Rootless--but coming home: Mattot-Masei 5785

The reading of the book of Bamidbar concludes this week with the parshiyot of Mattot and Masei. Jews are inveterate travelers. The long exile that we have suffered has of necessity forced us to travel a great deal. There is almost no place in the world that we have not visited, settled and eventually moved from to a different location. Thus the record of all of the travels and way stations that the Jews experienced in their years in the Sinai desert is a small prophecy as to the future historical experiences of Jews over millennia of wandering.

Our enemies around the world have always accused Jews of being “rootless.”  But that is untrue. We have always been rooted in the Land of Israel, consciously or subconsciously, throughout our history as a people. It is in the Exile that we feel less grounded, never certain of the shifting ground beneath our weary feet. But, being a restless people, we are filled with curiosity over locations that we have not seen and wonders that we have yet to experience. 

The history of the Exile is that Jews arrive at a new destination, settle, help develop that country or part of the world, begin to feel at home and seek to assimilate into the majority culture. Suddenly this all collapses. A mighty and unforeseen wind uproots them  and they move on to new shores. There are hardly any Jews to speak of in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and so forth. This was the Jewish heartland for centuries. But now we have moved on again to other shores. 

The travels described in this week’s parsha had one ultimate goal, one destination in mind: to enter the Land of Israel and settle there. The Israel deniers in our midst, religious and secular, leftists and rightists, the scholars and the ignorant all share a common delusion—that the home of Jews, especially now, is not the Land of Israel. 

We are taught that the Jews stayed at the oasis of Kadesh in the desert for 38 of their 40-year sojourn in the Sinai desert. They became accustomed to life there and felt comfortable. The Land of Israel was a distant dream, an eventual goal perhaps but not an immediate imperative. But the Lord pushed them out of the desert to fight wars that they probably would have wished to avoid and to settle a land, harsh in character but with the potential of being one of milk and honey. 

The Torah records every way-station and desert oasis in order to remind us that these places exist only in our past. Our present and our future lie in the Land of Israel alone. This lesson is as valid today in our Jewish world as it was for our ancestors so long ago at Kadesh. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein

For Rabbi Wein's devar Torah on Mattot-Masei last year ("The Reuven-Gad Syndrome"), click here.