Two Minute Torah Podcast

Masei 5768 by Rabbi David Wolpe

It is a commonplace of spiritual teaching that the journey, not the destination, is the crucial component in growth. Massey, the parashah whose title means journey, emphasizes this, but we may not appreciate just how powerfully the Torah teaches us this truth.

For Massey merely hints at the great truth. When we finish reading the Torah, when we chant the last chapter of Devarim, where are the Israelites? They are still in the desert. The Torah is, in one sense, a book without an ending. Yes, in the book of Joshua they arrive in the land, but it is anticlimactic, bloody, difficult and not at all the milk and honey paradise that is promised. For the story of the Torah is a story of wandering, of coping with the challenges of life, of stumbling and recovery and hope. Not of arrival, but of the journey.

What is it we need in this journey? Three things. We need a community, and that is Clal Yisrael, the people of Israel. If we lose one another, if we sacrifice the essential core of our connection, we are truly lost.

Second, we need a guide. God is the Guide through the wilderness. God invests our wandering with hope, assures us that this journey is not in vain.

Third we need a map. Our map is the Torah.

Massey hints at the essential message of the Torah. We are on this confusing, beautiful, baffling and wondrous journey together. God is beside us, not to ensure everything will be easy, but to remind us that it is all meaningful and important. And we have in hand the Torah, whose wisdom is a path of life, a way through the wilderness.

May we all be blessed in our various individual journeys and may we hold tight to one another, to the Torah and to God in our journey together.