Reflections for the Three Weeks and Parshat Matot-Masei
It Started With a Breach
On the 17th of Tammuz, Jerusalem’s walls were broken. It’s the day our liturgy shifts tone and memory becomes mourning. Nestled within this corridor of grief lies the journey of Masei, of forty-two encampments marking Israel’s desert wanderings.
The Torah tells Moshe to record each of the forty-two encampments (Bamidbar 33). The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 23:1) teaches that this wasn’t for historical curiosity. It was to preserve the miracles of each stop. Even the bitter ones. Shefa Gold writes that “each stopping place is a reflection of who we are.” Every desert name: Marah, Tav’erah, Elim is a mirror. So too are modern encampments: hospital hallways, court transcripts, passport stamps, or the silence after Kaddish. The Baal Shem Tov taught that these weren’t simply waypoints; they were spiritual stages every soul traverse – beginnings, reckonings, silences, transformations.
Forty-Two and the Flame That Pushes Back the Darkness
Douglas Adams wrote that the answer to “the ultimate question” of life, the universe and everything is 42. Jewish tradition quietly smiles. 42 desert journeys. 42 letter name of G-d (Talmud, Kiddushin 71a). 42-word prayers like Ana B’Koach, said for protection. 42 generations from Abraham to redemption.
Forty-two isn’t a coincidence. It’s a covenant.
In every home I’ve lived in, one thing has remained constant, a quiet covenant. It’s a reminder of Hashem’s presence, much like a mezuzah, though not one in form. A friend gave it to me years ago, and it has become a quiet petition; a reminder of faith when clarity feels elusive. It echoes a vow carved into a cellar wall by someone hiding in Germany:
“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining,
and in G-d even when He is silent.”
That inscription was once an encampment. So too, is my doorway. So is every place where belief flickers in the shadows and chooses to speak.
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, writing from the Warsaw Ghetto, taught that even in devastation, G-d remains present in the pain. The light of holiness does not disappear; it contracts. And we are called to notice the contraction, and light it anew.
The Flame That Never Goes Out
The ner tamid burns for moments like this. Not because they dazzle, but because they refuse to fade.
The flickering light above the ark, the ner tamid is rooted in Shemot 27:20 as first kindled in the Mishkan. In our synagogues, it burns without applause or attention. Not a blaze, but a breath; not brilliant but abiding. It weaves itself into the architecture of memory as a quiet sentinel, often overlooked yet never absent.
The ner tamid doesn’t shine to impress. It flickers to resist forgetting. We do not read these stories only by its light, we read them by the lives it honors. Rav Abraham Joshua Heschel, zt”l, wrote: “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.” The flame remembers, the journeys remember, we remember.
The ner tamid becomes our guide not through clarity, but through presence. Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv taught that spiritual growth begins with recognizing where we stand and calling from that place.
Her Journey Was Her Own Wilderness
My adopted Bubbie, a survivor of the Shoah, passed on the 17th of Tammuz many years ago. Her final encampment arrived just as our communal grief began. Born in Germany, she and her family were taken and transported through ghettos and camps across Europe, passing through France before being sent to Auschwitz. There they endured unspeakable horrors and profound loss. Somehow, Lennie alone survived. She later met an American soldier who would become her husband and had a love story worthy of novels. For thirty years, they traveled the world as he served in the military. Her forty-two steps weren’t marked by tribal banners, but by resilience.
These, too, were encampments. And every single one was holy.
Lennie walked forty-two steps. Her final one came on the day the walls fell. And now she is etched among the eternal. Not on plaques, but in presence. In memory. In flame.
Vows, Names, and Sacred Inheritance
Matot opens with laws of vows and speech: “Ish ki yidor neder laHashem” or when a person makes a vow to Hashem (Numbers 30:2). The Talmud (Nedarim 2a) teaches that words do not simply describe reality. Instead, they create it.
In mourning, we vow silently: I will remember you. I will speak your name. I will carry what you couldn’t. This is our neder she’balev or our vow of the heart.
Then enters the daughters of Zelophehad: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah (Numbers 27). Five individuals, not a collective. They stood before Moshe and demanded an inheritance. It wasn’t just of land, but rather of memory. The Talmud (Bava Batra 119b) praises their chochmah, gevurah, and tzniut or wisdom, courage, and dignity. They changed halacha. They transformed silence into sacred speech.
I speak Lennie’s name as they spoke theirs. Because remembering means naming. And the ner tamid burns not just for Hashem’s presence but for those who refused to be forgotten.
For years, I have set my Shabbos table with the silver Bubbie Lennie left me, thinking that was my only inheritance from her. We eat with it every Shabbos, silverware placed with intention, polished with memory. With every setting we place, I remember her. I think of how her legacy lives on my table, how it will be remembered long after I’m gone. She touches lives at my Shabbos meals she never knew she’d reach, a presence felt not through words, but through the gleam of what she gave.
What I did not know is I had another, subtle inheritance. I didn’t know her Hebrew name when I converted in 2000, three years after her passing. I did not know her mother’s name until I began working on this. When I took my name Basya, I had no way of knowing it was the name of Lennie’s mother, murdered at Auschwitz. The choice wasn’t guided by family memory or biographical detail, but by something quieter. It was a whisper I didn’t yet understand.
Rav Yisrael Salanter, zt”l, founder of the Mussar movement, taught that ethical living begins with honoring the humanity of others. To honor means to remember. To remember means to speak. So I speak her name, Channa bat Ephraim veBasya.
She never knew I was interested in converting, never knew I’d carry forward a connection to the Yiddishkeit she rarely spoke aloud. But somehow her legacy was already stitched into mine. My name was a name not chosen by coincidence, but by remembrance. A quiet gift from Hashem, whispered into my soul by Zocher kol hanishkachot or the One who remembers all that has been forgotten.
She didn’t need a monument. She became one.
Covenant of Memory: The Steps We Carry
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, wrote: “To be a Jew is to be a link in the chain of the generations, a character in a drama that began long before we were born and will continue long after our death.”
It is part of our covenant to remember even when we don’t have a name for what we carry. With each season of the Jewish year, we reenact our history and honor those whose shoulders we stand on.
Naming, remembering, witnessing. This is our inheritance.
But even so, so many fear being forgotten. We want our names spoken, our stories held, our steps remembered. We want to know we made a difference.
Judaism teaches that remembering is a mitzvah, both the good and the painful.
We remember Amalek: We remember Sinai.
We remember Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah: We remember the encampments.
This is our vow.
That all are remembered like this.
That every footstep, known or unknown, is carried.
That the ner tamid isn’t just a symbol, but a flame that pushes back the dark.
We believe in Hashem, the light that remains even in shadow.
We believe in the sacredness of every step.
Especially those never marked on any map.
We remember Lennie – Channa bat Ephraim veBasya and the others whose forty-two steps were taken through ash and light. Whose story may not be in textbooks, but is written in the white fire between the letters. In the sacred space where remembrance dwells.
This year, as I do each year, I lit her yahrzeit candle.
Not because she had no family to remember her but because she does.
Because of her, this week is written in memory of Channa bat Ephraim veBasya — whose silver thread still flickers in the flame, and in whose forty-two steps I now walk.
