44 | OCTOBER 26 • 2023 J
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E

tre ailleurs, “To be 
elsewhere — the great 
vice of this race, its 
great and secret virtue, the 
great vocation of this people.” 
So wrote the French poet 
and essayist 
Charles Peguy 
(1873-1914), 
a philosemite 
in an age of 
antisemitism. 
He continued: 
“Any crossing 
for them means 
the crossing of the desert. 
The most comfortable 
houses, the best built 
from stones as big as the 
temple pillars, the most 
real of real estate, the most 
overwhelming of apartment 
houses will never mean more 
to them than a tent in the 
desert.” 
What he meant was that 
history and destiny had 
combined to make Jews 
aware of the temporariness 
of any dwelling outside the 
Holy Land. To be a Jew is 
to be on a journey. That is 
how the Jewish story began 
when Abraham first heard 
the words “Lech Lecha,
” with 
their call to leave where he 
was and travel “to the land I 
will show you.” That is how 
it began again in the days of 
Moses, when the family had 
become a people. And that 
is the point almost endlessly 
repeated in parshat Masei: 
“They set out from X and 
camped at Y. They set out 
from Y and camped at Z” 
— 42 stages in a journey of 
40 years. We are the people 
who travel. We are the people 
who do not stand still. We 
are the people for whom time 
itself is a journey through the 
wilderness in search of the 
Promised Land.

In one sense, this is a 
theme familiar from the 
world of myth. In many 
cultures, stories are told 
about the journey of the hero. 
Otto Rank, one of Freud’s 
most brilliant colleagues, 
wrote about it. So did Joseph 
Campbell, a Jungian, in 
his book, The Hero with a 
Thousand Faces. Nonetheless, 
the Jewish story is different 
in significant ways:
 The journey — set out 
in the books of Shemot and 
Bamidbar — is undertaken by 
everyone, the entire people: 
men, women and children. 
It is as if, in Judaism, we 
are all heroes, or at least 
all summoned to a heroic 
challenge.
 It takes longer than a 
single generation. Perhaps, 
had the spies not demoralized 
the nation with their report, 
it might have taken only a 
short while. But there is a 
deeper and more universal 
truth here. The move from 
slavery to the responsibilities 
of freedom takes time. People 
do not change overnight. 

Therefore, evolution 
succeeds; revolution fails. 
The Jewish journey began 
before we were born, and it is 
our responsibility to hand it 
on to those who will continue 
it after us.
 In myth, the hero usually 
encounters a major trial: 
an adversary, a dragon, a 
dark force. He (it is usually 
a he) may even die and be 
resurrected. As Campbell puts 
it: “
A hero ventures forth from 
the world of common day 
into a region of supernatural 
wonder: Fabulous forces are 
there encountered, and a 
decisive victory is won: The 
hero comes back from this 
mysterious adventure with the 
power to bestow boons on his 
fellow man.” The Jewish story 
is different. The adversary 
the Israelites encounter is 
themselves: their fears, their 
weaknesses, their constant 
urge to return and regress.

THE TORAH IS 
ANTI-MYTH
It seems to me, here as so 
often elsewhere, that the 

Torah is not myth but anti-
myth, a deliberate insistence 
on removing the magical 
elements from the story and 
focusing relentlessly on the 
human drama of courage 
versus fear, hope versus 
despair, and the call, not to 
some larger-than-life hero 
but to all-of-us-together, 
given strength by our ties 
to our people’s past and the 
bonds between us in the 
present. 
 The Torah is not some 
fabled escape from reality 
but reality itself, seen as 
a journey we must all 
undertake, each with 
our own strengths and 
contributions to our people 
and to humanity.
We are all on a journey. 
And we must all rest 
from time to time. That 
dialectic between setting 
out and encamping, walking 
and standing still, is part of 
the rhythm of Jewish life. 
There is a time for Nitzavim, 
standing, and a time 
for Vayelekh, moving on. 
Rav Kook spoke of the 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Miles to Go 
 Before I Sleep

