Two Pillars of Geulah and Emunah
When Bnei Yisroel walked into the raging sea, they were not merely crossing a body of water. They were crossing a threshold of emunah – one that would define the Jewish People for all generations.
By: Rabbi Dovid Samuels
Pesach in Two Acts
Most of us think of Pesach as a single event – the night the Jewish People left Mitzrayim. Yet the Yom Tov itself tells a different story. Pesach spans eight days, and those eight days commemorate two distinct pillars of our redemption from Egypt. The first day of Yom Tov commemorates the miracle of Yetzias Mitzrayim – the night of the Plague of the Firstborns and the dawn exodus from Egypt. The seventh day, Shevi’i shel Pesach, commemorates an equally momentous event: Krias Yam Suf, the splitting of the sea. The Torah itself signals the significance of this second moment. After Krias Yam Suf, the pasuk states[1]: “And Yisroel saw the great hand… and the people feared Hashem, and they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant.” The full salvation and the Jews’ emunah both reached their fullest expression not on the first day, but on the seventh. Why?
A Disagreement With Deep Roots
The Magen Avraham[2] rules that a person can fulfil the mitzvah of remembering Yetzias Mitzrayim by reciting Shiras HaYam – the song Bnei Yisroel sang at the sea. After all, the Gemara[3] says one fulfils this obligation if he recites anything in which Yetzias Mitzrayim is mentioned, and all the more so by reciting the Song of the Sea itself. The Chasam Sofer, however, disagreed. He pointed to the verse[4] which commands us to remember the exodus as mentioning only leaving Egypt, but not crossing the sea or Krias Yam Suf. In the Chasam Sofer’s view, Krias Yam Suf is an independent miracle – remarkable and transformative, but standing on its own, distinct from the exodus itself. Rabbi Akiva Eiger challenged this position from a Midrash[5] which states that one who recites Krias Shema must mention Krias Yam Suf and Makas Bechoros in the subsequent paragraph of Emes V’Yatziv – and if he omits Makas Bechoros, he has not fulfilled his obligation. From here it is clear that he holds that Krias Yam Suf and the Plague of the Firstborn are not merely separate matters but integral parts of the story of Yetzias Mitzrayim. Mentioning it, therefore, counts as mentioning the geulah from Mitzrayim.
But this raises a striking question: if Rabbi Akiva Eiger is correct, and Krias Yam Suf is simply the culmination of Yetzias Mitzrayim, what exactly did the Chasam Sofer mean when he called it an independent, stand-alone miracle? And what was so qualitatively different about the emunah that emerged at the Yam Suf compared to the faith Bnei Yisroel already had when they left Egypt?
Two Kinds of Geulah
The Sfas Emes[6] offers a profound understanding to explain what’s going on. He introduces us to the principle that there are two fundamentally different types of geulah – redemption. The first is a geulah that Hashem brings about through midas harachamim – pure Divine compassion – irrespective of the recipients’ merits. The second is a geulah that people earn through their own actions and emunah.
The geulah from Mitzrayim was of the first type. In Egypt, Bnei Yisroel were sunken in the forty-ninth level of spiritual impurity. The prosecuting angel of Mitzrayim argued before the Heavenly Court: “These are idol worshippers and those are idol worshippers!” As if to say the Jews were no different – no better – than the Egyptians! Their redemption came not in their own merit, but solely through the chesed of Hashem and His promise to our forefathers. This is what our Haggadah means when it says “she’amdah la’avoseinu v’lanu” – it is the promise to our forefathers that “stood for them and stands for us.” This was an is’arusa d’le’eila – an awakening that came entirely from Above. Krias Yam Suf was something else entirely. Here, Bnei Yisroel marched into the raging sea. They generated the geulah. This was an is’arusa d’le’sata – an awakening from below. Hashem responded to their emunah with a miracle commensurate with that emunah.
Two Kinds of Emunah
There was certainly emunah at Yetzias Mitzrayim. When Moshe first brought Hashem’s message to the Bnei Yisroel, “vaya’amen ha’am” – the people believed[7]. But the Sfas Emes makes a crucial distinction: that emunah was given to them through chesed. Hashem placed them on that spiritual level. It was therefore a fragile emunah – real, but not deeply rooted. And indeed, soon after leaving Mitzrayim, when they were camped before the sea with Pharaoh’s army behind them, there were already factions calling to turn back.
The Sfas Emes distinguishes between two categories of emunah. The first is natural emunah – believing in what you see. A person who witnesses a miracle believes in Hashem because he has seen Him act. Even the great Prophet Yechezkel, who beheld ma’aseh ha’Merkavah and the visions of heaven, was operating within this category. He believed in what was revealed to his eyes.
The second is a fundamentally different kind: emunah that transcends nature. This is the emunah of a person who believes even in what he cannot see – even in what contradicts what he sees before him. This requires breaking one’s very nature, since it is natural for a human being to believe only in the visible and tangible.
