By Marco Del Monte
In the Torah, the phrase "Az Yashir" appears twice: Az Yashir Moshe, in Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea, an epic and liturgical hymn sung after the miraculous salvation at the Red Sea; Az Yashir Israel, here, on the other hand, it is the entire people of Israel who sing, not Moses alone. The context is less famous: it is a hymn of gratitude for a more "silent" miracle, the miraculous appearance of water during the journey through the desert.
In both cases, it appears that the songs spring from a miracle related to water: where there is water, there is song. There exists in the soul a natural predisposition to thirst, as it is written in Tehillim (42:3): "My soul thirsts for G-d", as is also written by the prophet Isaiah (55:1): "Oh, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters", and as our teachers explain to us, the water element corresponds to the Torah: "En Maim ella Torah", "There is no water other than the Torah" (Bava Kamma 17a). Furthermore, even in the unconscious realm of dreams, the interpretation of water is very often traceable to the Torah, and the Torah is called Life "Torat Chayim"; not by chance, without water there is no life, there is no song: the dead (spiritually speaking) are those who lack the capacity to praise, to sing, they have no water, they have no Torah: "The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor can any who go down into silence" (Ps. 115:17). The second "Az Yashir" springs from a place where there is no water, in the desert, a place of dryness, of weariness, of silence. Yet right there, a well appears, and the people sing: even amidst toil, in the aridity of oneself, when you find a new approach to the Torah, the voice returns. Moses – the man of the Torah – begins his journey immersed in water, like a spiritual newborn, and it will be he, years later, who leads the song of the people, accompanied by his sister Miriam, she who sings with faith, with strength, and for this she will merit the deepest gift: the water that will accompany Israel in the desert (Taanit 9a): The well – the hidden Torah – gushes forth thanks to her, to a woman who sings. After walking through the waters, the people sing. Because water is passage, it is purification, it is awakening. The sea represents the mikveh: only by immersing oneself does one emerge from the state of spiritual death (tum'ah) toward a new life. And the Torah itself is like a mikveh for the soul: it envelops you, it immerses you, it purifies you and causes the song of the soul to spring forth from you, that which gives true joy, just as the ritual of pouring water on Sukkot (Nisuch HaMayim) was considered the ultimate joy: "He who has not seen the joy of Simchat Beit HaShoevah has never seen true joy in his life." Israel crosses the sea on dry land, it is true, but surrounded by water, as if to say that even the seemingly most arid person is surrounded by water—not saltwater, but as the teachers say, freshwater gushing from the walls of saltwater; even one who appears to have only a wall, a semblance like saltwater, actually contains within a source of freshwater. Or it may also be understood as one who is ready to plunge into saltwater, that is, to face the difficulty of study, of the application of the mitzvot, in order to cross the depths of the Torah, of the sea, each according to his own style, just as there were twelve paths in the sea, one for each tribe, each according to their own way of studying the Torah; then, after this commitment, streams of living water, of freshwater, can gush forth from that saltwater, Az Yashir... Then, and only then, will one truly be able to sing.
Shabbat Shalom veChag Sameach
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.