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Shabbat starts on Friday at 8:17pm and ends on Saturday at 9:17pm. The weekly Torah portion is Beshalach and Shabbat Shirah. It’s Tu b’Shvat on Monday

Mincha is now in summer recess until the end of DST in early April. See the WhatsApp group for further info.

Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.30pm at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: dividing common property. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Annette Charak.

This week’s Torah reading features the Song of the Sea. The Gemara records a discussion between rabbis about how the people sang the song with Moses. On one view, the Jews responded to each line that Moses recited with a chorus: “I shall sing to the Lord”. On another view, they responded to Moses by repeating his line. A third view is less clear, but can be understood as their declaring “amen” to each line. On each of these views, the Jews may be seen to be passive in their song: either by repeating each line or with a recurring refrain or by simply saying “amen”.

Things unfold differently after the Song of the Sea. We are told: “Then Miriam the prophetess, sister of Aharon, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, ‘Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; He has thrown the horse and its rider in the sea.’”

The women’s response to Moses’s song is not limited to passive repetition. Miriam initiates and the women join her enthusiastically, spontaneously. Their activism is unbridled and it is not the first time they have taken action in the face of wider passivity. Shifra and Pu’a, two midwives, defy the royal command to drown all Israelite babies and continue to help Israelite women in childbirth, doing what they can to ensure the survival of the Jewish people.

The women did not allow their spirit to be broken; and when the right moment arose, they chose to act.