Today I want to spend a few minutes talking about traveling. I want to explore with you what it means to travel as a Jewish person. And how we as a community can travel in a spiritual fashion.

What is the Torah's attitude to travel? The Torah begins the second parshah that we read today with the words, eleh massey benei yisrael, these are the journeys of Israel. And the Torah then proceeds to literally list every place that the Jews camped when they were in the desert. Do you know how many places the Torah lists? Forty-two! The Torah tells us: they started in Egypt in Ramses, went to Sukkot, then to Etam, then to Pi ha-Hirot, etc., etc.

There's a lot of detail in the Torah's account; and this detail seems almost irrelevant. Why do we really need to know exactly where the Jews slept every night when they were in the desert? When we see a large portion of the Torah dedicated to recording the travel itinerary of the Jews, we should ask ourselves: Why is this here? How is this information relevant to our lives?

This exact question bothers all the commentators on the Torah. Today I want to focus on two separate approaches: the first approach deals with the idea of how we physically travel from one place to another.

--An idea which appears in the commentary of Rabbenu Yonah, who lived in Gerona in 13^th c., suggests that the Torah mentions all these places as a measure of hakarat ha-tov. The Torah is recognizing the hospitality of the desert that so graciously accepted the Jewish people for forty years. According to this explanation, the camps of the desert are repeated forty two times in order to help us come to appreciate the desert.

We normally look at the desert as a trap--A place where there is no shade, no life--It’s a barren, desolate region. Rabbenu Yonah teaches us, don't focus on the barrenness of the desert. Instead focus on the hospitality of the desert. Look at the oasis of water and pockets of shade that suddenly appear from out of nowhere. And when we really look at the desert, then we understand that there is a lot of life there. There are lizards and other animals who are welcome in the desert, there are cactuses and other plants that thrive in the desert climate.

This is the message of the forty-two massaot, the repetition of the travels teaches us to appreciate beauty in places where we don't normally take cognizance of the beauty. For example, there can be beauty in a crowded, busy subway train. When a person makes sure always to ride the trains with hard-boiled eggs in order to give to the hungry and the homeless, that's beauty. I call that "beauty in the desert."

Maybe the Torah dwells for a long time on the travels of the Jews in the desert because we sometimes miss this beauty when we travel. Traveling is about moving, walking, and running, going from place to place. The Torah is saying--stop. Focus on the beauty of each place. See the "beauty of the desert.

But there's another approach as to how to answer the question of why the Torah repeats the massaot. This approach focuses not on how people travel physically from one place to another, but on how we as individuals and as a community can use not place travel, but time travel as an opportunity to bond with God.

This idea is the Midrashic approach. The Midrash , as quoted in Rashi, answers the question we have been discussing with a parable: mashal le-melekh she-hayah beno holeh, compare this to a king who had a son who was sick, ve-holikho le-makom rahok le-rapoto, and so the king took his son to a distant place in order to cure him, keivan she-hayu hozrin, when they returned home, hithil aviv moneh kol ha-masaot, the father began to list all the places they went to, amar lo kan yashannu, he said: here we slept, kan hokarnu, here we caught cold, kan hashashtah et roshekhah, here you had a head-ache.

The Midrash is teaching us that on an individual level we should always take cognizance of God's presence. We were wandering, in the desert. There were moments where we had no water, no food, and no meat. We had wars, plagues, and communal fights. We were in many ways sick.k.

But even though we were sick the Torah is teaching us that God embraced us. Why does the Torah list all forty-two places? To show how much God loves us.

Let me illustrate to you why I think the tOrah's descriprion of the travels is an expression of love. What do we do when you come back from a vacation. We rush out and look at the pictures of the vacations, and we take in all the fond memories. This is what God is doing with us. God is saying here we got cold, here we slipped. But still we were together.

On an individual level the lesson of these travels is that even though we are sick, God still loves us.

So that's a lesson on an individual level. But there is also a lesson here on a communal level.

This parshah, parshat Massey, always falls in a time of year that we call in English, "The Three Weeks." This is a time when the entire Jewish community enters a period of mourning, that ultimately peaks on Tisha B' Av, when we mourn the destruction of the Beit ha-Mikdash, the Temple of Jerusalem.

In English this period is called the Three Weeks, but in rabbinic literature this period of time is usually referred to as "Bein ha-Metzarim." The phrase Bein ha-Metzarim literally means "Between the Straits."

But another translation of bein ha-metsarim, is bein ha-gevulot--between the boundaries. According to this translation, this period is a time that symbolizes the weakness of the Jews. This time of the year encapsulates the fear that faces the Jewish people as we went through history, from the destruction of the Beit ha-Mikdash, to the Crusades in Germany, to the Blood Libels in France and England to the Inquisitions in Spain, to the Pogroms in Eastern Europe, and finally to the Holocaust. In all these places we were vulnerable to our enemies precisely because we had no land of our own.

And today, even though we have medinat yisrael, and even though America has been very welcoming and gracious to us, we are still vulnerable. If six Jews in Chicago can get shot walking home from schul, it shows that even here in America we are still, so to speak, caught "Between the Boundaries."

The challenge of the Bein ha-Metsarim is to connect communally with the travels of the Jews throughout history, to feel at one with every Jewish community that ever was.

According to this explanation, the reason why the Torah lists all the forty-two stops of the Jews is to show that even though throughout our history there were times where communally we faced danger and persecution…God's greatness stayed with us through time. We should feel God's embrace in every genaration and in every community.

So as we travel this summer, lets carry with us these two separate travel messages of the Torah. Lets see beauty in places where we normally might miss it. Take cognizance of the greatness in the world that surrounds us. And lets also remember the time of the year that now comes upon us. It is a time to focus on the past of our people, to allow ourselves to travel through history and connect with the suffering Jews of the past. And most importantly, as we visit the destructions of the past to remember that Gods greatness always us.