Parshios Matot & Masei
Where Have You Been?
The conclusion of the book of Bamidbar that these parshiyot mark, to a
great extent ends the narrative section of the Torah. The generation of
Egypt and Sinai is no more. Moshe's fate that he too will not enter the
Land of Israel has been sealed. Yet, in order for the new generation and
the new leader of Israel, Yehoshua, to succeed, a review as to what
occurred to the previous generation is necessary. It would not be
farfetched to suggest that the parsha of Maasei, which details all of the
stops and way places of Israel in the desert journey of the Jewish people,
can be considered already as part of Dvarim - "Mishneh Torah" - Moshe's
repetition of the Torah at the end of his life. Only if one knows where
one has been and has learned something valuable from that experience can
one confidently continue on one's journey. Even though the future is
always an unknown and uncertain commodity, knowledge of the past minimizes
the surprises that may yet lie ahead. The Torah goes into great detail to
inform us of where we have been, how we got there and what happened to us
on that journey. This is all in the hope that something can be gleaned
from the past and applied to our current and future situations and
challenges.
For a people so rich in historic experience and worldly knowledge, the
Jews somehow surprisingly are reluctant to incorporate hard-earned lessons
of the past into current attitudes, values and behavior. The past errors
of the encouragement of assimilation, of belief in utopian solutions to
human and societal problems, of naive pacifism and lack of self-pride, of
worshipping strange gods and false idols, all are repeated again in our
times. It is as though the long journey of Israel and all of its way
stations has been forgotten, misinterpreted and ignored. We could
construct our own parshat Maasei from the experiences of the Jewish people
over the past three hundred years. We would be wise to remember the
debacle of nineteenth century Jewish German assimilation, the destruction
that the Jewish left foisted upon us in its blind and foolish belief in
Marxist doctrine and the uncaring aloofness of Western civilization, in
the main, towards Jewish suffering and persecution. If we remembered our
own Maasei, we could easily say: "Been there, done that" to most of the
ideas now floated about for solving our problems. We are not doomed to
repeat all of the past errors committed on our journey through history.
Yet, if we forget or ignore the lessons that those past errors produced,
our present and future problems are bound to increase, substantially and
intensively.
Thus, it is obvious that every generation writes its own parshat Maasei.
The greatness of such a parsha is only realized when it has meaningfully
absorbed the lessons of the previous parshiyot Maasei of Jewish life. This
guide to the past is the strongest guarantee of the success of our journey
into the future.
Shabat shalom.
Rabbi Berel Wein
Rabbi Berel Wein- Jewish historian, author and international lecturer offers a complete selection of CDs, audio tapes, video tapes, DVDs, and books on Jewish history at www.rabbiwein.com
Text Copyright © 2006 by Rabbi Berel Wein and Torah.org
Visit www.rabbiwein.com for a complete selection of Rabbi Wein's books and tapes.
