Elliot Cosgrove, PhD December 8, 2012
Given the multiple “New Years” observed by Jews throughout the year – Rosh Hashanah, Tu BiShvat (the Jewish Arbor Day), the first of Nissan – it is not surprising that another such Jewish New Year, Yud Tet b'Kislev (the 19th of Kislev) came and went last Monday, December 3, without much fanfare. To be fair, there is really only one particular segment of the Jewish world which celebrates the day with much fanfare, and that is the Chabad community. It was on this day in 1798, that the founder of the Chabad branch of Hasidism, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, also known as the Alter Rebbe, was released from the Petrapavlovski prison in St. Petersburg after having been arrested on suspicion of treason. The back story of the trumped-up charges remains a rather ugly example of internecine strife in Jewish history. The Mitnagdic community of Vilna falsely accused the Hasidic leader Shneur Zalman of supporting the Ottoman Empire, a charge that the Russian authorities believed, given the Alter Rebbe’s activism on behalf of Jews living in the Ottoman territory of Palestine. Eventually, the charges were dropped and the Alter Rebbe settled in Liady to build his community, the Chabad theology and movement, an effort that continues to grow, please God with strength, through this very day.
Last year I visited the prison in St. Petersburg, which, though cleaned up for tourists, remains a rather dreary reminder of the Alter Rebbe’s treatment at the hands of Czarist Russia – deprivation, torment, physical and mental trials. But if you know the story, then you know that for the Alter Rebbe, it was an ordeal that would be leveraged towards profound spiritual transformation. Because while the Alter Rebbe’s major work, the Tanya, was written prior to his imprisonment, it was his experience in jail that prompted him to realize his spiritual greatness and to disseminate his message widely. Indeed, the Alter Rebbe would later explain, in his darkest moments in prison he was visited by the mystical presence of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezerich, the long since deceased founders of the Hasidic movement. Perhaps, he supposed, the reason for his imprisonment was that there was some defect in his leadership, and his imprisonment was meant to limit his impact. “Not so,” his mystical visitors assured him. They said that Shneur Zalman would duly be released and not only should he, but he must understand his ordeal to have spiritual meaning; he must spread his message with even greater intensity. Thus it was, and the 19th of Kislev, the day of his acquittal and release, became a day of renewed commitment and inspiration. The day represents the possibility of spiritual renewal for the Alter Rebbe, for Chabad, and for every Jew seeking to break through the shackles of our existence.
When we read the story of Joseph, as we begin to do this week, we know it is a narrative that can be read differently every year. The tale of a favored child, a dandy who matures into a compassionate adult. A story of sibling rivalry and reconciliation. A literary vehicle to explain how the children of Israel arrived in Egypt. The first description ever of Jewish communal life in the Diaspora. This year, this week, I am taken by perhaps the most obvious and thus maybe most overlooked part of the Joseph story – his time in prison. First thrown into the pit by his brothers, and then into servitude in the house of Potifar, and then – on trumped-up charges – cast into Pharoah’s jail. According to tradition, it was here that Joseph experienced the lowest point of his life, as the book of Psalms describes, “…his feet in shackles, an iron collar put around his neck.” (Psalm 105) And yet, despite the adversity and imprisonment – not just once, twice or three times, but four times in Genesis 39 – we are we told that throughout it all, God was with Joseph. In each instance, though betrayed by his brothers and then by his master’s wife, though forgotten by all, in all his loneliness Joseph was never alone; God was with him. One cannot help but juxtapose the abiding presence of God in Joseph’s life with the experience of his father Jacob – Jacob who was always surprised to discover that God was in some place that he did not expect. For Jacob’s son Joseph, it was just the opposite. No matter where he was, so was God. No matter how low he was brought, God’s gentle caress, God’s presence, was there to raise him up and give meaning to his travail.
The story of Joseph, the story of the Alter Rebbe – stories of spiritual heroism in the face of incarceration – suggest that for some noble souls throughout history it has been in the very places where the straits are most narrow, that one can also discover an expansion of the soul. Be it Jew or non-Jew, a short or a long time of confinement, a story ending in death or with freedom, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Meir of Rotenburg or Yosef Yitzhok Schneerson, history shows that it is often precisely in these moments – in spite of, or perhaps because of, these hardships – that spiritual uplift is found.
