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Given by Debby Berlyne on August 2, 2008 (1 Av 5768
Rosh Chodesh
)
Parshat Masei
The part of today's Parshah, Masei, that our Torah readers read today sounds pretty repetitive. It is basically a description of the 42 places to which the children of Israel traveled after they left Egypt. We read the name of the place and, in some cases, a brief mention of what happened to the Jewish people while they were living in that place. The trip begins with the exodus from Egypt.
My first reaction to this section when I first read it was that it felt very familiar in a personal way. I too have moved around quite a bit in my life. In fact, I've lived for at least a year in seven cities in three different countries. But that's nothing compared to my parents. I recently figured out that my dad lived in 12 cities in four different countries, and my mother lived in 14 cities in 7 different countries. So I definitely feel a personal connection with the idea of moving from place to place and the adjustments this requires.
And of course the experiences of our ancestors in biblical times were repeated throughout our people's history from that time to this. We all learn in Jewish history classes about the many places our people have lived, the many times they were kicked out or forced to leave to save their lives. So this story should feel familiar to all of us.
Given my own experiences with moving around, as well as the fact that we are such a mobile society and I know lots of people who have moved into or out of the places where I was living, I can think of three possible reactions to reading about the experiences of our ancestors during their wanderings.
The first response is--this list is so boring! It's just a list of place names that I'm not familiar with. And in fact, according to the Eitz Chaim commentaries, we don't even know where most of these places are! And we don't learn about what happened to the Israelites in most of these places, so what's the point of this text
The second response is--how awful for the Israelites! It's so hard to leave one's home and maybe the Israelites never felt settled in any of the places where they lived.
The third response--how exciting! Moving to a new place is a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, explore new customs, and grow as a person.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, the third one is my response. I still remember the conversation I had with my mother when Danny and were deciding whether to move to Rockville after living in Philadelphia for 12 years. I asked my mother, the veteran traveler, about her perspective on moving to a new community. She told me, not in these words, but basically to go for it. Although moving is stressful and no one can call it easy, you can gain so much from the experience of settling into a new community. And that, indeed, has been my family's experience. We miss our friends in Philadelphia, but the feeling was of course more acute when we first moved here. But we've all appreciated the opportunity we've had here to meet new people, try new experiences, and become part of a new community. So my mother was right!
So what I want to explore today is the value of moving from one community to another and, on a related note, the value of travel. I found several commentaries on this theme, so I'm clearly not the only one who was struck by this aspect of the story.
One traditional lesson is found in a midrash that says that God told Moses: "Write down the stages by which Israel journeyed in the wilderness, in order that they shall know what miracles I wrought them." According to this view, the reason for listing the journeys is to emphasize all of the miracles that happened in these places. This serves as a reminder to the Jewish people of God's power.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat, in Israel, comments on the fact that our people has always traveled, but never aimlessly. We have, as he says, "a clear compass and a purposeful direction." We were given that direction by God, through such experiences as the binding of Isaac and the revelations at Sinai. And our goal, or destination, has always been to teach ethical monotheism. As we move through space and time, we need to remember where we came from.
Rabbi Riskin tells the story of Shai Agnon, who was asked where he was born when he received the Nobel prize for literature. The interviewer was surprised when Agnon said that he was born in Jerusalem because everyone knows that Agnon was born in Galicia. Agnon said:
"I was born in Jerusalem more than 3,000 years ago. That was my beginning, my origin. Buczaz in Galicia is only one of the way stations along the road of my life's travelogue. However, my real origin - the beginning which provided the ultimate goal - was and is Jerusalem: Only two Princes of the Tribes, who serve as scouts, did not fall prey to foolish cowardice and thus ultimately reached the Promised land: Caleb and Joshua. Joshua was an understandable candidate; his name was changed to include the name of G-d, and he was a faithful disciple of Moses beginning from even prior to the Revelation at Sinai. But what was the special merit of Caleb? Our Sages tell us that when the scouts began their mission to Israel, Caleb detoured to the Cave of Machpela at Hebron - in order to pray at the grave-site of our patriarchs and matriarchs. Caleb understood that Hebron was not only a starting point but was also an end-goal, and that only those who were mindful of this starting point would remain committed to the realization of the end goal."
Riskin is telling us that whenever and wherever we travel, we need to keep in mind where we came from and where we're going. Perhaps some of the ancient Israelites didn't have the strength to resist the temptation of assimilation. But others continued to wander from place to place, remembering that they were traveling the road to redemption. To do this, they needed to keep in mind everything that they had learned along the way, including the truths about what is right and what is wrong, and they needed to remember why their destination was important.
I had to think about this to make sense of it. The lesson I get from Riskin's teaching is that there are two ways to travel--one is to wander around aimlessly, going wherever you feel like going, with no particular destination in mind. When this type of travel becomes problematic, at least from the Jewish perspective, is when the travelers don't take time to reflect on their experiences or to try to understand what they have learned along the way. In contrast, there are the travelers who might not know where they are going to end up. But these travelers know that wherever they go, they will use the lessons they've learned along the way to make the most of the opportunities offered at each starting point. Their ultimate destination is not so much a physical place but a home or community in which they can remain true to their Jewish values.
