The second of our two parashot this Shabbat, Mas'ei, opens with a summary of the journeys of B'nei Yisrael in the wilderness. Over the course of 40 years, there are 42 stops along the way, and the Torah follows a formula to tell us about them: vayis'u and vayachanu, they traveled from here, and they settled there, they traveled from there, and they settled here. We have already encountered some of the places earlier in the Torah, and some of the places are mentioned here for the first time. Why does the Torah offer this list, this summary? Rashi comments that this list serves to show us chasadav shel HaMakom, "the kindnesses of the Almighty." For most of their 40 years in the wilderness, Rashi notes, B'nei Yisrael were not unduly burdened. In fact, not counting the first and last years, during the middle thirty-eight years, they only moved 20 times, as God did not wish to cause them excessive inconvenience through frequent, short encampments. Therefore, the Torah presents this list as a reflection of God's love for B'nei Yisrael. Even though He punished the people as a result of the sin of the spies and made them travel about the wilderness for 40 years, He nevertheless showed them care and concern throughout this period.
But what Rashi doesn't acknowledge is that at every stop, at each station, no one, including Moshe himself, had the slightest idea of how long the stop would last. Are we here for one year, or for one hour? Should we unpack and build a new tent, a new camp? Or is it advisable to just live out of our luggage and be ready for the next move? It's an exhausting state of dependence and of reliance. At any given point, Bnei Yisrael had no idea where they were going.
In a way, that’s how many of us feel now. Vayis’u vayachanu. The numbers go up, the numbers go down. Restaurants will open, restaurants will close. The Capital Region is doing great and has things under control, the capital region is seeing an increase in numbers. Will there be school in the fall? What will it look like? Will we be able to travel again? Will we still have our jobs in the next few months? Will we ever be able to go back to normal? It is draining, exhausting, debilitating to go from day to day not knowing what each day will bring and knowing even less what coming weeks and months will bring.
R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, in his commentary on the Torah, quotes a tradition from the Kabbalists (the Ohr HaChaim notes this same tradition in his commentary), that each place the Israelites encamped offered them another opportunity to reveal an aspect of their holiness. They didn’t know what was going to happen next, where or when they would move, but they had a project at each location: to reveal another spark, another layer of holiness in the world. Each stop gave them another opportunity to refine their own character as individuals and as a fledgling community. How will they respond to new situations that arise? How will they interact with each other - with their parents, children, spouses, neighbors, friends? How will they interact with Moshe Rabbenu, with Aharon, with the Kohanim, the Zekenim, with the Mishkan, with God’s Torah that they had been given? On the other hand, How will the leadership lead? They may not have known where they were going next, but they had so much to do where they were at each point.
And so as we conclude Sefer B’midbar on Shabbat, and then later this week usher in the 9 day period of intense mourning for the Batei Mikdash, which were destroyed in part because our ancestors neglected their responsibilities towards God and towards each other, we should use this time of not knowing what lies ahead to engage with what we can do now, just as our ancestors did while traveling the wilderness. We too can reveal the hidden sparks of holiness that are within us. We can improve the way we interact with others, increase and deepen our empathy, repair relationships with people, with God, deepen our Tefilah and our Torah study. We can do this as individuals and within our families. And we can also do this communally. Over the coming weeks, I will be working with you and our volunteers to devise new initiatives, both virtual ones and in person socially-distant ones, to bring our community closer together and closer to Hashem, and to reveal our sparks of holiness during these uncertain times. Our ancestors didn’t waste one minute at each unknown point in the desert: we can’t afford to either.
