No Rest for the Weary
After I delivered my sermon at the last Shabbat service on Jacob’s emotional and spiritual development, one of you came up to me and said: “I don’t like Jacob.” I asked: “Why not?” “He’s not very likeable.” It’s true that Jacob’s manipulation and deceit, his passions and jealousies, are unsavory. He vexes us because he reminds of ourselves. Biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg observes: “Jacob is Everyman.” (p. 279) Sometimes we can learn more from a life-size model such as Jacob, with foibles and faults like our own, than from an impossibly unblemished paragon such as Abraham, who seems to barely touch the ground.
At Bnei Jeshurun last week, the Rabbi sermonized on the moments of wholeness and fullness during Jacob’s life journey. She noted that after twenty years of exile and suffering, he comes home to reconcile with his brother Esau, and the Torah applies to him the epithet of completion: “Jacob came to the city of Shechem complete.” (Genesis 33:18) The Hebrew word for complete is shaleim, related directly to shalom and its connotation of peace. The Rabbi continued: we yearn for such moments of calm and serenity, and celebrate them when they arrive. Like Shabbat amid the seven days of the week, points of rest anchor us amid the turbulence of our regular experience. Even though points of calm are fleeting, they make the remainder of our lives manageable.
This week, I would like to the opposite point. In some profound sense, we are not meant to remain at rest. We are meant to strive, we are meant to struggle, and we are meant to live in turbulence. The name of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, means “and he settled.” It comes from the opening verse: vayeshev Yaakov be’eretz megurei aviv be’eretz Kena’an, “And Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan.” The sentence is designed to contrast Jacob’s permanent settlement in the land with his father Isaac’s temporary sojourn, since Isaac was always on the move and never owned property of his own. However, commentators have always taken the word vayeshev to point to Jacob’s state of mind, rather than his physical location. If so, the word is replete with an irony that Rashi seizes upon: “ ‘And Jacob settled:’ Jacob sought to settle in tranquility, but at that very moment the trouble of Joseph leapt upon him.” What Rashi refers to, of course, is that in the very next line we are introduced to the jealousy and resentment between Jacob’s beloved son Joseph and his brothers, which will lead in very short order to Joseph’s apparent disappearance and Jacob’s immeasurable grief. The text may state: “and Jacob settled,” but we as readers know that Jacob is about to be jolted into the greatest agitation that he has ever known.
Rashi continues with the following generalization: “The righteous seek to settle in tranquility: but God says, ‘their reward in the World to Come is not enough for them, that they seek to settle in tranquility in this world?’” (Rashi on Genesis 37:2) Rashi’s comment is surprising: why is God critical of the righteous, who desire tranquility? As the Bnei Jeshurun Rabbi noted, the desire for rest is the most universally human of cravings. However, Rashi seems to be saying that there is something wrong with settling in tranquility, with remaining in a state of ease, at least from the point of view of righteousness. To stay uniformly calm in a troubled world betokens apathy. My chaplain colleague observes: “the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference.” As we prayed earlier: “if you see suffering and don’t cry out, if you don’t praise and don’t revile, then I created you in vain, says God.” By the way, it’s interesting to observe that classic Jewish descriptions of the World to Come generally do not portrayed idyllic scenes of angels reclining upon clouds and playing the lyre. Instead, in some depictions, scholars continue to spar over words of Torah. It seems that even in Heaven, there is no rest for the weary.
At fifty years old, I know myself pretty well by now. I know the types of psychological triggers that set me off. Take this morning, first instance. I noticed a seventy-five cent discrepancy on my credit card receipt, and instead of letting it go effortlessly, I allowed myself to get all worked up in a self-righteous frenzy at a senseless clod of a telephone sales rep, wasting half an hour of my life, all for the sake of seventy-five cents. It’s the principle of thing—don’t you know. I can smile at myself now, but I used to imagine that if I just lived and worked hard enough on myself, I would overcome all of my character flaws and I would live in permanent state of serenity. The lesson of Vayeshev is that the disappearance of personal setbacks is not only impossible, it’s undesirable, and that knowledge allows me a certain freedom and lightness when I discover myself in turmoil once again. Jacob will experience upset throughout his life, and, apparently, so will I. The key is to embrace difficulties not merely with composure, but even with joy, because challenge is the stuff of life. It’s like going outside into raging rain, and instead of complaining about the stormy weather, reveling in the thrill of it. Yes, Shabbat is important for the opportunity to recharge. But perpetual Shabbat would be empty. As long as we are alive, we are meant to struggle. It’s the meaning of Jacob’s acquired name: Israel, “one who struggles with God and men.” Since we are the children of Israel, it’s the meaning of our name as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment