How will we get through the next four years? This week’s Torah portion, Vayetzei, offers some answers.
Though there are multiple views within the Jewish community, many people I know are deeply distressed by the results of the presidential election. They are disturbed that a man who freely expresses a range of hateful rhetoric (racist, misogynistic, transphobic and anti-immigrant, for example) was elected once again.
We are extremely worried, in particular, about how the Trump administration will cause suffering among our Latino and transgender brothers and sisters. And we are intensely concerned about Donald Trump’s stated intentions to violate fundamental democratic norms, moving our country in the direction of autocracy.
If what I’ve just described doesn’t reflect how you feel about the election results, please read on anyway. What follows may help you understand those close to you who do feel this way.
For those of us who are deeply troubled and frightened — presumably the majority of Bay Area Jews — how will we navigate our pain, sense of alienation, anger and fear during the next four years?
A small detail in the Jacob story brings us an important piece of wisdom about patience and forbearance.
We know that Jacob, having asked to marry Rachel, was forced to work for Laban for seven years. Then Laban sneaked Leah into the marital bed, after which Jacob had to work another seven years before marrying Rachel. (The text tells us that the years seemed to Jacob “but a few days because of his love for her.” Genesis 29:20) Then it took six more years of labor — a total of 20 — before Jacob could return home and move on with his life as an adult head of a large household.
The Torah’s suggestion that Jacob’s love for Rachel made the time fly by as he waited for her is a beautiful window into what love can be. Nonetheless, how did Jacob orient himself during those many years of being prevented from reaching his own goals?
In Mussar, an ancient Jewish tradition of spiritual development, one key quality of soul to be cultivated is “savlanut.” The word literally means “patience,” as in “This is taking so long! I can’t stand the wait!” But more importantly, Mussar notes that the word “savlanut” shares a Hebrew root with the words for a heavy weight, a burden and suffering.
In this sense, savlanut is not only a quantitative relationship to time, but also an existential quality of bearing the burden of suffering that is an inescapable part of human life. This quality can be conveyed by the strange English word “forbearance.”
Many Jewish texts extol the virtue of patience (in relationship to time) and forbearance (in relationship to life’s challenges). The rabbis are essentially telling us — lest we forget — that in this life, we don’t always get what we want. When we are disappointed or angered by the reality we find ourselves in, we can rage, collapse in despair or try to force our will on life, as if we can achieve any result if we set our minds to it. Then we often collapse in bitter disappointment when, inevitably, we are unable to make life conform to our desires.
Alternatively, along with working to create the life we want, we can cultivate the awareness that there is a way to move through the difficult seasons of life with a measure of grace. My teacher Sylvia Boorstein summarizes this quality in the pithy statement, “It’s not what I wanted. But it’s what I got.”
This kind of attitude can spare us the secondary risks of exhausting ourselves, making ourselves sick or doing harm to relationships when we are in the grips of strong emotions. Many of us have suffered some of these effects during these last few weeks.
This emphatically does not mean avoiding standing up for what we believe in, being complacent when harm is being done to us or to people we love, or tolerating injustice on a societal scale.
We can do all of those things, which I, for one, fully intend to do. But we can protest, push back and step up for justice with fists clenched and hatred in our hearts, or we can do these things grounded in our values, centered in a heart full of love and nourished by the wisdom of our tradition and our community. In this way, we know that we will do what we can and will ally with like-minded others to do what needs to be done, working toward the day when things will get better — and still sleep peacefully through the night.
I imagine that Jacob was practicing savlanut while waiting for Rachel for 14 years and then waiting for his independence for another six. Perhaps he counted the days. Or, as the Torah suggests, the time flew by because he was doing what he needed to do, even having been deceived and deprived of what he wanted. Perhaps he tolerated occasional bouts of frustration and then settled back into the knowledge that he could navigate the challenge with wisdom and grace.
May we use our tradition’s teachings on savlanut as a resource as we make our way through this time. With all of the challenges we will face, may we ground ourselves in love, kindness and justice, and know that we will get through this.