CAN THERE BE HOLINESS (and a Reason for Thankfulness)
IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERING?

(Courtesy: Rabbi Paul Kipnes )

Our ancient teacher, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev (1740-1810) illuminates the contradictory emotions welling up inside of a suffering Rebecca - she simultaneously wonders if she is being punished for her sinfulness by God (the Ar"i says that righteous women suffer no pain in childbirth - yeah, right!). Rabbi Jonathan Slater interprets Kedushat Levi’s insights:

We can understand it in this way. All people experience suffering, and perhaps women – through childbearing – even more so. That generates the fundamental human inquiry: why do I suffer? We probe and inquire, we analyze and assess, all in the effort of coming to an answer. We try to plumb the nature of suffering and to know its source and meaning. Rebecca did just that, and found herself boxed in a corner. She had two theories to explain her suffering, but they turned out to be contradictory in her own experience. She was stymied, almost to the point of despair, of giving up on life.

Levi Yitzhak, through this lesson, offers a response: suffering arises from misunderstanding the nature of existence. It comes from seeing a world divided between holiness and impurity, between good and evil, between nation and nation. Suffering arises from participating in the generation of further conflict and opposition, in setting what is in contention with what we want, expect, fear. The way out of suffering is not through reasoning, through dissecting, through analysis; is not through seeking explanations. Rather, it is indeed through turning to God, where oppositions do not exist, where only good prevails.

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