Resilience in the Face of Adversity

Parshat Chayei Sarah

by Rabbi Avi Billet

In Parshat Vayera Avraham was essentially pushed to throw Yishmael out of the house, a decision which gave him much anguish. In the following chapter, his beloved God effectively told him he had to kill his son – and even though at the moment of moments this decision was reversed and Yitzchak was spared – one can only imagine this emotional roller coaster. This Shabbos we read, in the opening of chaper 23, of the death of Avraham’s wife Sarah – and we know that he lived another 38 years without her. 

While Avraham's relationship with God is enviable, some aspects of his human experience are far less enviable. Forced to banish one son, almost loses another at his own hand, and then his wife predeceases him by 38 years. Even his finances are unclear to us – there are certainly times when he is wealthy (after leaving Egypt, in Gerar), but there is no indication that that was always the case, such as at the beginning of Lekh Lekha and when he sends Eliezer to find the wife for Yitzchak (the verse says Eliezer went with ALL of Avraham’s good belongings – considering that he went with only ten camels, it could very well be that Avraham had taken a financial turn for the worse – see Kli Yakar). Who knows? It could be that the purchase of Mearat Hamachpela wiped him out financially! 

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik spoke about Holocaust survivors he had met. "Some lost everything – their faith in God, their faith in themselves, their sense of dignity. For some, suffering was a crucible in which they attained great heights, and for some suffering was degrading and spiritually annihilating. They could no longer believe ‘I am Hashem who took you out of Ur Chasdim,’ and if you lose God in times of trouble, even in times of individual trouble, you lose yourself as well. That is why God told Avraham, I want you to remember during the long night of dread, during the long night of human wretchedness and failure, that ‘I am Hashem who took you out of Ur Chasdim.’ There were better times before, and finally the day will arrive when better times will return." 

There's no questioning the fact that life brings its ups and downs. And when we're really down we sometimes forget to focus on the ups. I once heard a rabbi telling of a time he visited someone – a well-to-do individual who was sick in the hospital – and the man essentially asked, "Why me?" The rabbi told him, "There is so much good in your life. Did you ever stop to say 'Why me? Why am I so lucky?'" His message was simply this: Before we complain, we need to recognize the good that we have. 

In the book "Abraham's Journey" – written posthumously by Rabbi Soloveitchik – the author writes as if God speaking to Avraham, "Abraham. You know very well that I have assigned you not just material objectives and goals. You will have to realize a great spiritual destiny. And the realization of your spiritual destiny will not be as easy as that of your material destiny. It is a long history of suffering and subjugation. Now you are a victor, but not always will your children be victors. What the future holds for your children is not a series of successes; it is a sequence of suffering and sacrificing…"

Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks of the central experience of Avraham's life being galut – homelessness, wandering without knowing the destination, sleeping on the ground on freezing cold nights, being lost along the byways of a strange land. This experience taught Avraham and his descendants the art of involvement, of sharing in distress, of feeling for the stranger, of having compassion for the other. It trained Avraham to react quickly to suffering, to try to lighten the other's burden as much as possible. No matter who the stranger was, what he stood for – the stranger had suffered and suffering purges a person and redeems him. 

Asking why our nation was born in the desert, Rabbi Soloveitchik explained that if our morality had to be one of kindness and Chesed, it could not have been formulated by people who knew not what suffering is. Only people in exile could appreciate a morality of kindness. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik continues, explaining that the supremacy of the norm of hospitality rejects the notion of "my home is my castle." Such a notion conveys two wrong ideas: a. that the home gives us protection and shields us in a time of crisis, and b. that it is our property and no one else can claim a share in it. Both are false: One is never fully protected – man is exposed to evil and disaster, and no human is the lord of the house, he is merely a tenant as the Torah says in Vayikra 25:23: וְהָאָרֶץ לֹא תִמָּכֵר לִצְמִתֻת כִּי לִי הָאָרֶץ כִּי גֵרִים וְתוֹשָׁבִים אַתֶּם עִמָּדִי: (“Since the land is Mine, no land shall be sold permanently. You are foreigners and resident aliens as far as I am concerned…”) 

Challenges we face in life are tests – tests of resilience, of how we will emerge from the trials, of how humans will rise to the occasion. Just looking back on events of this weekend over the last decade we saw a number of awful events that tested our people and some specific communities. Almost a decade ago was Hurricane Sandy when many people lost everything, and people not defined by anything other than ‘being humans sharing in a very challenging situation’ cared for one another, looked out for the elderly and needy, set up methods of feeding, clothing and housing those who had been hit hardest. 

