into the desert, they are taking a leap of faith. Their legs are praying, whether they have the presence of mind to think of it that way or not.
Like modern freedom movements, even this powerfully significant march to freedom does not accomplish the goal entirely. Soon the Israelites find themselves between the sea and the advancing Egyptian army. They are afraid. The faith of their marching feet slips into doubt (and kvetching) as they stall at the shore. According to one midrash, Moses turns to prayer, and God responds that this is no time for praying, that Moses should lift his staff and the people should march through the sea. Perhaps God is saying that it is time again for the people to pray with their feet. If the Israelites, somewhat inclined to shortness of faith, needed courage to march out of Egypt, imagine what it took to walk between the walls of the Red Sea! And yet they did it. No wonder this narrative was so inspiring to African Americans suffering under slavery and opression.
The Exodus narrative is not one that ties up into a short and sweet happy ending. The Israelites march to freedom over and over. They find that the remnants of the slave mentality they had in Egypt are hard to shake. The book of Shemot, Exodus, teaches us that freedom is not the kind of thing that is won once and kept forever. It is something that we must always value, always strive for, maintaining the memory that we were once slaves, and that our creator desires that we be free, and that along the way we will often need to pray with our feet. The need for our legs to pray as we strive for freedom did not end with the Torah. It has returned throughout Jewish history. And it is not uniquely Jewish, but is a story that we can share with others who draw hope and faith from it as well.
Martin Luther King day falls often on the week of parshat Beshalach, also known as shabbat shira, the shabbat of the song, because on reaching the other side of the sea, the Israelites sang and danced their gratitude to God, praying with their voices and their legs both at once. The song they sang echoes through our daily prayers, reminding us of the power of that moment, as the songs of the civil rights movement echoed through the country bolstering courage and faith.
In the year he was born, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday fell in last week’s parsha, the one where the events that catalyzed the march to freedom occur. It seems poetic, almost destined, that he would lead his people to the precipice of a newly won level of freedom. Let us recall that although Moses leads his people out of slavery, there is still freedom and autonomy to be won when, at the end of the Torah, Moses must give over his leadership to the next generation.
As we head into this shabbat of song and of marching, let us remember the slavery and oppression we have left behind, the freedoms hard won and the celebrations they merited. Let us remember that we must always be striving for liberty and justice in the world; that our collective memory demands it of us. Let us remember to raise our voices, link our arms, and march in step into the desert to serve God. Let us remember that in every generation we must find ourselves marching again, and still, to freedom.