Song of the sea

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Song of the sea

The Song of the Sea

Exodus 15.1-15.18

Exodus 15.1 to 15.18 comprises the song, known as The Song of the Sea or Az Yashir Moshe, which is sung to God by Moses and the Israelites?and then also by Miriam?celebrating how God hurled the pursuing Egyptians into the sea as the The Exodus....
also known as Az Yashir Moshe is a poem which appears in Exodus

Exodus

Exodus is the second book of the Jewish Torah and of the Christian Old Testament. It tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God Sinai....
at . The text describes the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, and the future conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. It is included in the Jewish prayer books, and recited daily in the morning shacharit services.

origin of this prayer comes from the text in Parshat Beshalach

Beshalach

Beshalach, Beshallach, or Beshalah is the sixteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Judaism cycle of Torah reading and the fourth in the book of Exodus....
.

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The Song of the Sea

Exodus 15.1-15.18

Exodus

Origin

The origin of this prayer comes from the text in Parshat Beshalach

Beshalach

Beshalach, Beshallach, or Beshalah is the sixteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Judaism cycle of Torah reading and the fourth in the book of Exodus....
. Az Yashir Moshe is the song that the Israelites sang after they crossed the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
safely. The original text is written in Exodus

Exodus

Sefer Torah

A Sefer Torah is a specially hand-written copy of the Torah or Pentateuch, which is the holiest book within Judaism and venerated by Jews. It must meet extremely strict standards of production....
that is written with a different layout to the normal simple columns, as can be seen in the picture. The alternating words are supposed to represent the two walls of the split sea with Israel walking down the middle. (The other section written differently is Moses' song at the end of the Sefer Torah in Ha'azinu.)

Meaning

This is a song of praise to God

Names of God in Judaism

In Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title. It represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relation of God to the Jewish people....
. It deals with His power. It also praises God for the miracle He has just performed for them.

Translation

Some of the prayer means this:

This song was sung by Miriam and the Children of Israel this song to God. And it said: "I will sing to God, for highly exalted. The horse and his rider have drowned in the sea. God is my song, and strength, And He is my salvation; This is my God and I will glorify Him, my father's God and I will exalt Him.

Ketuba of Yom Vayosha

The Ketubá del Seten Dia de Pesah (Ladino

Ladino

Ladino may refer to:*Ladino - Sephardic language, the Judaeo-Spanish primarily spoken among Sephardic Jews, or for the written form used in religious texts and translations...
), or ????? ???? ?????? ?? ??? (Ketuba Le-yom Ha-shebi`i shel Pesah) is a liturgical poem in Ladino, describing Pharaoh's defeat in the Sea of Reeds. Some Sephardic

Sephardi Jews

Sephardi Jews are a subgroup of Jews originating in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, usually defined in contrast to Ashkenazi or Mizrahi Jews....
Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish communities, at least in Turkey

History of the Jews in Turkey

The history of the Jews in Turkey covers the 2,400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey. There have been Romaniote since at least the 4th century BCE; and many Jews Jewish expulsion from Spain, the Sephardic Jews, were welcomed to the Ottoman Empire, including regions part of modern Turkey, in the late 15th century....
, sing this poem on the 21st of the Jewish month Nisan

Nisan

Nisan is the seventh month of the civil year and the first month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. The name of the month is Babylonian; in the Torah it is called the month of the Aviv, referring to a stage in the ripening of barley which occurs during the month....
, the Seventh Day of Passover

Passover

Passover is a Jewish and Samaritan holy day and festival commemorating God sparing the Israelites when He killed the first born of Egypt, and is followed by the seven day Feast of the Unleavened Bread commemorating the Exodus from Ancient Egypt and the liberation of the Israelites from Judaism and slavery....
, known as Yom Vayyosha, "The Day of the Song of the Sea". According to Jewish tradition, this is the day on which Pharaoh's army was drowned in the Sea of Reeds, and the Israelite people sang the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) in gratitude for this victory.

Presumably, this text is called a ketuba ("marriage contract") because the relationship between God and the Jewish people is traditionally described as a marriage, and the Splitting of the Sea is considered to be an important event leading to that marriage, which ultimately took place 42 days later, at Mt. Sinai.

A tune for the Ladino Poem (along with the entire text itself) can be found in Isaac Levy's Anthology of Sepharadic Hazzanut (Antologiya shel Hazzanut Sefaradit, 1965), vol. on the Three Festivals, p. 409, #335.

Non-traditional interpretations

According to the documentary hypothesis

Documentary hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis is the proposal that the first five books of the Old Testament represent a combination of documents from originally independent sources....
, it is a once independent text that was embedded into the Jahwist

Jahwist

The Jahwist, also referred to as the Jehovist, Yahwist, or simply as J, is one of the four major sources of the Torah postulated by the Documentary Hypothesis ....
source, and thus into the Torah

Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
. The date of the text is uncertain, and it may in fact be an original source for the more verbose tale that appears elsewhere in the text. The text also appears to have been included in the Elohist

Elohist

The Elohist is one of four sources of the Torah described by the Documentary Hypothesis. Its name comes from the term it uses for God: Elohim. It portrays a God who is less anthropomorphic than YHWH of the earlier Jahwist source ....
source, although after these texts were redacted together, only the first two lines of the Elohist copy remain, immediately after the lines from the Jahwist copy, the duplication being unnecessary.

External links

at Chabad.org
Chabad.org

Chabad.org is the flagship website of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Judaism movement. It serves not just its own members but Jews worldwide in general....