The Sea and the Endless Waves By Joseph Berger During the time of corona and since, we in our part of Netanya have been privileged to have the sea right beside us, and to be able to walk on a tayelet or on the beach itself, and I have done that for many months. We know that water, especially the great oceans, cover a significant part of the surface of our planet earth. The estimate is about 71%. Much of that is one big ocean that we conveniently divide into different sections such as Pacific, Atlantic, etc, but is actually continuous, and it is this water that may be the essential reason why there is life on this planet and not on any other, and as religious Jews we can certainly thank Hashem and say this is Hashem’s special blessing to us. Walking along the beach next to the sea inevitably makes a person aware of the constant rhythm of the sea. Even someone caught up in thoughts about issues in their lives, hears and sees the waves that keep rolling in, at times more strongly, crashing against stone walls that have been set up to protect
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against erosion. What a person walking along the beach must surely be aware of, some of the time, is how this sea was here long before me, and will still be here long after me. Whether in fifty years time Netanya will be a city of ten million people, or whether Netanya will have become a suburban part of the spread of the Greater Tel Aviv area, the sea will still be here. Many North Americans who have visited the Grand Canyon in Colorado agree that it is probably the most beautiful and spectacular of Hashem’s creations here on earth. (Brits, South Africans, who haven’t seen it, should.) But if you listen to or read about some of the explanations about its formation, and if you are standing at the top and look down to the path of the Colorado river, you can understand why people who study Geology and Geography, and Engineers who study the effects of different pressures that lead to erosion, will mostly suggest that the erosion caused by water carved out
