July 31, 2008
As we finish the book of Bamidbar, almost completing the desert trek from Egypt to Israel, we come to Masei v’nei Yisrael, a list of places where the Israelites camped along the way. It’s a simple chronicle, like a child’s report about her day. “I got up and ate breakfast and then went to school and ate lunch and then came home.” In time, the girl will learn to provide her chronicle with a plot; only then will it take on meaning.
As an elementary chronicle, Masei says simply, “They stopped at point A and then started up again toward B; they stopped at B and then started up again toward C” — and so on, through 42 “stops and starts.” Readers must provide the plot. What is this boring list about?
Make vacations into opportunities to take stock before starting up again in the fall.
The most intriguing idea comes from the midrash that explains it as a reminder of God’s miracles at every stage of the journey. But God shows up only at some of the places mentioned; for the others, only names are given. What, then, did God provide at the stations where Israel did nothing but stop and start?
By analogy, the story is told of a customs official who watched a bicycle rider cross the border every day. He was clearly smuggling something into the country, but what? Over time, the guard checked all over the bicycle for contraband, but discovered nothing. The handlebars carried no gold, the spokes were not silver, the tires held only air. After he retired and lacked the authority to administer punishment, the guard pleaded with the cyclist to explain the mystery. “I smuggle bicycles,” he responded, “just bicycles.”
So too with Masei. What did God provide for Israel at those stops where no miracles are recorded? The answer is “stops, just stops.”
Music consists of notes, but also rests. So, too, journeys are as much about pausing as journeying. Our commentaries say that journeys have stages and “each stage needs to be corrected before moving on.” Stops are opportunities for correction.
We should read Masei with our life journeys in mind. We also have “stopping points” along the way. Do we properly use each stop to correct our course before starting up again?
We are reminded of this question every time we attend a funeral, with its final segment of life’s pilgrimage: being carried to the grave. No matter how tiny the distance, Halacha asks that seven times along the way, we stop to put the casket down and then pick it up to start again. The funeral eulogy focuses on our accomplishments, but passes over the times when we stopped to rest in between those accomplishments — the trip to the graveside recollects those stops. If the eulogy testifies to what a lifetime of goodness can achieve, accompanying the casket illustrates the need to take time out along the way to those achievements.
Pausing to rest is more than just a ritualized way of walking to the grave. Why wait for the grave, after all? It is a recipe for walking through life long before the grave becomes a reality. While still alive, we should make our own stops and starts (before others do it for us while we lie in a casket).
Masei is read in summertime, when we take time out for what we call vacations. We know instinctively that we need such respites, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying them. But enjoyment is not enough. Why not make vacations into “stops” — an opportunity to take stock before starting up again in the fall? Do we really want to go back and work exactly the way we did before? When we get home, can we do things differently and better perhaps?
“Vacation” is a poor word. It implies “vacating the task,” simply not showing up for life. This week’s sedra suggests we convert vacation into rests that are more than hideouts from reality. Vacation is God’s bicycle: a miracle that God smuggles into creation. We should use it to go over the recent past and correct our course a little before starting up again in the fall.
The end of Bamidbar corresponds to the end of a work year. Hazak Hazak V’nithazek. Rest a bit, but even as you rest, be strong in taking stock, so that you may return having been strengthened.
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, cofounder of Synagogue 3000, is the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship, and Ritual at the Hebrew Union College in New York. He is the coeditor, with David Arnow, of My People’s Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries (Jewish Lights).
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