A.
In this week’s parasha, the story of the Exodus reaches its dramatic climax as the mighty Egyptian army meets destruction in Yam Suf. The scene is familiar enough: The multitude of men and women of all ages, encumbered with children and all their worldly possessions, cower in terror-stricken panic as they watch the headlong rush of every vehicle in Egypt which would roll, all bearing maddened soldiers bent on their liquidation.
Then Moshe’s voice rings out, stilling their frightened protests: אל תיראו התיצבו וראו את ישועת ד' אשר יעשה לכם היום כי אשר ראיתם את מצרים היום לא תסיפו לראתם עוד עד עולם: (“Fear not, position yourselves and see Ha-Shem’s salvation which He will do for you today; for as you have seen Egypt today you will not continue to see them forever more”; XIV, 14). And, indeed: וירא ישראל את מצרים מת על שפת הים: וירא ישראל את היד הגדלה אשר עשה ד' במצרים וייראו העם את ד' ויאמינו בד' וכמשה עשדו: (“And Israel saw Egypt dead at the seashore. And Israel saw the great hand [ha-yad ha-gëdola] which Ha-Shem made for them through Egypt; and the people feared Ha-Shem, and they believed in Ha-Shem and in Moshe His servant”; ibid., 30-31).
Two things are striking about the above passages: The first is the interplay between the two rather similar verbs, yara’ (“fear”) and ra’a (“see”). A bit of reflection reveals that they appear related, in that both share a primal core réysh-alef, which in the first instance is augmented by the radical prefix yud and in the second instance by suffixation of silent hé, i.e., expressed as a vowel. The implications of this relationship are worth exploring.
The second is the odd expression, “the great hand” which Ha-Shem made for them through the medium of Egypt’s downfall. Whatever does that mean?
B.
Let us deal with the second first; the Maharal mi-Prag sheds light on it in one of his classic works (גבורות ד' פנ"ח).
He begins by quoting a midrash familiar to anyone who attends the Passover séder: רבי יוסי אומר מנין אתה אומר שלקו המצרים עשר מכות ועל הים חמשים מכות? במצרים מה הוא אומר "ויאמרו החרטמים אל פרעה אצבע אלקים היא" ועל הים מה הוא אומר "וירא ישראל את היד הגדלה אשר עשה ד'" וכו' כמה לקו באצבע עשר מכות ועל הים לקו חמשים מכות (“Rabbi Yossi says, 'Whence do you say that the Egyptians suffered 10 blows [makkoth] and at the sea 50 makkoth? Concerning Egypt, what does it say: “And the hartummim said to Pharaoh, 'It is the finger of G-d’ [VIII, 15]," and at the sea what does it say: "And Israel saw the great hand which Ha-Shem made...."; how much were they afflicted by the finger? Ten makkoth, and at the sea they were afflicted 50 makkoth'”; הגדה של פסח). For Rabbi Yossi it appears to be a simple multiplication problem: Ten makkoth per finger times five fingers yields 50 makkoth.
The Maharal then goes on to note that, although etzba‘ “finger,” occurs but once in the narrative, the word yad is used repeatedly, e.g., in Exodus III, 2; VII, 5; and IX, 3 (aside from our passage), distinguishing our passage from all the foregoing by noting that only in our instance does yad occur with definite prefix ha-, ויראה שדקדקו הם מלשון היד כו' דמשמע כל היד (“And it may be seen that [Hazal] deduced from the expression ‘ha-yad’... that it connotes the entire hand”). Whereas in the case of each makka in Egypt proper they understood שהמכה עשה באצבע ויקרא החלק בשם הכל (“that He did the makka with an etzba‘ and called the part by the name of the whole”); though G-d moved His entire hand, as it were, to deal each blow to the Egyptians, the blow itself was done with the flick of a finger, as it were. This was not the case at Yam Suf.
Why? כי המכות במצרים לא היו באים לאבד את מצרים בכלל לכך לא היו המכות במצרים רק פרטים ולא באו דרך כללות עד שעל הים אז רצה להביא הקדוש ברוך הוא על מצרים מכה כוללת כי רצה להעניש מצרים במה שעשו לישראל (“For the makkoth in Egypt [proper] were not coming to wipe out Egypt in totality; therefore, the makkoth were but individual ones, and did not come by way of a collective generality, until at the sea; then the Holy One, Blessed is He wished to bring upon the Egyptians a collective makka, for He wished to punish Egypt because of what they had done to Israel”).
The Maharal then explains how it was that Israel actually saw this apparition which the Torah terms ha-yad ha-gëdola, whilst they observed only the effect of the etzba‘ in the earlier series, not the etzba‘ itself as due to the shëlémuth, “perfection,” inherent in the number five. He elucidates this shëlémuth through the metaphor of geometry.
The number one, he tells us, has no shëlémuth because it represents a single point, and therefore has no hithpashtuth, no dimensionality at all. Two is little better, for it connotes two points laid side by side. Regardless of their direction, position, or distance, the only figure which can be drawn between two points is a line, which has dimensionality along its length alone, With four points properly laid out, though, it is possible to construct two sides of a square and since it is a square, the entire area of the figure can be calculated along both its length and its breadth.
But the four points must be properly laid out, that is, the lines must be integrated and unified so as to make those measurements possible: רק על ידי אמצעי שהוא בתוכם שהוא אינו צד בפני עצמו והוא החמשי והוא אחדות השטח (“only by means of a mid-point which is inside them and a side in and of itself, and this is the fifth [point, which makes possible] the unity of the area”).
