by Rabbi Avi Billet
In one of his essays on the parsha, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks questions the need for the list of the Masa’ot, the stops of the journey of the Bnei Yisrael through the wilderness. Noting that the journey from Egypt to Israel shouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks, and in fact we will see in next week’s parsha that the place from which they crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land was אחד עשר יום מחורב, eleven days away from Sinai, Rabbi Sacks compares this journey to what Nelson Mandela called the Long Walk to Freedom.
Then he writes “The real journey to freedom, however, is not a physical one. It is a mental, moral, and spiritual one. It is long, arduous, and demanding, and there are challenges and failures along the way…. God was with the people. Yet they lacked the faith in themselves or in God to take the challenges in their stride.”
Going through the narrative of the Exodus, when the Torah says they didn’t go through the land of the Pelishtim in order to avoid war, he notes that they nonetheless saw war anyway, as well as other travails. Egypt gave chase to the splitting of the sea, there was no food or water, Amalek attacked.
We learn early on in the book of Yehoshua that the nations in Canaan were frightened of Israel regarding their size and therefore perceived military might, and the Israelites knew God was on their side and that they could not lose. “Yet fear overwhelmed their capacity for rational thought.”
So Rabbi Sacks suggests that the stops along the road that we read of in Masei are a “literary device to communicate just how many stages we must go through to get from here to there when the destination is liberty itself.” And then comes the line which he italicizes, which always means it’s the money line: “The road from slavery to freedom is as long or short as it takes for people to develop the habits of responsibility for their and their children’s future.”
The list in Parshat Masei is all about the many small journeys it took before the people were ready to enter the land and begin to construct a society of freedom under the sovereignty of God.
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This time of year on our calendar presents us with a problem. It’s a problem of relatability. It’s a problem of seeing ourselves for who we are, for where we stand in history, and for what our role and our task is going forward. Each of us, throughout life, experiences many journeys, and Tisha B’Av, every year, is one stop along the way.
We have all experienced or have knowledge of however many Tisha B’Avs we’ve observed in our lifetimes. Some of us may have camp memories, others shul memories, and still others unique experiences that were defining based on where we were for a period of one summer of our lives that included a Tisha B’Av. And each year had a different lead-in, a different degree of our own connection to this event on our calendar.
And in leading up to Tisha B’Av at this stage of life, surely some of us wonder if the future of the Jewish people will always continue this way. Not that it’s such a big deal – 3 weeks, 9 days, Tisha B’Av. It’s not the biggest inconvenience in our lives. But it IS a downer. For a fast day that is called a Mo’ed and for a day we are told will one day be a holiday… for how long must we wait?
I don’t know the answer to that question. Even if I continue to wait for the Messiah, whenever he comes (אחכה לו בכל יום שיבא), I still don’t know. All those who are in the world to come waited their whole lives. And while we hope our destiny is to live to see that day, I accept the reality that we may share the fate of those who are in the World of Truth. In which case, what’s it all for?
Living life with purpose, whether one is alone, has a spouse, has children, anyone who is accomplishing things in our person-to-person interactions, in our personal relationships with one another and with God, is living a meaningful life. And even if the Jewish life is incomplete absent a Mikdash – something we even note at every wedding, at the height of the joy of a new Jewish home being created, when we break a glass and say אם אשכחך ירושלם (If I forget thee, O Jerusalem) – we make the most and best of this gift of life we are given to achieve a higher purpose.
And one of those higher purposes is spelled out so beautifully in Rav Elimech of Lizhensk’s prayer before prayer – תפילה לפני התפילה, in which he writes a יהי רצון – may it be Your will, שנראה כל אחד מעלת חבירו ולא חסרונו. That each person should be able to see the other person’s best qualities, and not their deficiencies.
Remember Rabbi Sacks’ line: “The real journey to freedom, however, is not a physical one. It is a mental, moral, and spiritual one. It is long, arduous, and demanding, and there are challenges and failures along the way….”
One can argue that the freedom we seek is the one that comes from choosing to follow the Torah, as we learn in the beginning of Avos Chapter 6. איו לך בן חורין אלא מי שעוסק בתורה - the most free person is connected to Torah. And that the words of the Ten Commandments are חרות על הלוחות, engraved in the Tablets. אל תקרי חרות אלא חירות. Don’t read it as engraved, but read it as the source of freedom.
Rabbi Matitya HaYitzhari, an Aragonese scholar in the Iberian peninsula in the early 1400s, wrote an exceptional commentary on Avos. He asked on this statement: isn’t someone who is most distant from God, who follows one’s desires and does whatever he wants, isn’t that person most free? No! The Braisa is teaching us that the ultimate freedom comes from the Luchos, from fulfilling what is written on the tablets, which complete one’s soul and body.
In completing the soul, here is his summary of Dibros 1-4
1. Knowing the fundamental truth, which comes from belief in God
2. Distancing oneself from idolatry and all kinds of activities that are connected to idolatry
3. Being careful to honor and revere God
4. Designating time for holiness, purity, and to serve the Blessed One
If it’s a life of Physical Spirituality – Dibber 5:
5. Being careful to honor those greater than oneself, especially because their kindnesses are exceptional
And if we are simply focusing at a physical life - Dibros 6-10:
6. Being careful not to harm someone else’s body
7. Being careful to control one’s desires that may harm someone else’s existence
8. Being careful not to harm someone else financially
9. Being careful not to be the cause of anyone’s misfortune even if not harming them directly
10. And finally, having purity of thought, and keeping one thoughts holy
These are offshoots of Aseres HaDibros, which he defines as full fledged freedom, things which שהשכל ישמח בהם ויצילו האדם ממכשולות ובלבולים. – one’s intuition rejoices in these groundrules, which save a person from all kinds of machinations and mess-ups. The other person who thinks s/he is free is actually a slave to one’s desires and one’s idolatry, which bring a person down a path that may be seriously lacking in goodness and wholesomeness.
So we have the spiritual side, which is not contingent on having a Mikdash. And we have the physical life, which is all about how careful we are to not harm another person. Those are important takeaways that Tisha B’Av is meant to remind us – that the life we have is most free when we live it with others, in a non judgmental way, accepting people for who they are, and respecting their rights to be who they are. But life is a journey. And journeys have bumps and the occasional unexpected twist, which may cause us to consider whether the journey is worth it.
Reb Elimelech’s teaching, therefore can bring us to a different level. We are all likely capable of leaving other people alone if they want to be left alone.
But are we as good or even better at lifting people up? At saying the right word that helps elicit a smile? Of seeing the good in someone else? Of seeing through to a person’s soul? Of finding the beauty in a person that the person may suppress or not see in oneself? And the amazing news is that if we do this properly, while we may be elevating others, an incredible backhanded benefit of this is that we are uplifted as a result as well.
Rabbi Sacks called this journey to freedom a spiritual one, which is true. But one cannot embark on a spiritual journey in this world without recruiting the physical to be an assistant in that journey.
The parsha tells us there are many steps in the journey of life. It took 40 years for a people to weed out the negative traits that caused them to be stuck in the wilderness, and to be a nation ready to enter the Promised Land.
We don’t need 40 years to achieve our greatest potential of using our freedom guided by the Torah to have special appreciation for others. Even as we prepare to observe another Tisha B’Av, our collective commitments will help bring us ever closer to the day when Tisha B’Av will indeed be turned from yagon to simcha, from a day of anguish to a day of joy. May we all be blessed to experience, or at the very least to be a beacon along the way that brings our People to that great destination.
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