Sometimes the most important journey is not about the destination, but about breaking the routine that kept you from growing.
Seeking the Positive
Our Torah portion opens with the words, “Re’eh — See, I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse.”
The Rebbe explains that nothing that comes from G-d can truly be a curse. Sometimes something may look painful, confusing, or negative on the surface. But when we look deeper, we discover that even there, hidden inside it, there is a blessing.
We have to try to find the positive point inside all the chaos of this war — a war that people have been speaking about nonstop for the last few years. So the question is: What blessing might be hidden inside these difficult and complicated years that the Jewish people have been going through?
An Accessible Temple
In this week’s Torah portion, we read that when the Jewish people enter the Land of Israel, they will not be allowed to bring sacrifices wherever they want.
Instead, the Torah says that offerings must be brought only to “the place that G-d will choose.” Rashi explains that this refers to Jerusalem, where the Holy Temple would eventually be built.
The Torah repeats this idea several times in the portion: the offerings, the sacrifices, and certain sacred meals had to be brought specifically to that one chosen place.
In other words, the Temple service could take place only in Jerusalem, and nowhere else.
But why?
Why did G-d decide that there should be only one Holy Temple, located in Jerusalem? Why did everyone have to travel all the way there in order to bring an offering?
Why not build smaller temples all over the country? Wouldn’t that make Jewish life much easier and much more accessible?
Imagine a Jew wakes up one morning and feels deeply grateful. He survived a dangerous situation, or he experienced a personal miracle, and he wants to bring a thanksgiving offering to G-d.
But if he lives in Tzfas, in northern Israel, he cannot simply walk down the block and bring his offering. He has to travel by horse, donkey, or foot for a week or more until he reaches Jerusalem. Only then can he bring his offering.
At first glance, it would seem that the Holy Temple should have worked more like a synagogue.
Every city and neighborhood has a synagogue. When a Jew feels inspired to pray, study, or connect with G-d, he can go to the local synagogue nearby.
So why didn’t G-d make the Temple work the same way?
Why not make it close, accessible, and available to every person wherever he lives?
The Torah itself recognizes this problem. In Parshas Re’eh, the Torah says, “If the place that G-d will choose is far from you…” Later, when speaking about the tithe that had to be eaten in Jerusalem, the Torah again says, “If the road is too long for you… because the place that G-d will choose is far from you…”
So the Torah itself acknowledges that for many people, Jerusalem was far away.
Which makes the question even stronger: if the Torah knows it is far, why not make the Temple closer and more accessible?
Then, at the end of the Torah portion, we read about another mitzvah connected to this same idea: the obligation to go up to Jerusalem for the festivals.
Three times a year — on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot — every Jewish man was commanded to appear before G-d “in the place that He will choose,” meaning in Jerusalem.
Again, why all this trouble?
For the Jew who lived farthest away, the journey could take about two weeks in one direction, and another two weeks to return home.
The Alter Rebbe points this out in his Code of Jewish Law, in the laws about when we begin asking for rain in the daily prayers. The sages delayed the prayer for rain until fifteen days after Sukkot, so that even the last Jew who had traveled to Jerusalem for the holiday would have enough time to get home safely, even if he lived near the Euphrates River, the farthest settled Jewish area from Jerusalem.
That means a Jew who lived there had to spend an entire month on the road every time he went up for a festival.
And since the Torah commands this three times a year, it comes out that he could spend three full months each year just traveling to and from Jerusalem.
At first glance, that sounds like a tremendous amount of time. During those months, he could have been studying Torah, doing mitzvahs, working to support his family, giving charity, helping other people, and accomplishing so many good things.
So why did G-d make the Holy Temple so far away?
A Vacation from the Vacation
More than any other month, August is vacation season. People leave everything behind, get out of town, and try to escape their regular life for a little while.
But really, why can’t you just decide to take a vacation at home?
Think about it. Instead of packing suitcases, dragging bags, loading the car, standing in airport lines, going through security, and then discovering that your flight is delayed three hours — why not just stay home?
And even after all that travel, when you finally arrive, you end up sleeping in a small hotel room, on a bed that is not your bed, and you wake up in the middle of the night with back pain.
Then, when you finally come home from vacation, you are so exhausted that you need a vacation from the vacation.
So wouldn’t it be smarter to stay home, turn off the phones, tell everyone not to bother you, order hotel-style service to your house, and enjoy the comfort of your own bed, in your own place, without all the packing and traveling?
It would probably be cheaper too.
Of course, nobody here has ever dared to suggest this idea to his wife.
