Other People Help Us Find Our Way

We live in an age when we rarely if ever experience being lost.  Because of the ubiquity of Google Maps and Waze we believe that we can always find our way. 

A favorite Hasidic story.  It is told of Reb Chaim Halberstam of Zanz.

Once a woman became lost in a dense forest (where there was no cellphone reception).  She wandered this way and that in the hope of stumbling on a way out, but she only became more lost as the hours went by.  Then she happened upon another person walking in the woods.  Hoping that he might know the way out, she asked, “Can you tell me which path leads out of this forest?”

“I am sorry, but I cannot,” the man said.  “I am quite lost myself.”

“You have wandered in one part of the woods,” the woman said, “while I have been lost in another.  Together we may not know the way out, but we are certain of a few paths that lead nowhere.  Let us share what we know of the paths that fail and then together we may find one that succeeds.”

And yet we continue to think finding our way is akin to locating a blue dot on a cellphone’s digital screen.  Just because our cellphones can determine our map coordinates, does not mean we have found the way.  For that we require others.

Reb Chaim concluded, “What is true of these lost wanderers is true of us as well.  We may not know the way out, but let us share with each other the ways that have led us back in.”

Today marks the first day of the month of Elul and the beginning of the days when we are instructed to prepare ourselves for the upcoming High Holidays.  Rosh Hashanah is a month away.  The conclusion of Yom Kippur is forty days from now.

We are granted these days to reach out to others, to repair what we have done wrong, to ask forgiveness from those we have caused pain.  We remind ourselves that no one is perfect.  Everyone has made mistakes.  Each of us has lost our way during the past year.   All of us are last wanderers who need others to help find the way.

When we come together on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are reminded that together we can find our way.  We cannot do it alone.  We need each other.  Our community leads our way to repair.