עזי וזמרת יה ויהי לי לישועה
The Lord is my strength and my song. The Lord has become my salvation.
(Exodus 15:2)
This line is part of the beautiful song that unfurls from the Israelites as they stand at the shore of the Red Sea, having been redeemed from the chasing Egyptians.
Strength, song, and salvation: in what follows, we will consider the relationship between these experiences.
Oz: Strength:
What strength is displayed at the sea? The strength at the sea is the divine warrior strength to put an end to the chasing Egyptians.
The essence of what happens here is that the Israelites are freed from their final bonds to Egypt. Even though they have left Egypt, they still carry with them a lot of baggage from their time there, fear and trauma written into their nervous systems and every cell of their bodies, centuries of intergenerational trauma. The Israelites cannot move forward and become who they can become, move into their new status, until they have left some of this behind.
Ana bekoah gedulat yeminkha, tatir tzerurah. It takes the great power of Your right arm, God, to unbind the bound up ones, and that is what is transpiring here, a disentangling from the Egyptian forces not just outside the Israelites but also inside them, all the baggage and trauma and burdens that remain in them, that keep them bound up and unable to be free, unable to sing the song of God that wants to pour out of them.
What Stops You From Singing?
What stops you from singing your zimrat yah, your divine song, the song that is written into your soul, the song you were born to sing? What voices from your past, legacy burdens, false beliefs, traumas, fears and compulsions — like the chasing Egyptians — hold you back singing from this song?
Like Shedding Dead Skin:
Maybe think of it as shedding dead skin. A snake molts and sheds its skin periodically in order to allow for growth and a new skin to emerge. We humans are constantly shedding dead skin, so much so that about every 28 days we have entirely new skin. So that is what is happening here. The Israelites are standing on the shore and they see the dead Egyptians washed up there. This is the dead skin they have to shed in order to enter a new skin, a new identity, in order to sing a new song.
What dead skin do you need to shed? The Egyptians are described as drowning in the sea like lead, heavy in their armor and their chariots. What is weighing you down like armor, making it hard to move? What dead weight have you been carrying around, maybe for a long time, that is really not serving you? Can you imagine taking it off like a piece of clothing, like a snake sheds its skin, taking it off and leaving it there on the shore as you move on, a little lighter?
Like Pruning a Tree
Or maybe it is more like pruning a tree. Here is the thing. That second word – zimrah – it means song as in zemer or mizmor shir or kle zemer, otherwise known as klezmer. But it also means “pruning.” One of the 39 melachot, the 39 work activities that are prohibited on shabbat, is zomer, the same root, and it means to prune, to cut down dead branches from a tree in order to keep the tree healthy and thriving. This activity is prohibited on shabbat precisely because it is one of the basic life activities that is creative, that actually promotes growth. To prune a tree is to cut off parts of the tree that are dead or diseased in order to free up the tree’s resources to be used to support new growth, and in order to open up space for the sun to reach more branches so the tree can thrive.
Our internal landscape is like a tree with a few branches that are dead or not so healthy but have remained stuck in the system, continuing to tax and crowd our inner world. Can you imagine doing the work of zimrah inside you, of pruning, not cutting off anything that is part of your essence, just the dead outer branches that are weighing you down, sapping your energy and preventing new growth? This is gentle discerning work. We can take it very slow, trying on the possibility of cutting off even a tiny amount, getting a glimpse of what it might feel like to release it and create some more spaciousness inside, to sense the new air and energy that would be freed up.
This work is not easy. Even if the skin we are shedding or the branches we are cutting off, like the Egyptians, even if they have caused us a tremendous amount of pain, still, there is fear and uncertainty, grief and loss and even pain in the removal. In the period between the old skin and the new skin we are left vulnerable. The Israelites took 40 years to truly recover from this letting go of Egypt and moving into their new skin. It is slow patient work.
Ozi: My Strength: Strength To Show Up For Myself
It takes strength to do this kind of pruning, release and renewal. It is the strength of God that runs through us and helps us do this difficult task, to be a fierce warrior for our own healing. Ozi, “my strength,” perhaps also means strength for my own sake, strength to show up for myself in this way, to be as steadfast as a tree rooted in the ground, to be that committed to our own well being, to our own growth, to stand in that commitment with the fierceness of a warrior, even if it takes everything we have (and it does) to do this work, to release the weight of the past, to untangle and unbind the bound up ones and to turn towards a new song.
Zimrat Yah: My Soul’s Divine Song Emerges
And maybe as we create more space inside, we can begin to sense the song that wants to emerge, zimrat yah, a song of God. Maybe you can become, through this pruning, a kli zemer, an instrument upon which God plays, your unique song flowing through you like the waves of the Red Sea or like the breeze that blows through the tops of the trees, the air playing the leaves as instruments. Just so, the breath that moves through you, blown into you by God, is also wanting to play a song in you, for your life to become a zimrat yah, a divine song.
What new sound would emerge if you did let go of some of the heaviness of the past that lives in you? Who could you be without all of that noise, all of that baggage and weight? What song would you sing, what joy could you feel, what dance could your feet tap out, like Miriam, if they weren’t so weighed down by the weight of the past on your shoulders and in your heart?
Vayehi li lishuah – Salvation
This becomes for me a salvation, a redemption. This process of pruning, release and song – this is my salvation. There is a messianic quality to this movement, both at the original Red Sea, and inside us when we enact it. Az yashir, the words that begin the song at the sea are famously in the future tense – “then he will sing” in the future. The rabbis point to this word as proof of techiyay hametim, of the revival of the dead in the time to come: the song will come, it wlll be sung in the future. Maybe what this means is that we are always continually moving towards this future song inside us, we are always awakening from the dead, reinvigorating, stepping away from the dead Egyptians on the shore and their echoing voices inside us, and evolving into our future awakened selves, always drawn forward as if by a magnetic force towards this future song that wants to unfurl and be sung, our spirit wanting to be unbound from what holds it back and given the space to sing the song that is always coming, like olam haba, the world “that is coming,” always ripening, like the fruit of the trees we prune, zimrat ha’aretz, “the finest fruit of the land,” brought as a gift, as Yaakov sent to the viceroy (see Genesis 43:11), brought as a gift from ourselves to the Sovereign of the Universe. Our song, zimrat yah, always ripening, reaching towards that divine destiny.
The pruning of trees happens in late winter in order to make room for new growth in spring. This is where we stand in the year (Tu Bishvat) and in our parsha and inside ourselves at this moment, letting go of something just a little bit, perhaps with some wistful sadness even though it was a burden, but sending it off, back into the earth and into the sea, making room for the new song that is emerging, that is ripening inside us.
This Phrase: A Mantra
עזי וזמרת יה ויהי לי לישועה : This phrase appears in all three sections of Tanakh, here in Exodus, in Isaiah (the version we say in havdalah, Isaiah 12:2), and in Psalms (Ps 118:14, part of Hallel).. It is woven through Tanakh, as if asking to become a mantra, to be woven into the fabric of our lives, as a reminder to keep steady in the work, to be patient with its unfolding, to return to it again and again, each time with more space inside for our soul’s divine song.
To hear these words put to a beautiful tune by Rabbi Shefa Gold, click here.
Photo by Gustavo Fring at Pexels
