Off The Derech: Recalculating The Route

Imagine this.
You are driving,
You trust the voice in your phone.
“In 500 meters, take the next exit.”
You are focused. You know where you are going.
And then, for just a second, you miss the turn.
The exit flashes by.
Too late.
For a brief moment, there is silence.
Then the GPS pauses, thinks, and says, very calmly:
“Recalculating the route.”
No panic.
No shame.
No blame.
Just a quiet message:
You are not lost.
The journey is not over.
You are still on the way.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if we spoke to people the same way.
Because in life, people miss turns too.
People take unexpected exits.
People find themselves on roads they never imagined traveling.
And life, like the GPS, does not simply end the journey.
It recalculates.
There is one place, however, where we often stop speaking with that kind of gentleness.
When it comes to people.
When it comes to children.

We do not say, “He is recalculating his route.”
We say:
“He is off the derech.”
Off the path.
But what exactly is a derech?
And how do we know which derech is the right one?
Every person believes their derech is the right path.
Every community believes their map is correct.
So, when we say someone is “off the derech,” what are we really saying?
That they are off? That something is wrong with them?
Or, that they are no longer walking OUR road?
Most of us know someone we love who has taken a different path.
A child.
A sibling.
A student.
A friend.
Someone we once expected to walk one road and instead found another.
But what if a derech is not one fixed road?
What if a derech is a journey, and every soul has its own path?
The word derech appears constantly throughout the Torah.
Not as a label, not as judgement, but as movement. As growth. As becoming. As life
itself.
We see from the very beginning, the first Jew, Avraham is told:
“לך לך מארצך וממולדתך ומבית אביך.”
Leave what is familiar.
Go. Move forward.
Yaakov’s life is also defined by journey.
He flees, struggles, wrestles through the night, and emerges transformed.
The Torah says:

“ויעקב הלך לדרכו.”
The Torah does not present him as a man who becomes himself by standing still.
It presents him as a man who becomes himself through the journey.
And Bnei Yisrael spend forty years in the desert.
Not because the destination was unknown, but because transformation takes time.
Identity takes time. Growth takes time.
The Torah does not describe life as a straight line.
It describes life as a journey. Always walking, always becoming.
Again and again, Torah whispers the same truth:
“בכל דרכיך דעהו.”
Know Him in all your ways.
Not one way.
All your ways.
Then there is the verse every educator and parent knows, because it is both beautiful
and terrifying:
“חנוך לנער על פי דרכו.”
Educate a child according to his way.
His way.
Not our fantasy of his way.
Not our fear of his way.
His way.
So maybe the question is not,
“Is this person off the derech?”
Maybe the question is:
“Which derech is this person on?”
In Hebrew, there is already a softer phrase for someone who leaves religion:
“יוצא בשאלה.”
Someone who went out with questions.
Not someone who disappeared.
Not someone beyond reach.
Someone still wrestling.

Still searching.
Still in conversation.
We should worry far more when someone stops asking.
So perhaps we need new language.
Not “off the derech,”
but “on a different derech.”
Because a different path does not make a person worthless.
It does not mean they are broken.
It does not mean they are beyond care.
It means they are human.

It means the story is still unfolding.
Rav Simcha Bunim of Peshischa taught that a person should carry two notes in their
pockets.
In one pocket it should say:
“בשבילי נברא העולם.”
The world was created for me.
The other should say:
“ואנכי עפר ואפר.”
I am dust and ashes.
One gives dignity.
One gives humility.
But the Baal Shem Tov adds something even deeper.
He says:
“בשבילי נברא העולם” can also be read as:
“בשביל שלי נברא העולם.”
There is a unique path in this world that belongs to me.

No one else can walk it.
No one else can replace it.
So when we say,
“They are off the derech…”
Maybe what we really mean is:
“They are no longer on my derech.”
The Torah itself tells complicated stories about roads and journeys.
Avraham leaves everything familiar.
Yaakov wanders and wrestles before becoming Yisrael.
Bnei Yisrael spend forty years in the desert.
And then there is Lot.
Lot chooses another road.
From the outside, it appears to be a catastrophic mistake, a movement away from
Avraham, away from holiness, away from destiny itself.
Lot went off the derech.
He chooses another road. A road that looks like success, comfort, certainty.
From the outside, it looks wrong.
But Torah does something astonishing.
From Lot comes Ruth.
And from Ruth comes King David.
The lineage of Mashiach emerges from a road that once looked like failure.
The Torah teaches us:
a complicated journey is not always the end of the story.
Sometimes it is the beginning of something we could never yet see.
Perhaps that is why we read Megillat Ruth on Shavuot.
Shavuot is not only about receiving the Torah. It is about finding one’s way toward
Torah.
Chazal say:
“כל אחד ואחד לפי כוחו.”

Each person received according to their own capacity.
Same mountain.
Same Torah.
Same Divine voice.
Different inner experience.
This is not an argument that all paths are identical.
It is asking something deeper:
How do we stay connected to someone…
When their path is not ours?
When one travels, we say תפילת הדרך.
The prayer for the road.
We do not wait to pray when we arrive safely.
We pray while still traveling, while uncertain, vulnerable, not fully in control.
Because a derech is not only about destination.
It is also about accompaniment.
About who walks beside you while you are still on the way.
“כי מלאכיו יצוה לך לשמרך בכל דרכיך.”
God asks his angels to guard a person on all their paths. Whichever road they are on.
And it is not easy.
There are moments when we want certainty.
Moments when we want control.
Moments when we want the people we love to remain on the road we imagined for
them.
But life does not remain on one road.
Neither do people.
And perhaps that is why Chazal taught:
“דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה.”
Human decency comes before Torah.

Being a good person with good values is so important.
Not instead of Torah.
Before it.
Because if we lose connection to the person, we may also lose the ability to walk beside
them at all.
And then I think about a story I have not been able to stop thinking about since October
7th.
In the middle of terror, chaos, and gunfire, ten young adults ran for their lives and found
temporary shelter under a tree, near the Nova music festival.
They were terrified. Trapped for hours, calling anyone they could.
Parents, police, army, friends.
One of the boys, Ofir Griever, from Gedera, called his father Shmulik, and said:
“Abba, help us. There are terrorists everywhere.”
And his father, Shmulik, answered with three words that changed everything:
“אבא בדרך אליך.”
I am on the way to you.
He got into his five-seater 4×4 vehicle.
A neighbor, Nati Moses, grabbed his handgun and joined him.
Together they drove south into chaos.
Roads were blocked. Police tried to stop them and warned them to turn back.
Every rational instinct told them not to continue.
But a promise had been made.
“אבא בדרך אליך.”
So they recalculated the route.
Literally.
They left the main roads.
They went off road.
OFF THE DERECH.

They drove through fields, dirt paths, and impossible terrain, trying to reach a single tree
in the middle of horror.
And somehow, by going off road, they became the reason people survived that day.
They saved those ten young adults as well as about 40 other people.
I keep thinking about that.
Sometimes the people who save us…
Are the ones willing to leave the familiar road behind.
Sometimes love itself requires recalculating the route.
Not abandoning truth.
Not abandoning Torah.
But refusing to abandon a person.
Maybe being “on the derech” was never meant to mean:
never struggling,
never questioning,
never wandering.
Maybe being “on the derech” means that no matter how complicated the journey
becomes…
Someone can still hear the words:
“אבא בדרך אליך.”
I am on the way to you.
Perhaps that is what people need most.
Not panic.
Not labels.
Not perfection.

But the knowledge that even if the route changes…
They are not alone on the road.
Because as long as there is connection…
There is still a way forward.