The test, the challenge

In this week's parshah, there is a totally new concept - that of the test, or in more modern lingo, the challenge. God for the first time seeks and opts to test a nation, not an individual but rather a whole people, and at that, a people, who seem least opportune for being tested, on the one hand, exalted, but on the other, their nerves frayed, positive stress - eustress - and negative stress, distress, melding into one. 

My brother-in-law just finished a tour of duty in Gaza of 110 days, having had fewer than 5 days off during the whole period. They are given a week to return to civilian life, to reframe and assimilate what they experienced; our forefathers, in Egypt, had been ripped from slavery, only to witness the greatest miracles ever performed at the splitting of the sea, and then, ever so ironically, after God showed omipotent power over water, transforming it and freezing it, from the bottom up and in the middle of the ocean, two irregularities that fly in the face of nature, the most minimial need - water itself, was denied to the Jewish people on the difficult trek to Marah. There, again, in Marah, no water was to be found, for its sheer bitterness and impalability. 

In Hashem's own words, His design was to test the Jewish people; yet, juxtaposed with this was the giving of chok u'mishpat, law and order, or the tenets of communal life. The two worked hand in hand, a collective ethos conveyed, similar to Abraham's experience, on their very flesh. Lessons were taught testing them to the brink, but to craft them, cultivate them, and shape them into a different people, create them and recreate them. In the words of Isaiah: "I have created a nation for myself, they shall sing my praise."

This message seems very pertinent now, namely that God has a divine plan, irrespective of our finger pointing and search for culprits. With the horrific events that befell our nation, so many among us have sought to attribute the tragedy to our foibles and failures, failures and iniquities. Though difficult to conceive of, a simple reading of the Tanakh seems to portray a slightly different picture. Sometimes, God wants us to become a new nation who can rise to new challenges, and to do so, we need to undergo difficulties, collectively, to learn from what has befallen us, to rise to the occasion so that we can effect change, and shape the world to a better end. 

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