“Jacob settled in the area where his father had lived in the land of Canaan. . . .” (Genesis 37:1)
Rashi, quoting the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 84:1), says: “Jacob had a desire to live a serene life. Righteous people want to live in peace in this world. . . . God says, ‘Isn’t it enough for them that they are assured peace in the world to come, that they want peace in this world as well?’ ”
We learn in the Talmud (Baba Metzia 84b): “Rebbe sent a message that he wished to marry the widow of R. Elazar, son of R. Simeon bar Yochai. She demurred, explaining that her late husband had been a very great man. Rebbe responded, ‘Granted that he surpassed me in scholarship, was he also my superior in good deeds?’ She retorted, ‘You bow to his superior scholarship, in which area I am not the judge. But I do know that he exceeded you in his actions, because he voluntarily embraced great pain.’ ”
From this talmudic anecdote it is clear that suffering is counted among the good deeds of a person. But what kind of deeds are suffering and pain, and what part does a person play in the observance of them? From the Gemara it is clear that R. Elazar actually prayed for the pain, while we, here and now, say we can no longer bear it.
Obviously, we have to pray, cry, and beg God that He take our sufferings and remove them straight away, immediately. We say (Psalms 44:5), “Command the salvation of Jacob . . .” While pain is also a commandment and a good deed, nevertheless, when we pray “Command the salvation of Jacob . . .” we are asking God to command us with duties associated with salvation. Hence, “In God we have gloried all the day long . . .” (Psalms 44:9), referring to a positive commandment to praise and thank God all day for our salvation.
So long as pain is with us, though, we must accept it upon ourselves with love. Though we may have been convinced that the passage of a month would bring change, and then a month passed with no sign of abatement, we must not let that make us angry, God forbid. We need to know that the Holy Blessed One knows more than we do. He is the Jewish father. He is the heart of all the Jewish people, and the heart knows what is happening to the body and suffers with the whole body.
Now, when looking at the devastation of Judaism and of the worship of God that the pain is causing, we see more than wanton destruction. Every diverse component of Torah and worship that was carved out, fashioned, and invested in our children and grandchildren by our ancestors and ourselves is being systematically ruined and rooted out by the suffering. This is happening everywhere, in matters concerning kosher food, Sabbath observance, mikveh, kinder-cheder, and Jewish education in general. Be very careful and guard yourself against allowing even this to damage your faith by a hair’s breadth in any away at all.
Suffering is God’s commandment, and when it comes to God’s commandments there are statutes and there are judgments. There is pain that comes as a judgment. We can understand its purpose, because we can appreciate the benefit that can be derived from it. But there is also suffering that is a statute, whose purpose is incomprehensible to us—to the contrary, it may appear purposeless, as described above.
This is possibly is why our sages, of blessed memory, said that the Jewish people were redeemed only in the merit of their faith. In Egypt it was obvious that the pain of the exile was an incomprehensible statute. The Jews were sinking, further and further—as far as the fiftieth gate, God forbid—so what possible purpose could there be to the Egyptian exile, when the intention was to raise holy sparks? It was obviously a statute, beyond our ability to comprehend, demanding absolute faith.
While every statute requires the exercise of faith, statutes that are incomprehensible require irrational faith. Only when we bind ourselves with absolute faith to God, in a way that is irrational, can seemingly purposeless suffering be sweetened.
When Moses was told by God to go into Egypt, he said, “But they will not believe me.” (Exodus 4:1) God gave him two signs: The staff that was transformed into a serpent, and Moses’ hand, which became leprous and snowy white. Why did God choose these two particular symbols for His testimony to the Jewish people? From what has been said above we may understand that these two signs were chosen precisely because they are both symbols of the dark side. The serpent is the symbol of evil, while leprosy is a symbol of uncleanness, may the Merciful One protect us. It was precisely because they were symbols of the dark side that through them Israel was able to find its faith. They show that even though the Jews may sink to the lowest level, God may yet raise them up—and still more: that in raising the Jewish people, God will also raise all the holy sparks to their original places.
Here, perhaps, is another hint that God gave Moses: The unclean things, which Moses was to show the Jewish people as symbols of God’s power, were symbols of the causes of suffering—the very suffering that had caused certain individuals to lose their faith in the first place. That Moses could say of these Jews “they will not believe me” indicated a blemish in their faith that was due to the suffering of the exile. If not for this pain people would have been able to see clearly that it is always impossible to comprehend God’s actions, even when the suffering is lifted. His greatness makes it impossible for us ever to know either God or His ways.
While our prayers are to God that He have mercy upon us and redeem us straight away, if, God forbid, things have to continue for another week or another month, we must not let our spirit collapse. Even more importantly, we must not allow even a hint of a blemish to spoil our faith, God forbid.
This is the meaning of “Jacob settled in the area where his father had lived in the land of Canaan.” As Rashi says, Jacob wanted to live in serenity, while God said, “The righteous cannot expect to have peace in this world as well as the world to come.” As well as the simple meaning there is a deeper meaning: While the world to come is the supernal world, it can still tell us something about this world, in which we live now. The righteous want to live in peace in this world; they demand that this very moment be serene and idyllic. So when God refers to the world to come, He is referring not to the afterlife but to the future in this world. The righteous want all good things now, at this moment, and God is saying that at a certain time in the future, things will be serene and idyllic. It is true that God will help, but if it takes another day or another week, we must not let the waiting make us stubborn.
This could be the hint as to why when Jacob came to Egypt and first saw Joseph after many years of separation he recited the Sh’ma, as Rashi describes (Genesis 46:30). From what we have said above, it is understandable. When Jacob saw that the salvation, so long delayed, was so good—for Joseph was no longer a shepherd but Viceroy of Egypt—he realized that not just pain but prayer and the drawing down of salvation also demand that we abandon ourselves to God. So at the moment when Jacob saw Joseph alive he recited the Sh’ma, which is the giving over of the soul to God and the submitting to the yoke of Heaven.