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

 

Emotional blindness. The Case of Isaac – Toldot

Alienated. Feeling alone and disconnected from the people who used to provide connection and a sense of belonging. Perhaps there is a vicious cycle - feelings of alienation in an individual alienate the people they might otherwise connect with. Don’t we like to hang out with happy people? Surely, the alienated one needs to get over it! Look on the bright side! Which also means don’t dare look at what feels wrong and misaligned. Turn a blind eye, mate. That’s the winning strategy. Perhaps it is.

I wonder about the merits of focusing on the positive to such a degree that we stop seeing disturbing facts or fears. I want to explore this by looking at the metaphoric hints in our teachings about Isaac’s blindness.

Isaac is one of Judaism’s three patriarchs. He was literally blind[i], but Isaac also seems to have been blind to the true evil[ii] nature of his oldest son, Esau[iii], who he wanted to bless at the end of his life[iv] rather than his good son, Jacob.

The meaning of Isaac’s blindness is hinted at in various teachings of the Midrash. One approach is that God brought blindness down on Isaac as a way of shielding him from the shame of Esau’s behavior. Easu abducted married women and raped them. If Isaac would walk in the marketplace, people would ridicule him as the father of that scoundrel. By making Isaac blind, God caused Isaac to stay at home and thus avoid the experience of shame[v]. This seems to endorse the proposition that one way to deal with shame is to avoid exposure to it and escape from it.

I read a charming articulation of this approach from the Breslov school of Chasidism. “You may remember … from the early childhood of some little person in your vicinity, that closing one’s eyes was a strategy often employed to ward off the threat of seeming doom. It may not have always worked, but then again you might not have known how to do it properly.” [vi]The Breslov approach emphasises seclusion and talking to God like one would to a friend.

The Rebbe Nachman stated 'And if things get very bad, make yourself into nothingness.’

I asked him, 'How does one make himself into nothingness?’

He replied, 'Close the mouth and eyes – nothingness!’

They advise, “One has to hide inside the house to keep himself from feasting his eyes on this world. The walls of the house serve as blinders.”

An alternative view is that Isaac’s blindness was a consequence of his experience being offered as a human sacrifice by his own father[vii]. At the time the angels wept, and their tears entered Isaac’s eyes and eventually blinded him[viii]. The angels could not bear the injustice of a father’s cruelty to his son. Isaac tuned into the outrage of the angels to such an extent that his mind was closed to any form of parental rejection of a child. He could not see that Esau was an undeserving son, unworthy of the blessings he wished to give him[ix]. Following this interpretation, turning a blind eye is unwise.

Still another approach links Isaac’s blindness to the experience of bitterness of spirit[x] caused to him and Rebecca by the idol worship of Esau’s wives. This made Isaac angry, which led him to become blind[xi]. Anger, sometimes caused by being confronted with something we really wish we could pretend was not there[xii], can cause us to not ‘see things clearly’ and significantly distort our perception of reality, rendering us emotionally ‘blind.’

I am not sure exactly what guidance to draw from all this. However, a few things are clear to me. A lot of the time, it is useful to look away and tell ourselves that the time is not right for exploring depressing matters[xiii], on condition that we do look at them from time to time. If we never deal with painful issues, denial is likely to end in tears when reality crashes through and needs to be dealt with. Despite turning a blind eye, we still have some awareness of the problems we are choosing not to see so the emotions of anger, resentment and shame bubble away in the shadows, and in the subconscious and can’t be addressed. The suppressed rage and fear seep out in unspoken ways, through tone and body language and cause distress to people around us and to ourselves. Perhaps, the answer lies in mixing blindness with clear-eyed exploration of the painful things we wish to avoid.

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[i] Genesis 27:1

[ii] Midrashic sources, Midrash Rabba and others

[iii] Lamm, N. 2012, Derashot L’dorot, a commentary for the ages: Genesis, OU press, p. 114

[iv] Genesis 27:4

[v] Bereshit Rabba 65

[vi] https://www.breslov.org/dvar/bereishis/toldot_5761.html

[vii] Genesis 22:1-12

[viii] Bereshit Rabba 65:5

[ix] R. Ezra Bick, https://www.torahmusings.com/2013/10/the-blindness-of-yitzchak/

[x] Genesis 26:35

[xi] Midrash Tanchuma toldot 8

[xii] Toldot Yaakov Yosef, I don’t remember the exact reference

[xiii] R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya, chapter 26