Living through the experience of cancer and transmitting the experience of cancer treatment to someone you love are two very different experiences. When I was diagnosed, I largely walked into each step on the journey completely blind. I chose not to read anything online to preserve my own mental health (as much as that was even possible) and I did not know anyone who had recently experienced this to even ask. I implicitly trusted my team of doctors. They gave me appointment times and I showed up. They offered treatment plans and I, frankly, told them that as long as it would cure me, I was along for the ride. But no one told me what the ride would feel like or taste like or how each decision would ultimately impact my life, both in the immediacy and long-term. And now, on the side of treatment that inches closer to cured with every passing day, when I have the tremendous honor of guiding others across the immense and often foreboding expanse that is active cancer treatment, I wonder how the experience might have been different if I had my own guide. Would I have even believed her? Would her description have matched my own? And frankly, would knowing about each next step have even been helpful?

I have always been a bit baffled by the opening of Parshat Masei with its extensive list of each stop that Bnei Yisrael (the Children of Israel) made on their journey through the desert. Why do we need to know each stop they made? Occasionally, we learn something about a particular location, but not always. For instance in Bamidbar (Numbers) 33:9, we read, “They set out from Marah and came to Elim. There were 12 springs in Elim and 70 palm trees, so they encamped there,” but a few lines later, “They set out from Alush and encamped at Rephidim; it was there that the people had no water to drink.”

Every name on that list matters as each........

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