Friday, November 25, 2022

Parshas Toldos: WHY WHY WHY

It is a well-known concept in Jewish life that this world is a corridor to the world to come. It is a philosophy that is meant to focus us on our spiritual development, on not getting waylaid by the physical comforts that feed our goofs but not our neshamas. There is, however, one challenge with this imagery. A corridor is most often a straight line. The term infers a straight path. In truth, sometimes life feels more like a maze, with sharp turns and paths that are blocked. In other words, the corridor of this world is not often straight and therefore not always easy.

In many ways, this is the truth that we see from Parshas Toldos. Not one step of the lives of Yitzchak or Rivka, or their sons, seems straight forward and easy. This applies even to Esau, who we so often malign in our descriptions as a wayward son. Yes, Esau was drawn to wild sport and irreverent behaviour, but how much more so did these actions become a comfort to him when he erred in selling his birthright or when we saw his brother receiving that which he thought he deserved.

One of the profound statements in Parshas Toldos is Rivka’s cry: “If so, why do I exist?” (Bereishis 25:22). Life got hard, and Rivka reacted. Life got hard, and Rivka wanted to know what all her efforts and all her prayers had been for.  Life got hard, and Rivka went to challenge Hashem.

The term the pasuk uses for Rivka’s inquiry as to why it had all been so hard, and why it seemed to only be getting harder, is li’drosh. This term means to consult, but it also infers a force in the inquiry, a demand for answers and a pulling apart of the information. It is the root term for Midrash, the process by which the Oral Torah takes apart the text of the Torah and reveals its deeper meaning.  

Rivka’s demand is incredibly relatable. She wants to understand the purpose of pain. She wants to know that her suffering has meaning. Hashem’s answer to Rivka is not comfort. It is not an assurance that all will be well. Hashem responds to Rivka by telling her that her children will strive against each other. In other words, Hashem told Rivka that it was possible that life would only get more difficult.  

In the current era of the world, there is often an undertone and a demand that happiness is our due, that life should form itself around our needs and our wants. Alas, no matter how hard we wish that to be true, most of us quickly discover that it just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because there is a plan that is far greater than we can see.

Our individual maze-paths interlock with millions of other paths, and the full picture can only be seen by Hashem. Statements such as these, that only God knows what is good for us, are often blithely asserted as statements of comfort to those going through troubled times or are used as a means of forestalling someone else’s complaining. But as we learn from Rivka, when the going gets tough…it’s ok to react. Hashem wasn’t angry at Rivka for questioning her challenges. Hashem didn’t react negatively to Rivka for crying out. Rivka had an emotional reaction to a difficult life, but she channelled that state of distress back toward the Source of all things.

We may wish that life was easier, that our challenges were more straight-forward. We may despair when obstacles seem to pile upon us. That’s natural. That’s being human. And from Parshas Toldos we can learn that such feelings can be completely acceptable.

 

 

 

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