Lately, I’ve been thinking about patterns. Not visual or tactile patterns – the kind that we see on wallpaper, on tablecloths or in the design of our clothing. The patterns on my mind are the ones that are less concrete; invisible in fact to the naked eye. They pervade our day to day lives, and they have a great deal to do with how we function within them. Do you ever procrastinate, for example?! Or are you the get-those-items-on-the-to-do-list-done-yesterday type? Do you make lists at all? Are we morning people, or night owls? Do we tend to make decisions quickly, or to paraphrase writer David Sedaris, do we precede every action with ten years of discussion? Do we hold feelings in, or blurt them out? And onward.
Then there are the larger patterns. The ones that have less to do with how we’re driven hour-to-hour, and are more about the overall narrative. We can’t see these patterns either, but oh, how badly we try to discern them. We long for the trajectory of our lives to make sense – to be able to look back at where we’ve been and see the pattern – the guiding wisdom that got us from there to here. All the retrospective reasons why events “had to happen” in the way they did – even the painful ones. The pull of a coherent story line is that powerful.
We felt its power several Torah portions ago when Joseph revealed his true identity to his brothers, bringing their years of estrangement to an end. Before these astonished brothers could say a word, Joseph drew them close and said to them, in effect: “It’s all right. Don’t reproach yourselves for what you’ve done. I see now that God’s hand was in everything that’s happened – how I was sent here to Egypt ahead of you to ensure your survival.” In this one moment, the pattern of Joseph’s life falls into place for him – the terror of his time in the pit, the loneliness of his exile from his family – he sees everything as part of the whole – things that, as we might put it “had to happen” – in order for him to come to this point of clarity. Suddenly, even Joseph’s suffering makes sense to him.
Fast forward to the opening of this week’s Torah portion, Va’Era. Here too, there are elements of our story within which we strain to see the pattern. In verse 5, God assures Moses that He has taken heed of the suffering of the enslaved Israelites, and that liberation is soon to come. Now, did this have to take God 400 years? The Torah never tells us, leaving us to wrestle with the situation instead. What about the plagues to come? Did so much suffering for Israelite and Egyptian alike have to precede their eventual freedom?
And what about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart after each plague stopped, causing him to renege on his promise to let the Israelites go? This better turn out to be some pattern, to justify what a hard story it’s turning out to be!
Here are some possible responses to such questions:
Freedom would taste even sweeter to the Israelites for their having known so many years of servitude.
All these devastating plagues “had to” happen in order for God’s power to be truly seen and believed, in a land where multiple gods ruled the day.
Such events could only take place over a period of time – thus the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart until the worst plague of all.
There is truth in these responses, and more than a little comfort in that they allow us to organize these things in a way that allows us to handle them.
Years ago during a summer chaplaincy program, a man I’ll never forget looked at me from his hospital bed, before the operation that would amputate his leg and said: “I know there’s a reason for everything.”
And I never would have presumed to take that comfort from him. But I’ll be honest: I’m not so sure. Actually… I am. In some ways I envy his belief but I don’t share it. I don’t believe in a reason for everything. I do believe there can be meaning in what is, but that is an approach that cannot be forced. Inspiring as it is to see a pattern, a grand design, it’s not always possible.
Did all that suffering, did all those plagues, have to be the road this story took?
We can’t know if it had to be. We only know that it was.
And we work with what is on the page – and with what is in the crafting of our own lives – not really knowing if it’s all going to make sense, or if every single thing that happens will reveal itself as part of a pattern. Like those who came before us though, we never stop asking questions as we go back to work with what is, over and over again.
And if there’s a pattern anywhere, it’s here: in the fact that we never stop arguing, hoping, and wrestling what is into something better.
Shabbot Shalom,
Rabbi Rebecca Gutterman
