The Exodus is often told as a single story of liberation, but Parshat B’shalach insists on a sharper distinction. The plagues and the splitting of the sea were aimed at different audiences, and they served different purposes. Confusing them obscures the Torah’s deepest lesson about real freedom.

The plagues were for Egypt. They dismantled Pharaoh’s authority, exposed the limits of imperial power, and forced the expulsion of a people the system refused to release voluntarily. Their purpose was external and coercive. Egypt had to be broken in order to let go.

But expulsion is not freedom. Being pushed out does not mean having moved on.

That is what the splitting of the sea achieved.

The splitting of the sea was for the Jews. At that moment, the message shifted inward. The people needed to see that the world they had left could no longer be reentered. When the waters closed, the route back to slavery closed with them. The drowning of the Egyptians was not vengeance; it was finality. History sealed behind them.

This distinction explains why the Exodus alone was incomplete. Egypt released the Jews, but the Jews had not yet released Egypt. As long as return remained imaginable, fear and discomfort could always make bondage sound reasonable again. Freedom cannot take root while the past remains accessible.

Only after that closure does the Song at the Sea emerge. The song is not merely celebration; it is internalization. A people sings when it understands that a threshold has been crossed and that what lies behind is no longer an option. Memory, at that moment, stabilizes rather than seduces. The song teaches that freedom requires acceptance of permanence.

That lesson extends beyond the biblical moment. Systems and institutions can serve as tools of liberation in one era and become obstacles to maturity in another. They remain attractive precisely because they feel moral, familiar, and legitimizing long after their original purpose has passed.

The United Nations increasingly functions as a structure that keeps the road backwards open. Born from catastrophe, it was meant to prevent a return to unconstrained power and mass violence. Over time, however, it has become a place where history is managed rather than concluded.

Consider the 1947 Partition Plan which would create a Jewish State and an Arab State in the region of Palestine. It was the logical vision of the moment and Jews accepted it and built a state. The Arabs rejected it for decades and to this date, many still believe that an Arab state will be the only reality in the region. They see a past as achievable, a Muslim-majority holy land.

Worse, the United Nations itself tells Arabs that descendants of people who lived in what is now Israel will get to move back to towns and homes. The UN continues to pass laws and resolutions to this effect, making the past the direction of time, not a future of two states living in coexistence.

The splitting of the sea teaches that freedom demands the courage to let certain paths disappear. Growth requires recognizing when a framework has completed its historical role and must be left behind. Without that willingness, societies drift endlessly between liberation and dependence, mistaking motion for progress.

The plagues ended Egypt’s control while the sea ended the possibility of return. That is the difference between being released and being free. Today, the United Nations is preventing the Israelis and the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) from transitioning to the other side of the sea, moving on to freedom for all.

Every generation must choose which comforting and destructive structures it is finally prepared to leave in the past. Today, the United Nations may be the choice before us.