The Wandering Jew
The soul cannot be content with intermittent spurts of energy. The soul, however, wants truth and consistency and will stop at nothing until it has achieved its goal.
The Sinking Rameses
The noun Jew has often been prefaced by the adjective “wandering.” And it is this week’s parsha, Masei-Journeys that details the forty-two journeys of the Jewish nation from Egypt to the Land of Israel. By analyzing the names of these places through which they traveled we can gain some insight as to how we can weather the vicissitudes of our personal journey through life and of our collective Jewish existence as well.
The first journey out of Egypt was to a place called Rameses. If Mitzrayim-Egypt connotes the state of confinement and distress that comes from a lack of independence, then Rameses is the first step in the pursuit of spiritual independence.
Rameses was ostensibly named after the Egyptian Pharaoh who carried that name. However, our Sages tell us that it is related to a Hebrew word that means to sink. When the Egyptians enslaved our ancestors and had them build cities, they ordered them to build the structures in marshes, which caused them to sink. The Egyptian leaders did this to deny their slaves the satisfaction of knowing that their labor had any enduring value.
What this can mean in the spiritual journey of a Jew from a state of spiritual enslavement is:
The first quest and journey is to extricate ourselves from the clutches of subservience to masters other than G-d. However, no sooner that we leave Egypt, we discover that one of the features of life as a slave—the lack of a sense of accomplishment—cannot be easily taken out of our system. We land in a place that is characterized by its inability to produce lasting results.
From Ramses to Sukkos
In real life, this refers to the person who is inspired to become a better person, and reorient his or her life in the direction of the Holy Land, metaphorically speaking, but then discovers that this feeling of inspiration is short lived. This discovery can be devastating, because it makes the person feel that they are a failure and they could never really be free.
Knowing that this phenomenon is a normal part of journeying through life is somewhat comforting. But to help us cope with this phenomenon, we travel on to the next place called Sukkos, an obvious allusion to the Festival in which we dwell in temporary homes.
This can be understood to mean that when we realize that our journey to the Promised Land can be long and protracted, we should find solace in the spiritual experiences we have, albeit of a temporary and fleeting duration. If our souls—hitherto suppressed and inhibited in the spiritual land of slavery—can feel uplifted, even sporadically, in the beginning of our journey, this too is progress.
From Sukkos to Eisam
But the soul cannot be content with intermittent spurts of energy. If all the soul wanted was to express itself, it can learn to be content with occasional experiences of inspiration. The soul, however, wants truth and consistency and will stop at nothing until it has achieved its goal. This pursuit of truth is alluded to in the name of the Israelites next stop, to a place called Esam, the letters of which are the same as the Hebrew word for truth—Emes.
But alas, the pursuit of truth does not produce quick results. And that is why in the word Eisam, the letters for truth are jumbled, as if to underscore the elusive nature of this quest. Moreover, the Torah describes the location of Eisam as being “at the edge of the desert.” This alludes to the feeling of desolation and frustration that accompanies the discovery of how elusive the goal may be.
More specifically, the word Esam—while it begins with the same letter as the word Emes, an aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, it is followed by the last letter tav. In the word Emes, by contrast, the letter Alpeh is followed by the letter mem—the middle letter of the Alphabet, and only then the letter tav.
What is the significance of this difference?
In the pursuit of truth, it would be nice to go progressively from the first level to the last. Every step that we climb gives us a sense of accomplishment and incentive to go to the next level. There are times when we think we have already reached the end only to discover that we are still in the middle. Imagine the frustration and disillusionment one experiences when this occurs. This is what the jumbled word Esam signifies: When we think we might have reached the end of our quest for truth, we may realize that we have barely reached its mid-point.
But, the Torah tells us that the Jews continued in their journey to the Land of Israel. We should never give up hope.
The Final Step
One’s personal journey is paralleled by the journey of the
Jewish people through history. This journey will lead us imminently to the Messianic Age, ushered in by Moshiach. For thousands of years we have been hoping and waiting for this day. One of the primary challenges is when we think we’re there only to discover that somehow there’s been a detour. The challenge we have—in our own personal journey or our collective journey through history—is to never give up. This too is one of the steps in our journey. Even at this juncture—nay particularly at this juncture—we must strengthen our faith in the promise we have heard from our leaders and prophets that the “time of your Redemption has been reached.”
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Matos-Masei by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
