The Faith of Our Fathers Holds Firm

1“This is my God and I will glorify Him, the God of my father and I will exalt Him.”¹ Rashi explains: “‘The God of my father’: I am not the beginning of the holiness. Rather, the holiness is established and abides with me, and His Godliness has been upon me since the days of my fathers.” But what does holiness have to do with the Song? We must also ask a second question. Bnei Yisrael had reached the level of “This is my God,” seeing the revelation of Hashem with their own senses. As Chazal expounded, “A maidservant at the sea saw what Yechezkel ben Buzi did not see.”² Why, then, did they say “it is established for me since the days of my fathers”? They had been granted this vision themselves!

2Further on it is written, “Hashem said to Moshe, ‘Behold, I will rain down for you bread from the heavens, and the people shall go out and gather …’”³ My holy great-grandfather, zy"a, in his holy sefer Divrei Binah, drew attention to the words “I will rain down.”⁴ Why does the verse not say “Behold, I am giving you bread,” or something like it?

3My holy father and teacher, zt"l, said in the name of the holy Rebbe R' Yechezkel of Kuzmir, zt"l, that the verse “And Bnei Yisrael were going out with an uplifted hand”⁵ means that they raised their hands upward. My holy father explained R' Yechezkel's words. A person must know a great principle: everything he does and accomplishes, in spiritual matters or in physical ones, comes entirely from Hashem's power. It is in the spirit of the verse “You shall know this day and take it to your heart that Hashem is God in the heavens above and on the earth below; there is none other.”⁶ A person must recognize and know that everything, both “in the heavens above,” the spiritual matters that belong to heaven, and “on the earth below,” the physical ones, comes from His power: “that Hashem is God; there is none other.” This is the meaning of “Bnei Yisrael were going out with an uplifted hand”: with their hands raised and lifted toward heaven. In everything they did, they recognized and knew that nothing came by human power; it all came from the power of Hashem, blessed be He. Those are his holy words.

4To explain all this, we may say the following. The holy Shelah writes that there are two paths to faith in Hashem.⁷ One comes through reflection, as the verse says, “Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these.”⁸ A person investigates and reflects until he grasps that the palace has a master, as Avraham Avinu did.⁹ The second is faith handed down to us by our fathers, generation after generation, as the verse says, “Know the God of your father and serve Him.”¹⁰ This faith is simple and wholehearted, without investigation.

5It is well known that whenever my holy father spoke about simple faith, he would quote the pious R' Yosef Yaavetz. R' Yaavetz related that in the days of the Spanish exile, when the trials came, it was the simple people, whose faith was simple, who held firm. The great scholars, highly accomplished in wisdom, who had reached faith through their own investigation, did not hold on to it. [These are his words in his sefer Ohr HaChaim:¹¹ “To you, O men, I call. I am of the exile of Spain, we who were driven out because of our many and mighty sins. Most of those who prided themselves on wisdom, almost all of them, exchanged their Glory on the bitter day, while the women and the unlearned gave over their bodies and their wealth for the sanctification of their Creator.”¹²] We see from this that wholehearted faith in the tradition of the fathers brings a holiness that lets a person withstand a trial. The reason is simple. Faith held wholeheartedly, by tradition, without resting on reason and understanding, cannot be shaken by questions, and so a person stands firm in the trial.

6aOn this basis we may answer our second question. When Bnei Yisrael stood at the sea and such great miracles were done for them, they reflected on all those miracles. Through that reflection they grasped and saw Hashem's glory revealed in an overwhelming way, on the level of “This is my God.” This is faith that comes through investigation. But for the generations to come it is better for faith to rest on the tradition of the fathers, so that they do not stumble in times of trial. So even then, when they had attained faith of the kind “Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these,” they did not want to rely on that faith alone. Instead they stood and proclaimed, “the God of my father.” They meant: although we are now on the level of “This is my God,” where I point with a finger and see Him, as it were, we still cleave to the faith of the fathers, so as to hand that faith on to the generations.

6bSo they walked both paths. They had indeed attained faith through reflection, but they wanted to keep walking with “the God of my father and I will exalt Him” as well. As Rashi explained, the holiness is established and abides with me from my fathers. That is, the holiness of this faith is held firmly in our hands, and it will bring holiness upon us and upon the generations after us. Through it they will be able to withstand every trial until Moshiach comes. For, as is known, the generation of “the footsteps of Moshiach,” the era just before the redemption, will be a time of concealment within concealment, as is taught in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, zt"l.

7[¹³This explains the Midrash: “Because of the faith with which Avraham believed in the Holy One, blessed be He, as it says, ‘And he believed in Hashem,’ Israel was privileged to sing the song at the sea, as it says, ‘Then Moshe sang.’ This is ‘Tashuri from the peak of Amanah.’”¹⁴ Why was the Song granted in Avraham's merit in particular? We may say as follows. It is written, “He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And he believed in Hashem, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”¹⁵ This is difficult: what is new in Avraham Avinu believing Hashem's promise? The meaning is this. After everything Avraham Avinu had grasped about faith, he refused to rely on what he had grasped, and believed in Hashem with simple faith. This is hinted in Hashem's words to him, “So shall your offspring be”: Hashem promised him that his offspring's faith, too, would follow this path of simple faith. And in the merit of this faith Israel was privileged to sing the Song, as the Midrash said.]

8This lets us explain why this Shabbos is called Shabbos Shirah, the Shabbos of Song. We do not find this with other Shabbosos on which important portions are read; Parshas Yisro, for example, is not called “the Shabbos of the Receiving of the Torah.” This suggests that Shabbos has a connection with the Song. According to what we have said, the Song of the Sea teaches us simple faith in Hashem in every situation. And Shabbos, too, is about faith: “For in six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.”¹⁶ So we learn faith in Hashem from Shabbos as well. That is why it is called Shabbos Shirah: Shabbos and the Song are two ways that can lead a person to faith.

9This also lets us answer the question the Divrei Binah raised: why does the passage of the manna open with the words “Behold, I will rain down for you bread from the heavens”? It is to teach that the bread the Holy One, blessed be He, gives us comes wondrously, through Him. As Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, write, the word “faith” in a verse of Yeshayahu refers to Seder Zera'im, the order of the Mishnah that deals with farming, because a farmer believes in the Life of the worlds and sows.¹⁷ For only Hashem makes the grain grow and sprout, bringing something out of nothing. That is why the verse here says “I will rain down.” When rain falls for the needs of plants, everyone recognizes that it comes only from Heaven, and that nothing flesh and blood can do will help bring it. In the same way we must believe that the bread we have also comes down from Heaven, like the rain, which comes from Hashem's hand alone.

10We pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that in the merit of the fathers we too be granted the faith of the fathers, in the spirit of “the holiness and the faith are established for me since the days of my fathers,” remembering how my holy father always spoke about simple faith. May Hashem plant love and fear of His Name in our hearts, so that we can pass through all the trials of the days of Moshiach and, in the merit of faith, see the coming of the righteous Redeemer. Amen, may it be His will.