7 years ago – this Sunday (10/31 – 25 Cheshvan) is the yartzeit of the Har Nof Massacre. How many remember the devastation and the despair we felt over Jews being murdered in their tallis and tefillin while davening to Hashem? How do we move on from there? 

A community went to make a shiva visit to the Druze policeman who gave his life trying to stop the attack. Books were written about those murdered including “LIVING ON: Messages, Memories and Miracles from the Har Nof Massacre” to inspire others to live lives emulating the middos of the men murdered that day, as well as a 5th victim who died a year later from his wounds. 

Just three years ago (October 27/ 18 Cheshvan – Parshat Vayera), the Tree of Life Shooting/Massacre, in which 15 Jews were murdered for being Jews who showed up to a synagogue on a Shabbos morning. That day changed a certain way of thinking – if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. We must mourn for the dead. And we must be prepared for the future. 

How can we have optimism when things look bleak? 

Avraham had a choice – he could have holed himself up in his tent and died after his wife's death. He could have gotten mad at his God. 

But he didn't. He saw he had a job that needed to be done, and he put whatever strength he had into seeing that it get done. More important than his troubles, it seems, was his future. And his future was Yitzchak, the nation he was promised by God, and the dedication to that God that was necessary for his future nation to survive. Some of that dedication to God was certainly emphasized through Avraham’s prayer experience. And that message carried over through Yitzchak who, according to our tradition, taught us about the Mincha prayer in his ventures into the field towards the end of Chapter 24 in our parsha. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik taught about the power of tefillah, as well as a form of its comparison to Torah Study (Talmud Torah) 

“Prayer is an art, not just a mechanical performance. It is an attitude, a state of mind, a mood. It is a great and exciting experience, an adventure. But when we find ourselves holding the prayerbook, when we are about to recite our prayers and pour out our hearts before God, the scene changes completely. The adult, the proud mind, the independent thinker, the genius – none of them are admitted to the Heikhal Hatefillot, the palace of prayer. They cannot know the art of prayer. 

"Talmud Torah requires self affirmation and self appreciation, confidence in one's ability to understand and judge, to discriminate and equate. Tefillah demands self negation, just the opposite approach [to how one engages in Torah study]. The mood that generates a desire for prayer is one of hopelessness and bankruptcy. To pray means to surrender one's pride and self-confidence, to put aside any awareness of greatness, freedom, and independence. Prayer is for those who are simple, who are capable of complete surrender and of complete trust in the Holy one, ‘whose heart is not naughty… Whose soul is like that of a weaned child’ (Psalms 131:1-2 – one of the shortest chapters of Tehillim – worth the read! - AB). Incidentally, the child feels that he is in the embrace of someone who loves him very much, who will protect him and do anything to make his life happy and better. That feeling is the very root of prayer." 

While the anniversary isn’t now because this happened a few months ago, consider the devastation that followed the building collapse in Surfside. A community stepped up to help one and all, because the human experience, and the strength of human connections, is where we share a common bond. Tragedies are what they are – they can’t be walked back. But humans can rise to the occasion, and hopefully through helping one another we can see past differences and realize there is much more that unites than divides us. 

With whatever downs people may be experiencing at any given time, fulfillment in life comes from seeing the positive, finding the silver lining, experiencing the ray of sunshine, judging people favorably, and perhaps most importantly in seeing other people as people towards whom we may one day be faced with the opportunity to do Chesed. 

A friend who was going through a rough spell once told me “People often look for excuses not to go to a simcha, as if it's a burden. And thank God, we have so many simchas, it might be viewed as a burden. But somehow, when it's a tragedy, everybody drops everything and they are there, offering to help, etc. If we'd only have such an attitude when it comes to a simcha, how much more positive and optimistic we'd be." This is certainly a perspective worthy of consideration. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik taught us about Avraham’s troubles in life, but also about his prayers, his strength, and his resilience to adversity, as well as his never-ending special relationship with God. 

With God's help, may our tefillah be uplifted, may we be blessed with strength and the years to continue to do Chesed and may we be blessed, along with all of עם ישראל, to be optimistic of the bright future that lies ahead.