Unlike Joseph or the Alter Rebbe, not every prisoner is fortunate enough to receive a mystical visitor from heaven or a bygone era. But just because the spiritual resources come from within, rather than above, the stories are no less inspiring. On this, the week of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the freedom march on behalf of Soviet Jewry, I think of the memoirs of Natan Sharansky, who in his years in the Soviet gulag experienced what it was to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Despite psychological tormenting by his jailers and isolation from the outside world, he insisted on fighting back, if not physically, then mentally. In his memoir, appropriately entitled Fear No Evil, Sharansky describes how again and again he would play chess in his head, game after game, variation after variation. And how, when another prisoner informed him (through the piping in the toilet) that it was Israel’s independence day, Sharansky put on his cap and stood at attention at the appointed moment of silence, turning in his cell southeast towards Jerusalem. Never once, wrote Sharansky, in all those years, would his hope of “next year in Jerusalem” dissipate. Through all he endured, the pulsating thoughts in his mind, the feelings in his heart, would bring him forward each day making meaning in a world otherwise bereft of hope and humanity.
Just as moving, though less well known, is the account of Jacobo Timerman, the editor of Argentina’s La Opinion, from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, Timerman was brutally tortured by the Argentine military, an ordeal described unsparingly in his account Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. In the clandestine prisons, in the face of anti-Semitic abuse and accusations of Zionist treachery, Timerman clung to his Jewish identity and love of Israel, not due to religiosity (he was thoroughly secular), but again, as an act by which he could maintain his humanity. Asked repeatedly to repudiate his background, tempted by the option of suicide as his only act of defiance, Timerman came to understand that it would be the ability to survive in the fullness of who he was, no matter how numbered his days might be, that would keep him human.
Perhaps more than anyone else, it was Victor Frankl, a man who endured the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi death camps, who provided a blueprint of strength in the face of adversity. No earthly happiness, wrote Frankl, could compensate for the suffering endured. Yet for Frankl, it is the hold that an individual has on his or her inner self, an individual’s “search for meaning,” even in suffering, that differentiates a life of significance from one of doom. For Frankl, for his wife who was murdered in the camps, for millions of others, the choice of life or death was not in their hands. For Frankl and his school of logotherapy, it is the choice we make of assigning meaning to life, even in the most horrific circumstances, wherein lies our ability to endure, to stand undefeated and remain intact in the days we have been granted.
Some of us, like our spiritual heroes, may in times of trouble sense the abiding presence of God in our lives. Please God none of us will face the tribulations of those I have mentioned this morning. But all of us will, inevitably, come face to face with the limitations of what it means to be human, and please God, we will realize that denied the opportunity to shape the length of our days or the circumstance of those days, we can nevertheless will meaning into our existence. I think of the congregant I visited yesterday in the hospital receiving chemotherapy – round after round, week after week, stuck in a hospital room, altogether uncertain about what the future holds – yet absolutely insistent that she surround herself with love, with hope and with meaning. I have never in my life left a person in such fragile circumstances so inspired by the model of fortitude and resilience I encountered. Indeed, no matter what our lot in life, no matter what our station in this world, each one of us has the opportunity to articulate a sense of meaning, of value and of mission in what we do. Which is why, as Martin Luther King once advised:
Even if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” [Lickerman, p.37]
There are no limits to the limitations of our world, and yet each one of us can and must cultivate a sense of meaning within the framework of the lives we have been given.
The story of Joseph falls this week, as it does every year, in the darkest time of the calendar year. The days grow shorter, light becomes scarce, and we are acutely aware that there is far more in this world beyond our control than within it. At this darkening time before the winter solstice, this evening we will as individuals, as families and as a Jewish community begin to celebrate Hanukkah. Among its many meanings, Hanukkah gives us an opportunity to respond to the unavoidable dying of the light. The rabbis teach that the miracle of Hanukkah is not just that the cruse of oil lasted eight days, but that the Maccabees, knowing full well that they did not have enough oil for the days ahead, still went ahead and lit the menorah. Not the Maccabees, not anyone, knows how long a cruse of oil will last. But faith, be it in God or in ourselves, is wrought not by relying on miracles, but in the act of lighting another candle despite the uncertainty, filling each successive night and day with more light, even when – especially when – the days grow darker and darker. Like Joseph, even having descended into the pit, like the psalmist (Psalm 30:11), we remain ever hopeful that, “Our lament [will be] turned into dancing, our sackcloth girded with joy. My whole being singing hymns to you, praising you – O Lord forever.”