At the very end of Pekudai, in fact the closing words of the Book of Shemos, there is a small but very significant comment of Rashi. The verses describing the ‘Clouds of Glory’ read, “When the cloud was raised up from upon the Tabernacle, the Jews would embark on all their journeys. If the cloud did not rise up …. For the cloud of Hashem would be on the Tabernacle before the eyes of the House of Yisroel throughout all their journeys”.
Rashi picks up on the fact that the Clouds did not actually rest on the Tabernacle during the journeys. Rashi therefore explains that the term “all their journeys” when used the second time does not actually refer to the journeys per se, rather to the encampments; thus the verse actually reads, “the cloud of Hashem would be on the Tabernacle…. throughout all their encampments”. Rashi then qualifies how the Torah could call ‘encampments’, ‘journeys’ when they are two opposing concepts? Rashi brings two examples elsewhere in the Torah where an encampment is called a journey. One such example is the Parshah of ‘Masai’ – the Parshah that lists the journeys, which is actually a list of encampments.
While Rashi’s point is seemingly just linguistic, the message is anything but. The place where a Jew encamps is also called a journey. A Jew is always on a journey, this world is just a corridor towards the next world. This can be explained via a simple parable – an aeroplane sleeve. Who stops and sits down on the aeroplane sleeve, to admire the appealing adverts found there? The sleeve just serves to transport you from the plane to the airport, but to stop there?
How is The World to Come described by the Talmud? Righteous SITTING and basking in the countenance of Hashem. When we get there, when the journey is finished when we get to sit, to encamp, but now, in the aeroplane sleeve to sit? Rabbi Orlofsky recalled a ‘vekker’ [the guy in a Yeshiva who is in charge of waking people in the morning] whose wake up call was, “Rise and shine there’s plenty of time to sleep when you die”.
This concept is aptly portrayed in the song composed by Abie Rottenberg – ‘Ride the Train’:
Most are filled with people sayin’, “this ride’s just for fun.
Why think about tomorrow when you’ve got today instead
Sit back enjoy the view, there’s miles and miles of rail ahead”
However as the song describes:
But one car seems so different, inhabited by few
Who say there is no time to waste, we’re only passing through
The choices that you make today are all that’s gonna last
The train is moving down the track, and it’s moving awful fast.
Our forefather Avraham is introduced to us as a seventy five year old man. Where was he till now? He had been fighting the wicked king Nimrod and walked out of the fiery furnace unscathed. He had written a book with four hundred chapters in which he successfully debated the pagans around him regarding there being just one G-d. But none of this gets a mention in the Torah. He is just introduced with the command, “GO” – go on a journey. R’ Moshe Shapiro explains that we are being taught a profound message, which encapsulates the role of every one of us in this world. A Jew needs to remember this world is just a journey so off you go just WALK!
Perhaps this is why after someone dies we ‘Sit Shivah’. After an encounter with death we spend a week sitting; from a certain perspective doing nothing, one can’t learn Torah or run his business or the like. A week spent in a state of being dead, contemplating the dead and what they achieved in their journey.
So in summary let’s just remember the words of Rashi – “A Jew’s encampment in this world is but a journey!”
Good Shabbos,
Yaakov