Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

One of the strangest teachings in Chazal comes from the Midrash on Yam Suf: even Datan and Aviram, those consistent rebels against Moshe and Hashem, merited the sea to split for them. The Torah records that they did not leave Egypt with the nation at first, and yet when they finally came to the sea, it parted for the two of them just as it had for all of Klal Yisrael.

This is puzzling. Why should men who fought Moshe from Egypt to the wilderness, who stirred up rebellion and refused to listen, deserve such a miracle? The answer is that they did not deserve it at all. Rather, they were carried by the collective merit of Israel. The miracle was not theirs; it belonged to the tzaddikim and the nation as a whole. They were simply swept along because Hashem redeems His people together.

The Principle of Collective Merit

The splitting of the sea teaches a profound lesson: Hashem’s providence attaches not only to individuals but to the collective of Israel. Even the antagonists are preserved—not out of their own righteousness, but so that the nation as a whole remains whole. This is why Moshe, in Parashas Eikev, recalls Datan and Aviram but not Korach: the nation saw with their own eyes how men who once walked through the parted waters, sharing in the miracle, were later swallowed by the earth for their insolence. Their survival at the sea was not a sign of personal merit but of Hashem’s covenant with all of Israel.

A Modern Parallel: Israel After the Shoah

History has repeated itself in our own times. After the destruction of European Jewry, waves of Jews came to Eretz Yisrael. Among them were gedolei Torah, tzaddikim, and simple Jews devoted to mitzvos. Alongside them came secular Zionists, socialists, and even anti-religious leaders who scorned Torah. Yet when the State of Israel was declared in 1948 and surrounded by enemies, miracles of survival occurred. Time and again—in 1948, 1967, 1973, and even in our day—the nation has been preserved against impossible odds.

Why? Not because of political brilliance or military genius alone. Those are only the garments. The true reason is the same as at Yam Suf: the merit of Torah and of the righteous within Israel sustains everyone together. Just as Datan and Aviram walked through the sea because they were attached to the people of Hashem, so too today the irreligious and even the antagonists of Torah are carried by the merit of the tzaddikim in their midst.

The Contrast

Here lies the eternal contrast. The tzaddikim live in open connection to Hashem; they are the reason the sea splits. The reshaim live off that merit temporarily, but their share is only incidental, borrowed from the collective. They receive miracles not because they deserve them, but because they are passengers in the same boat. Eventually, like Datan and Aviram, their own rebellion catches up with them. But in the meantime, Hashem protects the entire people as one body, for the sake of the covenant and the righteous within it.

Conclusion

The story of Datan and Aviram at Yam Suf is not a curious historical footnote; it is a blueprint for Jewish history. The existence of the State of Israel and the miracles of its wars are not testimony to the merit of secular ideologies but to the eternal covenant Hashem has with His people and the sustaining power of Torah. Just as the sea once split for rebels only because they were attached to the righteous, so too today every miracle in Israel’s survival flows from the hidden wellsprings of Torah and the collective merit of Klal Yisrael.