Im bechukosai telaichu<\/em>,\u201d which is generally translated as \u201cIf you follow My statutes\u2026\u201d. However, the literal translation, and exact meaning, of the verse is \u201cIf you walk in My statutes.\u201d The verb \u201cwalk\u201d in this context is a bit puzzling, even provocative. What might it mean to \u201cwalk\u201d in statutes, to walk in the laws of Torah?<\/p>\nTo address this dilemma, many commentaries quote the following passage in the Midrash Rabba <\/em>on this verse:<\/p>\n\u201cIf you walk in My statutes\u201d. This is expressed in the verse (Psalms 119:59), \u201cI have planned my paths and have redirected my feet toward Your teachings.\u201d Thus, King David said to the Master of the Universe: \u201cEach and every day I plan my destination toward a particular place, toward a specific residence. Instead, my feet guide me to Your synagogues and study halls, l\u2019batei knessiot u\u2019I\u2019batei midrashot<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\nThe eighteenth-century commentator, Rabbi Chaim ben Atar, author of Ohr HaChaim<\/em>, offers no less than 42 explanations for this unusual phrase and this startling Midrash<\/em>. In the sixteenth of these many interpretations, he suggests that \u201cwalk\u201d might mean \u201ctravel.\u201d Thus, the meaning would be that if you are about to travel on a journey, you are advised to study a bit of Torah beforehand so that you \u201cwalk\/travel\u201d in the company of the Torah you have studied. The Torah thus accompanies the traveler on his journey, sheltering him from the dangers of the road. This approach echoes the teaching of our Sages in Talmud Bavli Berakhot<\/em> 14a to the effect that it is prohibited to depart upon a journey before one has engaged in Torah study, as is written (Psalms 85:14), \u201cJustice goes before him as he sets out on his way\u201d.<\/p>\nThe twentieth-century major halachic authority and tragic victim of the Holocaust, Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal, favors this interpretation of the Ohr HaChaim, <\/em>over the other forty-one. He writes:<\/p>\nThis Midrash <\/em>tells the story of King David who would not embark upon any journey, whether a short foray or a lengthy expedition, without first studying some Torah. Of course, King David had access to many study halls, but we can nevertheless emulate his practice even if study halls are not available to us. Torah study in the privacy of one\u2019s home is acceptable, and even a brief verse or two of Torah will suffice if that is all that time allows.<\/p>\nThere is another way of understanding King David\u2019s statement as narrated in the Midrash<\/em>. King David is, in a sense, reporting upon his own experience. After all, he is a king, and a very busy one at that. He starts off his day with all sorts of plans, appointments, meetings, and destinations. He has worldly responsibilities of all sorts. His intentions correspond to his royal role.<\/p>\nYet somehow, at the end of the day, and often long before that, he finds himself in the beit midrash<\/em> studying the Almighty\u2019s Torah. Has he deliberately and consciously abandoned his plans and mundane tasks? No!!<\/p>\nSomehow his \u201cfeet\u201d have misled him. His inner self has propelled him to take a detour and follow the path to the study hall rather than the path to lesser destinations.<\/p>\n
I have found this \u201ctake\u201d on King David\u2019s experience an apt metaphor for so much of the human experience. Do not most of us chart our futures guided by all sorts of plans regarding our education, our lifestyle, our careers, our relationships? At times, those plans are realized, although seldom exactly as we thought they would turn out. Often, however, fate intervenes in unpredicted and unpredictable ways, and we find ourselves in situations far removed from what we had anticipated. In moments of religious contemplation, we may even come to realize that it was not fate that intervened, but a Divine source, a surprisingly new spiritual script written and guided by the One Above.<\/p>\n
Frankly, I have felt this \u201cDavidic\u201d experience more than once in my own career. I began as a teacher of Torah to high school boys. I was tempted to pursue higher secular education and pursued and obtained advanced degrees and professional training in the field of psychotherapy. I found employment in school systems, clinics, colleges, private practice, and even Jewish community work. I enjoyed those experiences and found them meaningful and spiritually rewarding. I knew where I was going\u2014or so I thought.<\/p>\n
My \u201cfeet\u201d kept taking me back to synagogue and study hall. Opportunities arose, environments changed, the times beckoned, and I found myself teaching Talmud, delivering Torah lectures to a wide array of audiences, and leading prayer services. I went through a series of career changes, some moderate, and some totally life changing. My children, now grandparents themselves, would often tease me tauntingly, saying \u201cDaddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sufficiently presumptuous to compare myself to King David, but I\u2019ve concluded long ago that he was not speaking only for himself in that beautiful Midrashic passage. He was talking about a very widespread basic human experience.<\/p>\n
I especially have come to see this human experience play out in a wide range of social contexts.<\/p>\n
One dramatic instance of this phenomenon can be discerned in the so-called Baal Teshuvah<\/em> movement. We have been witnessing this development for some sixty years now. Men and women, some quite young, some middle aged, some quite old, who were ignorant of Jewish observance and who were planning totally secular, nay gentile-like, lives, who were already living lives totally ignorant or deeply alienated from things Jewish. At some point, after some chance encounter with a rabbi or teacher, after spending a Shabbat in an observant home, after meeting a man or woman with whom they fell in love and who introduced them to an observant life-style, or any one of a multitude of other scenarios, their \u201cfeet\u201d led them not just to synagogues and study halls but to a redefinition of their entire lifestyle.<\/p>\nThere are other instances of this phenomenon, but let us conclude with one dramatic one. I refer to the young men and women with lifelong exposure to traditional Jewish observance. We refer to them in a language similar to the verses I\u2019ve been referencing in this essay. We call them \u201coff the derech<\/em>,\u201d off the path. They very much resemble, of all people, King David. They too have started their \u201cday\u201d planning to wander in so many directions, all \u201coff the path.\u201d<\/p>\nBut at some point, for a nearly infinite number of reasons, their \u201cfeet\u201d have redirected them. Sometimes it is an inexplicably retrieved \u201cleap of faith.\u201d In other circumstances, it is a long, arduous, and back-and-forth process. But it is often, increasingly often, that their paths twist and turn back to \u201cthe path,\u201d the derech<\/em>. <\/em>Typically, it is not precisely the derech<\/em> they once abandoned.<\/p>\nIt is a derech <\/em>that fits them as individuals and that allows them to return to an authentic and personally satisfying Jewish life, a return to thebatei knessiot u\u2019batei midrashot<\/em> that speak to them and meet their legitimate and sincerely desired spiritual goals.<\/p>\n
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