Rabbi Yehuda Zev Klein

Route 42

Parshas Maasei offers a detailed account of the Bnei Yisrael’s forty-year journey through the Midbar, listing all 42 journeys, famously referred to as the Mem Beis Masa’os, on their way from Mitzrayim to Eretz Yisrael. Each stop is recorded, along with the duration of their stay. At times, they remained in a location for many years; at others, merely for days, or even just a single day.

How, though, did the Jewish people know when it was time to move on?

The Torah, in Parshas Beha’aloscha, outlines the system. As long as the Ananei HaKavod, the Clouds of Glory, hovered above the Mishkan, the nation remained encamped. When the Clouds lifted, that was the sign to travel. This Divine signal guided them through every leg of their journey.

Curiously, the Torah repeats this instruction several times over the course of multiple Pesukim: “Al pi Hashem yachanu, v’al pi Hashem yisa’u—By the word of Hashem they encamped, and by the word of Hashem they traveled.” Whether they stayed for a year, a month, or a single day, the rule remained the same. And this phrase is repeated no fewer than three times.

Why such emphasis? Why the repetition?

The Baal Shem Tov famously teaches that these 42 journeys correspond not only to the nation’s physical route through the desert, but to the 42 distinct phases every individual experiences in the journey of life. Each stage, each stop, has its purpose. Every experience, whether brief or prolonged, joyful or painful, is a step toward spiritual growth.

Life brings us through emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges. Sometimes we are caught in situations that linger for years: a difficult landlord, a trying boss, a struggling child, or a personal hardship that disrupts our peace. We ask ourselves, “Why am I still here? Why can’t I move on?”

The Torah tells us: “Al pi Hashem yachanu, v’al pi Hashem yisa’u.” You are here because Hashem placed you here. This stop, however temporary or uncomfortable, is not random. It is designed for your neshama’s growth. Perhaps it is to build patience or strengthen emunah or cultivate anavah (humility). And when your inner work at this stage is complete, the clouds will lift. And just as in the Midbar, you will move forward.

Sometimes, the change is abrupt. A job you love ends unexpectedly. A home you thought would be yours forever must suddenly be vacated. A neighborhood you once dreamed of no longer fits your needs. It is disorienting. But in that moment, Hashem tells us: “This stop has fulfilled its purpose. The growth available here is complete.”

There is a profound lesson in this pattern. Every phase of life, even those that feel like mere layovers, is intentional. And even when Hashem brings us to a place of challenge or discomfort, He never abandons us. At times, He walks beside us. And other times, especially during our darkest moments, He carries us.

There’s a well-known poem that beautifully expresses this:

One night I had a dream.

I dreamed I was walking along the beach with G-d.

Many scenes from my life flashed before me.

In each scene, I noticed footprints in the sand.

Sometimes there were two sets of footprints.

Other times, there was only one.

I noticed that during the lowest periods of my life,

when I was suffering from anguish and sorrow,

I could see only one set of footprints.

So I asked G-d,

“You said you’d always walk with me.

But I noticed that during the most difficult times of my life,

there was only one set of footprints.

Why, when I needed You most, did You abandon me?”

G-d replied,

“My precious child, I love you.

I would never leave you.

The times when you saw only one set of footprints—

that was when I carried you.”

Why does the Torah repeat “Al pi Hashem yachanu, v’al pi Hashem yisa’u” again and again?

To engrave this truth into our hearts: We are never lost. We are never alone. Every stop, every delay, every detour has meaning. And every step is guided by Hashem.

Rabbi Moshe Donnenbaum

In the Eyes of Hashem and People

The Chasam Sofer, in his responsa (6:59), writes about a Pasuk that he questions whether anyone in history has ever truly fulfilled, at least in its entirety. That verse appears in Parshas Matos: “V’hiyisem nekiyim me’Hashem u’miYisrael—You shall be clean in the eyes of Hashem and in the eyes of Israel.”

The Chasam Sofer explains that this Pasuk imposes a double responsibility, a “double yoke” upon a person’s shoulders. The first part, “Nekiyim me’Hashem,” demands that one’s actions be pure and correct in the eyes of Heaven. They ought to be done in accordance with halacha, with integrity, with proper middos. This, says the Chasam Sofer, is the easier part.

The second part, however—“U’miYisrael”—is far more difficult. It requires that one’s actions not only be righteous in the eyes of G-d, but also appear righteous in the eyes of people. One must ensure that others who observe their actions do not misunderstand or misinterpret their behavior, even if the actions are entirely proper from a halachic perspective.

This concept underlies the halachos of mar’is ayin (avoiding appearances of wrongdoing) and the weight that Chazal place on avoiding even suspicion of impropriety.

