Rabbi Ari Kahn
Parashat Vayechi 5776
Love and Loss
In the words of the great poet Alfred Tennyson,
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.[1]
Almost any person who lives long enough will experience and
suffer loss; it is an inescapable fact of the human condition. Modern
scholarship recognizes five distinct stages of loss and mourning: Denial,
anger, bargaining, and depression must be experienced before acceptance is a
possibility.[2] And yet, though the process may be universal,
the individual’s
response to loss is far less uniform: So many factors come into play, and so
many different types of loss may be experienced at different stages of a person’s life, generating very different
responses.
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.
How did Yaakov cope with these catastrophes? Others might
have crumbled under the weight of these tragedies. Indeed, when Pharaoh asks Yaakov
his age, Yaakov responds:
'My journey through life has lasted 130 years,' replied Yaakov.
'The days of my life have been few and hard. I did not live as long as my
fathers did during their pilgrimage through life.' (Bereishit 47:7)
In Yaakov’s words, first to his sons, then to Pharaoh, and,
eventually directly to Yosef, we hear the pain that he has lived through and
the loss he has endured. His beloved wife had died suddenly; from the moment he
had met her, all Yaakov ever really wanted was to marry Rachel and to live out
their days together. His son Yosef, who replaced Rachel in Yaakov’s heart, was wrested from him,
leaving Yaakov bereft and emotionally alone. 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. Hard as it was for Yaakov to bear, the loss of his loved ones was not
what shook him to his very core. 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 focus on the time he
had spent with Rachel and of his special relationship with Yosef; more
generally, he could take pride in what he had achieved, rather than focusing on
what was lacking in his life.
Even Tennyson, the poet who grappled with the sudden loss
of someone so dear to him and so central to his life, [3]
was able to draw solace from this aspect of love lost. From the depths of his
own mourning, Tennyson chose to change his focus, and to cherish the time he
had shared with his friend Arthur Hallam rather than succumb to the raw, biting
pain of loss.
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 ran away from Esav, when
he lost his home, his property, his entire family, God had been with him. God spoke
to him, reassured him, promised not to abandon him. Years later, when Yaakov extricated
himself from the house of Lavan and started to make his way back home, God
spoke to him, guided him and shored up his courage. Yaakov had an intimate
relationship with God; he spoke to Him in his hour of darkness and fear as he prepared
to confront Esav, and brought Him offerings of thanksgiving after the ordeal
was over. And yet, 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.
The loss of a loved one is painful, but to suffer God’s silence is a completely different
experience. The loved one is gone, yet God continues to exist; He chooses not to
communicate. Can we say to a person who has experienced intimacy with God such
as Yaakov did, that it is better to have been a prophet and lose the ability to
prophesize than never to have heard the voice of God at all? Can a prophet take
solace in the fact that he knows with certainty that God exists and
communicates with man, that He is involved in human history and takes a
personal interest in each and every aspect of our lives – and not be anything less than
devastated when prophecy is suddenly, inexplicably denied? Is the loss of this
gift of intimacy too spiritually devastating for any man or woman to bear?
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. Only then is Yaakov able
to make sense of what has happened. He is granted the insight that is only
possible from God’s
perspective of history –
insight that Yosef was granted all along. Yosef lives, and God speaks; Yaakov’s world, which had been upended, is
set right.
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.”[4] 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.
For
a more in-depth analysis see:
[1] Alfred
Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H.”
[2]
See Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death and
Dying, (Routledge 1969), Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, On Grief and Grieving (NY: Simon and
Shuster, 2005).
[3]
Despite many a lover taking solace in the words of Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H”
was written for his dear friend and fellow poet Arthur Hallam, who had been
engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister Emily but died unexpectedly at the age of
twenty two.
[4]
Talmud Bavli Pesachim 56a.
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