Imagine this. You are driving, You trust the voice in your phone. “In 500 meters, take the next exit.” You are focused. You know where you are going. And then, for just a second, you miss the turn. The exit flashes by. Too late. For a brief moment, there is silence. Then the GPS pauses, thinks, and says, very calmly: “Recalculating the route.” No panic. No shame. No blame. Just a quiet message: You are not lost. The journey is not over. You are still on the way. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we spoke to people the same way. Because in life, people miss turns too. People take unexpected exits. People find themselves on roads they never imagined traveling. And life, like the GPS, does not simply end the journey. It recalculates. There is one place, however, where we often stop speaking with that kind of gentleness. When it comes to people. When it comes to children.

We do not say, “He is recalculating his route.” We say: “He is off the derech.” Off the path. But what exactly is a derech? And how do we know which derech is the right one? Every person believes their derech is the right path. Every community believes their map is correct. So, when we say someone is “off the derech,” what are we really saying? That they are off? That something is wrong with them? Or, that they are no longer walking OUR road? Most of us know someone we love who has taken a different path. A child. A sibling. A student. A friend. Someone we once expected to walk one road and instead found another. But what if a derech is not one fixed road? What if a derech is a journey, and every soul has its own path? The word derech appears constantly throughout the Torah. Not as a label, not as judgement, but as movement. As growth. As becoming. As life itself. We see from the very beginning, the first Jew, Avraham is told: “לך לך מארצך וממולדתך ומבית אביך.” Leave what is familiar. Go. Move forward. Yaakov’s life is also defined by journey. He flees, struggles, wrestles through the night, and emerges transformed. The Torah says:

“ויעקב הלך לדרכו.” The Torah does not present him as a man who becomes himself by standing still.........

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