Waze Of Life: Navigating Our Spiritual Journey Through The Lens Of Pirkei Avot

Anyone who has ever traveled knows how confusing it can be to get around. It's not enough to say, "I want to get from point A to point B." You'll need directions, landmarks, warnings about treacherous terrain. You'll need to know the rules of the road so that you'll be able to avoid those pesky and costly traffic tickets. In fact, a travel guide is what you're looking for - a compilation of everything you'll need to get where you're going. According to traditional Judaism, the Torah does precisely this. It is Judaism's travel guide through life - a road map, so to speak for righteousness, designed to show all of us how to arrive at the destination that Hashem Intended. In our tradition, we have a road map that never leaves us, even, or especially, in difficult times.
Whenever we feel lost for any reason, the words of Torah are there to elevate our spirits, give us hope, and challenge us to continue putting one foot in front of the other, to go forward in our journey. All of us need help some of the time, in finding our way. We don't like asking for help. We don't like telling people we are lost. We would also confess that when we are confused about life, about the direction in which we are to go, too many of us have turned down more than one wrong road, too prideful to ask for advice. We don't want anyone to know that we don't know where we are going. We are embarrassed to tell people that we didn't plan well. Because we have found our way before, we figure we will find our way again. Some of us would prefer to trust in our own instincts, rather than trust a map, believing that our own moral compass was objectively perfect. But, it isn't, which is why we have our very own spiritual GPS guiding us; through the dictums of the Torah, the insights from the Talmud, and the wisdom and maxims of our Sages.
My sincerest hope is that the lessons found within this book, Waze of Life, will help to improve the quality of each of our own spiritual driving experiences.