When I was asked to give the D'var Torah, I wondered what portion I would get and if it would make any sense in my life. The rabbi's are always able to draw something out of the text that is both universal to the human condition and particular to our own lives and I wasn't sure I was up for the challenge, especially when I read the text.
My son, Elliott, just read the Torah portion where the Jews are wandering through the desert trying to get to the Promised Land. With no GPS systems to rely on and no one to ask for directions, the Israelites must rely on God to guide the way.
In this Torah portion, God's mode of communication is a cloud: When God moves the cloud, the Jews are supposed to follow. When the cloud stops, the Jews are supposed to set up camp. I discovered that the Israelites stopped and started 42 times on their 40-year journey between Egypt and Israel. One can only imagine the complaining along the way.
In Numbers Chapter 33, Verse 1, the Torah states, “These are the journeys of the Children of Israel, who went forth from the land of Egypt…” Why does the Torah say they are going on “journeys” plural? Wasn't going from Egypt to Israel just one single trip that just took a long time?
Apparently not, according to some rabbinic interpretations. The 42 stops and starts, they say, may represent the many spiritual journeys we all make during our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we don't always understand the meaning of our present journey until we arrive at the other end and can look back with a different perspective. The rabbi's were basically saying that life is not one journey, but a series of different journeys, or chapters, as we sometimes call them, that we must endure, survive, and hopefully grow from.
These collective journeys obviously helped create the Israelites' spiritual identity.
Let's face it, if the Israelites had simply gone from Egypt to Israel in a few weeks time, they might not have banded together as a cohesive tribe; they might not have studied Torah together and developed our beautiful traditions; and they might not have grown spiritually into a religious people. We all know how hardship and struggle can often unify a people or a family.
I understood how they might have felt about all the stopping and starting. I have moved 17 times with my husband and 14 times with my mom for a total of 31 physical moves in my life. Of course, I never wanted to move. I often went kicking and screaming. But now that I have that precious 20/20 hindsight, I am grateful for the many experiences I have had and the people I have met that have become a part of my many journeys.
It took 4 moves for my parents to divorce…
8 moves to live in a beautiful holler in the Great Smokey Mountains,
11 moves to lose my high school sweetheart in a car accident,
12 moves to find my first job,
14 moves to meet and marry my husband of 23 years,
16 moves to have my first cat,
21 moves before the start of my animal welfare career and the birth of my son,
24 moves to buy my first house,
26 moves to have my first dog,
And 31 moves to find a most incredible best friend.
Thankfully, you don't have to physically move to have these life changing stops and starts. Certainly, all of us have experienced job transitions, relationship changes, deaths, marriage, births, and yes, even final exams. We may find ourselves in difficult dilemmas and wonder if we will ever get out of them. It is said that when God closes a door, he opens a window. But sometimes when God closes a door, it can feel like we're locked out of the house for the night.
That is when we need to follow and trust the cloud most.
The cloud can be scary for the high school student going off to college, the soldier leaving for war, and the pregnant mother waiting for the birth of her child. The cloud sometimes keeps us put when we want to move, and moves us when we want to stay put.
Certainly the cloud keeps us from seeing too far into the future: we might not travel if we saw what lay ahead. While I have certainly been miserable leaving friends behind, I also have found happiness everywhere I have landed. Knowing this, I am not so afraid of the stops and starts anymore, especially since I know my “journeys” are clearly not over yet. Perhaps I have gained a little more trust in the process.
I think the cloud-and the 42 stops and starts-was necessary for the Israelites because it would have been real easy for the Jews to just put down roots as soon as they found a nice stream and not continue to Israel. The Israelites were immature and childlike when they began their singular journey; it took many small journeys along the way to turn them into a great people.
Who knows how our journeys will change or mature us? Whether experiencing the collective journey of our people or the individual journey of our lives, it sometimes simply helps to follow and trust where the cloud leads us.
Home