Pain in a Vacuum – Parshat Toledot
I admit I’ve never been pregnant.
I don’t understand the discomfort of carrying a living moving person in my belly for nine months nor the joy of hosting a new life within.
So when I read in this week’s parsha of Rivka’s pregnancy of twins and the difficulty she had with all the jockeying for position that went on inside,1 all I can do is try to understand her situation. But what is really happening with her? The text of the Torah is certainly not just reporting that it was a difficult pregnancy. In addition, one of the most puzzling questions I’ve had with this story is how does the answer she received satisfy her?
The Ohr Hachayim, an 18th century sage, writes that Rivka knew that pregnancies can be difficult. She also knew that some pregnancies end in miscarriage. The pain of this pregnancy, the Ohr Hachayim writes, was so great that she made an assumption that the pregnancy would not come to completion and she would lose the children. She was experiencing, he writes, what Dr. Viktor Frankl would call an existential vacuum. She could accept the pain if there was meaning to it – if a baby would come at the end of the process. “Why am I even pregnant? All of my efforts were for naught” was her cry. It reminds us of a prophecy in Yeshayahu that in better days: “they will not toil for naught.”2 Rivka was so concerned, she went to ask God.
The answer to her cry, the Ohr Hachayim continues, was specific to her question. “You will give birth”, she was told. Yet this is no normal pregnancy of twins. Rather there are two competing nations being born. That is the nature of this difficult pregnancy. There is meaning to your painful pregnancy, they tell her, and it will end with the birth of twins. This answer apparently satisfied Rivka. She now had meaning to her pain and that made the pain bearable. We hear no more about the difficulty.
Dr. Viktor Frankl describes what happens to a person who experiences pain without meaning. Suffering/pain without meaning, he says, equals despair. To put it mathematically, he says, D=S-M. Despair equals suffering without Meaning.3
How often have we experienced pain and suffering in our lives? Were we always successful in finding meaning? Despair has been present at some point of our lives. Often, we don’t know what meaning there is to that pain, certainly not immediately. Rivka experienced that emptiness of meaninglessness to her pain. She at least had the help of prophets to guide her. We are often being asked to be our own prophets to help us through these times.
I am certainly not equipped to to explain anyone’s suffering. We have all experienced pain and suffering. Dr. Viktor Frankl has offered different ways to help find that meaning that we’ve discussed in other posts.
Taking responsibility for our attitude towards our suffering is certainly at the base of the process we are asked to go through. Being our own prophet is a great challenge. Are we interested in that challenge? Would we rather just remain in our despair? Sometimes, the first step is just knowing that there is meaning, and even if we don’t yet know what it is, that can help.
P.S. It has been a couple of years since I last wrote a logoparsha post. I appreciated the feedback. I never expected the kind of following I had. Yet, it was time to take a break. Similarly, I had this idea and I enjoyed sitting down and writing this post today. I don’t know what I will do with future posts but it is nice to reconnect and I am grateful for this opportunity.
Footnotes
- 1. Bereishit 25:22-3
- 2. Yeshayahu 65:23
- 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EIxGrIc_6g&list=PLHhFBC_qutip7B5dsYpAKg3CmCVCp5fdU&index=12 – from around 2:30-3:50
- 4. Picture from ArtSpark
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