Friends,
I am so grateful for the adventurous travels that I have been blessed with this summer so far. I am still processing the 6 days that I spent in Poland and last Shabbat we celebrated my mother's second Bat Mitzvah, which was very joyful and meaningful, as my mother read and reflected on the passage from the Torah about the daughters of Zelophohad. Their challenge of the law allowed inheritance to pass to female heirs and my mother spoke of the importance of education for women, especially in patriarchal regimes where their rights are denied. We were all so proud of my mother!
This week I had a wonderful sailing adventure on England's east coast, where many of my childhood summers were spent, sailing from Burnham-on-Crouch to the historic port of Harwich and back again in a relentless, beating wind. I was moved to discover a memorial sculpture to children on the Kindertransport next to the harbor, which was dedicated in 2022. I have seen these memorials at train stations in London's Liverpool Street, Berlin and Prague, but never in a port. Almost all of the 10,000 or so children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and put on trains, then got ferries from Europe to Harwich and almost 2,000 of them spent their first couple of weeks in a nearby holiday camp called Dovercourt. Most of these children, between the ages of 1 and 15, never saw their parents again. I am now back in London on a very rainy Friday, preparing for Shabbat.
This week in the Torah, we conclude the fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar (Numbers in English) - Mattot-Masei. One of the narratives in these final readings is the list of 42 places where the Israelites camped on their journeys through the wilderness. Each name of these stops along the way has significance for what happened there, the lessons learned or not learned in the evolution of a people. In a mystical interpretation, the Baal Shem Tov taught that these 42 places exist in the life of every human being, from the moment of birth until the day of death. In our sailing trip, the navigation was very tricky and crucial; drifiting off course can lead to disaster in the form of running aground on perilous sand banks. Fortunately my good friend Micah was the navigator on his ipad and we made it through the shipping channels! All journeys can be powerful metaphors for life's challenges and opportunities, awareness of how to navigate the dangers is where we learn and grow. We don't need to cross seas and oceans and forests to meet these obstacles, as they can be emotional and spirutal in nature in our own homes. Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, the great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, teaches that it is in the arafel, the foggy darkness of the journey, that we meet God, the force that helps us embrace challenge as opportunity for new possibilities. So many of those frightened children leaving their families behind all those decades ago were able to build amazing new lives for themselves beyond the devastating tragedy.
I feel so fortunate for the travel opportunites I have had in my life and hope that they have been a source of growth for me. Whether we are travelling this summer or staying home, journeying internally or externally, may our travels be nourishing and may the challenges and obstacles help us learn and grow.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Marc
