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Given by Debby Berlyne on July 30, 2011 (28 Tammuz 5771 )
D'var Torah on Shabbat Masei

Today’s parshah describes the travels of the Israelites from Egypt in great detail. We learn about the names of the 42 places where they stayed and the dates of each stop. During their stay at Mount Hor, 40 years after the Israelites left Egypt, Aaron climbs up Mount Hor and dies at age 123. The description of the Israelites’ travels then continues after the very brief mention of Aaron’s death.

When I read this, I wondered why the Torah describes the journeys of the Israelites in such painstaking detail. Several of the commentators I read asked the very same question. So I’m going to discuss a few different answers to this question.

One of the early commentators to ask about the detailed descriptions of the Israelites’ travels was Rashi. His answer was that the Torah describes the Israelites’ travels in detail to show God’s mercy. We all know that the Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the desert. This traveling would have been intolerable if the Israelites had to move on every day of those 40 years. But we learn that God was merciful, and let them stay in one place for a few days to more than a year.

I can understand this reasoning. God would not seem very merciful if the Israelites spent every day (except, presumably, Shabbat and holidays) packing up their belongings in the morning, traveling through the hot, dry climate all day, and then finding a new place to sleep that night. This would be a pretty miserable existence. Being able to stay in one place for a while before having to move on would be much nicer. Also, it would give the Israelites time to attend to practical details, like doing laundry, or making clothes, or repairing their cooking utensils, or whatever the day-to-day chores were that they had to attend to.

But I was wondering how merciful God would have seemed to the Israelites even if they didn’t have to move every single day, because they still had no permanent home for what was, essentially, an entire lifespan for many people. Most of us in this congregation appreciate having a stable home that we can go back to every evening for years on end. Living in the same place for a long time is the best way to get to know the people in your community, as well as the resources (such as schools, parks, businesses, and workplaces) that are close by.

But maybe that wouldn’t have been an issue in biblical times. After all, we know that many peoples were nomadic in those days, so having a permanent home might not be something that people expected. Also, since the last “permanent” home the Israelites had had was Egypt, where they did not have the freedom to move around, maybe traveling frequently seemed like a nice change. And the Israelites traveled with their families and community, so they didn’t have the problem of having to establish a new community at every stop.

Ramban gives us a different reason for the list of the Israelite’s stops during their time in the desert. The specifics about when and where the Israelites stayed in the desert were designed to ensure that future generations would believe that the miracles that happened during the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert were really miracles. According to this perspective, people who heard the stories in later years might have thought that the things that happened to the Israelites were near inhabited areas and so were less miraculous.

For example, God’s provision of food to the Israelites in the desert might not seem miraculous if you believe that the Israelites were wandering from inhabited village to inhabited village and what the bible describes as “manna” was really just food that was readily available from local shepherds or farmers. But if you know that the place that God gave the Israelites manna was in the middle of nowhere, with no access to shepherds and their flocks or any vegetation, then you can really appreciate how miraculous the manna was.

Rabbi Moshe Shulman of the University of Calgary (I always like quoting from fellow Canadians whenever possible!) said that the message of the detailed journey descriptions is to remind the Israelites and, by extension, their descendants, of how far the Israelites have come! In reviewing the details of their journeys, we think about where the Israelites started, where they ended up, and how they changed as a result. Specifically, this account of their travels helps us remember and appreciate that the Israelites started out as scared, weak people who had been slaves their whole lives. Then ended their journey as strong people who were ready to fight for what they believed in and who had the ability to create a nation in a new land.

This idea has a lot of appeal. No one could go through all that the Israelites went through in Egypt and then in the desert without changing. And, undoubtedly, the people who emerged from the desert were very different than the ones who went in. While they were in the desert, the people had a chance to learn from their weaknesses and grow as a result. For example, they learned to trust that God would provide them with food and that Moses would lead them out of the desert. They learned that courage and faith were much more effective than weakness and doubt. And it was only after having grown as individuals and as a people that they could be ready for their new lives in the land of Israel.

This is a powerful message for us today, as well. We can think of our lives as journeys, and nowadays we have so many ways to remember all of the steps in those journeys! We record our travels through photos, scrapbooks, diaries, blogs, even Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds! And we can use all of that information to remember what we were like earlier in our lives and the effects of what we have experienced on our personalities and on our life trajectories. We can also use this information to assess where we are today compared to where we were in the past. In doing so, we will probably ask some of the same questions as our ancestors must have asked every day during their journey: Are we in the right place now? If so, what do we need to do to stay in this place? And if we are not in the right place, where do we need to go? And what will it take to get there?

The detailed steps that the Israelites took to become a strong people ready for a new life in a new country also remind us that if we aren’t where we need to be right now, we can get there through persistence. The journey probably won’t be quick or easy, as we learned from parshat Masei. And we’re bound to take many unexpected twists and turns along the way. Maybe we won’t reach the destination we’re aiming for in the end. But maybe the place where we end up will have good points as well, and the journey to get there will also have its benefits.

