Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once said that to be a Jew is to be on a journey.

We love to tell the stories of our travels. But the journeys of our lives? Our dreams, our deepest thoughts, our loves and losses, our successes and failures, our daily lived experiences?

Those are the true journeys. Like Dorothy’s visit to the Land of Oz, many of them are interior travels. Physically, Dorothy never left home. But oh, she traveled far.

The Torah takes us on many physical journeys, culminating in a recitation of the 42 stops made by the Children of Israel as they trekked through the wilderness. It is a dry, almost tedious list. There is no color or emotion, none of the drama, fear, or triumph of a journey that lasted four decades.

And one place—one incredibly significant stop—is missing. Mount Sinai.

Which is strange, because the time they spent at the foot of Mount Sinai was by far the most important pause on their march from slavery to the Promised Land. Yet it is never mentioned.

My favorite explanation for this glaring omission comes from Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, who described Mount Sinai as “timeless, cut loose from any place.”

According to Exodus, Mount Sinai was a very real, very physical location. But I am deeply enamored with the idea of Sinai as a state of mind. Because to me, Judaism itself is a state of mind.

This has never been more true than in today’s Diaspora, where someone might tell you, “I’m Jewish,” and when you ask what that means, simply answer, “I’m just Jewish. It’s part of who I am.”

My own answer is different.

I’m Jewish because I live my life in a particular way. I perform certain rituals, recite certain prayers, strive to behave in certain ways. I am Jewish because I do Jewish things.

Both answers are valid, whether someone chooses to be Jewish or to do Jewish. Unlike many of our neighbors—whose first response might be that being Christian means believing in Jesus—Judaism has never rested solely on belief in God.

To me, being Jewish means walking a particular path, one that is at once profoundly human and deeply spiritual.

It has been twelve years since the death of the teacher of my teachers, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Reb Zalman delighted in connecting the outer and inner dimensions of Judaism.

Once, as he prepared to light the Shabbat candles, he paused and said, “We light the outer lights to remind us to light the inner light on Shabbat.”

Many years later, his student Rabbi Simcha Raphael recalled that this ability to connect ritual practice with inner spirituality became the foundation of his own religious life.

Perhaps that is what every journey is ultimately about.

The roads we travel eventually come to an end. But the inner journey continues, carried forward in the lives we touch. Reb Zalman’s light still burns in his students. Dorothy’s journey continues every time someone discovers courage, compassion, or wisdom within themselves.

And the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness still invite us to ask where we are headed, what we are carrying, and where we might encounter our own Sinai—not merely as a place on a map, but as a place in the soul.