On the Road with a Headache
Finally.
After a forty year journey, the Jewish people reached their destination. The 400 year old Divine promise to Abraham, that his descendants would be redeemed from exile and return home to Israel, was about to be fulfilled.
In the final portion of the fourth book of the Torah, the Jewish people are in the plains of Moab, at the bank of the Jordan River, opposite the city of Jericho, ready to cross into the Land. Yet the Torah turns to the past. The portion begins with Moses writing and recounting the names of all 42 steps of the journey. Why does the Torah, whose every word and every letter holds meaning, choose to recount all 42 stops in the journey?
Rashi, quoting the Midrash, offers an analogy:
Why were these journeys recorded?... Rabbi Tanchuma expounds it in another way. It is analogous to a king whose son became sick, so he took him to a far away place to have him healed. On the way back, the father began citing all the stages of their journey, saying to him, “This is where we sat, here we were cold, here you had a headache etc.”[1]
The recounting of the 42 step journey, then, is similar to a father who traveled with his son to a distant place in order to heal his son. On their way home, the father recounted all the places and occurrences they experienced earlier on the journey.
The problem, however, is that the story of the Jews in the desert is different than the father-son parable. In the parable the father and son are returning to their original place. On the way back they are, once again, in the same places where they experienced the earlier events, thus it is reasonable to recount the events that happened at those precise places. The Jews in the desert, by contrast, were not returning, they were heading farther and farther away from Egypt, and they had no plans of returning. Why then does the Torah focus on the past, the retelling of the journeys, instead of focusing on the future - the land of Israel that they were about to cross into?
Life is a journey.
Each of us must travel through the wilderness, experiencing many trials and tribulations to achieve our goals and reach our destination. The journey we call life is by no means straightforward. While there are moments, “stops on the journey”, of deep meaning, great achievement, and extraordinary joy, there are also difficult stops on the journey. We sometimes find ourselves going in circles, taking detours, experiencing spiritual “headaches”. We sometimes feel cold, alone, abandoned, and sometimes we just feel that our inner strength and vitality, that our values and convictions, are asleep.
The journey is tedious, yet, we must remember that like the Jews on their journey toward Israel, eventually we will reach our destination, eventually G-d will help us overcome the challenges and reach our promised land.
While on the journey, we must keep focused on the future, always striving to move one step forward. We don’t always have the luxury to dwell on the challenging experiences. Yet, when we overcome the challenge, when we reach our goal, we must do what the father did. We must figuratively “return” to the past difficult and painful experiences. Once we are ”healed” we reach a deeper realization: that all the stops of the journey are indeed part of the healing. As Rashi puts it: “he took him to a far away place to have him healed”. Every step of the road, the cold, the headache, the complaining, was necessary in order to transform the child into a wholesome person.
The name of the Rabbi who taught the father-son parable was Rabbi Tanchuma, whose name comes from the Hebrew word, Nechama, for comfort. Rabbi Tanchuma teaches us that no matter what stage of the journey we are on, no matter how challenging the road ahead, we should be comforted. Because we must know that (1): eventually, “on the way back”, after we conclude the journey, we will discover that every step of the journey was indeed part of the healing. And (2): we will discover that although it is not always obvious, our king, our father, is with us on the journey“.[2]
[1] Rashi, Numbers 33:1.
[2] Based on the teachings of the Rebbe, Lekutey Sichos Volume 18, Masey Sicha 1.
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