It's What We Bring Home That Counts

The Journey

Life is a journey with stations along the way, some more comfortable than others. But when we settle in to those more comfortable stations, we may forget that we haven’t yet reached our destination.

G‑d placed us on earth for a purpose. He brought our souls down from on high, and when our journey is complete He will return our souls to that celestial place. During this journey our souls are meant to accomplish something – something they can bring back to their heavenly home.

This accomplishment cannot possibly be measurable in temporal terms because temporal achievements don’t make the return trip with us.

Three Friends

An old parable teaches that the human has three friends, and it is only at our funeral that we can truly appreciate which among them is most important.

This first friend doesn’t bother attending at our funeral. The second attends the funeral, but stops at the grave and goes no further. The third friend accompanies us on the last leg of our journey and is at our side when we return to heaven.

The only friends that truly stay with us are our good deeds.

By now I am sure you imagine that the first of these friends are our material accomplishments, our homes, cars, bank accounts, wardrobes and estates. These things serve us in this life, but don’t come with us when we depart. They don’t come to the cemetery to bid us farewell. Instead they stay behind and serve their new masters.

The second of these friends are our family and close friends. These are the people we have touched and who have touched us during the course of our lives. These people love us and accompany us to the grave, but they cannot go beyond. This is where we part company. We go to heaven and our loved ones remain behind.

The only friends that truly stay with us are our good deeds. The charity we gave, the honor and respect we showed our parents and the Torah we learned all stand us in good stead when we return to heaven.

Priorities

Yet in life we spend far more time and expend much more energy amassing the first category of friend and far less time and effort on the second and third. This is because we forget we are on a journey. We become so comfortable with our particular station in life that we grow myopic and see only the needs and interests of the current station.

Suppose you are traveling to visit your mother and stop overnight at a beautiful hotel overlooking a picturesque lake with a perfect view of the sunset. You are so enchanted by the location that you decide to stay another day. A day becomes a week and before long you rent an apartment, get a job, build a home and settle in this roadside location by the lake.

One day your mother calls and asks why you never arrived for your visit. At that point you finally realize that you got carried away.

Stations In Life

Life has many stations. Childhood, adulthood, parenthood and grandparenthood, each with its own set of joys, challenges and responsibilities. But the common thread is that they are mere stations on the journey from birth to death and beyond. The wise remember the journey and refuse to get carried away by the stations’ allure.

The wise remember the journey and refuse to get carried away by the stations’ allure.

The wise remember that the reason we stop at any particular station is to collect a mitzvah, not available at any of life’s other stations. We can serve G‑d as adults in ways that are impossible for children and vice versa. We don’t arrive to parenthood because we crave the joys of raising children; we become parents to serve G‑d in new ways. These forms of service accumulate through the course of life and ultimately coalesce to become the sum total of our achievement. This total is brought along on our final journey when we present our offering to G‑d.

A Name

This kind of forgetfulness never occurred to our ancestors as they journeyed from Egypt to Israel. Though they spent forty years traveling across the desert and though they made camp at certain stations for extended periods of time, they never took their eyes off the goal; they always remembered that their travels were a means to an end. Even when stationed in one place for twenty-one years, they continued to view themselves as en-route. In their minds they were constantly and always on the road.

This is why the name of the Torah portion that describes the forty-two places in which our ancestors made camp in the desert, is Masai, “journeys.”1 It is not called “stations,” “settlements” or “camps” because in their minds, they were never settled, not until they arrived at their destination— the land of Israel. It was a constant journey, and they were constantly en-route.

We too are en-route. The luxuries, pleasures and joys of the journey are not important. That we arrive at our destination, enriched by our journey, is.

A Story

The story is told of a wealthy merchant traveling through the town of Mezritch. Not having arranged lodgings for the evening, the man accepted an invitation from the famed Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch. Appalled at the terrible poverty he saw in the Maggid’s home, he asked how the Maggid could live this way. The Maggid exclaimed, why I have more than you do, if I hadn’t invited you in tonight, you wouldn’t even have a roof over your head. The traveler replied that at home he had a beautiful and well-appointed residence, but here he was merely en-route, where he could make do with less.

The Maggid’s reply: I too am en-route - for life is a journey from earth to heaven.

This reply echoes across the generations and reaches directly into our hearts.2

Footnotes

Numbers 33:1.

This essay is based on Sefer Taam Vadaat ibid.

