CHOCHMAS NASHIM: MATOS MASEI:
JOURNEY THE LEGACY
By: Suri Davis
It’s the summer, I’m feeling nostalgic and exhausted from these past months’ journey through the halls of Corona…I prefer Blue Moon…just saying…
Summer memories are movies and music…since we are completing the Book of Numbers with the Parshah of Journeys, I thought I’d lean into it and use the top ten songs of Journey as the basis of my dvar torah this week. Here goes:
- Don’t stop believing. We saw the miracles in Egypt, during the crossing of the Red Sea at Exodus, and the daily miracles of food, water, clothing and shelter in G-d’s hands in the desert.
- We faithfully believe in G-d’s omnipotence in the past, presence and future and for all eternity.
- Lights illuminate that which is difficult to see, it can take a single match to cut into the darkness in an entire room. It takes G-d’s light/shchinah to elevate the world from entropy and materialistic pursuit, and raise man’s purpose to spiritual pursuit to elevate man’s soul
- The Jews walked by foot in the desert for 40 years. We walked at the behest of our groom, G-d. As a result, G-d shows gratitude for our devotion to Him in the arid desert, and when we sin, and G-d wants to destroy us en masse, he tells us: Zacharti lach chesed neurayich, ahavat klulotayich, lechtech acharai bamidbar/I remember your kindness when you were young [a young nation], the love you showed to me as a young bride, walking after Me [G-d] in the desert…”
- We are now in the midst of the “three weeks,” a time we commemorate the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem. When they were destroyed, why didn’t Judaism halt altogether. If G-d could permit His homes to burn, then maybe He is not so very omnipotent? The answer is in this week’s final Parshah in Numbers, journey. The punchline is that life is a journey, which never ends, until G-d says it ends. What motivates us to go form first grade to second grade etc. aside from our parents telling us we have to? The spark within us to better ourselves with each passing year. For Jews there is the pintele yid, the Jewish spark, which smolders in our souls, and yearns for the rebuilding of G-d’s castle in Jerusalem, and we work feverishly and devotedly towards that end.
- Trial by Fire. Indeed. We get tested all the time. From Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Stalin, Hitler etc. we have been the brundt of worldwide jealousy, ire, hatred, progroms. And from the time our forefather Abraham was thrown in the fire, we have survived.
- After all these years, we survive and THRIVE and struggle and celebrate and withstand and contribute the very best of Medicine, Science, Arts, Culture and Ethics to the world.
- Our duty as Jews is to go Separate Ways from the other nations of the world. To distinguish ourselves by our rules of modesty, ethics and perseverance. We are tested in every generation, often we feel tired and worn out by our journeys in the spiritual desert, and if we feel worlds apart from the rest of the world, so be it. But if we feel that we are stuck in the material world where we are now on Earth, our job on Earth is to grab hold of that which is spiritual and elevate all things we own, all people we meet, all money we make to the service of G-d, and with that we will be what G-d intended, a light upon the nations.
We are tired of this pandemic, but clearly we are not done learning from it. It’s begging for our attention, heed me, learn what you must learn, otherwise you will be destined to be Tom Hanks in the movie Groundhog Day, living the same experiences over and over, until we have learned that which G-d has intended us to learn.
Study hard.
Shabbat shalom
Suri