For one simple reason: everyone understands that a vacation is not only about resting. A vacation is about getting new energy. It is about recharging your batteries. It is about stepping into a different headspace and coming back with a fresh start.
And for that, you usually have to leave your house and your regular surroundings.
Because it is very hard to stay home and truly feel like you are on vacation.
When you are in the same place, surrounded by the same kitchen, the same laundry, the same bills, the same messages, and the same responsibilities, you cannot fully disconnect. Everything around you reminds you of what needs to get done.
In order to let go of everything for a little while and rise above your regular routine, you need to change the atmosphere. You need to change the scenery.
Only then can you put yourself into a different state of mind.
Refreshing the Connection
The same is true in Jewish life.
A person who was born into an observant Jewish home, and has been praying every day for as long as he can remember, faces a real challenge: routine.
The very fact that he does it every single day can become the problem.
I hear this often from people who started putting on tefillin and praying regularly.
They say, “At the beginning, it was very inspiring. Every time we prayed, it felt meaningful. We were focused. We felt connected. But after doing it for a while, it became a habit, and we lost some of that energy.”
They miss the feeling they had in the early days, when prayer still felt new.
This problem is not new.
The Alter Rebbe speaks about it in Tanya, chapter 39. He quotes the verse from Isaiah: “Their fear of Me is like a commandment learned by habit.” In other words, a person can serve G-d simply because that is how he was raised. His parents and teachers trained him to live this way, and now he continues doing it almost automatically.
When a person grows up in a certain framework and never steps outside of it, he can end up doing the right things, but without much thought or feeling.
He washes his hands in the morning and prays, not necessarily because he feels that he is speaking to G-d, and not necessarily because he truly wants to connect at that moment, but because it is simply part of his daily routine.
Some people wake up in the morning and brush their teeth. Others wake up in the morning, say Shema, and pray. And if he does not pray one morning, he may feel the same way a person feels when he forgets to brush his teeth. In other words, his actions have no deeper meaning to them.
That is why, three times a year, a Jew was commanded to travel to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
He had to leave his routine. He had to wake himself up from the frozen state of doing things mechanically.
He had to leave his home and travel to another place, because sometimes only a change of place can create a real change inside a person.
Only that can give him a real emotional experience and a renewed connection with G-d.
That is why the Torah commands every Jew to go up to Jerusalem three times a year.
Because that visit to Jerusalem helped him remain a living Jew — not just someone going through the motions.
It gave him fresh energy and renewed desire to keep the mitzvahs, so that Judaism would not become, G-d forbid, a burden.
This is also why, throughout the generations, Chassidim traveled to the Rebbe.
They did not wait for the Rebbe to come visit them.
Because in order to be awakened and uplifted in serving G-d, a person sometimes has to leave his city, leave his usual place, and travel to the place of his teacher.
As the Mishnah says, “Exile yourself to a place of Torah.”
To a Rebbe, You Have to Travel
In the book Zikaron Livnei Yisrael, there is a letter written by Reb Itche Masmid, who was in Europe, to his friend Reb Yisrael Jacobson, who lived in the United States.
In the letter, he tells him:
“In my opinion, the time has come for you, too, to come to the Rebbe. It has been more than ten years since you were by the Rebbe. The fact that you saw the Rebbe when he was in America does not count for anything. Tzu a Rebbe’n darf men for’n — to a Rebbe, you have to travel.”
In other words, seeing the Rebbe when he happened to come to your city is not the same thing. If you want the real experience, you have to make the trip. You have to leave your place and go to him.
And perhaps this is one of the good things that came out of this war.
The army was shaken out of its regular routine. Suddenly, everyone woke up and realized that they were not as prepared as they thought they were. That awakening was painful, but from it, only good can come.
The same is true in our personal Jewish lives.
A person can get used to his own spiritual routine. The first time he came to shul on Shabbat, it may have been a major step. It was new. It was meaningful. It was a real break from his regular life.
But after a while, even that can become routine.
So he has to keep moving forward. He has to make sure that yesterday’s growth does not become today’s autopilot.
Some people travel to Israel in order to awaken their Jewish soul and strengthen their connection with G-d.
A chasid travels to the Ohel, the resting place of the Rebbe.
But not everyone is traveling somewhere. And if you are not physically traveling, then you have to find another way to break out of your routine.
Do something that surprises even you. Take on a positive action that will not only pleasantly surprise your family, but will make you surprised at yourself.
Because sometimes, in order to grow, you do not have to travel across the world. But you do have to move.
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