With the reading of the first sedra of Devarim/Deuteronomy, we find ourselves standing at the threshold of the Promised Land. The forty-year wandering will soon be over. While Moses cannot enter, it will be Joshua who is at the head of the line, the new leader, the successor of Moses. I always wonder if anywhere from the time Joshua is selected until the death of Moses, he said to his mentor, “Hey, Moshe, did you ever think of asking for directions?”
What a schlep! A whole generation died in the wilderness; those who left slavery never made it to freedom. What makes it more mysterious is that some calculated the actual trip by foot should have taken approximately ELEVEN DAYS! Joshua would have been right to gently suggest a wilderness GPS might save them a “little” time.
But if we think of the Israelites, those who left and those who entered, as a model for growth then maybe it was best not to rush. After all, aren’t we “whippersnappers” as youngsters and, if lucky, only later on might we attain wisdom? So, too, the Israelites who might not have been ready for the Promised Land. Like teenagers they didn’t know what to do with their freedom, having fashioned a material idol (the Golden Calf) when dad was late coming home from work (read, Moses on the mountain). The teenaged mind probably cannot comprehend the meaning of freedom assuming it really means free like a bird to fly around, not focusing on anything significant. Those are the years in which we learn not only school subjects, but how to live with rules. No wonder we have Bar/Bat Mitzvah at 13. It is the time to become a child of responsibility, hopefully to carry what we learn into adulthood.
It is said that we use our young adult years to settle down, to begin a family, to prepare for the future including savings and the like. Imagine going from the mountain then wilderness of Sinai directly to the Promised Land. They would have enough problems organizing themselves, let alone conquering it. Remember, ten of the spies sent to check out the situation saw giants and ogres, images in a child’s mind, while only two saw challenges but nothing they couldn’t handle with preparation and faith.
A personal comparison: New York City public schools were eager to push students ahead. We had something called S.P. (Special Progress) which combined grades 8 and 9. I graduated high school at age 16. Socially it was a big mistake. I wasn’t really ready for college on any level, but I had to come to terms with it. Of course, this wasn’t anything conscious on my part; it was a retrospective revelation, as it were, that I thought about when studying Eriksen’s Stages of Psychosocial Development.
Perhaps a “people” has a similar stage-by-stage development, but whether or not they do, the Israelites surely needed the time to develop as fully as possible before that stage in our national life.
(Speaking of losing your way, Our immigrant near-ancestors who were more than willing to shed their Eastern European past, would go to night school. In one such school the instructor asked a newly-arrived Jew, “Where would you find elephants?” The student was truly perplexed, and responded, “How can you lose an elephant?”)