In turbulent times, the Torah reminds us that struggle can bring creation

One can hardly read the news today without feeling like the world as we have known it is coming to an end. I do not need to detail in this space all of the ways in which the forces of politics and war and cultural battles are pulling us all in opposite directions, such that we may very well ask if there is any middle ground, any possibility of compromise, that may in fact exist. To me, these last few years have become so emotionally challenging that I have cut back on my news consumption. I have even found that the late-night TV funny guys are less funny, because they keep pushing the same buttons over and over, reminding us all how awful everything is, and how seeking common ground might as well be a lost cause.

We might very well ask ourselves the same question that our matriarch Rivqah asks herself up front in Parashat Toledot, when she finds herself physically and emotionally torn apart by the twins in her womb, who are locked in permanent struggle (Bereshit 25:22): “Im ken, lamah zeh anokhi?” The text seems to be missing a verb; if one assumes the verb “to be,” which is often implicit in Hebrew, her question might be read literally as, “If so, why am I this?” Defective verses are often fertile ground for commentators: Ramban first disses Rashi’s explanation (“If this was going to be so painful, why did I pray so fervently for it?”), and then offers the following gloss: “If only I did not exist; if only I could die or never have
been born!”

According to Ramban, Rivqah is so desperate for the pain to stop that she is thinking that she would be better off dead, a particularly dark take. And yet, from our perspective, had all of this not unfolded in this way, none of us would be here. There would be no Israel, no Torah, no Jews. So we know then that no matter how much Rivqah wishes never to have been born, her desperation and suffering were essential to bringing Torah to the world.

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Throughout Jewish history, there have been periods of cataclysm followed by rebuilding and the creation of new institutions. Hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt turned a family into a people. Destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans two millennia ago led to the formation of what we call Judaism today. Although the wheels of Zionism were turning for a century prior, the devastation of the Shoah hastened

the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Perhaps the painful struggles and deep rifts of today’s world are signs that humanity is about to give birth to something big, something that will bring us light and truth and freedom.

It is perhaps too easy, and maybe also playing into the hands of those who profit from impending doom, simply to turn
away, throw up our hands and say, “This stinks. Get me outta here.” The greater challenge that we all should rather take up is, in assessing the state of affairs, to reach higher, to hope more grandly, to seek peace and pursue it. PJC

Rabbi Seth Adelson is senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.