I often find myself thinking about what is supposed to happen next. Along with the movement to be more mindful, there seems to be this catchphrase of “living in the moment.”
But up until now, we’ve all structured our lives as a series of goals that we’re meant to reach at different points. We do everything in our power to ensure we have the tools to reach those goals, be it in our academic and professional lives or even our personal and familial lives. There’s a societal pressure that comes from both aspects of our lives as Jews and our lives as modern-day beings in this world.
For those of us who are lucky enough to have the Jewish calendar as a grounding structure in our lives, it can lend us an opportunity to set up goals relevant to the time of year and holidays. I thought about this a lot during sefira as it’s the one time of year when we are literally counting our way toward the goal of receiving the Torah. My sefira this year was quite unique as I had the pleasure of going to Israel just before Yom Ha’atzmaut. I also had a unique Lag B’Omer that involved a bonfire in New Square (which is probably an experience that gave me enough material for its own article)! And just days before Shavuot this year, I rejoiced in watching the U.S. Embassy open in Yerushalayim. For the first time I can remember, my journey towards Shavuot was filled with experiences that, in a way, made me better prepared to attempt to relive the experience of Matan Torah.
The morning of the embassy dedication I was teary-eyed as I dropped my daughter off at school. Instead of chatting, we listened to Nachum Segal talk about the day’s events because I was just so overwhelmed with emotion. While I was in Israel a couple of weeks earlier, I was lucky enough to stay in Arnona, just a few blocks away from what was then just the consulate.
As the grandchild of four people who all spent World War II in the United States, I’ve always had a difficult time comprehending the destruction of European Jewry as it had no direct impact on my life. My mother often retells the story of the Six-Day War ending during one of her childhood birthdays. (Don’t worry, Ma, I’m not revealing which birthday it was.) But she always describes how my grandparents just cried at the moment as it was something that was unbelievable to them, as they still very much had a World War II-era mentality.
During my year in Michlalah we used to fall asleep to the gunshots in Gilo, and it was still a time when our mothers told us not to eat the meat in Israel as it was likely not great quality and could make us sick. So less than 20 years later, to walk the streets of Israel and see the immense technological advancement that Jews are making to further develop our homeland, and then watch the U.S. government recognize our holy city of Yerushalayim as our rightful home, strikes the same emotional core that I believe my grandparents felt in 1967.
But for us, this surely isn’t enough. It’s merely a step on the journey until we see the Land of Israel completely in the hands of our nation and we can walk the streets in complete peace in the upcoming days of Moshiach. But this year, I’ve put a lot of thought in to the journey, and not only the goal.
Maybe it’s because my life has not exactly reached many goals that I thought I would reach by now. What if we spent more time focusing on the journey itself and not so much where we are going? I imagine this would help alleviate the feeling of stuckness that so many of us feel. When we’re in that moment of realizing that we’re not hitting that goal, it’s hard to pull out of the moment and have that perspective of the bigger picture.
If we look through the history of the Jews, I wonder if there was even any expectations of events like Matan Torah or the end of World War II, or if the development of modern-day Israel was even fathomable. We hear so many stories of those times, and I wonder if the underlying goal of survival had any other dreams of actual building. We look at the journey of those survivors who became a generation of builders as they just had a sense of obligation to do so. But was it their lifelong dream or a goal they spent years in school working toward? So many times their stories include so much hardship and failure, that when looking at their life’s accomplishments it’s impossible to believe they had the mental strength to continue on their journey.
The beauty of the journey is that we have to remind ourselves that our journey is being controlled by God, Who we know as a master plan for us. While we can’t explain the cause of the hardships, having the emunah that everything is happening for a reason seems like an impossible feat most of the time. And while the journey can be so painful at times, it’s those experiences that just build us up even higher to reach even better goals that are bigger and better than our wildest dreams.
By Rachel Zamist
Rachel Zamist has lived in the Passaic community for the past 32 years and has watched it grow and transition. She is the beaming mother of Mimi, a seventh-grade student at Rachel’s own alma mater, YBH.