Fortunately for us, a significant number of our ancestors were the second type of traveler. Surely they didn't always know where they'd end up. But in each stopping place along the way, in just about every continent of the world, our ancestors formed Jewish communities. Some of these communities survive to this day; others are gone but continue to influence today's Jewish communities. Because our ancestors remembered where they'd come from, who they were, and what type of destination to aim for, we are still able to live Jewish lives today.
Another commentator, Baruch Sienna, who writes for Kolel, the Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning of Canada (the country where I grew up!), points out that in the Torah, we are told to remember the experience of slavery so that we remember to treat those who are underprivileged or disadvantaged with compassion. But the liturgy asks us to remember yitzi'at mitzrayim, the exodus from Egypt, not the slavery. Exodus means out of the road, so it refers to the journey. So the liturgy is telling us that the travel itself was important. And the reason why the travel is important is that it is a metaphor for our lives.
Several interesting features of the Israelites' journey are:
- They don't know when or where it will end.
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They don't actually reach the end of their journey by the end of the parshah
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None of them, not even their leader Moses, actually reaches their final destination.
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We, as readers of the story, don't reach the destination either, or at least we don't in this parshah.
Just as our Israelite ancestors did not know when or where their journey would end, none of us knows when or where our lives will end. So it's not a great idea to keep doing something that's stupid or wrong because you can make up for it later--there might not be a later. The Israelites don't actually reach their journey by the end of the parshah--how is that like life?
I think the message here is that we never stop "traveling" in life; that is, we never stop having new experiences and having the opportunity to learn from those experiences. Another similarity between traveling through space and traveling through life is that there is value in both the journey and the destination. Certainly, one can have many valuable experiences during the process of traveling from one location to another. And that's true in life as well--the process of aiming for a goal, such as studying for a college degree or working at a certain job to get experience, can be transforming. Sometimes during this "traveling" part of our lives, we change our destination because of the experiences we have while traveling.
Gershon Silins and Jane West Walsh, from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations or UAHC, report that according to current brain research, the narrative form might actually be "hard-wired" into our brains. In fact, narratives like the one in Parshat Masei might be critical to allowing us to think and remember, just like the loop that tells us to move our feet "right, left, right" without thinking after we learn to walk as toddlers by trying and sometimes failing. Stories and the sequences of ideas they offer are essential to understanding the world and our place in it. The wandering in the wilderness of our ancestors that are described in Masei in the form of a list of 42 places is apparently essential to our very existence as a people on a journey that continues today--we take this journey together as a people because we share its history and its destiny.
Although the list of places in parshat Massei doesn't mean very much to us today--we don't even know where a lot of these places are--our ancestors probably were familiar with these place names and they probably knew the stories connected with each place. So the place names were sort of a code to help them remember the stories. Silins and Walsh compare this experience to the impressions we get when we hear the words "Watergate" or "Woodstock"--a single word conjures up an entire story.
So I've learned several lessons from the list of places in today's parsha. I've learned, first of all, that we'll get a lot more out of our traveling experiences if we learn from them. And that requires remembering where we've come from, what happened along the way, and where we are going. I would add that it also means using what we've learned through these experiences to make changes in our lives.
The second thing I've learned is that there are a lot of similarities between the experience of travel and the experience of life. Life is never static. One of things I remember from my graduate studies in philosophy is the statement by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said that "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." What Heraclitus meant is that by the time you put your foot back into the river, the waters you touched the first time have moved on. We and the world around us are changing constantly, and we need to take advantage of the opportunities offered by change to learn and grow. But we also need to avoid being swept this way and that way by the forces around us--changing without direction or thought won't get us anywhere we want to go.
The third lesson I've drawn from this parsha is that reviewing all of our travels, and those of our ancestors, on a regular basis is a good idea. I guess that means that looking at the photos from my previous trips is a good thing to do! This helps us remember exactly what happened so that we can learn from those experiences as we move through life.
It's interesting that I'm giving this d'var Torah almost exactly a week before my family and I leave for our annual vacation. This week, we're going to spend two weeks exploring Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa. And, incidentally, we're going to stop along the way in Albany and visit Jim, Terry, and Sharone Hendler. So this time when I travel, I'll try to think not only about the places we visit and the history we learn, but the opportunities this gives me to gain new perspectives on the world and on my life. Maybe this journey will have an impact, even if it's a small one, on the rest of my life.
So, going back to my comments at the beginning, when I talked about the different perspectives one might have on the story of the wanderings of our ancestors, now I can really back up my own reaction to the story. If you remember, I thought that the wanderings of our ancestors were exciting because of the opportunities they would have to meet new people and gain new experiences. I don't know what it was actually like to go through these journeys, but I believe that they did take advantage of these opportunities--which is proven by the fact that our people are still around today.
I'm going to close by reading a poem by Robert Frost that, I think, captures some of the themes I've talked about.
1. The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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