(כו) וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יקוק אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה נְטֵ֥ה אֶת־יָדְךָ֖ עַל־הַיָּ֑ם וְיָשֻׁ֤בוּ הַמַּ֙יִם֙ עַל־מִצְרַ֔יִם עַל־רִכְבּ֖וֹ וְעַל־פָּרָשָֽׁיו׃ (כז) וַיֵּט֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה אֶת־יָד֜וֹ עַל־הַיָּ֗ם וַיָּ֨שָׁב הַיָּ֜ם לִפְנ֥וֹת בֹּ֙קֶר֙ לְאֵ֣יתָנ֔וֹ וּמִצְרַ֖יִם נָסִ֣ים לִקְרָאת֑וֹ וַיְנַעֵ֧ר יקוק אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּֽם׃
(26) And G!d said unto Moses: ‘Stretch out thy hand over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.’ (27) And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and G!d overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.
אמר ר' יוחנן: תנאין התנה הקב"ה עם הים שיהא נקרע לפני ישראל; הדא הוא דכתיב, (שמות יד) וישב הים לאיתנו - לתנאו שהתנה עמו. אמר רבי ירמיה בן אלעזר לא עם הים בלבד התנה הקדוש ברוך הוא, אלא עם כל מה שנברא בששת ימי בראשית; הה"ד (ישעיה מה) אני ידי נטו שמים וכל צבאם צויתי; מידי נטו שמים וכל צבאם צויתי: צויתי את הים שיהיה נקרע לפני ישראל; צויתי את השמים ואת הארץ שישתקו לפני משה, שנאמר, האזינו השמים וגו'.
R' Yochanan says: G!d made a stipulation with the sea that it should split before Israel; thus it is written (Shemot 14:27), "And the sea returned... to its strength (l'eitano)" - to the stipulation (l'tanai) that [G!d] made with it. R' Yirmiyah ben Elazar says: not only with the sea did G!d stipulate, but with all that Ze created during the six days of Creation; thus it is written, "From my hand I [G!d] have stretched the heavens, and all their legions I have commanded" - I commanded the sea to split before Israel; I commanded the heavens and the earth to be silent before Moshe, as it is stated, "Give ear, O heavens etc."
The Torah tells us that, after the Jews crossed through the Red Sea, “the Sea returned to its strength.” The Midrash says do not read it as “strength” but as “condition.” The Red Sea returned to its original condition. G-d, when [Ze] created the Red Sea, made a condition with it that, on the seventh night of Pesach (Passover), when the Jews will be by the shores of the Red Sea, the Sea should split open and allow them to pass through.
So, everybody asks, wasn’t it when the Sea split open that it went back to its original condition, when it fulfilled the condition G-d made with it and not when it became water again?
G-d makes conditions, not only with the Sea. G-d makes a condition with every person in the world. G-d tells each person, “There will be one moment in your life when you can save somebody else’s life, there will be a moment when you can do the greatest thing, which I created you for, but – you have to be ready to be something else. To go out of your way. Water, to become dry land, to become anything in the world. The deepest secret of life is that, I always have to be what I am, but there are moments I have to be not what I am also.
[...]
When you love somebody very much, what is the acid test? If you really love somebody – are you ready to change for that person, even for just a moment?
The Gemara says that finding your soul mate is like crossing the Red Sea. Everybody asks, why does G-d call out, forty days before a person is born, who his soul mate is? Because, for two people to find each other and live together, everybody living on their schedule all the time, they will never make it, right? I am I, and you are you. Unless they are like the Red Sea. When G-d created the Red Sea, at that time, He put in the condition that there will come a moment that it will have to stop being a sea and become dry land. But this is a heavenly power. You cannot do it after you have been created (i.e. with the power of ‘this world’). It must come from before. Because, change is the hardest thing in the world. That kind of change is not from ‘this world.’ It’s as deep as when G-d created the world. Therefore when a person is born, a condition is already made that you will marry this Chanahle, but, for this Chanahle, I want you to change a thousand times.
Now I want to go one step deeper. Why does the Torah say that the Red Sea went back to its original condition? What happens to you if you refuse to change? You know what happens to you? You might say: “Okay, at least I am what I am.” You know what the Torah says? When was the Red Sea really a sea? After it was ready to change. When are you really what you are? Only if you can be anything for somebody you love. And, when the Sea returned to its original condition, suddenly, it was really a sea, a real sea. Now its water was really water. When Moshiach is coming, [the prophet Isaiah writes about olam habah/the world to come: "the world will be filled with the knowledge of God k'mayim l'yam mechasim/as the waters cover the ocean bed"]. “K'mayim l'yam mechasim” (as water covers the sea) – the waters of the Red Sea, such deep waters, waters that are ready to change to save peoples lives.
[After Siddhartha loses his son] Siddhartha gazed into the water, and as the water moved images came to him: his father appeared, alone, sorrowing over his son; he himself appeared, alone, also bound with the bands of longing for his distant son; his son appeared, he too alone, the boy, desirous, raging on the burning track of his young wishes, each one of them aiming for his goal, each one possessed by his goal, each one suffering.
[...] The image of his father, his own image, the image of his son flowed into one another...and other images, and they all flowed into and over one another, all of them became the river...the river was made of him and his kin and every human being he had ever seen, all the waves and waters made haste, suffering, toward destinations, many of them, to the waterfall, to the lake, to the rapids, to the sea.
[...] He could no longer distinguish the many voices, not the gay from the weeping, not the childish from the manly, they all belonged together, lamentation of longing and laughter of the wise, outcry of rage and moaning on the deathbed, everything was one, everything was interwoven and intricately knotted, a thousandfold. And everything together, all the voices, all the goals, all the yearning, all the suffering, all the desire, everything good and evil, everything all together was the world. Everything all together was the flow of events, was the music of life. And if Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices, if he did not listen to the pain or the laughter, if he did not bind his soul to any one voice and enter into it with his I, but rather listened to all, the entirety, perceiving the unity, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of one single word, and the word was OM: perfection.