Here is another take on the reasons for listing each stop along the way in the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to Canaan: this list reminds each of us of the many kindnesses each of us experiences along our own personal journeys. Although most of us don’t travel as often or for as long as our ancestors, we all travel through life, with many unexpected twists and turns along the way. We might not have the challenge of setting up camp every few nights, but most of us do move into a new home from time to time, whether it’s moving into a dorm room at college, getting that first apartment, buying a house, or moving into a retirement home. We might not face the threat of wild beasts in an unknown land, but we do face unexpected illnesses or other misfortunes that can affect us or our loved ones.

Throughout their journey, God protected the Israelites, allowing them to move from place to place safely in a world that was surely very dangerous. Think about what travel must have been like in those days. I imagine that the Israelites went from place to place on foot, carrying their belongings on their backs or maybe dragging some of them on carts. Maybe they had some pack animals to help carry their possessions but maybe they didn’t. If they were injured or got sick along the way, medical care would have been very primitive. As we know from the Torah, the desert didn’t naturally provide much food or water. Some of the people they met were friendly, others were not. And the people were poorly prepared for this journey, having lived in the same place for hundreds of years, with no experience traveling at all, let alone in such a dangerous environment. And yet, they made it!

And just like our ancestors, we too benefit from God’s protection as we move through the stages of our personal journeys. We all have all experienced healing of illness in ourselves or in a loved one. We have survived threats from unfriendly schoolmates, colleagues, or neighbors. We have had enough to eat and drink. Our journeys are not easy, just as our ancestors’ journey was not easy, but we have made it this far. And, just as God helped our ancestors reach the goal of their journey, so too we hope that God will help us reach the goals of our own journeys, whatever those goals might be.

Another similarity between our experiences moving through our lives and our ancestors’ experiences moving through the desert is that we learn from each stop along the way. The Torah doesn’t tell us what happened at each stop or what the Jews learned from each experience. But I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that each experience taught the people a new lesson. Why do I think that? Because the people’s mentality changed substantially as a result of these travels. We know that they started the journey thinking of themselves as slaves who needed someone to tell them what to do. And they ended the journey as a free people, ready to take control of a new land.

And we too learn lessons along our personal journeys. This is something that has really struck me recently because I realize that I respond to certain situations differently than I did in the past because of what I’ve learned. For example, I used to worry a lot about what people thought of me. Now, I realize that most of us spend a lot more time thinking about ourselves than about other people. I’ve also learned that what I think someone else is thinking is usually wrong—most of us aren’t very good at reading minds, so it’s best not to try! And I’ve learned these and many other lessons the only way that one can learn these lessons—through experience. It’s no good telling someone that this is how human psychology works—the only way to really internalize the lesson is to experience it for yourself.

One of the most useful lessons one can learn by experience is that difficulties that seem insurmountable can be overcome. So often, when we’re in a really tough situation—such as losing a job, or finding out that a close friend is about to move—we lack faith that we can make it through the situation. The memory of other times when we’ve overcome major challenges, however, can be really helpful in giving us confidence that we can overcome the present challenge and, sometimes, can even give us a few tips about what to do next.

According to the Talmud, the reward for learning Torah is the experience of trying to learn a lesson, not actually learning that lesson. I remember when I was in college waiting for my “real life” to begin. In some ways, I’m still waiting. But an important lesson from today’s parshah is that I’ve been living my “real life” all along, even when I thought I was only preparing for it.

Apparently, some Jews used to read all 42 stages of the Jews’ trip without interruption. According to Rabbi Yitchak Zimmer, the reason for this practice is that the 42 stages are a biblical poem, like the song the Israelites sang after crossing the Red Sea. So the 42 stages, which represent the growth of each Israelite who made the journey, are a way to thank God for the challenges each Israelite experienced along the way, as well as the help they got from God to grow.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin compares his experience visiting his grandparents’ shtetl in Poland with the Israelites’ experience. He took a physical journey back in time to visit the place his family came from. Although the Israelites did not return physically to Egypt, they did return in their minds. And going back the place we came from, whether in fact or only in the mind, is important because of the influences of those early experiences on who we are today.

At the end of the journey, Moses stands before the people and reads out the list of stops along the way of the journey they had just completed. The place names were, for these people, reminders of exactly what happened at each place. When Moses said we traveled from Place A to Place B, this would remind one person of an illness that he had experienced in that place, or someone else that she had couldn’t find her young daughter for a few minutes the very next day. At this point, the Jews needed to take stock of where they had started, what had happened to them along the way, and where they were now—not only geographically, but as individuals and as a people. Only when they recognized where they were could they be ready to take the next step.

And maybe we should use Masei as an opportunity to take stock of our personal journeys. Try asking yourself these questions. Where did my journey start? Where did I stop along the way? What happened to me at each stop? What did I learn as a result? Where am I now, and how is that different from where I started? And if I were to summarize my life’s journey through today, which events would I include?

I hope you’ll find, as I did, that your journey has been worthwhile, that you’ve gained important lessons from your journey that will help you along the way, as you travel to your next destination and the one after that.

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