Encampment as Journey

“On the Road” versus “The road less traveled” in the worldview of *Rashi*

This post is dedicated to the safe journey —A Tefilat Haderech Prayer for the Road, in a Torah Format- Study as supplication, for the brave soldiers of our people, right now trudging down the dusty and darkened roads of war — fighting for the very freedom,(one we often take for granted), needed- to engage in the luxuriousness of the spiritual journey.

The title of this weeks Torah portion, “Masei”- Journeys, can be misleading.

For someone thumbing through the table of contents eager for some Biblical inspiration ala Jack Kerouac’s “on the Road”- or even Jon Krakauer’s tender and unbearably sad retracing of Christopher Johnson McCandle’s journey, “into the wild” - will be sorely disappointed.

Instead, they will find a dry index, of all the places in the wilderness where they stopped and rested, leaving out all the “juicy” in between stuff- prompting many jewish scholars to suggest that a more sedate title such as “encampments” would have been a more accurate name for this portion.

The medieval Scholar, Rashi responds by pointing out a simple but easily overlooked truth: “The encampment is also part of the journey.”

Rashi, reminds us here to be mindful, of the ample opportunities to experience truth- along the way of the mini journeys we embark on daily, even as we are encamped, firmly grounded in our own individual-prosaic predictable flow, even as we are entrenched in faithful acceptance of the predictable contours, colors and rhythms of our lives.

While there might exist many ways to reach the high plains of our truth, some perhaps more “glamorous” than others -the shy but reliable inner convictions that sustains us, in the “Road less traveled” mode of our stillness, a quiet truth that resides in the here and now- is as important as the booming, erratic truth rush - that lines the walls of the beyond, the exotic “out there” places we encounter along “the Road.”

M Scott Peck said it best “….Truth is reality.”

Rabbi Yossi