COMMENTARY: Wandering as a biblical model

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Quick now. Pick one word that best describes many significant biblical events, and much of religious life and human existence. If we want to appear”ethically correct,”we would choose expressions like”mercy,””justice”or”compassion.”But that would be a lie […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Quick now. Pick one word that best describes many significant biblical events, and much of religious life and human existence.


If we want to appear”ethically correct,”we would choose expressions like”mercy,””justice”or”compassion.”But that would be a lie because, unfortunately, these positive terms do not accurately reflect human history.

If we want to be cynical, we might select”hatred,””destruction”or”injustice.”While the sad record of history may support such a negative choice, these terms, too, are incorrect because the Bible, religion and our own lives include sunlit days as well as dark nights. Brightness coexists side by side with bleakness.

I opt for”wandering.” We humans are a restless bunch, continually traveling, pilgrims in search of new beginnings, greener pastures, the Promised Land. But tragically, many wanderings have often been forced upon us as a result of wars and other catastrophes. Whatever the cause, the human condition is one of constant movement.

Indeed, wandering is a central theme of the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, Sukkot in Hebrew, that comes five days after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The eight-day holiday, starting this year on Friday evening, Sept. 24, recalls the frail lean-tos, or Sukkot, the ancient Israelites lived in during their wanderings in the Sinai wilderness following the Exodus from Egypt.

Leviticus 23 is most specific:”… that your generations may know that in huts I had the children of Israel stay when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” In addition to the congregational Sukkot erected in synagogues, many Jews build family-sized huts where holiday prayers are invoked and special meals are eaten.

Although the makeshift shelters are decorated with the fruits of the fall harvest, the holiday’s emphasis is on the 40 years of wandering that took place before the former slaves could enter the land of Israel, which their ancestors had left centuries before for Egypt.

In Genesis 12, God commands Abraham to leave his birthplace in Ur of Chaldees _ today’s Iraq _ and travel to what is now modern Israel where he will commence the new religious vocation chosen for him.

Not surprisingly, as the new Christian millennium dawns, Pope John Paul II, a modern religious pilgrim, is eager to retrace Abraham’s wanderings.


For the Jewish people, especially, wandering became an integral part of their lives. Sometimes the wanderings were joyous pilgrimages three times a year to the Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot, Passover and the spring festival of Shavuot.

But sometimes the wandering was brutal, as in 586 B.C., when King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and forced the Jews to become captives within victorious Babylonia. Happily, 50 years later the Jews were able to return to their beloved Jerusalem where they built the Second Temple.

That Temple, too, was destroyed _ in 70 A.D. _ and the triumphant Romans expelled the Jews from the land of Israel. The Greek word”diaspora”was used to describe the Jewish wandering that continued for many centuries and in many lands.

In fact, Jewish homelessness went on for nearly 2,000 years until the 1948 emergence of the state of Israel, many of whose citizens are wanderers from more than 120 countries.

Wandering is also a defining experience for other peoples and religions. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many Africans were sold as chattel and placed in chains as slaves on ships of misery that transported them to America. That infamous wandering, the”Middle Passage,”is indelibly etched into the memory bank of African-Americans.

For centuries Christians have undertaken wanderings or religious pilgrimages to holy places, especially Jerusalem. European literature is filled with vivid accounts of faithful wanderers who made perilous pilgrimages to sacred sites like the Via Dolorosa and the Holy Sepulcher.


Unfortunately, some medieval Christian pilgrims who called themselves Crusaders stopped along their routes of march to murder Jews and Muslims _ and other Christians _ whom they labeled religious”infidels.”The brutality of the wandering Crusaders remains a permanent part of both Jewish and Islamic collective memories.

Every year, many Muslims undertake the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the site of the Kaaba, the sacred black house linked to the life of Mohammed. The Hajj is a wandering filled with intense spiritual meaning.

And finally, the English pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620 in search of religious freedom identified themselves with the biblical Israelites. Egypt was Britain, Pharaoh was the English king, and the Red Sea was the Atlantic Ocean. Just one more wandering in history.

DEA END RUDIN

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