Life Is a Journey: The Secret Hidden in Mattos-Masei — An Important Message for Each One of Us
Life Is a Journey: The Secret Hidden in Mattos-Masei — An Important Message for Each One of Us
What do speech and travel have to do with each other?
At first glance, not much.
Parshas Mattos begins by teaching us about the power of our words. The Torah reminds us that speech is not something casual. What we say matters. Words can build, words can hurt, words can bring people closer, and words can create distance.
Then we come to Parshas Masei, and the Torah seems to move in a completely different direction. It lists the forty-two places where Bnei Yisrael camped during their forty years in the desert.
One stop after another.
For many of us, those names are difficult to pronounce and even harder to understand. Why does the Torah spend so much time recording what seems to be an old travel log?
The Baal Shem Tov reveals that these journeys are not only the story of our ancestors.
They are the story of every one of us.
The forty-two journeys of Bnei Yisrael represent the different stages that every person goes through in life.
We all have our own Mitzrayim—the things we need to leave behind in order to grow.
We all have our own Marah—moments when life becomes bitter, when things do not turn out the way we hoped.
We all have stops along the way that we never expected and never would have chosen.
And that is the great lesson of Masei.
Life is a journey.
Some stops are joyful. Some are painful. Some are confusing.
But every stop is part of the road Hashem is leading us on.
There are moments when we all ask ourselves: Why am I here? Why did Hashem bring me to this situation?
It could be a challenge with our health, a worry about our children, a difficulty at home, or a disappointment that changed our plans.
The message of the Baal Shem Tov is that even the places we do not understand are part of Hashem’s plan. The place where we find ourselves today is also part of the journey.
The question is not only where we are.
The question is how we travel.
Perhaps that is why Mattos comes before Masei.
Before the Torah tells us about the journeys, it teaches us about our words.
Because the way we speak during the difficult parts of life makes a difference.
When a person reaches a difficult stop, it is easy to complain, become discouraged, or lose hope. But our words can also lift us. Words of emunah, words of tefillah, words of kindness and encouragement can give us the strength to continue.
Our words may not always change the situation.
But they can change the way we face it.
There is another powerful lesson from the life of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.
Many people think a meaningful life requires great adventures, travelling to many places, and experiencing extraordinary things.
Rav Shlomo Zalman showed us otherwise.
He spent almost his entire life in one neighborhood of Yerushalayim. Yet when he was niftar, hundreds of thousands came to his levayah. In his hesped, his son explained what made his father’s journey so special.
Rav Shlomo Zalman may not have travelled far in the physical world, but every step he took had purpose.
He walked to learn Torah.
He walked to help another Jew.
He walked to comfort someone who was hurting.
He walked to bring shalom between people.
His greatness was not measured by how far he travelled.
It was measured by what he accomplished at every step.
That is a message for each one of us.
Most of us live ordinary lives. We go to work, take care of our families, go to shul, and deal with the daily responsibilities that come our way.
But ordinary moments can become holy moments.
The conversations we have matter.
The kindness we show matters.
The choices we make matter.
Every step can become meaningful.
We cannot always choose the stops that Hashem places before us. But we can choose how we respond. We can choose the words we speak, the kindness we show, and the faith we bring to every stage of our journey.
Perhaps that is the deeper message of Mattos-Masei.
When we read the journeys of Bnei Yisrael, we are not simply reading a record of where they travelled thousands of years ago.
In those journeys, we can recognize our own lives.
We all have our own places where we begin again, our own difficult stops, and our own moments when we wonder why Hashem has brought us to this point.
The Torah is reminding us that our journey is not made up only of the big moments. The quiet steps matter too—the words we say, the kindness we show, and the choices we make every day.
Perhaps one day, when we look back, we will see that even the stops we struggled to understand were also part of the road Hashem was leading us on.