By Lazer Gurkow

Rabbi Lazer Gurkow is spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Tefilah in London, Ontario, and a frequent contributor to The Judaism Website—Chabad.org. He has lectured extensively on a variety of Jewish topics, and his articles have appeared in many print and online publications. For more on Rabbi Gurkow and his writings, visit InnerStream.ca.

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8 Comments

Anonymous Geneva, Switzerland July 20, 2012

Does it really matter our "free" choice? If the "friends" that we make are already led from above by G-d, does it really matter much the "free" choices we make "that often lead to friendship?" (assuming that we will have those "friends" anyway, the question is then only how much more or less we will have of each of them (which I suggest is also part of G-d's Mission). However in your construct it appears that the more or less of each of the "friends" in us is the result of our free choices? Am I wrong? In theory this could in principle be so ( ex., if there are three roads: one requires crossing a river; the second - fighting at some point bandits who will attack you; and the third - climbing a mountain), if you do not know what awaits you, depending on your strength, you may arrive at the destination point with more or less of health (and perhaps this will thus define how much of each of the "friends" you have, which is then the result of your free choices at the beginning of the roads). Is it your suggestion Rabbi Gurkow? Reply

Anonymous Belgium July 20, 2012

As loved ones, we are NOT left behind. Our connection to those who have passed to the next world stays very strong and real! The soul depends on its relatives and friends to do mitzvot and good deeds also on its behalf, and this is the source of true gratification for the soul, and helps it ascend to even greater heights. And this is how our relationship with them matures and grows, and our journeys continue together. Reply

Michelle UK July 19, 2012

thanks your words touched my heart, G-d bless all Reply

Lazer Gurkow London July 18, 2012

Deviating from G-d's Mission An integral part of Jewish theology is our belief in free choice. With respect to all moral questions we choose freely. However, this freedom does not extend to choices we make beyond the realm of right and wrong.

Here is where the two intersect in a curious way. We are led from above to the friends we make, but we are not led from above to the choices we make that often leads to friendship. Those choices are ours alone.

As to Anonymous' separation of friend #2 and friend #3. In my article I wasn't only referring to the kind of good deed that leads to friendship. The kind Anonymous labeled being a mentch. I was referring to all Mitzvos (good deeds are often used as a catch phrase for all the commandments.) In this we would include Shabbat, Kashrut, prayer and Mezuzah as well as honesty, kindness and generosity.

The former don't lead directly to the friendships and even the latter don't always lead to friendships. Reply

sue Kanata, ON July 18, 2012

appreciation This article and the use of an old analogy is well appreciated, and literally! Reply

Anonymous Geneva, Switzerland July 18, 2012

classical assumptions Raddi Gurkow and the anonymous from Columbus are both right:) if one tries to separate things, this is how it would be as described by Rabbi Gurkow, however in life actually things happen in the way in which the Columbus' anonymous describes it. All is interconnected of course, this is also GOD's intention. But still we can indeed separate one friends from the others, and when we do so, we can also see that indeed in life people tend to give one or the other friends more attention. But GOD made us all different, exactly because each of us is to accomplish his/her own mission. Perhaps the less or more attention we give to one friends and not the others is also part of that mission assigned to us by GOD. My question to Rabbi Gurkow would be, does he think that we can deviate from GOD's assigned missions? And if so would the choice of friends, one such instance in which GOD gave us a chance of deviating from His assigned missions for each of us? Reply

Chava Levy, Chabad Guatemala Guatemala, Guatemala July 17, 2012

great article!!! This is one of the best articles I 've ever read , and for me , it wakes me up!

Thank you Rabbi Lazer Gurkow! as always, you amaze us and enrich us! Reply

Anonymous Columbus July 17, 2012

Assumptions This article makes so many assumptions about the readers. Is it true that "we spend far more time and expend much more energy amassing the first category of friend"? Maybe that is the case for the writer of the article!

But actually there is an even deeper flaw with this article, in my opinion. And this is the way that Rabbi Gurkow separates these three categories of "friends" from one another. How is it even possible to do good deeds (friend #3) without friend #1? All good deeds occur in the material world, after all--even though they have a spiritual core. And friend(s) #2 --this is the category that gives testament to the fact that friend #3 happened at all. This is to say, if we have significant relationships, it is because we managed to be menshes in the first place!

Why make such a separation between the three categories? Instead we should recognize that a true spiritual person sees the connection between between the material, the relational, the moral, and the spiritua Reply