By: Ari Zwiren
It wasn’t very long ago that I was imagining spending the weekend of July 6-7 in New York on my way to Poland, Denmark and Israel on another amazing NCSY Summer Program, JOLT (Jewish Overseas Leadership Training). Instead, I found myself in Beit Meir on the Ohr Yerushalayim campus on the first weekend of NCSY Kollel.
When you spend all year preparing for one thing and end up making a spur-of-the-moment decision that changes your life, it is hard to adjust, as was the case with my situation. It was only as I sat in the chader ochel (lunch room) singing with the other Kollel guys that I was able to relax.
As the bright pink, orange and yellow setting sun streamed in on the Ohr Yerushalayim campus, Rav Netanel Leibowitz spoke about Moshe Rabbeinu. He mentioned that the reason Moshe didn’t go in to Israel was not as a punishment for hitting the rock, as opposed to talking to it, but in fact because Moshe’s attitude proved not to be the ideal demeanor for a leader of an Am Yisrael that didn’t leave Egypt, but rather an Am Yisrael of the desert.
As I thought about that lesson, I realized I was not completely unlike Moshe Rabbeinu on a much smaller scale. Moshe planned fo most of his life to lead the Jewish people into the land of Israel. I, in turn, planned to attend JOLT. Both of our paths were diverted. Hashem decided that Moshe was not the leader that was needed to bring Am Yisrael into Eretz Yisrael. Following that same idea, I believe Hashem diverted my path and put me on NCSY Kollel so that I may learn the lessons of Moshe Rabbeinu and pass them on… So here goes…
Just because you prepare for something and end up somewhere else doesn’t mean the preparation was useless. In the words of my Shiur Rabbi, Rav Mickey Ellman, the journey is often more important than the endpoint itself. Often the best lessons we learn are in the preparation, not the destination, but when you finally get to where you are going, don’t let it go to waste. I leave with a quote that has become a part of Kollel 2013, a quote from Matthew Broderick in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off: “Life moves by pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”