Midreshet Amit

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This week’s parsha, Parshat Beshalach, opens with Hashem leading the Jews on their journey out of Egypt. Instead of Hashem bringing the Jews on the shortest route to the Promised Land, He leads them on a detour so as to avoid the Plishtim because He is concerned that if they would have to fight the Plishtim, they might lose their faith and want to return to Egypt. How could it be that the Jews would want to go back to Egypt where they had been enslaved and tortured for so many years?! This teaches us, says Rabbi Adam Lieberman, that it is part of human nature to question our abilities and worthiness. On the one hand, we want to accomplish great things and we often get inspired to set exciting, lofty goals for ourselves. But it often takes only one small setback to quickly start doubting ourselves. The challenge is to push through and maintain faith in ourselves and our abilities, despite setbacks along the way. A second aspect of human nature that might have led the Jews to want to return to Egypt is that we tend to be more afraid of the unknown than the known, even when the known is not something we really want.

This year we all leapt into an unknown by coming to Israel. We left our homes, 6000 miles away, to come to Israel and take on new challenges, in a different country, with a different language. We came excited to accomplish goals that we had set for ourselves. Occasionally there have been setbacks but we have mostly stayed strong in our beliefs and goals. As second semester has begun, we see ourselves setting still higher goals, growing in our belief in Hashem, and taking each day and cherishing it.

In a few short months we are going to be faced with the same challenge again. We will be stepping into another unknown as we begin college. We are determined take our goals, lessons, and achievements from this year in Israel and apply it to our new lives in college, wherever we may be.