Embrace the pain

Embrace the pain

I felt quite uncomfortable as I observed a five-year-old girl erupt in frustration and rage when he was rejected by his peers as he tried to join them in an activity. At times, in the quest for scarce means of sustenance, status or companionship, there is plenty of pain to go around. 

One strategy is to escape into fantasy. In my late teens, as a somewhat insecure young man, I was chosen to be a ‘lieutenant general’ in a summer camp ’colour war’ activity.  As part of this role, I was carried on someone’s shoulders dressed in a camouflage army uniform. At the time I thought I looked glorious and once told a friend that I liked “that [inflated] Zalman” better than the real one.

That memory came to me while studying this week’s Torah reading about Pharaoh dreaming of standing on the water of the Nile River[i].  Pharoah dreamed of cows and grain, hinting at catastrophic famine for his nation and people in the region. But first, Pharaoh noticed his own position in the dream: ְbehold he was standing on the Nile River, like a god walking on water. His dream reflected the fact that he made himself into a god who controlled the Nile[ii]. “My Nile is my own; I made it myself[iii]”. While this delusion served Pharaoh’s political interests[iv], it might have also served an emotional need to overcompensate for any insecurities.

This blog post is an argument for not running away from pain, before or after it occurs. In the Torah reading, the Pharoah’s nightmare-induced funk was relieved when a prisoner with a talent for dream interpretation, Joseph, was brought before the king. Joseph had been imprisoned for two years (in the final phase of his jail time), yet it felt like a few days for him. This was because “afflictions are treasured by the righteous”, and these two years [of imprisonment] were [for Joseph] like two days[v]. He saw the problem as something to accept rather than resist.

Joseph’s father was not so accepting of the troubles in his life. He craved tranquility as he ‘settled’ in the land of Canaan[vi]. Not long after Jacob had ’settled’, a terrible event occurred. His favourite son Joseph disappeared. Joseph’s own brothers sold him into slavery then misled their father about what happened. While the loss of a son is a terrible tragedy, Jewish tradition suggests that Jacob’s suffering was related to his seeking to be ‘settled into tranquility’ in his life on earth, rather leaving such aspirations for the afterlife in heaven. We are encouraged to feel like foreigners passing through this life, to expect and accept hardships in this foreign place rather than resisting the inevitable disappointments with false hopes of a trouble-free life[vii]. 

One challenging form of pain many people seek to avoid is the shame and guilt that arises from causing harm. For Joseph’s brothers, many years passed and still they failed to confront the cruel robbing of their young brother’s freedom until they found themselves the victims of false imprisonment. This predicament caused the penny to drop. The brothers reflected on what they did to Joseph and proclaimed; “but we are guilty about our brother, that we saw the distress of his soul, when he pleaded with us but we did not listen”[viii].

Joseph’s brothers felt a mixture of shame and guilt about their sin. Yet, the eldest brother Reuben chose not to ease his brothers’ discomfort; instead, he seemed to rub it in. “Did I not tell you, do not sin with the boy, but you did not listen, and also his blood is now demanded of us[ix]”. Reuben gave his brothers a master class in repentance. It is not enough to say ‘sorry’ as a response to being punished. He invited his brothers to make a deep personal commitment to now take responsibility for the choice they made to commit an injustice and sin against an innocent child all those years ago. He urged them to put aside any excuses, and own up to their choice[x].

The rejected five-year-old girl got a ‘sorry’ from the other girls. It did little to change how she felt. Sitting with the harm caused to, and by us is a slow and painful but useful path to healing.

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[i] Genesis 41:1

[ii] R. Bchaye, on Gensis 41:1

[iii] Ezekiel 29:3

[iv] Chemdas Yamim manuscript in Torah Shlaima, p. 1530, tell us more about this. Pharoah was constantly ruminating about the matter of the Nile. He would say to himself, “if the Nile will not rise this year then there will be a great famine, or if he add a lot of water then it might ruin the crops and I told the Egyptians that I made the Nile and now I will be [considered] a liar to them”. He saw his dream in a way that was similar to his ruminations… In the end he recognised that his dream will require him to tell the people that he in in fact not God, and he admitted this to Joseph when he said that after God made all this known to you, he acknowledged that there is a God other than himself. 

[v] Midrash Habiur, a manuscript, cited in Torah Shleima, p. 1529, 8. The midrash is based on the fact that the verse states it was two years – days. If it was two “years”, why does it say “days”?

