"Dad, Did Moses Really Part the Red Sea?"

A Deep Dive into Miracles

Earlier this week, I was minding my own business — by which I mean serving my daughters pancakes, pouring their syrup, refilling their waters, grilling them extra slices of turkey bacon, effectively acting as both cook and waiter for a very small diner, because that’s what being a father means — so minding my own business, when my ten-year-old, Naomi, asked me: “Dad, did Moses really part the Red Sea?”

It’s one of those moments when you look around for the adult in the room, and realize that it’s you.

I told a non-Jewish friend about this, and she suggested this moment was the Jewish equivalent of when kids ask their parents, “Is Santa Claus real?”

Look, I know what she means. Jews don’t have that moment of Santa disillusionment, because we typically don’t have Santa in the first place, so there’s no illusion to lose. Indeed, I wonder if some of the ingrained skepticism often associated with the Jewish character comes from being on the playground, hearing the other kids talk excitedly about this magic elf in a red suit who comes down the chimney with presents, and thinking, Are these people serious with this?

It’s one of those moments when you look around for the adult in the room, and realize it’s you.

But ultimately, I think the moment I faced at the breakfast table was pretty different from a kid asking about Santa. First, just to be clear — and I imagine all my readers are old enough to acknowledge this — Santa is not real. Plus, Santa doesn’t have anything to do with Christianity, or Jesus. He doesn’t have any real religious significance.

Moses? Different story.

Exodus, Moses, the parting of the sea — that’s in the Torah.

My daughter hadn’t sniffed out some playful fabrication of childhood, on a level with the costumed actor at the birthday party claiming to be a real Disney princess.

Whether she knew it or not, my daughter was asking a deep question about the nature of Jewish belief in miraculous events.

I think we all know the image my daughter had in mind when she asked me her question: Moses, standing at the banks of a vast sea, raising an arm and causing the water to divide in an instant, creating a dry pathway for the Israelites to make their crossing.

But as is often the case, the story that exists in the popular imagination is not the same as the one told in the Hebrew Bible.

Here is the relevant passage from Exodus, 14:21:

Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split…

So, as it turns out — no, Moses did not part the sea. The Lord parted the sea, by way of a strong east wind. Also, the water did not divide on the spot. The wind blew “all night,” suggesting a more incremental change in the sea.

And about that sea. Notice how the passage never says that it was the Red Sea that parted. That idea is actually the legacy of a Greek mistranslation of a Hebrew phrase, which refers to the body of water as a “Sea of Reeds.” Scholars debate which body of water this indicates, but the text seems to suggest more of a reedy marsh than a vast ocean.

So we have a strong wind blowing for hours over a reedy body of water.

I’m not trying to downplay the magnitude of what occurred. I’m just saying that, looking closely at the text, we get the impression that this was not some abrupt reordering of the properties of water and wind and gravity.

Exodus describes a miracle that was broadly consistent with the usual workings of nature.

We modern people — rational, materialist, data-driven — often assume we are the first ones to come across an account of a miracle in the Hebrew Bible and wonder how it could have happened.

But in fact, Jewish scholars and sages have been pondering the nature of miracles for millennia.

One strand of Jewish thinking is that miracles are not — as a close reading of Exodus 14:21 indicates — characterized by God altering or suspending the laws of the natural world.

Rather, miracles represent the customary workings of nature, only in ways and at times that God ordains. Walls of water don’t suddenly rise out of nowhere. Instead, a strong wind, blowing for a long time, creates a path on which the Israelites can cross. God’s actions remain in harmony with the regular rules of creation.

We’ve been discussing the parting of the sea in literal terms, but in Jewish tradition, Torah can be read in multiple ways — literally, yes, but also figuratively, poetically. These readings are not viewed as contradictory. Rather, meaning grows, accumulates.

I’ve read one account that treats the parting of the sea as a kind of pulling back of the veil of the physical world to reveal the divine presence.

I think that’s a useful way to understand the Jewish view of miracles, too: God’s presence is expressed within the ordinary occurrences that surround us.

All of which, I admit, would be a lot to explain to a ten-year-old over breakfast.

What I told my daughter is what I believe: that if you look around you, if you look with full attention, you can see wondrous events every day. Most of these don’t come with a figure like Moses, raising his arm to remind us, “Hey! People! This is a miracle!”

But that doesn’t mean daily events lack divinity — or, to use another word, holiness.

Eating breakfast with loved ones every morning — doesn’t that have its own kind of holiness?

So, once and for all did, Moses part the Red Sea?

No, and no one ever said he did.

But on the other hand — the world is a pretty miraculous place.