Our Unique Destination

As I was reading the weekly portion of B’shalach, I noticed that the interpretation I’ve known all my life was incomplete at best. The portion begins by telling us that when the people of Israel left Egypt, instead of leading them in the direct, shortest way to the Promised Land, God chose a major detour. It was a logical and wise decision. The short way, The Way of the Philistines as it is called in the bible (Via Maris today), had the risk of a military attack against The People of Israel. Considering that they had just been released from hundreds of years of slavery, God reckoned they were neither mentally, nor physically ready for the challenge of a war. Let them walk for a few weeks longer, and at least they will be safe along the way.

So far so good, but when we look at the whole story, we learn that the long way didn’t add just a few weeks to the journey, but turned into a 40-year long ordeal. So, what went wrong?

Having a daughter at a university in Gainesville made me quite familiar with the four-hour, exceedingly boring drive to get there. The entire 300-mile drive is on the Turnpike and on I-75, where the most exciting sites are the service plazas that sell the most awful coffee. Sometimes though, the tedious drive is interrupted by the GPS, ordering me to get off the highway and continue on side roads. On the occasions that I was too arrogant and disobeyed the GPS, it cost me hours of delays caused by a car accident or roadwork. Once I have learned my lesson, I dutifully get off the 70-mph freeway and replace it with narrow roads limited to 40-mph with endless stop signs and red lights. But after a while, the trusted GPS directs me back to the highway.

Going back to the main path after taking a detour is what was missing from the Israelites journey from Egypt to Israel. They veered off the main road for good reason, but never went back. They kept wandering on the side roads until they seemed to forget the purpose and the destination of their journey.

The lesson of the Torah goes, of course, beyond travel and traffic advice. It is about our life journey and has two parts that are equally necessary. First is the lesson that sometimes we must veer off the direct path and take the long way around, either for health, economic, professional, or family-related issues. And the second part (that our ancient ancestors ignored), is that after a period of healing, fixing, and rebuilding, we must go back to our own path, our individual unique destination. If we fail to do so and keep wandering on side roads, we may end up spending the rest of our life in the desert.

Two years ago, we were forced by COVID-19 out of our comfortable and predictable life’s path. We found ourselves on mostly unfamiliar roads. Initially, some might have been exciting but soon lost their appeal and became rigorous and unpleasant. There were times when the pandemic eased off and we felt safe to go back to the main path, only to be pushed towards another detour.

We don’t know how many more detours this global pandemic will give us, the same way we don’t know what other obstacles life has in store for us. With that said, I urge you never to forget to find a way back to your own highway, and off the side roads.