Parshat Matot-Masei

This week's parasha is sponsored by Shari and Ron Silverstein and family in memory of Morris Browns, father of Baruch Sienna.

Life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage

This week we conclude the Book of B'midbar with a double portion: Matot-Masei. And even though we don't read the final chapters of our story for another two months as Moses recapitulates the Israelites' adventures in the concluding book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) this is the end of the trip. The Israelites are camped on the east side of the Jordan, Moses has been told to ascend the mountain, and except for Moses' death that we will read about in Deut. 34, for all intents and purposes, the narrative is over.

The short (only two chapters), final parasha of Masei is a travel agents' itinerary: where we went and where we stopped. Most of the forty-two place names no longer have any significance to us, and the commentators disagree on why it is important for the Torah to include these details. Surprisingly, the main stop Mt. Sinai is not included. The trip begins with the exodus from Egypt, central to the biblical narrative. In the Torah, we are reminded of our slavery in order to have empathy and treat the underprivileged and the disadvantaged with compassion, 'because you were slaves in Egypt.' But in the liturgy, we are asked to remember yitzi'at mitzrayim, the exodus from Egypt, not the slavery itself. Exodus comes from the Greek: ex - out of and hodos meaning road. I understand why I must remember being a slave (to have empathy for others), but why must I remember the road trip itself?

Although it is a cliché, perhaps the Torah wants to impress upon us that the point of any journey is the travel itself. The Torah commands us to remember the Israelites' travels because the journey is also a metaphor for our lives, as all of us are 'on our way.' The 'way' is a common religious metaphor: Halacha, the system of Jewish law literally means 'the way,' and the Torah is referred to as a pleasant path: (when we return the Torah to the Ark, we sing: "d'racheha darhei noam-- its paths are pleasant, and all its ways are peace." Other religions refer to the 'way' too. Buddhism commonly refers to the 8-fold path, and the Tao is often translated as 'way.'

Robert Frost uses the fork in the path to illustrate our choices on our paths in his famous poem, 'The Road Not Taken.'

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler...

In this classic verse, Frost understands that we cannot return. Once we set out on our paths, we go down that road. This is different from the concept of journey in the ancient world. Thomas Cahill suggests that life was seen as part of an endless cycle of birth and death; time was like a wheel, spinning ceaselessly. We all were on a 'merry-go-round' of life. What goes around, comes around. There is no progress. The Greeks advanced the concept; we could go on a quest, but we would return to the same place. In Homer's epic Odyssey, Odyseus (Ulysses) journeys to Troy during the Trojan war and then back to his home in Ithica. Through their narrative, the Israelites teach a different message. We embark on a journey, and we end up in a different place from where we started, although the destination eludes us. I don't know if it is a tragedy or simply realistic that the Israelites' journey ends before reaching the land of Israel. For it is not only Moses who does not reach the promised land, it is us, the readers. Yes, I know that if we read on in the book of Joshua, we can enter the land, just like we can 'enter the land of the future' by peaking into our children's and grandchildren's lives. But we ourselves cannot go there. We are on a journey, but the final destination is not important.

I think the Torah's insistence on the journey teaches a profound lesson. We don't stay where we are, but (as they say in Boston), you can't get there from here. Because there is no 'there.' I don't mean that the land of Israel is a figment of the Israelites' imagination, but that our final port of call (wherever it is) is not the destination. (And as a big, big, traveler, you have to believe me on this one). Whether it is a degree or career, or even a vacation spot, the destination is not the thing of value. Many of us often think, "If we could only short-cut the process, and get 'there' without the journey, that would be the greatest." But sometimes the destinations we set out for didn't turn out to be the places we wanted to be. Maybe even because the trip itself changed us. At my niece's graduation this past month from U of T, many individuals were honoured with extraordinary achievements in their fields of study. But what I was struck by was how many hadn't begun in that discipline. Often the dean would introduce the awardee, by saying, "This individual started out studying X, and took a course in Y just out of curiosity." But they discovered a passion and a talent for this new field, achieving the highest standing in this new language, or new specialty. The thing of value, no matter the destination- is the process.

For me, I have almost come to the end of this journey of writing these weekly columns (and I will talk more about what I've learned in the process in my last one; I still have two more). The word, 'journey' comes from the French 'jour' as a 'journey' was originally the amount of travel one could cover in the space of a day. This image of a 'day' is in fact, often used as a metaphor for the journey of our lives: awakening in the morning (birth) with our journey ending with our death (at sunset). This poem by Alvin Fine is found in the Reform prayerbook:

Birth is a beginning, and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage.

Let's make the most of the trip.

Shabbat Shalom,

BDS