Rules for the Wildnerness
Parashat Matot-Masei
Rabbi Noa Kushner
July 9th 2021
Four Basic Rules for Moving Through The Wilderness / Life
Rule #1: You Can’t Leave Until You Journey
Rule #2: You Cannot Name the Station Until You’re Done With It
Rule #3: Sometimes Backwards is Forwards
Rule #4: Every Station is Essential
I will admit that this week, I:
Completely drove by an exit I have turned of millions of times without noticing.
Was convinced a morning in person appointment was an hour later than it was, causing me to
show up fashionably disheveled, and
got two roads so confused I could not find my destination.
In fact, I made so many mistakes that one of my daughters actually asked if I was okay.
And these are just the mistakes that leave evidence!
My interpersonal interactions these days are not exactly smooth
It takes me much longer to the get the words out
Spontaneity, never my strong suit, is now completely out of the question
Multi-tasking? Don’t ask.
Maybe something similar is happening to you
This going back and forth, or being stalwart, grateful and cheery while protecting against
delta variants
Is not for the faint of heart.
I keep imagining a person who has carried a heavy weight in their arms for a very long time —
we know when she finally puts that weight down, her arms are shaking.
We’re shaking and we’re also not sure if it is time to put the
weight down or what part of the weight we should be putting down or even, where it goes.
It turns out in the Torah, we’re also between stages in the wilderness
42 stages to be exact (1)
And while there’s a robust conversation amongst the rabbis about why these stages are even
listed
Understandably because reading it one gets the sense that somehow a random copy of
Moses’ gas bill got stuck somewhere in Numbers —
While there is this open question about what this list is doing in our Torah altogether
It seems, this year, patently obvious, at least to me
That the stations are listed because they have something to teach us about how to move
through the kinds of times just like the one we’re enduring now
We could even call these stations hints or: Basic Rules for Moving Through The Wilderness /
Life
So this shabbat, I came up with four such rules:
Rule of the Wilderness #1: You Can’t Leave Until You Journey
Let me explain.
Before the itinerary introducing the whole 42 station situation
We have an introductory verse
And the verse uses both the words
מַסְעֵיהֶ֖ם (“their journeys”) and מוֹצָאֵיהֶ֛ם (“their departures” or “their going out” or “their leaving”)
(Think Yitziat Mitzrayim / our leaving of Egypt and you’ll have the idea)
Two times both words are used in one short verse as if to emphasize the distinction between
“Leaving” or “Going out” versus “Journeying”
The inclusion of both words helps us see that these are two very distinct actions.
Further, these two words are each written in multiple, different orders in the verse
Making it very unclear which comes first: The “leaving” the “departing” or the “journeying.” (!)
Now, typically assume we “leave” in order to “journey”
We expect a yetziah / a “departure” a “going out” first, in some ways an implicit rejection of
where we currently are.
But the Sfat Emet
Chasidic commentator
Points out that, actually, in religious travel, actually, we “journey” first and “leave" second.
I’ll say it again, because it is unintuitive: We “journey” first and “leave" second.
In other words, the Sfat Emet says you have to be on your way a long time, you have to have really made some tracks before you have really left anything Now the Sfat Emet bases his interpretation on the fact that,
right in the verse before, in a phrase so common we don’t even notice it,
we are described as a people who came out of Egypt. And the Sfat Emet teaches that this reference to our leaving Egypt right there before the long
42 station itinerary has a specific purpose, it is reminding us
That (even though it might look like it)
we did not leave Egypt first and then journey
No, no he says
Because, he says, we already know Egypt came with us, it stayed with us in the wilderness
The slavery of Egypt playing itself out again and again
No, he says we did not leave Egypt and then journey
Rather, we had to be brave enough to go on the journey, to begin the holy itinerary
And then, at each station there was less and less slavery in us, the slavery fell away over a long period of time and wandering
So that by the time we reached the promised land, we had finally left Egypt. (2)For us, too, personally and as country
maybe leaving this chapter of history
and all the fears that come from it,
all the changes and upheaval is too much to ask
So maybe instead of trying to “leave” we can instead just be willing to go to the next station,
To see what God has in mind on the ol’ itinerary Rule of the Wilderness #2: You Cannot Name the Station Until You’re Done With It I told you that there were 42 stations and there’s a lot of rabbinic discussion about why we
even have this list to begin with. We could go through all the reasons, but I think the most
compelling is the most obvious, namely that each station taught us something And in fact, if you had a rabbi who wanted to go through the names of each station and try to
isolate their literal meanings
As, in fact, you do
You might be surprised to learn that
Along with names that sound right out of Harry Potter like
“Wilderness of Thorns” / aka: מִּדְבַּ֣ר סִינָ֑י (3)
There are others that are clearly referring to emotional, spiritual states like:
מָרָֽה / which means bitterness; or to be contentious
And we happen to know this is where everyone complained about the bitter water until
Moses made it sweet (4)
Or: קִבְרֹ֥ת הַֽתַּאֲוָֽה
Which I translate as: Graves of Desire
Which is the place where everyone overindulged their craving for meat and died, true, in
Torah (5)
So now we are maybe beginning to understand the existence of the itinerary — it’s not a
geographic map at all but
In the words of HaKtav VeHaKabalah (6)
a map of what was experienced or happened in each place
The names describe what happened there
And the names that make no sense today are just because we forgot what happened once
long ago.
