MATOT MAASEY 5781

Do you know why you are where you are?

I apologize in advance if what I’m about to say offends anyone. Today’s Torah reading is surely a candidate for one of the most boring Torah portions of the year with passages like: “They journeyed from A and they camped at B; they journeyed from B and they camped at C; they journeyed from C and they camped at D, and on and on.” It reads like those trip tickets that Triple-A used to have…and unless you are a geographer or someone planning a trip through this area, this long list of names of places that you have never heard of before and that you have no desire to hear about again can seem a bit, can I say, tedious?

So why is it in the Torah? And even worse, the list ends before the Jews arrive in the Promised Land! After all these starts and stops the Torah portion ends just before we get to the destination. It’s like recounting the stops we made as we drove across country on our family vacation and never bothering to mention that after all these stops we arrived at our destination. What sense does that make?

There are different explanations offered by our commentaries, but since many of us are traveling these summer weeks, I thought I’d share with you what I consider a most profound approach. I’ve done a good deal of traveling in my lifetime—usually for sight seeing or to see family or attend a family function or for rabbinical meetings. But sometimes unintended things happen along the way.

A couple of good examples happened wheI was single. Before I met Cheryl, I traveled to Florida, NY, NJ, Israel and Houston in my quest to find a suitable mate—only to meet the love of my life, Cheryl, 7 miles away in Sandy Springs. Before I met Cheryl, after spending precious time and money—more often than I would like—after meeting face-to-face, I didn’t always know why I bothered to make such an effort.

But this parsha makes clear that while my reason for travel might have included an introduction…my presence in these places at that time was no coincidence and that Gd had placed me there for a specific reason. For example: I was able to help a woman secure a get (Jewish divorce) in NY, so she could remarry. I was able to help a woman in Houston—who was raised as a Christian—discover that she was actually Jewish—and with my rabbinic contacts around the country, I was able to secure proof.

Once, after attending a Rabbinic conference in NJ. I experienced a 2-hour delay in Newark airport—which is not unusual for the Newark airport. I sat next to a young man with spiked green hair and a ring through his nose. He saw my kipa and began to ask me questions. It seems that he was estranged from his Jewish family, and after an hour of conversation, I convinced him to give his parents a call. Yes, I may have made the trip with one purpose in mind, but Gd clearly has His own agenda.

The lesson is: How do you know where you are supposed to be? How do you know why you are where you are? And how do you know that, while you are so busy fixating on where you think you ought to be, that you are not missing out on things that are calling out to you right where you are? I wasn’t thinking about Gd or holiness or Divine purpose during these trips. But Gd brought me to those places because that is where I was needed.

According to Kabbalah, there’s a divine spark hidden within everything and we are in the places we find ourselves not by accident but in order to redeem the holy sparks that are present there. Everything calls to us: Hineyni, “Here I am, pay attention.” But are we listening? Every situation wants to positively change us, but we are more focused on changing the situation. We hurry life along to get to “the point,” as if we know where and what the point really is.

It may sound cliché, but the journey is the point—the opportunity to hear the call and to respond to it. There’s an old Chassidic story of the yeshiva student who hungered to someday, somehow, meet Eyliyahu Hanavi (Elijah the Prophet)—who appears, according to legend, often in mysterious ways in every generation. The boy’s father suggested that perhaps, if he would stay up all night and study with purity and devotion, Eyliyahu might come. The student did as his father instructed. He studied fervently all night, but nothing happened. Then, one night, while he was studying, there was a knock on the door of the Bet Midrash study hall. When the student opened the door, there was an old man who asked for something to eat.

      The student was annoyed that this beggar was bothering him, taking him away from his holy studies, and so he gave the man a bit of food and ordered him to leave. The next morning, when he told his father about the intrusion, the father sighed. “That intruder,” said the father, “may just have been the Eyliyahu, and now you have missed an opportunity to spend time with him.”

From that day on, he always welcomed every stranger that he met as warmly as he could, no matter how busy he was—just in case. He grew up to become a famous scholar and a much-respected tzadik (righteous person), but whether he ever again had the opportunity of meeting Eyliyahu Hanavi or not—no one can say.

It’s a lovely story. But it’s more than just a story. It’s a reminder to us all that the journey is as important as the goal, and that if we keep our eyes and hearts open along the way, we may learn more as we travel than we will from the goal of our trip.

The whole trick of a spiritual life is to be where you are, to really be in the moment and in the place that you find yourself in, and not to be so possessed and not to be so focused on the place towards which you are going that you don’t see the Divine sparks that call out to you on the way 

Perhaps this is the point of our Torah portion. It teach us that we need to pay attention to the place that we are in—even as we travel. Kids will say: “Are we there yet?” But wise people travel with their eyes and hearts open, for who knows? We may not want to be in this place that we are passing through, but Gd may want us to be here—completely here—awake and alive to where we are and to what is going on around us. 

The Torah records every stop that the Jews made in their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land in order that we might realize and understand that there may be all kinds of Divine sparks along the way calling to us and pleading for our attention if we but take notice of them.

My friends, wherever we travel this summer, wherever we go in life, may Gd help us to keep our eyes and hearts always open on our journey through life to the holy sparks right in front of us. Amen!