The second comment from Limudei Nissan comes from Parshas Massei.
The Torah lists the forty-two encampments that Klal Yisrael stopped at during their journey from Egypt into Eretz Yisrael. This information seems like irrelevant ancient history. It happened once, and it is never going to happen again. Yet the Torah spends a considerable amount of pesukim telling us every stop, utilizing the formula "They traveled from A and they encamped at B; and they traveled from B and encamped at C; and so forth" cataloging 40 years and 42 stops of travels in the wilderness.
This seems superfluous, not needed, and irrelevant. This is, of course, impossible to say about pesukim in the Torah. No letter in the Torah is irrelevant. So, what is the lesson of the 42 encampments that the Torah is teaching us?
Many of the names of these stops call to mind less-than-stellar moments in the history of the Jewish people. For instance, the pasuk writes, "And they traveled from Refidim, and they encamped in the Wilderness of Sinai." [Bamidbar 33:15] Why was that location called Refidim? Chazal say, "she’Rafu yedeihem min haTorah" (they failed to learn properly), and as a result, they were attacked by Amalek. This is not one of the more glorious moments in the history of Klal Yisrael.
"And they traveled from the Wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped at Kivros Ha’Taavah" [Bamidbar 33:16]. Kivros Ha’Taavah means the burial place of those who lusted. They complained about the food, and they were punished. There are several other places with similarly negative associations.
How do people look back on the less-than-glorious moments in their lives? Human beings tend to forget it and to wipe the slate clean. "I do not want to remember all those incidents and places where I tripped up." The Torah says "No." It is important to remember our past, even if that past includes incidents that do not make us proud.
The only way we will know how to be better in the future is to learn from our past. To paraphrase the American philosopher George Santayana "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The reason the Torah catalogs the 42 encampments is to teach us: Yes, there were moments in your past in which you fell down, but you were able to bounce back from those moments.
Yes, there were moments in your history in which you did not act properly, but you were able to pull yourselves out by your strength of character. Those are important lessons that a person has to know. A person is the total of his experiences — good and bad. To have an attitude, "I just want to forget about the past," is going to doom a person to failure again.
The Torah feels it is worthwhile to enumerate the 42 encampments to teach this lesson — that life is a journey. The journey is sometimes not a straight line — it has ups and downs, peaks and valleys. There are glorious moments and less than glorious moments. We should not erase any of them from our memory banks.
Whenever I read Parshas Massai and the enumeration of the 42 encampments, it reminds me of an incident that happened with me. Someone once asked me a shaylah [question seeking practical advice]. I do not know if I answered him properly, but based on Parshas Massai, this is what my thoughts:
I knew someone who had a child who had a very difficult time becoming engaged and married. This can be a very trying experience — for the parents and certainly for the young adults themselves. In the course of the several years that it took this person to become engaged; the person’s parents compiled a loose-leaf notebook of all the different suggestions for shidduchim that were proposed and considered over the years. The notebook was not as thick as a Chumash, but it was quite a thick compendium. The person said to himself that when his child finally becomes engaged, "I am going to burn this notebook."
I do not know if they still do this today, but at one time, there was such a thing as a "mortgage burning ceremony" when a long-term mortgage was finally paid off. The borrower would be so thrilled to be finished with monthly payments on this 30-year mortgage that he would physically burn the mortgage document, celebrating the fact that he now fully owns his home. This is how the parent felt — "When my child finally gets engaged, I’m going to burn this notebook!"
I told him that I was not sure that this was the correct Torah hashkafa [philosophy]. I told him that this experience was a journey in which there were ups and downs (probably mostly downs), but it was a journey that a person hopefully grew from. It is not something to destroy as if it never happened. This is the lesson of the 42 encampments. It would be much more efficient to say, "They left Egypt; they came to Eretz Yisrael; it took them 39 years, but they finally made it." However, the Torah does not record it that way. The Torah writes about each of the stops and alludes to what happened at each of those stops. We recall the troubles they had at the various stops along the way, their defeats, and the way they behaved. All of this is important. These events made Klal Yisrael, and a person’s own history makes him.
Therefore, I advised this parent that even though there were painful moments associated with this notebook, the chronicles of the trying period in which his child was trying to find their destined partner is nevertheless not something that should be burnt. They should be stored and be available so that, from time to time, it will be possible for both the child and the parent to say, "Look what I went through and look from where I have come."
