Dedicated to the memory of Gavriella Bader, z”l, a caring friend to my children and a beautiful human being. May her memory be a blessing, as her life was a blessing.
Yaakov is inconsolable at what he thinks is his son Yosef’s death. His children come to comfort him and vayema’en lehitnahem, “he refuses to be comforted.” He mourns like this for many years, declaring that he will go down to his grave in grief.
What are some situations in life that evoke this type of inconsolable state? Maybe you or someone you know has undergone a difficult loss or life challenge, or maybe you remember a time when the pain around some hardship simply did not release for a very long time, and maybe it is still there. Maybe there is an old wound inside you whose cause you don’t necessarily even know, and there is pain there like a pool of stagnant water, never draining and releasing, somehow always there, even if you don’t feel it at every moment. Or maybe there is a physical ache or a chronic condition that is always there in the background. Or maybe there are certain facts about the world or about history that you feel inconsolable about, that are simply impossible to digest and be comforted over.
It is a little like being stuck in a pit with no way to get out. Yaakov was stuck in such a pit. The brothers threw Yosef in a pit, but it is Yaakov who remains there. Yosef was taken out and moved forward, released the pain and created for himself a successful life. Yaakov, on the other hand, Yaakov in his grief was stuck in that pit. The very pit the brothers meant for Yosef ended up trapping Yaakov.
It is also possible that part of this syndrome, both in Yaakov and in ourselves and in any one else we know, it is also possible that part of this syndrome is due to intergenerational trauma. When part of you is stuck so unrelentingly in pain, it is a little like being bound up, with no recourse, no way to untie the knot of suffering. Perhaps Yaakov inherited this from Yitzhak, who was indeed bound up in the akedah, bound up with no way of undoing himself, helpless to unlock his own suffering. Yaakov may have inherited this bound-upness so that he was predisposed to getting mired in a grief that would not release.
So here is the question – we see what happened with Yaakov, and we know this happens in ourselves and others. What can we do in such situations? How can we learn to be with the inconsolable?
At the very end of the description of Yaakov’s relentless grief, the Torah says – vayevk oto aviv. “His father cried over him” (Genesis 37:35). It is an odd thing to say after all the other descriptions of mourning, and, since the Torah doesn’t name the identity of either the father or the son in this phrase, Rashi suggests that we read the crying here at the end as referring not to Yaakov but to Yitzhak. Yitzhak was crying over his son Yaakov’s great distress. After the whole description of Yaakov’s relentless grief over Yosef, we hear now about Yitzhak, Yaakov’s father, standing and watching the terrible grievous state his son has entered and crying over it.
Vayevk oto aviv. I think this one phrase may help us find a way to be with the pain. It implies that there is someone else on the outside who actually sees very clearly the suffering and is crying over it. We can become the Yitzhak, the onlooker, the person who sees the intensity of the hurt and cries. We can do this for others, and we can also do it for parts of ourselves, taking a step back from the pain inside and looking at it as if from the outside, as if it is our child, and weeping over it.
I want to play with this phrase a little: vayevk oto aviv, “his father cried over him.” The word oto is written without a vav so that we can easily change the vowels to read: ito – vayevk ito aviv – his father cried not over him, but with him. What Yitzhak did, upon seeing his son in such distress, not knowing how else to help him, was to cry with Yaakov. We can turn towards both other people and our own parts in this way– we can cry ito, “with him,” with the pain inside us that will not let go, with the people around us who suffer inconsolable and incomprehensible losses, with the world and its tragedies. There are indeed many things in the world and inside ourselves to which the only answer is to cry with them; what they are asking for is simply this company. Perhaps eventually, as we cry, there may be some release, some undoing of the stuckness, loosening of the bonds. But first we need to do this step with all our hearts – veyevk ito – to simply cry with him, cry with each other, cry with our own parts that hold such unbearable burdens, cry with the world that is at times so impossibly and relentlessly broken.
And maybe when we are vayevk ito, when we cry with one another, maybe then we also draw down Another to cry with us and hold us. Looking again at this phrase – vayevk ito aviv – who is aviv, his father, here? Since the father is not named, perhaps it can apply not just to Yaakov or to Yitzhak, but also to the original Parent, to Avinu shebashamayim, our Parent in heaven. When we reach this point of inconsolability, there is only One who can truly hold our pain. Eyn lah menachem, “she has none to comfort her” (Lamentations 1:2), we say of the destroyed Jerusalem. When we are in that place of eyn lah menachem, the place that Yaakov was in, where indeed none could comfort him, still there is One who can comfort us: anokhi, anokhi hu menakehmkhem, “It is I, it is I, who am your comforter,” God says in Yeshayahu (Isaiah 51:12). When there is no one else to comfort, there is this One, this presence that is always available to us, crying with us and keeping us company. There is something large enough and strong enough to hold even this impossible pain.
In times of mourning, we call God hamakom, the Place, or perhaps the Space, or the Spacious One. Hamakom yenakhem, we say. The Spacious One comforts. In our times of inconsolability, what we need is spaciousness; we need to know and feel that there is this larger space around us that is so vast and so loving that it can hold our most unbearable burdens, a space so wide that nothing is too weighty to fit here. Nothing is too hard, too impossible, too heavy, too sad, to be held here, by the love of this One. As endless and relentless as the pain is, so, too, is this Place, so, too is the endlessness of the love of this place, so too is the endlessness of its capacity to hold what is difficult. We can breathe in some of this hamakom space inside ourselves, taking a deep breath and making the space inside a little larger, inviting the divine presence into ourselves so that whatever is inconsolable can relax and be held in spaciousness.
As we learn to invite the hamakom space inside ourselves, we can also offer it to others, to hold the space open for their pain, too There are moments when we as humans cannot provide the comfort ourselves, but we can become vessels for this hamakom energy, to trust and to help others trust that there is something larger than us that can indeed hold what feels impossible to bear.
Returning to ourselves and to the places of stuckness inside us, to the pools of stagnant pain that we sometimes carry, perhaps, over time, as we learn to cry with those places and invite in God to help us hold them, perhaps, over time, the tears and the air and the divine spaciousness, perhaps those substances in some incomprehensible way begin to work their magic and loosen the bonds of the bound-up ones inside us, so that they can untangle, unbind, dissolve and release. Tatir tzerurah, we say of God on Erev Shabbat – you, God, are the one who can undo the bound up one. Tatir tzerurah. Come unbind us, unbind the places of stuckness, the places where pain has pooled inside us for a very long time, like Yaakov in his inconsolable grief. Come cry with us and relieve us, be with us in our darkest moments so that we can be with others in their darkest moments and together unbind the knots that tie up each of us and the world at large.
Please, God, may it be so. Tatir tzerurah, unbind Yaakov’s bonds of relentless anguish, and unbind our own. Help us to know how to cry together and how to invite you to cry with us and to hold us all in your endless spaciousness and love.
המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים
May the Spacious One bring comfort to all those who are mourning among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
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