[vi] Midrash Rabba on Genesis 37:1

[vii] Rabbi Yitzchak Ben Aramaa, in Akedat Yitzchak, Genesis Shaar 30, p. 257

[viii] Genesis 42:21

[ix] Genesis 42:22

[x] Rabbi MM Schneerson, The Lubavitcher Rebbe in Likutei Sichot, Vol 16, Miketz

 

Family Comes Last? Abraham Saving Sodom but Sacrificing his Son

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto, used under CC license:

As a young boy, I waited for what seemed like an eternity, in the vast cavernous ‘770’ Synagogue in Brooklyn after the prayers, longing to just go home. But my father had important communal work to attend to as an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Dad had many people he had to talk to, to advance his important Lubavitch outreach work. When I became a dad, I promised myself to prioritize my family over my work. I told myself that, if the price of greatness is neglecting my family, I choose my family. Almost three decades later, when I reflect on that promise, I think that, while I have certainly fallen far short of my ideal, I have at least partially fulfilled my promise. I wonder what the Torah teaches us about this dilemma.

The story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac[i], especially as it follows closely on the heels of his heroic efforts to save the wicked people of Sodom[ii], is jarring. Does it legitimize deprioritizing familial love?! After all, we have the great Abraham pleading for strangers in Sodom, but not for his son, who he is willing to kill?

Let us examine the two cases.

In the case of Sodom, God told Abraham that He planned to destroy the wicked people of that city because the injustices perpetrated by its inhabitants had provoked great cries[iii]. (To be clear, in Jewish sources, the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality, but extreme cruelty to strangers[iv]). Despite the xenophobic cruelty of this community, Abraham pleaded for mercy for them and pestered God, advocating for them six times [v]. Abraham felt compelled to cry out to the heavens to prevent the destruction of human life[vi].  “The great argument between Abraham and God…was a turning point in the history of the spirit. For the first time a human being challenged God Himself on a matter of justice”[vii].

Yet, when God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac[viii], Abraham did not offer one word of protest. His response was eager obedience and acquiescence to the divine will [ix]. It is only God’s redirection at the last minute that Abraham not kill his son, that spared Isaac’s life.

Abraham’s willingness to challenge God for evil strangers but not for his son, seems like the case of the community worker or clergyman who shows endless patience for strangers, but appears to put his family last [x]?

To try to make sense of this, I take a step back and recognize that I am using a very contemporary social lens to interpret a timeless text. As an orthodox Jew in 2022, it is right for me to search for guidance in the Torah for how to live my life now, but I also am bound to consider interpretations of the Torah that have been written over thousands of years. 

In my study of the classic and Chasidic sources, I found the dominant theme to be an emphasis on devotion to God, rather than commentary about degrees of devotion or neglect of one’s family.

Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac was not a case of prioritizing a mission or cause over a child. Isaac was Abraham’s sole successor in his mission of promoting monotheism; so, if Isaac would have been killed, that would have meant the end of Abraham’s cause rather than its advancement[xi].

Far from some frenzied burst of fanatical religious excitement, Chasidic teachings portray this moment as a dark night of Abraham’s soul, where he lost all inspiration and any high spiritual consciousness, yet his deep devotion to God was so strong that he was prepared to make this painful sacrifice [xii].

There is a Chasidic story that emphasises prioritizing parental care over spiritual experience. Once, in the middle of the night, a child of the Mitteler Rebbe [the second leader of the Chabad Chasidic movement] fell out of bed. Entirely engrossed in his spiritual-mystical studies, he did not hear the child’s cries. However, his father, the Alter Rebbe, heard the cries, closed his Torah books, and went to comfort the child. The Alter Rebbe later said to his son: No matter how deeply immersed you are in holy pursuits, when a child cries you must hear it; you must stop what you’re doing and soothe their pain[xiii]. In one instance, the Lubavitcher Rebbe told one of his emissaries whose child had some difficulties: Your main mission is looking after your child. If you have any time left after that, you can do other things[xiv].

Far from the modern, work- focused dad, whose love for his children is sometimes not evident, Abraham’s love for Isaac was clearly manifest. God’s first sentence to Abraham highlighted this when he referred to Isaac as the child he loved. As the story unfolds there is a tender exchange between son and father. Isaac asks a question of Abraham, addressing him as “my father”.  Abraham replies: ”Here I am, my son.” Then, he again tenderly refers to Isaac as “my son”[xv]. What is being described here is a loving father, with tears flowing from his eyes [xvi], who, despite feeling intense love for Isaac, attempted to do what he believed he must, to obey God.