The Gemara (Yoma 86a) cites an example. Rav, one of the great Talmudic sages, declared that if he were to buy meat on credit and people saw him doing so, it could be a Chillul Hashem—a desecration of G-d's Name—because others might wrongly assume he wouldn’t repay. This is the essence of V’hiyisem nekiyim me’Hashem u’miYisrael. We are charged not only to act righteously, but to be perceived as righteous.

Let’s consider a simple modern-day case. A person walks into a local Jewish-owned store and tells the store owner, “This product was defective. May I exchange it?” The owner agrees and goes to the back. The customer, with permission, takes a replacement from the shelf and walks out. From Hashem’s perspective, the person has done nothing wrong. But imagine another customer standing nearby, unaware of the prior conversation. To them, it may look like theft. They saw someone take an item and leave without paying.

This is the challenge. To live with such integrity and awareness that no one, even from a distance, could misinterpret your actions.

The Chafetz Chaim exemplified this sensitivity. If he arrived late to davening due to attending a brit milah, he would knock on the bimah and announce where he had been, so no one would suspect he was careless about tefillah. Similarly, Rav Moshe Feinstein once yawned as he was learning one Shabbos afternoon. He immediately explained to his much younger chavrusa that Parasas Massei was long, and he had woken up early to prepare Shnayim Mikra (read the Parsha twice, as prescribed by halacha). Even a brief moment of fatigue, in his view, demanded explanation, lest it be misunderstood.

Parshas Massei itself reveals a striking illustration of this principle.

Aharon HaKohen, unlike Moshe Rabbeinu, never prayed to enter Eretz Yisrael. Moshe, as we know, recited 515 tefillos (as noted in Parsahs Va’eschanan). But Aharon is never recorded as having done so. The Megaleh Amukos explains this omission with two profound insights, one mystical (al pi sod), and one halachic (al pi nigleh).

Mystically, Aharon understood that he would eventually enter Eretz Yisrael, albeit not in his current lifetime, but through his gilgul (reincarnation) as Ezra HaSofer, who would lead the Jewish people back to the Land after the Babylonian exile. The gematria of Aharon (256) and Ezra (278) differs by 22, symbolizing the 22 generations between them.

Halachically, the Megaleh Amukos suggests something even more striking. Aharon refrained from davening to enter the Land because he feared that others might suspect impure motives. As a Kohen, he would receive matnos kehunah, Priestly gifts from the people. And though his desire to enter Eretz Yisrael was purely spiritual, others might say, “He’s praying to go to Israel so he can collect gifts!” The pain of being misunderstood by others was so great that he refrained entirely from davening to enter the Land. Hashem knew his true intentions, but Aharon HaKohen still held back, to avoid the faintest appearance of self-interest.

This is the profound weight of V’hiyisem nekiyim me’Hashem u’miYisrael.

It demands that we live not only with objective righteousness, but with perceived righteousness, and to act in ways that are beyond suspicion and are transparent and clean in the eyes of both Heaven and man.

Of course, we must give others the benefit of the doubt. But we, too, bear responsibility to act in a way that preempts misinterpretation, that clarifies confusion, and that upholds our personal integrity in both realms.

Rabbi Ilan Halberstadt

From Murderer to Convert

One of the most astonishing episodes in Jewish history centers around Nevuzaradan, the chief general and executioner of the Babylonian empire, tasked with destroying Jerusalem and the Beis HaMikdash. Chazal (Gittin 57b) tell us that Nevuzaradan personally killed over two million people, and when he reached Yerushalayim, he slaughtered nearly another million. A total of three million people—men, women, children—all fell by his hand.

And yet, the Gemara presents us with an incredible and perplexing episode.

When Nevuzaradan entered the site of the Beis Hamikdash, he saw something that disturbed him. The blood of Zechariah HaNavi, who had been murdered during the First Temple era after rebuking the nation, was still boiling on the floor, bubbling up from the stones. Puzzled, he inquired, “What is this blood?” The people refused to answer, but under threat of death, they finally revealed that it was the blood of Zechariah, a prophet whom the people themselves had killed for speaking the truth.

Upon hearing this, Nevuzaradan unleashed an unimaginable massacre—slaughtering young men, brides, elders, children, and sages—in an effort to silence the blood. Yet the blood of Zechariah continued to boil. Finally, in exasperation, he cried out, “Zechariah, Zechariah! I have killed the best of them—do youu want me to annihilate them all?” And at that moment, the blood stopped.

What followed is one of the most mind-boggling moments in all of Chazal. The Gemara tells us that Nevuzaradan was seized by teshuvah. He had a moment of profound introspection. And in that moment, he said: “If the vengeance for one Jewish soul—the Navi Zechariah—is so overwhelming that it demanded the death of hundreds of thousands to appease it, what does that say about me? About the millions I have killed?”

