My grandmother Ruth Lewis of blessed memory loved to read. She passed that love to my Mom who passed it down to me. However, Grandma Ruth was not patient – she liked to turn to the last few pages of the book, read them, relieve the pressure of not knowing how things shape up, then return to the opening pages. This way of reading makes me think about how we deal with unknowns, like, who’s going to win in Doha?
The world’s been watching soccer in Qatar the past week – sure wins, upsets, who will make it to the next round?
But except for someone who’d like to cheat at sports betting, do we really want to know what is going to happen next? Isn’t the drama about wondering whether my team will win, lose, draw, stay or go back home, as opposed to knowing how things turn out in the end, or rather, the existential level, knowing things actually do get tied up and closed out in the end, regardless of whether a certain team goes home with the trophy. If nothing appears to be proceeding toward a conclusion of any kind, would we like that type of competition also?
In a more general way, we might ask do we prefer stories that have a known ending, or do we prefer stories whose ending or resolution remains beyond the pages of a book or the running time of a movie or TV show?
This is a question for us to think about today as we read the story of Jacob who runs away from home, all alone, walking through the country side as day turns into night. And let’s remember Jacob is not ish sadeh, an outdoors person, like his brother Esau. Jacob is an ish tam yoshev ohalim, a simple person who stays in the tents. Esau is a hunter. Jacob, according to our Sages, studies Torah in the ‘tents’ of Shem and Ever, kind of a primordial yeshivah.
The simple student finds himself in the middle of nowhere. Having left Beersheva, he stops in a place called ‘hamakom’, the place, makes a sleeping spot with rocks and lies down. Everything sounds peaceful, but he is in the dark, alone except for God’s Presence. And even then, after the dream is over, after God promises to protect him along the way, and after God promises he will one day return home, after all that, Jacob is still uncertain about the future.
He makes a vow, “If God protects me, and feeds me and clothes me, and returns me home…then Ado-nai will be my God.”
God tells him what will happen, but he cannot accept it. It may be for him, for us too, knowing things will resolve themselves could be just as disconcerting as not knowing. If we know the result, we may question every thought and action about whether we’re helping events proceed to the result. Or alternatively, we may over-relax and switch off our awareness and turn into a robotic version of ourselves. Jacob does not trust God’s prophecy for him. In a way, he’s just like his grandfather and grandmother who both laugh when God promises them they’ll have a child at their advanced age.
This conundrum is clearer if we assume for a moment the result or end is not what we are hoping for – how could we possibly live knowing events will lead us to pain, suffering, or worse?
Many years ago Rabbi Edward Feld, a mentor of mine, offered me some advice when I was going through a difficult time. He counseled me to embrace the uncertainty, to accept I only had a certain amount of control. What I think he was really saying to me was ‘Trust yourself’ – You know what’s right for you, and no matter what happens you will have choices to make. Make the best choice you can and, like Jacob, keep going on.
I’m not sure if it was at this time that I added a moment of prayer to my daily schedule. Every day at noon my phone notifies me to “Say the serenity prayer”. I wonder if the serenity prayer would have made Jacob feel better and trust in God’s promise. It does not always work for me, but it’s there. I suspect many of you know it, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Let’s come back to the question, do we prefer knowing the ending, or do we prefer discovering through the unknown?
Both preferences can be challenging. We may be happy to know the ending, but unhappy when we find out how we’ll get there. And we may be unhappy to be in the dark, but the end may light us up and raise us up.
This is why our tradition calls us to trust in God, because only God has the ability to see time in both directions, and in a world we help to with God’s Presence with our prayers, our Shabbat spirit, knowing and not knowing the result, the end, the resolution are equally unimportant, even irrelevant – only kindness, compassion, community, and the search for holiness matter.
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