From a contemporary perspective, Leon Kass argues that, in a sense, we all sacrifice our children. “…All of us fathers, devote (that is ‘sacrifice’) our sons to some ‘god’ or another – to Mammon [money] or Molech [an idol served with child sacrifice]. To honour or money, pleasure or power, or worse, to no god at all.  …we do so willy-nilly, through the things we teach and respect in our own homes; we intend that the entire life of the sons be spent in service to our own ideals or idols…  But a true father will devote his son to – and will self-consciously and knowingly initiate him into - only the righteous and Godly ways………

Finally, Cass points out, “the true founder [of any movement] knows and accepts the fact that his innocent sons will suffer for the sake of the righteous community, and that their ‘sacrifice’ is no proof that they are not properly loved as sons.  On the contrary, the true founder, like the true father, shows his love for his followers when he teaches them, often by example, that one’s life is not worth living if there is nothing worth dying and sacrificing for” [xvii].

In the end, we are indeed called on to ‘be willing’ to prioritize G-d over our loved ones, and this involves some painful trade-offs by parents in which children get significantly less of their parents’ attention, support and material goods they might ideally receive, but in the end, Judaism – or devotion to any cause - should not detract too much from parents’ love and care for their children and families [xviii], just as Abraham does not actually sacrifice his son. Getting the balance right is fraught for fathers, and even more so, for mothers. I believe that awareness of the dilemma is one part of managing its tensions.

 

Notes

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[i] Genesis 22

[ii] Genesis 18:17-32

[iii] Genesis 18:20

[iv] Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b

[v] Genesis 18:23-32

[vi] The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Likutei Sichos vol. 10, p. 58, 5,

[vii] Sacks, J. (2009), Covenant and Conversation, Genesis, Magid Books and the Orthodox Union, p. 103,

[viii] Genesis 22:2

[ix] Genesis 22:3-10

[x] I wondered if this kind of attitude was inferred by some Chasidim from the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings relating to the phrase from כתובות (ט ע"ב that כל היוצא למלחמת בית דוד כותב גט כריתות לאשתו, that all who went out to the wars of the house of David, would write a divorce to their wives which, although it technically has an entirely different meaning, could be understood to mean, in a symbolic sense, that Shlichut requires a prioritization of the mission over attachment to family.  

[xi] The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Likutei Sichot, vol 20, p. 76-77

[xii] Rabbi Mordechai of Lechvitch, and similarly in Chidushei Harim, based on the Arizal and the Zohar, cited In, Reisman, M. Y., שיעורים בסידור התפילה ר' מנשה ישראל רייזמאן שליט"א ע"י הרה"ג שיעור נ"ח - והאלקים נסה את אברהם ניתן לשמוע  www.kolhalashon.com

[xiii] https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/livingtorah/player_cdo/aid/2081439/jewish/Hearing-the-Cry-of-a-Child.htm

[xiv] Told to me by Rabbi Yossi Engel with the name of the Shliach the Rebbe told it to.

[xv] Genesis 22:7-8

[xvi] Rav Avraham Mordechai Alter: Imrei Emet: Sefer Bereshit, cited in White, T, Avraham and the Akeida: The Silent Sacrifice, www.contemplatingtorah.wordpress.com

[xvii] Leon R. Kass, L, R., the beginning of Wisdom p. 348-350 cited in White

[xviii]
An example of the commitment to family is expressed in this talk by the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s.
: ומכיוון שהוא יוצא למלחמת בית דוד – הרי בודאי שהוא מצליח ומנצח כו', וחוזר בשלום לביתו, על דרך מה שכתוב "ויבוא יעקב שלם", "שלם בגופו כו' שלם בממונו כו' שלם בתורתו", באופן של "לכתחילה אריבער", ואז הוא חי עם אשתו, ונולדים להם בנים ובנות עוסקים בתורה ומצוותיה – ביתר שאר וביתר עז, מכיוון שמדובר אודות חיילי בית דוד (משיחות הושענא רבה תשמ"ג ותשמ"ח. התוועדויות תשמ"ג חלק א' עמ' 251-253; תשמ"ח חלק א' עמ' 291-293
 http://www.chabad.org.il/Magazines/Article.asp?ArticleID=7222&CategoryID=1442