Darkness is a Hallway: Transforming Suffering to Strength

D’var Torah Parshat Bo 2018

I recently discovered an incredible project/product called “Empathy Cards” which are designed by artist Emily McDowell. These empathy cards, which are physical cards you mail or give to a friend or relative in situations of serious illness and loss, are “what to say when you don’t know what to say.” They offer words of being with instead of fixing. Words of offering presence instead of answers.

Empathy cards are a welcome replacement for a cliche Hallmark card. Even more so, a welcome replacement for the trite and unhelpful — sometimes unintentionally hurtful — things we might say when we feel unsure about what to say when confronting a person in pain.

You can buy a card that says “There is no good card for this” or “Please let me be the first person to punch the person who says this happened for a reason.” You can also buy one that says: “This Darkness isn’t a dead end. It’s a hallway. Keep going.”

This week, we read Parshat Bo. After a period of plagues and fear, the Israelites are told to get up and go. In a classically Jewish move, the torah doesn’t just picture them starting to pack their bags. Rather, at this very moment, the torah teaches that more commandments are given.

Among those commandments is a twice repeated reference to the commandment for Tefillin,* the boxes we place on our forearm and our forehead, with leather straps that hang down and that we tie ritually around our arm.

A question arises: why at this moment of standing on the cusp of freedom? Why receive the mitzvah of tefillin at this particular moment? What is its connection to the Exodus story?

Commentators through the centuries speak to this issue. Many, including Rav Kook, point to the connection between the “z’eroa n’tuya” (outstretched arm) and “yad hazah” (strong hand) of God which guided the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery into freedom.

While I like this read, perhaps there is something more here. Something on the level of “remez” — symbolic interpretation — that connects this ritual to the transformative moment of transition the people are experiencing. Ten days ago, when Cantor Lisa and Naomi (Naomi Less of our Hiddur Band) met to prepare for today, we studied the parsha as we always do. Naomi observed that the leather of the traditional tefillin is made from the same material and even resembles the whips of the Egyptian slave masters. How uncanny that they would be made of the same material! What if the tefillin represent the act of taking what has hurt us and transforming it into a blessing? Of taking our pain and transforming it into our strength?

In this read, tefillin then come to be more than a reminder of the Divine’s role in freeing the people. They are reminders of our role in bringing about our own freedom, going from darkness to light. In this light, tefillin become symbols of resilience. Symbols that remind us that WE have the power to take hold of our past and reshape the way it defines us. To take what has hurt us and transform it, even wrest a blessing from it.

Each of us have our mitzrayim/mitzrayims — narrow places. Some of us have a bit of tzores (difficulty) and some of us have more than a lifetime’s supply. Yet, if our ancestors could take the objects that caused them pain and suffering and turn them into a powerful holy experience, then can we?

At this point, you may be thinking “that’s beautiful and inspiring.” Or you may be thinking “yeah right.” It is often much easier to talk about taking our suffering and making it into a strength than it is to live it. Many of us, myself included, are still holding pain and suffering very close to feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy. Sometimes if we scratch the surface, we find justified rage. Most of us know from personal experience or the experience of those close to us “post-traumatic stress” or post-traumatic anxiety. We understand that pain and suffering can stay with us for a long time.

Doctor Steven Taylor writes in “Psychology Today” that there is also such a thing as “Post-Traumatic Growth.” Post traumatic growth** is a term coined by Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun that describes those times when a person triumphs over the past, not simply coping or adapting but finding new inner strength and spiritual awareness.

What lies in the difference between the two post traumatic reactions? Research is ongoing but it seems from what he says and from my own experience that going through the darkness is often a prerequisite for growth. In fact, according to some research, it is sometimes necessary for a person’s basic values and ideas to be challenged and ultimately re-aligned in order to move on the other side with strength and renewed faith and motivation.

This brings us back to the Israelites. Right before they are free and right before they receive the commandments comes darkness: the physical darkness of the plague of darkness and the spiritual darkness of the final plague when death and suffering are all around. On that night, the enslaved Israelites have to make their first ever choice: to put up the blood on the doorposts or not; to take a leap of faith or to stay in darkness. Others got to choose and come along too. They choose how they want the past to define them, how they want to move forward.

The other thing we learn from the Israelites about transforming pain into suffering is the fact that this kind of growth is not linear. They understand the profundity of freedom for about 5 minutes until they want to turn away. They get it and then they forget. And then forget again.

It’s not that we have an insight, reach spiritual bliss, and then we are done. Transforming our pain into strength is an ongoing, lifelong process. It takes awareness and intention and a willingness to be with what’s hard, to accept and to seek out the blessing and discover our own strength. There is no timeline. And there may be some pains and hurts we can never recover from — and that’s ok also. We can still find in those places strength and compassion. Yet, having the ancient Israelites as an example, we recognize the hope for us to find a blessing, the potential that we can transform suffering into strength. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday.

To close, I take us back to the Empathy Cards I mentioned at the beginning. There is nothing to fix, rather to be with. It is not that everything happens for a reason. In fact, we want to be the first one who punches the person who says this to us while we are in pain. Yet, this teaching on Bo reminds us: “Darkness isn’t a deadend- it’s a hallway. Keep going.” We may yet find a blessing in that transformation.

• A note that Rashbam also reads these passages symbolically. They are not tefillin per say, but ideas that we should burn in our brains.
• I found out after this d’var torah that one of my congregants, Diane Cole, has been cited for her work on Post-Traumatic growth.