Ma’sei – It’s all about the journey

By Rabbi Ezra Friedman

Life is a journey. Every part of the way effects what may follow. Mistakes can be made but they are meant to be learnt from. When we are young, our journey is intensified. As we grow older, we use the knowledge gained from our life experiences to improve ourselves. The prophet Yirmiyahu agrees with such a concept. In his book Eichah (Lamentations 3, 27) he writes:

“ט֣וֹב לַגֶּ֔בֶר כִּֽי־יִשָּׂ֥א עֹ֖ל בִּנְעוּרָֽיו”

“It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.”

When one is young, events and challenges make a greater impact on one’s mind. A young child who experiences the world anew, approaches everything with great curiosity. Every sight, sound, and event is met with new excitement. This is not only limited to age. One may continue to live life with such a youthful approach by making a conscious decision to do so. When one views life as a continuous journey, as a path to any goal, every aspect of that path becomes meaningful.

Our Parsha teaches us the importance of focusing on the journey and the landmarks met along the way. This week’s parsha is called Ma’sei, a short term for the Hebrew word “Ma’saot“- journeys. Almost an entire chapter is dedicated to review all the places the Nation of Israel traveled through their journey in the desert. The Torah lists in detail the exact location of every step of the journey as well as every important event that took place.

Much has been written as to why the Torah went into so much detail about the Ma’saot. The Rambam– Maimonides, writes in his famous book of philosophy “Morei Nevuchim” (the guide to the perplexed 3, 50) that the detailed wording of these travels comes to teach a basic principle. An unfortunate tendency in human nature is losing the moment. When a special and inspiring moment occurs in one’s life, the first moments are very powerful. However, the specialness fades with time. Whether it be a joyous wedding or a birth of a family member, time takes its toll. We try to regain that special feeling through commemorating those events or recording them through film or picture.

The Rambam explains that Hashem understood this tendency and wrote in the Torah a profound answer- “Ma’saot”. The details of the journey are so important in order that the obstacles that we endured are not forgotten with the passage of time. These obstacles that we experienced together, helped to form us as a nation. When we pay close attention to the journey, then we will have a greater appreciation for how far we have come. When we look inside the Torah and see where it all happened, the desert hilltop where we fought for our lives, the shaded oasis where we rested and the valley where we cried, then the feeling of what Hashem did for us remains alive. We can then more easily acquire the lessons that are meant to be learned from those important events.

There is a story of a Jew who went through the Holocaust. During that terrifying period, he was stripped of all that he had. In the cold winter the Nazis gave him a pair of shoes to wear. To his horror, the sole of the shoe was made of a piece of a Sefer Torah– a holy parchment that has verses written on it in the holiest manner. The man was shocked, that he as a practicing Jew would be disgracing the holiest object in Judaism with every step he took. In his situation of life or death, he realized he had no choice. Regardless, he could not release that hard feeling, of shaming the Torah with every step. He made a promise that if he ever survived the war, he would do his utmost to donate and rewrite a beautiful adorned Sefer Torah. The man did miraculously survive and was able to reestablish himself.  He built a family and kept his promise. He donated an elegant Sefer Torah.  He also kept the shoes from that awful journey. When he woke up on a Shabbat morning, he would look deep in his closet at the shoes and recall those hard times. He then continued on to synagogue and witnessed a bar mitzvah boy reading from his glorious Sefer Torah. He would shed a tear, a tear of joy and appreciation for how far he had come, from the depths of pain and affliction to the songs of joy and prosperity.

For the common man, the intensity of special events are often subdued with time. Our memory is sometimes very short. After the devastation of the Holocaust, the Jewish people continued, settling the Land of Israel, and rebuilding our nation piece by piece, ultimately bringing us to a state of prosperity. Along the way, those moments in history, both sad and joyous, fade with time, loosing effect. To keep them alive, we must look at our own “Ma’sot“, at every detail of our voyage. By observing every landmark along the way, they will ultimately leave a mark on our souls. More important than the destination is the journey that got us there.