Unscrolled V’Zot Ha’Berachah: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It is surely one of the most fascinating endings of a story ever conceived.

After all we have gone through—the revelations and the rebellions, the miracles and the massacres, the divinity and danger—the text refuses to bring us over the finish line.

Like Moses, we are left stranded in the Sinai wilderness, looking over the boundary line but unable to cross. For Moses, this makes sense. Because of his sin—arrogantly striking the rock to bring forth water for the Israelites instead of speaking to it—he has been condemned to die without ever taking possession of the promised land. But what was our sin as readers? Why can’t we cross over? Why does the text, which has taken us this far, refuse to take us just a little bit farther?

Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, AKA Ramban, offers a clue in the introduction to his commentary on the book of Exodus. “When they left Egypt, even though they came forth from the house of bondage, they were still considered exiles because they were in a land that is not theirs … When they came to Mount Sinai and made the Tabernacle, and the Holy One, blessed be He, caused His Divine Presence to dwell again amongst them … then they were considered redeemed.”

What a marvelous paradox. Despite leaving Egypt, they are not redeemed because they are in a land that is not theirs. But when they build the Tabernacle, despite being in a land not theirs, they are redeemed.

I can’t help but be reminded of the ending of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Having journeyed all the way to the Emerald City in search of someone who can help her return home to Kansas, Dorothy is told by Glinda the Good Witch that she was in possession of the power she sought the whole time. When asked why Glinda didn’t inform Dorothy of this in the first place, Glinda responds, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.”

As a child, I found this answer unsatisfying. After all, Glinda could have at least tried to tell Dorothy that this long, dangerous journey down the yellow brick road was unnecessary. As an adult, however, I feel I now understand this teaching. We are all in the position of Dorothy. We have heard, at one point or another, that the things we seek are not somewhere over the horizon, but are right here with us. All spiritual lessons eventually come to rest on this: be here, live in the now, appreciate what is.

All spiritual lessons eventually come to rest on this: be here, live in the now, appreciate what is.

And yet, despite how many times we are told this, we don’t believe it. Not really. Not in our bones.

Dorothy’s journey, then, was not unnecessary. It was, however, necessary in a different way than she had supposed. The Emerald City was never the true goal, but the path there was instrumental to her waking up to the true source of her redemption.

As seen in Ramban’s above teaching, land does not equal redemption, but it is somehow connected. Perhaps we can venture to say that the land makes redemption realizable. Just as the Emerald City is the place where Dorothy finally understands what she has had all along, the promised land is the place where the children of Israel truly realize that they have been redeemed.

We might also say that the land is the place where redemption can be turned from a state of being into a way of life. The land is the theater upon which the Israelites’ spiritual lives will play out. It is the source of their sustenance and the fertile soil of their culture and language. It is a repository for cultural memory and experience.

But the real redemption—that came earlier, when we built a space for God in our midst. God might have mentioned that to us way back in the book of Exodus, but of course we wouldn’t have believed it.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.