I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Ari Kahn entitled ‘Love and Loss’ on the significance and prevelance of loss in life and how we face it. I share this in particular for Shabbat Parshat Vayechi, which the National Association of Chevra Kadisha has designated as a time for End of Life Awareness - see below for more about their initiative for this year.
In the words of the great poet Alfred Tennyson, 'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.' Almost any person who lives long enough will experience and suffer loss; it is an inescapable fact of the human condition. [...] Our Patriarch Yaakov suffered and endured a great deal of loss. First, he lost the comfort and tranquility of his childhood home when he was forced to flee his brother's murderous fury. In retrospect, this loss paled in comparison to the death of loved ones that Yaakov subsequently endured: He lost the love of his life, Rachel, when she died in childbirth. He mourned the loss of his son Yosef, the son of Rachel, for decades. Both of these losses were devastating, cruel, swift: He was unprepared for the death of his young wife and of his seventeen-year-old son.
[...] And yet, as traumatic as these devastating losses were, they may not have been what Yaakov had in mind when he described to Pharaoh the misery he had experienced. These losses are not unknown in this world; they are, in a sense, a cruel but not unusual part of life. [...] Yaakov had loved and lost; he could cling to the memories of Rachel and Yosef, take comfort in Binyamin, enjoy the company of his other wives, children and grandchildren. He [...] could take pride in what he had achieved, rather than focusing on what was lacking in his life.
[...] Yaakov had experienced an additional type of loss, and it was this other pain that tormented his days, his nights, his years: Yaakov had experienced estrangement from God Himself. When [...] Yaakov's life was torn asunder by the disappearance of Yosef, God was silent. For decades, Yaakov was left to face his grief alone, without God's words of reassurance or comfort that he so sorely craved. When Yosef exits the stage, God ceases to communicate with Yaakov. For Yaakov, the loss of his son is compounded by God's silence; this loss, unlike the other pain that he had experienced, was unnatural, impossible to understand. It was a sense of loss that reflected something so profoundly wrong that Yaakov was inconsolable.
[...] When Yaakov is informed that Yosef is, in fact, alive, his prophetic ability returns; Yaakov comes to life once again. His spiritual world is rehabilitated. The intimacy with God is restored. [...] And then, once again, Yaakov is thrust into darkness. On his deathbed, Yaakov intends to share this Divine perspective with his children, to draw a line from the past, through the present, to the future. He is eager to include them in the intimacy with God that he has regained, but this intimacy is suddenly denied. Yaakov once again must endure the loss of Divine communication, and God's silence terrifies him. He searches the faces of his children with fear: Could they, perhaps, be unworthy of sharing Divine intimacy?
Rabbinic tradition teaches us that in this moment of fear and dread, Yaakov's children cry out in unison: "Shma Yisrael – Hashem Elokeinu Hashshem Echad – Hear oh Israel (our father): God is our Lord, God is One." Yaakov now gains a new type of understanding, a more human sort of insight: This time, God's silence is not a punishment but an act of tenderness and consideration. God is silent, not because Yaakov's children are unworthy of prophecy, but because they are worthy of God's kindness: Sometimes, we are better off not knowing exactly what the future holds, and yet, despite this, when – and even more importantly, when our children say the Shma – we know that God is with us.
Have a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
