The Importance of Wandering

On June 18, 2011, just 10 weeks after I stepped from the mikvah, I was privileged to give the d'var Torah at my husband's childhood synagogue. The parsha was Shelach. At this point in the Torah, the Israelites have made it to the borders of the promised land, and they send in 12 spies to scope out the situation. The spies find a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey, with grapevines so large that it takes many men to carry them back to the camp. But they also find a land filled with formidable inhabitants. Ten of the spies report back that the land is good, but not worth the fights with the “giants” (Numbers 13:32) who live there. Only two, Joshua and Caleb, insist that settling the land will be worth it and that with God's help they can settle there. The people side with the ten spies, and for this lack of faith, God dooms them to 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, I've lost the copy of the d'var Torah I gave in 2011, but I remember that it was about fear, wandering, and finding your place in the world. We moved a lot at that time in our lives - for jobs, for grad school, and then for jobs and grad school again. Between 2010-2015, we lived in 4 cities and 6 apartments. We've been settled in the DC-area for over ten years now, and with our wandering days behind us, it seemed like a good time to revisit the themes of that old d'var Torah.

The Israelites let their fear keep them from the life God had promised. They saw themselves as small and insignificant, “like grasshoppers” (Numbers 13:33), and let their own insecurities cloud their judgement. The 40 years of wandering was a punishment that helped to reshape their thinking. A people who can survive a nomadic life in the desert can do anything. While not a punishment, my own years of wandering helped clarify my values and strengthen my community ties. Nashville and Birmingham taught us the value of small, engaged Jewish communities. Philadelphia showed us the power of walkable communities. We learned the differences between areas with many transplants and those with more homegrown populations, and the importance of pride of place. Everywhere we went, we joined a synagogue, defying the demographic trend of young 20-somethings not embracing memberships. We didn't let the possibility of moving away in the future keep us from engaging in the present. In each place, we built relationships, celebrated holidays, and did the daily work of discovering who we are and what we wanted from life.

Now, more than a decade into our time in the DC area, I see how those wandering years were not just transitional, they were formative. They taught us to be brave enough to try something new and grounded enough to keep showing up. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we learned who we were as we traveled. Looking back, I think the heart of that long-lost d'var Torah was this: fear tells you to wait, but faith tells you to begin. Wandering gave us the wisdom to know when to pause and when to move forward. And now, as we stand more firmly rooted in the life we've built, I’m grateful for the places we’ve been and the courage it took to journey through them.

Omer 2025 Day 49

Day 48

Day 49: The Torah
Malchut in Malchut, Leadership in Leadership

Of course our final book is the one that earned us the name "the People of the Book." The Torah is a profound guide to the complexities of leadership. There are explicit instructions, such as the "dos" and "don'ts" of the Ten Commandments. And then there are the lessons we can draw from the detailed lives of the individuals throughout the text. How to welcome the stranger like Abraham and Sarah, while also treating those in our household with respect. How to be more humble than Joseph, but maintain his cool head under pressure. How to overcome a "slow tongue" to speak truth to power, like Moses. 

For all their great accomplishments, our leaders are also shown to have flaws. No one is perfect and the Torah doesn't pretend otherwise. We're not given superheroes; we are given people in all their complexity. The Torah doesn’t just tell us what to do; it shows us how to be. It challenges us to rise to the occasion, not to dwell on our missteps, but to use them as opportunities to grow. And it reminds us that leadership is not about being perfect, but about being faithful to ourselves, our values, and our communities.

Omer 2025 Day 48

Day 47

Day 48: The Giver by Lois Lowry
Yesod in Malchut, Connection in Leadership

I can't think of this book without recalling how much I disliked my 7th grade Language Arts class. I remember three things from that class:

1. I watched The Princess Bride for the first time. It remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

2. This was my first experience with someone trying to explain raising children in an interfaith household to somehow be proud Jews who also celebrate Christmas. I wasn't even Jewish at the time and still I was not convinced. 

3. I read The Giver, which I enjoyed so much that I read beyond the assigned reading each week. That shouldn't have been a problem, except that our teacher wanted us to stop at pre-assigned chapters so that she could test our ability to predict what would happen next. This method disrupted the narrative flow of the novel, forcing me to re-read chapters again to recall details of the story each time I was allowed to read the next chapter. It put me in a position to feel bad about my love of reading and to lie about having read more than I was supposed to read. And it turned the class discussion of the novel into a resentment-building experience that was slowing down my enjoyment of the novel, instead of a generative discussion that could add to my understanding of the story.

Moving on...

The titular "Giver" in Lois Lowry's novel is not a traditional leader, publicly in command of society. The Giver is largely invisible in the community, with a job that is purposefully unknown and unseen. His role demonstrates the importance of leaders as responsible for maintaining our connection to the past. Even a society that has removed difference, color, and emotion from the world recognizes the importance of maintaining a connection to those things, having at least on person who understands the foundation on which their society was built. The Giver's role is not just to remember, but to carry the painful memories so that others don’t have to feel them. Without these memories, it's clear that the rest of the people lose not just their history, but their humanity. Ultimately, a good leader needs to not only maintain a connection to the past, but the people's connections to each other.