A Thought on Parshas Vayishlach

"...ki b'makli avarti es haYarden ha'zeh..." "...for I crossed this Jordan with my staff..." (32:11) In his prayer to HaShem, Yaakov recalls how he had long ago crossed the Jordan River with little more than his walking stick, his staff. Rashi comments that when he fled from Esav years before, he had no riches, not livestock, only his lone staff. Then Rashi cites a cryptic midrash that when the verse says that Yaakov crossed the river with his staff, it does not mean that he only had that staff with him, but it means that he had used the staff in order to enable him to split the water and then walk to other shore. He crossed the river with the use of his staff. Rabbeinu Avigdor develops this midrashic approach and takes it even further. He notes that centuries later, after our nation forded the Yam Suf, the verse says "v'yar Yisroel es ha'Yad ha'Gedolah" (Shmos 14:31) - which we normally translate as "the Israelites saw that manifest miracle." Rabbeinu Avigdor observes that if this were the meaning of that verse, it should have said that "Benei Yisroel" saw the splitting of the sea. Instead, it only says "Yisroel." This is an allusion, he writes in the name of another cryptic midrash, that the verse is really referring to the patriarch Yisroel, who is Yaakov (as we learn later in this week's parsha). Our sainted forefather Yaakov "watched" his children, the Benei Yisroel, cross the sea in the same manner in which he earlier had crossed the river. It was a case of the formative acts of our holy ancestors generating the manner in which our later history and destiny would come about. He adds, with more midashic support, that the staff with which Moshe Rabbeinu "split the sea" was actually the very staff which had been used by Yaakov centuries before. That stick had engraved upon it the sacred name of HaShem. Thus, the "mighty hand" which was present at the Yam Suf was the hand of Moshe waving the staff which encased the ineffable name of the Mighty One. No one doubted at that moment that the events at the Sea were anything other than a revealed miracle.