Rabbi's Musings

There’s a story of a certain Rabbi Joseph, who lived almost 2,000 years ago.  He became critically ill and slipped into a coma.  His father, Rabbi Joshua, remained at his bedside praying for his recovery.  Fortunately, Rabbi Joseph did get better.

         When he awoke from his coma, his father asked, “What did you see as you hovered between this world and the next world?”

         Said Rabbi Joseph: “I saw a world turned upside down.  I saw a topsy-turvy world.”

         Rabbi Joshua listened, thought for a while, and said: “You saw a clear vision of how things really are.  You saw the world clearly.” 

These days, who could argue with Rabbi Joshua’s assessment?  We are living in a topsy-turvy world.  It’s a time when no one feels safe, everyone feels anxious and what we took for granted no longer applies. But we should not despair. Now is the time to realize we are called upon to act, to help others, to bring balm to this troubled world.

And how, exactly, do we accomplish this feat?  Not with simple mantras of feel-good self-improvement books.  And not with a bright cheery retort to anything sad, such as making lemonade out of lemons.  But there are things that must be done.  There are choices to be made, decisions to be considered. 

In the Bible there is a question asked that has always haunted me: “Watchman, what of the night?”  (Isaiah 21:11)  Some would say this is the question we would ask God, “Why is it night for us, O God?  And where are You?”  But maybe the questioner is actually God.  It’s as if God is asking us, “How do we behave when the night is dark and we are frightened?  How do we respond in a world of anxiety and suffering?”  One thing I do know is that any religion worth our attention and devotion must help us answer this question.   

Okay, so what do we do? The first choice is to decide how we will understand the suffering that visits us.  A New Yorker cartoon shows a cemetery divided into three sections.  The first one is labeled, “their own fault,” the second is labeled, “somebody else’s fault,” and the third is labeled, “nobody’s fault.”  The caption for the cartoon says: “All you need to know.”  Sadly, when it comes to the suffering of others, we often engage in such an exercise.  Is there spiritual significance to their suffering?   Is it a punishment from God? 

Unfortunately, ancient Jewish tradition did not always help in this regard.  Those who suffered often were made to feel like perpetrators of crimes.  They were blamed for the illnesses and calamities and physically removed from the community.  Thankfully, later Jewish tradition realized the folly of such an approach.  The rabbis came to see that suffering doesn’t come from God; indeed God suffers along with us.  A haunting rabbinic story pictures God mourning with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed.  For the ancient rabbis, God is not the Destroyer.  God is the chief mourner.  Likewise, we should not blame God when we suffer.  As the Psalmist declares, when possible, God heals our shattered hearts and binds up our wounds.  God is not our enemy or even our righteous adversary. 

When it comes to those of us with an incurable disease, chronic illness, or family tragedy, it also often seems that our suffering has placed us into a different world than the rest of our community.  It’s as if we are in exile from the land of normal living. 

I recently heard of a woman with breast cancer who hates to go to movies.  When she goes to the movie she forgets herself for awhile, but when she leaves the theater her new condition comes back to her, and this realization of her exile from her normal self is more than she can bear.

The saddest part of choosing how we understand our suffering is that, in fact, there is almost no way to understand it.  Suffering happens for no cosmic reason.  Cancer develops.  Accidents happen.  The economy nose dives.  Factors come into play but there is no divine plan.  If we are honest we admit that suffering doesn’t have to be explained, and in many cases perhaps it can’t be explained.

This lack of an explanation may be okay, however, since the real choice is not about how we understand suffering.  The choice is how we respond to it.  When we are the ones who are doing the suffering we should not have the additional burden of trying to explain it. When the Bible declares “Watchman, what of the night?” it may well be that the question is being asked of the friends and family of those in pain.  How will you respond to the night of suffering?  This is the greatest choice before us.

The answer is not to explain the suffering.  The answer is not to say much at all.  The answer is to show up and be there.   The response is to visit the kingdom of the night, remembering that each of us holds two passports, one for the kingdom of the day and one for the kingdom of the night.  We don’t identify as aliens with the place of suffering.  We identify as fellow travelers.  We all hold dual citizenship.

Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman has observed,  “[especially]…in the ordeal of Night, we should remember the potential for the spirituality of meeting.  Unable to cure disease, remove people’s pain, explain away great suffering, or bring back the dead, we can at least deliver that shared moment of “being there,” which is the way to transform the exile of illness into at least the gateway to home; the way also to identify with the suffering of others because we know we will be where they are soon enough; and, in due course, the way we help them (as we hope others will one day help us) make their way in peace to a final home beyond the lifetime that we know.  The spirituality of meeting cannot deny the Kingdom of Night.  But it can soften its inevitable arrival.” 

Fortunately, most of us will not suffer chronically for most of our lives.  Indeed, we may even be relatively pain free.  But that doesn’t mean we will not be challenged by sadness and frustration.  We will still suffer, albeit in far less dramatic ways.  And even for us there are choices to make.  For instance, one choice is to decide what kind of glass we’re drinking.  Scott Hamilton, the famous ice skater, takes the old cliché about how some people see the glass as being half-full and others seeing it as being half-empty and makes a profound comment: “Sure,” he writes, “that half glass is there but right beside it is a full glass.  And that glass is the important one.  As long as you are alive and kicking, as long as you have another day, you have a full glass.  We are all in this race and we all have the choice of what to do with the minutes we have been given….I always try to make the most of mine.” 

These words remind us to take each day as a gift, even if we are not as content as we would like.  With such perspective the various frustrations and problems need not overwhelm us and take from us the enjoyment of life’s daily pleasures.