It is a map of the states of the soul
Now we understand rule #2, now it makes perfect sense,
Paraphrasing Rabbeinu Bahya, we can’t name the station until we’re on the way to the next
one
Otherwise we won’t know what will happen there.
There’s a place near one of the fancy malls in Marin,
where there is a marsh and I think a bird sanctuary
A lot of storks and heron are there, somehow surviving the noise from the 101 but I digress
Michael and I pulled the car over there about eighteen years ago when we found out his
father, Marvin, z”l, may his memory be a blessing, was in the final stages of his cancer.
“It’s bad, isn’t it.” Michael said.
“Yes, it’s bad,” I said, and we sat there a little while absorbing the news before going home to
make arrangements for the flights.
Maybe for the high holidays this year we should make our own maps with the 42 stations of
our lives or however many we think we have so far
And name them just what they need to be named
Names that make sense to us
“The place with birds where it was bad”
Or, maybe just we can just set place holders until the name comes our way —
Maybe this year in particular we need to try and name the places
where things happened to us during covid
Because, if your last year is anything like mine, the geographic map was very, very small
Very repetitive
Deceptively so
But, in fact, one room might now need to be designated with many names to signify all that happened in it
Because there’s no question
We might not be moving very far these days but we’re surely moving through God’s itinerary
See, in the wilderness, too, you might not know this, but the geographic distance we covered
was also not all that impressive (!)
And we returned to the same place more than once
Sometimes giving it a new name, sometimes repeating the old one
Which leads me to the third rule
Rule of the Wilderness #3:
Sometimes Backwards is Forwards
Another surprising feature of our list of 42 stations is that there are some names of previously
established characters in Torah right in the list. Some are more vague, some seem to refer to a
tribe, like the tribe of Edom, but one caught my eye: Terach (!) (7)
Remember, Terach is the father of Abraham, he is the original father that Abraham is trying to
leave at the very beginning of our story, the one about whom God says to Abraham, “Go! Get
out of his house!”
Given everything we’ve said about this list so far, Terach’s sudden and unexplained
appearance is riveting. As if there is a place where the people Israel, this many generations
later, still must confront Terach in some way. (Freud is having a field day somewhere.)
Terach seems to be in the itinerary, as if to teach, that as far as we have journeyed, our parents
can and will still show up at any time,
That is to say, parents — they always show up in at least one place in God’s itinerary,
“Surprise!”
So see, there are times, when, in order to move forward, we must go back and finish old
conversations, with those we love, whether they are living or not
Sometimes, just like in Torah, those stations last one night and sometimes they last eighteen
years
And, just like in Torah, we only know when it is time to go when God tells us its time
And then, when it’s over, with careful penmanship, we may write down the name of that
station in the little book we carry with us everywhere: “Terach”
Sometimes backwards is forwards in our memory —
and sometimes backwards is actually forwards physically
As in, you literally have to travel backwards, to the places you’ve been
It’s just how things go in the wilderness
In fact, I never noticed this before but in the Mekhilta d’Rebbi Yishmael
We learn that when Aaron dies in Torah
In Deuteronomy it says he dies in one place but in our parasha, it says that Aaron dies in
another on Hor HaHar / literally, mountain of mountains.
How does Rebbi Yishmael resolve it? He says that when Aaron died, we went backwards eight
stations, from one of the places to the other, so while Aaron died in one place and was buried
in a second place. (8)
I don’t know about Aaron somehow sort of dying in two places
But it makes perfect sense to me
That on God’s itinerary
In order to bury and grieve a great and peace loving leader like Aaron
We go backwards eight stations
Sometimes we have to go back eight or eight hundred stations, more
Remembering our third rule is that sometimes going backwards is going forwards
Which brings me to my last Rule for the Wilderness this shabbat
Rule #4: Every Station is Essential
Couldn’t God have gotten across all the teachings with like, 12 stations?
A nice, jewish 18 stations?
We already admitted we’re going to some stations over and over, going backwards
Why so many?
The Ba’al Shem Tov famously taught that there is something for us at all the stations. A spark.
We could also say, a name that must be found. Recovered.
That’s why, according to the Ba’al Shem, we’re sent into this wilderness altogether
And so, my last station for you is one you might not like at first but bear with me
It is called, חֲרָדָ֑ה (9) you know the word chareidi /
It means to tremble, to shake, it can even mean to be terrified, existential fear
As if to say, if we are in the place where our arms are so tired they are shaking,
If we are in the place where our hearts are shaking — and I think we are, at least partly, in this
place
Here is name for it: חֲרָדָ֑ה
And maybe that name will help us let it go, or it will let us go
Like all the stations something in it is essential — And then, the Mei HaShiloach teaches that
Even if we can’t yet experience the next place yet
Even if we can’t feel it yet
We know from Torah the next place will be named מַקְהֵלֹֽת / community, assembly and yes,
congregation, being together
So I give us חֲרָדָ֑ה / fear this shabbat because
If we can learn to name this essential place, to collect its name
Then (the Mei haShiloach teaches) God will give us the strength of heart to get to the next
place —
Where we will be together and need not be afraid. (10)
May it be only soon and in our day.
See Num. 33:1-49
Green, Trans. The Language of Truth, p. 275-6.
Num. 33:15-16
Num. 33:8-9.
Num. 33:16-17
See his comment to Num. 33:2
Num. 33:27-28
Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 15:22:1
Num. 33:24-25
Mei HaShiloach, Volume I, Numbers, Masei 2
