This week it happens – the shattering of hope in a way that is not reparable. What our ancestors thought would be a short journey from the foot of Mt Sinai to the land they were promised became endless. Because, the story goes, at the moment when courage was required, they could not trust. And so, we are told, our ancestors were unable to take the step that was required to carry them over the threshold between wandering and coming home. Instead, they were doomed to wander aimlessly in the wilderness of Sinai until they died.
Everyone dies; dying is not a punishment. It is the sense of never getting to one’s goal that is seen here as tragic. Yet which of us ever arrives at our life’s goal?
אמר להון לרבנן מאי האי אמרי גולגלתא לעינא דבישרא ודמא דלא קא שבע
It was asked of the Sages: Why does an eyeball outweigh everything? They said: the eyeball of a person of flesh and blood is not satisfied ever. (BT Tamid 32b)
We humans are always capable of wanting more than we can have, of dreaming of visions greater than we can achieve. Especially in the case of someone whose mortal ability to live fully was curtailed by age or by circumstances, there is always a sense of that which is left untasted.
Is there really any difference between that generation of the wilderness, doomed to wander without ever reaching their goal, and any of us? Just like the eyeball in the Talmudic legend, we are always yearning to see more, to know more, to experience more.
And just like our ancestors, sometimes we just don’t have the courage to take a step that we need to. And so we keep wandering, looking, whether we know it or not, to learn something we do not yet know, to become who we are not yet.
And yet: reaching a goal may not be all we hoped, if and when we reach it. One of the best explanations I’ve ever heard for why HaShem did not allow Moshe to reach the land that was promised us was that if he had, his dream of it would have been perforce replaced by a much less beautiful reality. Better that he die with the dream unrealized, than that the dream itself be recognized to be unfulfillable.
In Jewish tradition, life is not about ultimate achievement; it is about the day by day experience. If it is faith in something that we need to rise up from sleep in the morning, it is certainly not about today being the day when we win it all. Rather, as anyone in recovery can attest, it is about recognizing today, lived well, to be all the victory we could ever hope for.
Any life can be seen as wandering aimlessly in a wilderness, and any life can be seen as a blessed journey. May we find the blessing that balances the longing as we face each day that we are fortunate enough to live, and in that way understand that each day of our lives is a sacred pilgrimage, even on the days when we’re not sure where we are, or what our wandering is for.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Ariel
Birth is a beginning,
And death a destination;
And life is a journey,
A going – a growing
From stage to stage.
From childhood to maturity
And youth to age.
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
And then perhaps to wisdom.
From weakness to strength
Or strength to weakness –
And, often, back again.
From health to sickness
And back, we pray, to health again.
From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,
From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding –
From fear to faith.
From defeat to defeat to defeat –
Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey,
Stage by stage –
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning,
And death a destination;
And life is a journey,
Made stage by stage
From birth to death,
A sacred pilgrimage.
– Alvin Fine (adapted)
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 