The Road that Made You

June 29 I turned 59.

I don’t say that for birthday wishes — though I received them gratefully. I say it because birthdays do something to rabbis. They make the text personal whether we want it to or not.

Last week was Parashat Pinchas — the 46th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah parashah. This week is Matot-Masei. And somewhere in the movement between those two parshiyot I found myself thinking about stops on a map. The old AAA TripTik. The road that made you.

This week’s parashah begins “These are the journeys of the children of Israel who went out from the land of Egypt.” (Bamidbar 33:1)

What follows is a list. Forty-two stops. Most of them appear nowhere else in the Torah — no story attached, no miracle recorded, no complaint, no manna. Just a name. They camped at Makheilot. They traveled from Tahat. They set out from Terah.

Why does Moses write this? Rashi says God commanded it — the stops matter in themselves.

Ramban offers something more layered: Moses intends to record divine kindness, and cites Maimonides — the miracles were real to those who witnessed them, but future generations will hear them only as hearsay and disbelieve. The list is evidentiary.

Then Ramban closes with striking humility: “a matter whose secret has not been revealed to us.” We have reasons. The list is larger than all of them.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov reads the list differently — as the inner map of every soul: “Every individual among Israel has a portion in the Land of Israel. And the journeys of the children of Israel are the rectification of souls.” (Likutey Moharan I:112)

The 42 stops are not geography. They are spiritual biography. And the principle is uncompromising: you cannot skip stops. Every place you camped, every road you traveled, every unnamed moment — was necessary. Formative. Yours.

Strikingly nearly half of the 42 stops appear nowhere else in all of Tanakh. No story. No explanation of the name. Just the formula — they set out, they camped, they moved on. Stops 15 through 32, eighteen consecutive encampments, represent the entire 38 years after the sin of the spies. A generation lives, ages, and dies across those eighteen names.

And Torah gives us: רִמּוֹן פֶּרֶץ. לִבְנָה. חֲרָדָה — Trembling. מִתְקָה — Sweetness. The names suggest something happened. The text refuses to say what.

Rebbe Nachman’s instinct is right: the unnamed stops may be the most formative ones. Crisis produces story. Endurance produces character. And endurance rarely gets a name.

Last summer my planned trip to Israel was cancelled because of the war. So I took my wife and I decided on a road trip across Canada instead. Winnipeg. Minneapolis. I wanted her to see where I grew up — and where I grew.

We drove to the house on Campbell Street where I grew up. A man came to the door — a retired elevator repairman. He knew immediately who I was. “You must be the rabbi’s son.” Shaarey Zedek had been his client, he said. He remembered my father, Rabbi Gene Wernick, as someone who always made people welcome.

I hadn’t expected that stop to say anything. It said everything.

We went to Shaarey Zedek on Shabbat. I hadn’t planned the timing — it was my 45th Bar Mitzvah anniversary, to the day. People remembered my father. Some remembered me. The building held us like no time had passed, even though everything had, including a total renovation.

And then we went to the cemetery. To visit my mother, Judy. I’ve only been there five times in 44 years. Winnipeg is not a tourist destination. Standing there with Jody, I understood something about why Moses writes the list. Not to document. To witness. To say: I was here. This place made me. I do not want to forget.

Now I am in Jerusalem, in a room of 25 rabbis learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute and we are mapping our faith journeys. The same question the parashah had already asked. The same question Moses was answering when he picked up his pen on the plains of Moab, knowing he would never cross the Jordan.

I’m 59 years old. My spirit has not received the memo. But my body — my body has read every page.

The stops accumulate. The unnamed ones most of all.

We are all somewhere on the 42 stops. Some of us are in the wilderness still. Some of us sense we’re approaching the plains of Moab — not yet arrived, but able to see further than we once could.
Moses climbs Abarim. God shows him everything. He doesn’t argue. He witnesses. He has already written the list.

What are the stops that shaped us — that we still haven’t named?

That, I think, is a question worth sitting with.

Safe travels.