At the Yam Suf, Bnei Yisroel stood before an impasse. Everything they could see and hear and feel told them: turn back. Yet they walked in to the sea. The Midrash[8] captures this with its famous teaching: “A maidservant at the sea saw what the great prophets Yeshayahu and Yechezkel never saw.” How can that be? Because Yechezkel saw sublime Divine visions – but those were visions given to him. The maidservant, by contrast, marched into the sea with nothing before her eyes but crashing waves – and believed. That is a much higher level.
One Who Breaks His Nature – Nature Breaks Before Him
The Midrash[9] poses a striking question about a verse[10]: “Vayavo’u Bnei Yisroel besoch hayam bayabashah” – “And Bnei Yisroel came into the sea on dry ground.” But which was it – sea or dry ground? The Midrash answers: the sea did not split until Bnei Yisroel had entered the water up to their very nostrils. Only then did it become dry ground. But why did they need to go in that far before the miracle occurred? The Sfas Emes explains: This was the main salvation: reaching a level of total self-sacrifice, where no natural calculation has any hold. When a person achieves that, nature itself has no hold over him.
“Certainly, Krias Yam Suf did not occur in the sea itself alone – but in every single Jew as well.”
The Sfas Emes extends this insight with the Midrash[11]: “HaYam ra’ah vayanos” – “The sea saw and fled.” What did it see? The Midrash says it saw the coffin of Yosef HaTzaddik. When Potifar’s wife tried to seduce Yosef, the pasuk says “vayanos vayeitzei hachutzah” – he fled. The sea, the Sfas Emes explains, saw someone who had broken his own nature – who had conquered the raging sea of desire within himself – and the sea made an obvious conclusion: if a human being can flee from his own nature, surely I, the sea, must flee from mine. In the words of the Sfas Emes: “Certainly, Krias Yam Suf did not occur in the sea itself alone – but in every single Jew as well.”
The principle the Sfas Emes is teaching us is breathtaking in its scope: man is a microcosm of the world. When there is a Krias Yam Suf within a person – when he conquers his inner sea of desire and natural instinct – the outer world responds in kind. Krias Yam Suf was not merely a one-time event at a body of water. It is a spiritual law. It can be re-created even now, today.
An Emunah For All Generations
Now we can return to the disagreement between Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Chasam Sofer. Rav Akiva Eiger holds that it is one continuous process: the miracle of the first day taught Bnei Yisroel how Hashem saves – and on the seventh day they had internalised it so deeply that they generated the salvation through their own emunah. This is “Draw me after You – and we will run.”[12] First Hashem draws, then we run on our own.
The Chasam Sofer sees a qualitative leap – not just a continuation. At Krias Yam Suf, a different kind of emunah was forged. Not emunah received as a gift, but emunah won through trial, through self-conquest, through mesiras nefesh. And because it was earned in this way, it became permanent – woven into the fabric of the Jewish soul. As the Sfas Emes puts it: what a person experiences externally is transient. What penetrates his inner being – that is enduring. The emunah of Yetzias Mitzrayim came from outside. The emunah of Krias Yam Suf was forged from within, in the crucible of a moment when everything shouted “it’s impossible” – and Bnei Yisroel walked in anyway.
This is why, in Hallel each Yom Tov, we turn to the sea and ask: “Mah lecha hayam ki sanus” – “What its it to you, O sea, that you flee?” We are not simply recalling a past event. We are invoking that same emunah. We are reminding ourselves – and the world – that the capacity to split the sea lives within every Jew.
The Sea Within
While seemingly spiritual and lofty, this message is remarkably practical. Mesiras nefesh – self-sacrifice – does not have to mean leaping into a stormy sea. It means the daily, relentless, sometimes grinding work of overcoming one’s own nature: the desires, the laziness, the anger, the habits that chain us. Every time a person subdues his inner turbulence – his own raging sea – he is performing a Krias Yam Suf. And the rewards are waiting to be seen.
“Every time a person subdues his inner turbulence – his own raging sea – he is performing a Krias Yam Suf.”
The segulah for a miraculous salvation, then, is not a formula or a specific tefillah, though those have their place. It is a way of being: complete emunah, even when – especially when – the sea looks impassable – and the personal breaking of one’s nature, which triggers the breaking of nature itself. Krias Yam Suf did not happen only once, at a sea in ancient Egypt. It happens every time a Jew looks at the impossible – at the raging waters of circumstance, illness, financial pressure, or spiritual struggle – and walks in. The sea always splits for those who have already split the sea within themselves.
Shemos 14:31 ↑
Orach Chaim 67 ↑
Brachos 13b ↑
Devarim 16:3 ↑
Shemos Rabbah 22:3 ↑
- Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (1847–1905), known by the title of his magnum opus, the Sfas Emes, was the second Rebbe of the Gerer Chassidic dynasty in Poland. He is recognised as one of the most profound and influential Torah scholars of the 19th century
Shemos 4:31
Mechilta, Shemos 15:2 ↑
Shemos Rabbah 21:10 ↑
Shemos 14:22 ↑
Tehillim 114:3 ↑
Shir HaShirim 1:4 ↑
