Dry Land in the Middle of the Sea

“…the sea, and the Children of Israel walked on dry land in the middle of the sea.” Opening Once a man came to me in deep trouble. I said to him: “Try to picture yourself at ninety years old, looking back at this moment from far away.” He stood there, and he could not do it. He really could not. He was unable to step outside the moment and look at it from somewhere else. That told me everything. The hardest part of trouble is not the pain itself. People suffer pain, and they hold on. The deeper struggle is something else. It is the feeling that this moment is your whole life. That this sea is all there is. That there is nothing before you and nothing after you, only the wave that is sweeping you away right now. That is not just trouble. That is drowning. The Question The Torah says: “And the Children of Israel walked on dry land in the middle of the sea.” Look closely at the words: dry land in the middle of the sea. Two opposites in one place. If the sea split open, then where did they walk? On dry ground that had appeared? And if they were still in the middle of the sea, how could it be dry land? The Torah does not contradict itself for no reason. A deep lesson is hidden here. The Answer The miracle of the splitting of the sea was not only that the sea opened. Every child knows about that miracle. But the inner miracle, the greater miracle, was that the Children of Israel walked in the middle of the sea, and the sea did not stop being a sea. The danger was there. The waves were there. The terror was there. And yet for the Children of Israel, their inner reality was dry land: solid ground, steadiness, security. It is not that the sea pulled back. It is that Hashem gave them the strength to live a different reality inside it. And this was not only a one-time miracle. It is a lesson for all generations. As the Book of Psalms says: “From the narrow place I called out to Hashem; Hashem answered me with wide-open space.” Hashem answers from inside the narrow place. He does not wait for you to get out of it. He answers you while you are still in it. What This Means for Serving Hashem To the young married man reading these lines: maybe you have a sea of your own. Maybe it is your health. Maybe it is earning a living. Maybe it is your home. And you feel that you are drowning. There is not a moment to breathe. The problem has become everything you are. Listen. True redemption does not always mean that the sea pulls back. Sometimes the sea keeps raging, and Hashem gives you a different kind of strength: the strength to feel dry land in the middle of it. What is that dry land? It is being bonded to Hashem. When you stand in prayer and say even one word that is true, that is dry land. When you learn one line of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, or one line of the Mishnah, the early code of Jewish law, and in that moment you are connected to the Master of the world, that is dry land. The letters of the holy words are solid ground, even when the waves reach up to your neck. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, wrote in one of his letters that even in a time of trouble there is a very high light that shines specifically out of the hardship. The sea itself can become a place where Hashem is revealed, if you are inside it and connected. Closing: The Second Request In our prayers we speak of Hashem as the One “who redeemed Israel.” But maybe we also need to know what to ask for. Not only “Split the sea”: take the problem away, remove the pain. Sometimes that is what we need, and it is right to ask for it. But there is another prayer, a deeper one: “Give me dry land in the middle of the sea.” Give me the strength not to drown. Let me stay connected to You, steady, breathing, moving forward, even when the sea is raging all around me. Let me find the wide-open space even from inside the narrow place. Let me walk on dry land even in the middle of the sea.