On the Road with Shekhinah

Finding divine companionship on an uncertain journey.

(Getty Images)
Advertisement

I dropped my husband off at the airport one early morning last week. He was heading to Israel to tend to his elderly parents. On our long drive to SFO, we talked about the news and all of the different directions from which we are feeling threat right now. Dread crept into our conversation.

I always feel dread when approaching an airport farewell, especially when one of us is flying to a place that is technically a war zone. But I feel the dread even in more casual moments of parting. My parents made long work of goodbyes. When I would leave town, they would stand on the sidewalk and wave in my rearview mirror until I was out of sight. There is undoubtedly ancestral trauma in this: When someone you love leaves, you don’t know if you’ll see them again, even if you always do. 

At the airport, I kissed my husband, got back in the car and pulled away. In my unsettled state, I found myself offering up Tefilat Haderech, the Traveler’s Prayer, on his behalf. As a rule, I am not a fan of non-consensual prayer. If someone says, “I’ll pray for you,” my body tenses up, resistant, protective of my neshamah and my own intimate relationship with the Divine, for which I do not need outside intervention, thank you very much.

Still, I prayed for my husband. Maybe it’s different in a marriage. Our lives are intertwined; his peril is my peril. We are not a single being, of course, but our souls aren’t completely independent of each other either. So I drove up Highway 101 and the words to the prayer poured from my lips.

Support My Jewish Learning

Help us keep Jewish knowledge accessible to millions of people around the world.

Your donation to My Jewish Learning fuels endless journeys of Jewish discovery. With your help, My Jewish Learning can continue to provide nonstop opportunities for learning, connection and growth.

As I did this, I realized I was offering up the prayer not only on his behalf, but on my own. Because I am also on a journey. Frankly, we all are. What is ahead is not clear. We might be walking through the valley of the shadow of death, or there might be a blooming valley just over the crest. It is so hard to tell. And isn’t that especially the place of prayer, in those moments where there is no certainty? I don’t know the future, but I do know the words to this prayer.

Tefilat Haderech, as it was given over in the Talmud, is expressed in the singular:

May it be Your will, Adonai my God, to lead me to peace, direct my steps to peace, and guide me to peace, and rescue me from the hands of any enemy or ambush along the way, and send blessing to the work of my hands, and let me find grace, kindness, and compassion in Your eyes and in the eyes of all who see me. Blessed are You, Adonai, who hears prayer.

Formulated this way, the prayer asks for my safety alone. But early on, the standard version of this prayer shifted to the plural. I became we, my steps became our steps, the work of my hands became the work of our hands

This change might be a reflection of Judaism’s longstanding, visceral preference for communal prayer. I often feel gratitude for that choice. If I am down on my own worthiness, the merit of the others with whom I pray might lift my words to God’s ears. The Baal Shem Tov goes as far as to suggest that when you pray alone, you should unite yourself in thought with other wayfarers who are undoubtedly praying alone too, forming a kind of congregation with them — an imaginal minyan. Hurtling up the freeway that morning, my prayer was for my husband and for me and also, it seems, for everyone similarly situated — solitary travelers in cars and planes and on foot, all making their journeys.

The Talmud teaches that when we suffer, the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, suffers along with us. Because of that, the Baal Shem Tov teaches that our prayers should be not for our own healing alone, but for that of the Shekhinah as well. This is not only another reflex of the Jewish allergy to solo prayer, but another kind of insight: We are divinely companioned. In Jewish mystical literature, there is a blur between the Shekhinah and knesset yisrael, the collective of Israel, which I would express as the collective of humanity. The ways I hurt are also ways the collective hurts. My pain is shared, my prayer is shared — and God willing our healing will be shared. 

The Zohar tells us that we recite Tefilat Haderech in order to draw the Shekhinah to us, to be protected by her on the road. That is, our prayer is not a message being sent far away from us, but an invitation for the Divine to be close to us. So we aren’t alone when we hit the road. Shekhinah is with us, on the road together like in a classic buddy film. And there is a mutuality of care: Shekhinah protects us and we offer prayers for her wholeness. 

The road is a perilous place — sometimes in reality, more often in our imaginations. But the journey is also where revelation happens, as Abraham, Hagar, Jacob and Moses could all tell us. As we all travel on the uncertain road ahead, may we feel the companionship of the Shekhinah, and have ample cause to pause with wonder in the wild spaces bursting forth with Jacob’s words: Adonai is in this place, and I did not know it.

This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on April 26, 2025. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here. 

Advertisement
Advertisement

Discover More

Singing God’s Song 

Brooding over a psalmist's question in the face of death.

Revaluing Labor

On restoring the prestige of physical work.

Loving the Stranger

It's the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah, but what does it actually require?

Advertisement