Ever feel like you are unsure whether you are coming and going or going and coming?
This is the experience of the Israelite people in this week’s double portion, Matot-Masei, which concludes the book of Numbers. In fact, in one verse alone the Hebrew version of the words “coming,” motzeihem, and “going,” maseihem, are listed twice and both times in the opposite order.
Sforno, a famous medieval Jewish Torah commentator, also known as Obadiah Ben Jacob, points out how difficult it must have been to have been constantly uprooted in their lives. Sometimes, he argues, it was harder for them to leave and sometimes it was harder to arrive. Sforno, who lived in Italy in the late 15th Century, early 16th Century, understood the perils of travel. Much of his adult life was spent in Rome where he was known as the rabbi to the pope.
But, as the circumstances for Jews in Europe changed he was forced to wander by himself for several years, writing letters to his brother Hanenel about the difficulties he faced along the way. Eventually he was able to settle near his brother in Bologna where he lived out the rest of his life in peace.
The Hebrew word for “coming,” motzeihem, is actually closer to “where they find themselves.” It is often translated as “their starting point” in various English editions of the Torah. Last week at Camp Havayah, my rabbinic counterpart, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, from Adat Shalom in Bethesda, Maryland, taught about bioregionalism, an environmental discipline which encourages us to really know the place we are residing.
It asks questions like do you know the ecology of the region, the sources of water, the plants and animals that live there, what foods are grown there?
All with the hope of better understanding our starting points. He uses a Hasidic teaching which features a rabbi lost in the woods. The rabbi comes across another person also lost there. He says, “come, let’s be lost together – alone we may not know where we are or where we’re headed, but together we’ll figure it out.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex