The Sea of Reeds

On my 13th birthday, instead of being bar mitzvahed I played second oboe in the Youth Symphony of New York. Now I'm almost 52 -- four times 13; four new men -- and I'm preparing for my belated bar mitzvah. So for the first time in decades I find myself playing the oboe again.

I have to prepare a midrash for the ceremony -- my interpretation of a passage from the Torah, which has been selected based on my birth week. It is the story of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. The Israelites, fleeing slavery and being pursued by their Egyptian masters, reach the shore of this sea and are faced with a conundrum: if they don't cross the sea, they will be killed; but if they try to cross the sea, they will probably drown.

I read ahead a bit and found out that they ended up getting to the far shore. But how?

The oboe is a "double-reed" instrument, but the reed is made from a single piece of cane, which is folded over, sculpted a bit, and then cut open -- creating two reeds that vibrate against each other.

When the Israelites reached the Sea of Reeds, they had two choices: to give up, or to cross. Either way, they were probably going to die, or at least be returned to servitude. But then they crossed, and emerged as a free people. (Well, kind of free.)

So again, how did they cross?

Well, they did something impossible, and then they became free (kind of).

Over and over again, I practice the oboe part of a Bach cantata, No. 82, "Ich habe genug." I think it means "I have enough" -- or possibly "I've had enough!" (I remember my father saying "Genug!" -- "Enough!" -- when something frustrated him. Note to self: Find out why Bach spoke Yiddish.) It's in a book of cantatas titled Difficult Passages. I do my best, with my flabby, out-of-shape embouchure, to hold my oboe's double-reed together tightly enough so that when I blow through it, it will make the right sounds.

My father died of a stroke before his 52nd birthday. I am, at best, a reflection of my father. I wish he would come back alive. That's impossible. I want to try to live beyond him, not as a reflection but as myself. I tell myself that's difficult.

So I'm thinking that my journey to (four times) manhood will involve turning the impossible into the merely difficult. I must make my embouchure strong enough (and sensitive enough) so the two reeds (actually, one) vibrate against each other in the proper way.

This suggests to me that the Israelites and the Egyptians, though the former were fleeing the latter, were really one thing. We are fleeing ourselves. It's impossible. But if we hold on tightly to our conflicting selves, and blow, then the passage may become only difficult.

What keeps me going is that afterwards we'll eat some kugel.