How has your summer been so far? I hope it’s been a good one, no matter where you’ve been. But, for many of us, the response to this question is often about comings and goings: a list of places we’ve been and our trips to and from, with little discussion of what happened there. Such is the case with our Torah reading this week.
It’s a double portion, Matot-Mas’ei. Mas’ei, the title of the second portion, means, literally, “goings.” We are at the end of the Israelites’ journey in the wilderness, a period during which we often describe them as “wandering.” As we read the long recap of the people’s travels, naming place after place after place, it becomes clear why the word “wandering” is used. From the text, it seems as if nothing happened in the lives of the people besides moving from camp to camp!
We know as readers of our people’s story that it is full of much more than travels – they built a Tabernacle and created a holy community with sacred rituals. They agreed on an ethical blueprint for living their lives, fought with each other over moral questions, and fought together against other peoples. They betrayed their commitment to their new covenant over and over, and then came back to it each time. They also lived their lives in details only fleetingly revealed by the text. They raised children, cultivated relationships, gained insights, and suffered losses. We can see all this, looking in from the outside, but do the Israelites? Or, are they so consumed by their journey that it is all they can see?
In this context, it makes perfect sense that in next week’s portion, the people will begin to stand still for a long moment, a moment that stretches the length of the book of Deuteronomy. They need this so that Moses can prepare them for life in the Land of Israel. He can help them shift from a state of wandering to the laying of roots; from the disconnectedness of focusing on their journeys to the grounding of living their lives where they are.
For all of us, the journey through life is full of defining moments and milestones such as lifecycle events, graduations, professional accomplishments and life changes, or smaller stopping points like the completion of an all-consuming project or the end of an academic year. Summer may be the perfect time for us to stop and enjoy, to take a well-needed vacation or just an evening walk – whatever might help us to notice the moments when nothing big in life is happening except life itself. This way, we are not wandering from stopping point to stopping point. We are living our lives where we are.
Wishing you all a peaceful, meaningful and perhaps even uneventful Shabbat,
Rabbi Jeffrey Saxe
