Cantor's Blog

This is the D'var Torah that Cantor Fogelman delivered on July 29, 2022. 

In early June, some of my close friends from college and I spent a long weekend together up at Mohonk Mountain House. While we were there, decided to attempt a hike called Labyrinth, with its famous rock scrambles and Lemon Squeeze chimney. We didn’t know much about the hike, only that it was very famous and somewhat challenging – and that Rabbi Jaech had recommended it to me when I mentioned to her that I was heading up to Mohonk. We did read the informational “warning” plaque at the entrance to the hike, which noted that “The Labyrinth path up to the skytop tower is a difficult 45 minute rock scramble. During the 300 foot ascent, you will be required to climb three ladders and over, under, and through various rock formations. Along the way, you will encounter such challenging formations as: “Headache Rock,” “Fat Man’s Misery,” “The Lemon Squeeze” and “The Crevice.” Google told us that the trailed covered a distance of 1.5 miles.

            This seemed totally doable to us, so up we went. But the instructions turned out to be quite misleading. We naively assumed that “three ladders” meant that there were literally “three ladders” on the entire trail. This was far from the truth, and in some ways gave us false hope. It turns out that the “three ladders” meant that there were three ladders in the “Lemon Squeeze” section itself. When we got to the third ladder on the trail itself, we almost turned around. The climb was high, the space was narrow, and it required both mental and physical gymnastics to figure out the best way to maneuver through the opening. But thinking that this was the last latter we had to traverse, we persevered and climbed up the ladder and under a rock. But we were still nowhere close to being finished with the hike. It took us the good part of two hours to finish what we thought was going to be a 45-minute hike. We kept wondering if we had made a wrong turn somewhere – but fortunately, the trail was marked with painted red arrows that pointed the way. Sometimes the way was straight ahead; other times it was up and over a cliff. We trusted that the arrows would take us where we needed to go, but there were definitely more than a fair share of white-knuckle moment as we climbed.

I reflected on this hike as I read this week’s Torah portion, the double portion of Matot-Masei. My experience climbing the Labyrinth echoed many of the feelings that the Israelites likely encountered while wandering the desert: anxiety over what loomed ahead, impatience with how long it was taking, and frustration that the journey was much more difficult than what we had originally anticipated.

The word Masei literally means “Journeys.”  The portion begins with a laundry list of the 42 stages in the Israelites’ wanderings in the wilderness. With the exception of a few asides detailing some sort of event that took place along the course of this journeying, the Torah presents more than forty straight verses recording nothing more than place names.

Because of the length of this forty-year journey – and all the stops along the way – it is easy to forget that the distance between Israel and Egypt is only about 250 miles or so. You may recall that the Jews’ wandering path was punishment for the deceit of the spies who traveled to Israel ahead of the rest of the group. Ten of the twelve spies, the exception being Joshua and Caleb, gave false reports of Israel being a land dominated by beasts and giants. As a result, God made the Jews wander so that the generation of sinners would not make it into the Promised Land. New blood would mark new beginnings for the Israelites, but the events of the past forever linger in our story. They didn’t know that their journey would take so long – like my friends and I on the Labyrinth, they thought they would be wandering for a much shorter period of time.

The circuitous path of the Jewish in the desert made for 40 years of memory in a very compact geographical space. Although a more direct route to the Promised Land may have been preferable to some, sometimes the scenic route can bring its own rewards.  Imagining a map of the sites visited in Parshat Masei conjures a frustrating series of loops through an area that even today is still very much barren but beautiful wilderness.  Had the Jews not wandered, the rebellious spirit of the spies and the construction of the Golden Calf would have carried over into their lives as free men and women. By waiting for a new generation to come forth in the desert, the Jews were gifted with the memory of past mistakes and the knowledge of how to make improvements for the future.

