Our path right now is not an easy one, and no light is yet visible on the horizon. Is there a point, a purpose to all the pain and misery? Is there a meaning to this war, to the horrific losses?
In this week’s Torah portion, ‘Ekev [the word can mean “since,” “because,” “continuity,” and is also a Hebrew homonym: “heel” and “footprint”] we read: “And you shall remember all the way on which the Eternal our God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to afflict you, to test you, to know what was in your heart …” (Deut. 8:2).
There are times in our lives’ journeys when the pain, the affliction, and the challenge are simply too much to bear. Moses wants to remind us that the journey has a goal, an endpoint, and that existence is not random, nor senseless. Parashat ‘Ekev asks us to stop from time to time, to look back, to see the footprints we have left behind us in the sand, and to realize that our lives were, in essence, a long journey of learning, of continual discovery of the powers we harbor within ourselves.
Because sometimes, precisely from amidst all the difficulty our essence surfaces and is refined, our heart is revealed.
And for one magical moment the meaning becomes clear, the purpose emerges.
And then we discover that our life’s journey has not been for naught.