The peculiar sanctity inherent in such an integrated and unified field, he adds, is illustrated by the mishna: מנין לחמשה שישבו ועוסקים בתורה ששכינה ביניהם? תלמוד לומר "ואגדתו על ארץ יסדה" וגו' (“Whence [do we learn] for five men who sat down and are engaged in Torah, that the Shëchinah is amongst them? The teaching is to say, ‘He has founded His band [aguddatho] upon earth’ [Amos IX, 6]”; אבות פ"ג מ"ו בגירסא שהניא רבינו כאן). An agudda is not some random grouping of things thrown together, but rather one built around some principle of organisation, as evidenced by other uses of the root, e.g. iggéd, “bind together, join, unite.” To my mind, this concept can be related to DeBroglie’s matter waves, in which a series of parameters – wavelength, amplitude, magnitude, frequency, and the like – are unified by the wave-form to create a unique entity which becomes susceptible to human perception. The Maharal’s integrated field, then, is the metaphysical origin of the matter wave.
With this in mind, the Maharal reconsiders the numbers; Rabbi Yossi’s calculation presupposes ten makkoth associated with each etzba‘, such that the five of them together result in 50; what, exactly, does that mean?
The Maharal reminds us that we are resident in the world of teva‘, “nature”, and that therefore any phenomenon which we perceive as contra naturam must have its origins in the supernal realm which generated and maintains ours, אשר משם באים הנסים כו' ולעולם תמצא כי הדבר שהוא קדוש ונבדל לגמרי הוא העשירי, כי העשירי תמיד קודש לד', והענין הזה שהעשירי יוא קודש אין כאן מקומו לבאר. ומפני כך כאשר הביא השם יתברך הנסים מן העולם הקדוש הנבדל אל עולם טבע החמרי היו עשר כי מדריגת עולם הנבדל שהיא נבדל מן עולם הטבע נחשב עשר נגד עולם הזה וגו' (“since thence come the miracles... and you will always find that the thing which is holy and utterly set apart is the 10th, for the 10th [‘asiri] is always sacred to Ha-Shem. And here is not the place to elucidate this concept that the 10th is sacred. For this reason, when Ha-Shem brought the miracles from the holy world which is set apart [‘olam ha-nivdal] to the world of material nature, they were 10, for the level by which the ‘olam ha-nivdal, is nivdal from the world of teva‘, is considered 10....”).
In the interests of space let us take the Maharal’s words for true without further comment, save to note the inherent sanctity with which the Torah invests the ma‘sér, the 10th part of all Israel’s crops, flocks, herds, and wealth, and also the Ten Sëfiroth through which metaphysical energy sustains our world (cf., most recently, A”z Yashir, Parashath Shëmoth, 5772).
D.
In consideration of our first question, the Birkath Tov notes in the name of his father, founder of the dynasty of Ozherov, Rabbi Leibush ha-Gadol זצוק"ל that Moshe, perceiving the palpable yir’a (“fear”) as Israel beheld the onrushing Egyptians, rearranged the letters to change the equation and bring about rë’iya, “seeing, perception.”
As I noted at the outset, the two words appear to share a primal root which (if it occurred in the Biblical corpus, which it does not) would be réysh-vav-alef. However, my ongoing research into the roots of the Holy Language seems to show that the secondary root derived from the primal by suffixing silent hé is generally closest to the primal meaning (for example, the root gimmel-vav-lamed, which connotes movement, particularly in a rolling, cyclic manner cf., e.g., Psalm XXII, 9; Proverbs XVI, 3), yields gala, “roll off, move away”). Our primal root, therefore, would seem to have something to do with per-ception.
The radical prefix yud, on the other hand, imparts directionality to the primal meaning; tzadi-vav-alef means “extrude, excrete”; yud-tzadi-alef means “exit, leave, go out.”
Yir’a runs the semantic gamut from “fear” through “wariness” to “awe” and even “reverence.”Fixation on any phenomenon or entity which gains one’s attention, such that one’s perception is directed to it, can generate all of these emotions, even when the entity is not necessarily all that awe-inspiring to begin with; after all, as has been noted before in these pages, the Egyptians conceived the ram, the male sheep, as the avatar of their creator god.
After 210 years of involvement in the civilisation of the Nile (whose ruined buildings inspire awe to this day), the last 80 of them in servile bondage to the Egyptians, had instilled all of them in Israel; the sight of that massive, army charging at them full tilt brought them all to the fore.
Al tir’u, barked Moshe -- “Fear not” – hithyatzvu u-r’u eth yëshu‘ath Ha-Shem – “Position yourselves and see Ha-Shem’s salvation.” He had to change their perception to break the spell; they had to look elsewhere. Va-yar’ Yisra’él eth ha-yad ha-gëdola – “And Israel saw the great hand” – Va-yir’u ha-‘am eth Ha-Shem – ‘and the people feared Ha-Shem.”
Rearranging the letters of the Holy Language had changed the direction of their percep-tion, with all of the accompanying emotions. Ki asher rë’ithem eth Mitzrayim ha-yom lo’ thosifu li-r’otham ‘od ‘ad ‘olam (“For as you have seen Egypt today, you will not continue to see them, ever more.”
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