Which brings me back once again to the Labyrinth: My friends and I were there celebrating our upcoming milestone birthday – and were definitely feeling the physical challenges of the course. We’re all in decent shape, but are more used to riding our Pelotons or swimming laps in the pool than climbing mountains. This was a new kind of workout for us, resulting in banged up and bruised knees and a scratched Apple Watch. In fact, when I look at the scratches on my watch I am reminded of how I persevered and completed one of the most challenging hikes I have ever been on. They are battle scares, of sorts. We wondered if we would be able to do this hike in a decade or more. We were inspired when we met a woman in her seventies at the top of the mountain, hiking with her adult daughter. This reassured us that completing the hike was less about age or physical ability and more about perseverance and mental stamina.  

We anticipated that the hardest part of the hike would be the final ascent into the Lemon Squeeze chimney. While this was certainly a challenge in its own way, I nearly had a panic attack on an earlier part of the trail. After contorting ourselves through about two-thirds of the trail, we reached an open field of rocks at the top of a cliff. I made the mistake of looking down – it was terrifying. Then I stepped on a loose rock, temporarily losing my footing. I was fine. But then I looked back over the cliff, wondering what would have happened if I actually had tripped over the loose rock and gotten injured. We were past the point of no return – there was no way I was traversing down the same steep rocks I had just climbed up. But I didn’t know how much was left in the hike or whether I would be able to handle the Lemon Squeeze itself.

I told my friends that I needed a moment to refocus and regroup. We sat beneath the shade of a rock and reflected on how far we had come – it was certainly no small feat. And the section of the trail we were on when I decided to stop was by no means the hardest part of hike. In fact, it was probably the flattest and most straightforward section. Instead of keeping my mind on the task at hand, I allowed myself to overthink and let my anxiety get the best of me. After about fifteen minutes, we got back up to complete the hike. We didn’t really have any other choice, as it was. And it turned out that the final ascent was certainly challenging, but nowhere near as hard as I convinced myself it would be. A hike like this truly requires both mental and physical exertion. Based on the stories we read in our Torah as well as the travelog that is noted in Parshat Masei, we know that the Israelites’ journey though the wilderness was filled with similar challenges.

As an aside: The Hebrew name for Egypt, Mitzrayim, literally means “the narrow space.” The Lemon Squeeze was most definitely in itself a narrow space – making the coincidences between the two journeys even more similar!

Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl cites a classic midrash from Rashi, the medieval commentator, in reference to the desert landmarks listed in Parshat Masei. This midrash “compares the review of the journey to a parent who is bringing a child home after an extended trip, reminding the child of the places in which they found shelter and faced challenges.” We’ve all heard the kids on long car rides or perhaps even were once that kid ourselves asking “are we there yet?” over and over and over again. In this age of GPS, more often than not we know exactly how long a car ride is going to take – traffic pending, of course. I’ve noticed that my four-year old son Alex’s question of choice is not actually “are we there yet.” It’s “how many more minutes until we get there?” Having a sense of how long something will take in advance creates different expectations for the journey. Instead of impatiently whining, Alex can pass the time by keeping track of the numbers. If our GPS tells us that it will take 30 minutes for us to reach our destination, I tell Alex to count to 60 thirty times. Of course, doing so doesn’t exactly hold his short attention span – but doing so does give him a concrete sense of how much further to go. We didn’t have that sense of comfort as we hiked the Labyrinth. All we knew was that we had climbed for way longer than the 45 minutes than we anticipated, with no end in sight.

The Israelites, on the other hand, knew that they would be wandering for forty years – that was their punishment. As the days and years passed, God commanded Moses to mark the starting point of each and every one of the Israelites’ marches through the wilderness. As a result, we know that Rephidim is where Moses struck the rock out of frustration for having no water to drink. We know that Aaron died on Mount Hor, on exactly the fortieth year and the first day of the fifth month since the Jews had left Egypt. Making note of these landmarks helps us to recall many of the most significant milestones along the journey to the Promise Land. The locales are more than just dots on a map – they are our history.

And so, the moral of the story is to pay attention to the red arrows, and trust that they’ll take you where you need to go. The journeys of our ancestors across the generations set an example for us to follow, and the fact that they kept a record of what happened where and when allows us to recall and revisit their achievements. Even the simplest accomplishments, the flattest part of the trail, are to be both respected and celebrated. The distance may be short, but the lessons are enduring.

Shabbat Shalom!