And then—he fled, left his position, abandoned his post, and converted to Judaism.

Think about the gravity of this transformation. This was not a minor figure, nor a common sinner. Nevuzaradan was the architect of the destruction, a man with the blood of entire populations on his hands. And yet, he found a pathway to the emes (truth), and he became a ger tzedek, a sincere convert.

How are we to understand this?

At a superficial level, his logic seems counterintuitive. If anything, realizing the enormity of his sin should have led him to despair, not redemption. If the death of one tzaddik—Zechariah—called forth divine retribution of such magnitude, what hope could there be for a man like him?

Rav Moshe Shapiro zt”l offered a profound insight. Sometimes the path to Hashem begins not from spiritual heights, but from the lowest depths of darkness. Nevuzaradan stood at the epicenter of destruction, at the nadir of human morality, and yet from that very place, he discovered the truth. He recognized the value of one Jewish soul, and from that realization came an even greater one: if one soul is worth so much, then the people who carry such souls must possess an immeasurable truth.

His kal vachomer, his thinking process, was not one of despair; it was one of clarity. The very scale of the destruction, the weight of Divine justice for a single Jewish Navi, revealed to him the infinite worth of Am Yisrael. And from that recognition came a decision: if this is truth, I want to be part of it.

Rav Moshe once shared a chilling but powerful story to illustrate this. During the Holocaust, a Christian priest was stationed in one of the camps. Day after day, he watched as Jews were herded in and mercilessly murdered. At a certain point, he could no longer bear the contradiction between what he had been taught and what he was witnessing. In a moment of anguish and clarity, he stood before the crowd, took off his crucifix, and snapped it in half, declaring, “This cannot be the truth. The Jews must be the true people of G-d.”

Sometimes, it is the overwhelming injustice and darkness that brings a person to finally recognize the light of truth.

Nevuzaradan’s conversion teaches us another lesson.

If the blood of one Jew can cry out for generations, and the price of silencing that blood is so immense, then the value of each Jew is immeasurable. This is why Nevuzaradan didn’t collapse under the weight of his sin. Instead, he chose to attach himself to the very people he had once destroyed. He wanted to be connected to that truth. To be part of something that carried such Divine weight and sanctity.

And this is the secret of teshuvah. From the deepest place of destruction, the seeds of redemption begin to grow. The Midrash says that when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, “Tzion sadeh techarash—Zion was plowed like a field.” But plowing is not just a sign of ruin; it is a preparation for planting. The field is made ready for new growth.

This is the meaning of the blessing, “Es tzemach David avdecha meheira tatzmiach—The sprouting of redemption begins in the furrows of destruction.”

And this is the ultimate message of these Three Weeks. From the depths of churban comes the possibility of rebuilding. From the greatest desecration comes the yearning for sanctity. Nevuzaradan’s story is not just about how low one can fall, but about how high one can reach, even from the lowest place.

We do not have to wait for destruction in our own lives to experience this awakening. We can choose now to do teshuvah, to open our eyes to the infinite value of every Jew, and to begin planting seeds of redemption today.

May we be zocheh to that transformation, speedily in our days.

Rabbi Tzvi Sytner

How to Define Yourself

A few years ago, I was leading a trip to Israel with a group of young men, none of whom identified as religious. I remember the very first night of the trip, we visited Tzfat. One of the boys turned to me and said, “You know, I’m not religious… but that place was deeply spiritual.”

The next day, we visited the Kotel. Another participant said, “I’m not religious, but the Wall… that was powerful.”

On the third day, we heard a talk from Charlie Harary. Yet another boy said, “I’m not religious, but that talk—wow, that was amazing.”

At that point, I turned to them and asked, “Why do you keep starting your sentences with ‘I’m not religious’?”

They shrugged and said, “Because we’re not.” “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Do you eat matzah on Passover?” They said, “Yeah.” “Do you hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah?” “Yeah.” “Do you kill?” “No.” “Do you steal?” “No.”

I smiled and said, “You keep saying you’re not religious… but you do all these things that are deeply rooted in religious values. Matzah. Shofar. Ethical conduct. These are the pillars of Judaism. That sounds pretty religious to me.”

Then I shared with them something.

“If you define yourself by what you are not, that’s all you’ll ever be. But if you begin to define yourself by what you are, then who knows what you might become?”

We all make mistakes. We all fall short of who we hope to be. But when those moments happen, we face a choice: Do we define ourselves as the mistake? Or do we say, I made a mistake—but that’s not who I am?

When we begin to identify with the good within us, with the spiritual pull that already resonates in our lives, we open the door to incredible growth. We stop being “not religious” and start becoming wholesome.

The journey doesn't begin with perfection. It begins with the courage to say, “This is who I am. And this is who I want to be.”