Learn from Your Past!
The Torah records for us the travels of the Jewish people in the desert of
Sinai during their forty-year sojourn there. All of the stops and way
stations are mentioned. Rashi explains that this is analogous to a parent
reviewing to a grown child the record of a long family trip that was taken
long ago and recalling how the then young child reacted to the matter at
each and every location.
We are all acquainted with the cliché (trite as it may seem but nevertheless
true) that life itself is a journey. When people travel and go forth on a
journey they take photographs so that when they return home they can
remember and recall the locations visited and the events that occurred in
There is an inner drive within us to remember where we have visited and been
in life. In fact, this is the basis for all memoirs and autobiographies. We
do not wish to forget what happened to us on our life’s journey and we do
not wish to be forgotten by others that come after us.
This drive to remember and recall and then to retell our story is a very
powerful one. If all politics is local then all history is personal and
individual. Therefore the review in this week’s parsha of all of the stops
and locations in the desert made and visited by the Jewish people carries
with it special and poignant meaning. It speaks to our human emotions and
not only to our intellect and sense of the past.
Part of the benefit of reviewing past events and their locations is to
enable us to learn from those experiences and not to foolishly repeat past
errors and wrong decisions. That is what Rashi means when he recounts for us
the example of the parent and child revisiting their long trip – “Here your
head hurt, here you tripped and fell, etc.” The parent is telling the child
to watch out in the coming years and not to be so negligent in the future.
The entire thrust of knowing Jewish history and understanding and
appreciating our past is to guide our attitudes and behavior in the present
and future and not to unnecessarily repeat past errors and wrongs. An
individual or a nation that knows little or next to nothing of its past
cannot realistically expect to make wise decisions in the present or
The Jewish people have had such a long, eventful and rich history. We have
lived everywhere on this planet and experienced every type of government
rule ever known to humankind. Our travels, so to speak, should have given us
the ability to judge current problems in the light of past experience. But
this ability is naturally contingent on somehow remembering and recalling
the events of the past.
The abysmal ignorance of a large section of the Jewish people regarding this
long past of ours has contributed to much of the dissonance in our current
Jewish world. We should take out our old photo album and study it.
Rabbi Berel Wein