Page 29 - Holyland Magazine - 2023 Edition

A layout of the "Song of the Sea"

miraculous act of redemption. The song is also Collections, which comes from Germany and the Israelites walking on dry land with the sea
treated specially in the text of the Torah. dates to around 1250. on both sides.

While most of the Torah is written in solid These scrolls, or others with the same features,
lines, with occasional paragraph breaks, the In the medieval tradition of central Europe, the are on display in the permanent exhibit “The
“Song of the Sea'' has a special layout. In the last two lines of the song were not written in History of the Bible” at the Museum of the
Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Megillah 16b), the “brick by brick” style. In line with medieval Bible in Washington, DC. Though few non-
Rabbi She’eila of Kefar Timrata is quoted as tradition in central Europe—but it has been Jews know about the seventh day of Passover
saying: “All of the passages of biblical song corrected to the “brick by brick” layout. This is and its focus on the splitting of the sea, the
are written as half bricks arranged upon whole evidence that the community using the scroll significance of this event and the song that
bricks and whole bricks arranged around half decided the older layout was incorrect, and so commemorates it can be seen in the historical
bricks.” they “fixed” it. focus on the layout of the text of the song itself.

This special layout, unique in the Torah, In addition, the most common version of the First, the development of the “brick by brick”
though with a parallel in the “Song of Devorah” layout contains a visual pun to represent the style to denote the text as a special song,
(Deborah in English translation)in Judges 5, physical moment of redemption. The last and then the change to the text’s final line to
requires the exact content of each line to be line of the song is broken into three sections illustrate the miracle told in the song’s lyrics.
specifically prescribed to maintain its uniformity. of text: the “waters of the sea,” the dry land It reminds us that even as the biblical text
However, different communities have created the Israelites walked on within, and “the sea” remains constant, the ways we engage with it
slightly different layouts. again. The layout of the text thus represents change over time and place.

The Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain the
“brick by brick” layout of the song, for
example, though the oldest known Torah scroll
fragments do. We can see evidence of this
evolution in one of the scrolls in the Museum The last line of the "Song of the Sea" in SCR.001646

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