Let me share a piece of my week with you, because I am still a little undone by it.

I got to hold my grandson.

אמיתי שלום, a week into his life, in my arms at his brit. Ilan and Margalit gave me the zchut of being the sandek, which is not a thing I did anything to deserve, and I am not sure I have found the words for it yet. And in the same room, for the very first time, his twin sister אמונה אהבה at his side along with big sister Ayelet. A whole week Emuna had been in this world before I ever saw her face. Around us, so much of my family, all in one place at one time.

I was on the ground for twelve hours. It took more than half a dozen flights to get there and back.

If you laid that out for anybody they would tell you the math is insane. All those connections. All that waiting. All those hours folded into a seat that does not recline, for less than a single day.

I would do every mile of it again tomorrow, and I would not think twice.

And somewhere around the third or fourth flight, half asleep and completely wrung out, this week’s parsha quietly caught up with me.

The most boring list in the Torah

At the end of Bamidbar the Torah gives us what looks like the world’s dullest travel diary. They traveled from here and camped there. They traveled from there and camped here. Again. And again. Forty-two stops.

If you have ever zoned out during the Torah reading, this is usually where it happens. My eyes have glazed over on this list more times than I want to admit.

But our sages stopped and asked the question I never bothered to ask. Why? Why write down every single campsite? Especially the terrible ones. The place where they cried. The place where they turned on each other. The place where they wanted to quit and go back.

Why put the ugly stops in the official record at all?

Because that is where you tell your kid, look how far you came

One teaching pictures a parent walking a child back through a long, awful trip once it is finally over. Here is where you got sick. Here is where you were freezing. Here is where you were so scared you could not speak.

Not to hurt them. To say, look at all of it. Look how far you came. You walked through every one of these, and here you are.

I actually caught myself doing that, sitting........

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