December 21, 2024
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Vayeshev
No Finish Line
December 21, 2024 – 20 Kislev 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated.
On the one hand, there is a certain wistful beauty to it. Our children were so young and small and cute. We were so much younger. Our parents were alive, standing with our children, three generations lighting candles. What a blessing.
On the other hand, there can be a certain wistful melancholy to it. Our children are grown and gone and out of the house. We don’t see them every day like we used to. Our parents have passed. We were not only younger back then but also healthier. Before the back pain. Before the hip pointer. Back when we used to be able to run and play tennis whenever we wanted and climb up and down stairs without even thinking about it.
An old photo is a mixed bag. My late father in love used to say: “There are no happy pictures. There are only pictures of happy memories.” The memories are of course happy. We were blessed to have lit candles with our young children and our beloved parents. But the picture is not entirely happy because in the intervening years we have felt the ravages of time in our body and in our soul.
Is there any inoculation against the ravages of time? We cannot stop the worries, stresses and conflicts of daily living. That comes with the human condition. But is there a way to think about our life that minimizes the ravages of time? Our Torah has so much to say here.
The last several weeks have been Jacob’s story. Today’s portion and for the next several weeks we encounter Joseph’s story. But near the end of Joseph’s story, an older and quite ravaged Jacob makes a reappearance.
I want to compare two moments in the Jacob story, Jacob in mid-life and Jacob near the end of his life.
This is Jacob in mid-life: He had just been through a series of grueling ordeals. Anxiety about the reunion with Esau and his 400 soldiers. When that’s over, he does get to breathe easily. His daughter Dina is raped, and his sons visit harsh revenge on the entire town. When that is over, the love of his life, Rachel, dies in childbirth.
That is a lot. And on top of all that, he still has the anxieties of moving back home to Canaan with a big family–a lot of wives, a lot of children, a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Moving, especially moving a family, is one of the great stressors of life, then and now.
And yet, there is this telling moment that speaks to Jacob’s fundamental health, strength and vitality despite going through inordinate trauma. As Rachel lay dying in childbirth, she says that she wants to name the child Ben-Oni, son of my sorrow. Jacob overrules her and names the child Benjamin, son of my strength. Jacob intuits that our lens is self-fulfilling. If we see sorrow, we live sorrow. If we see strength, we live strength.
Contrast this robust moment of Jacob in mid-life with Jacob at the end of his life. When he learns that Joseph is alive after all, he has two conversations that speak to a soul that is in a very different place. When he first sees Joseph, the first thing Jacob says is: “Now I can die, having seen for myself that you are still alive.” A curious comment. Not only is his son Joseph alive. He is thriving. He is the second-most powerful person in Egypt. He is married. He is the father of two children. Jacob is the grandfather of two grandchildren he had never met before. But instead of celebrating this bouquet of blessings, what he offers up is: “Now I can die.”
The second telling conversation is with Pharaoh, who asks Jacob how old are you, and Jacob answers that he is 130, and that the years of my life have been me’at v’raim. few and bad.
Jacob in mid-life, despite the rape of his daughter, the violence of his sons, and the tragic death of his wife, is still able to see Benjamin as son of my strength. Jacob in older age, despite learning that Joseph is alive and thriving and the father of two new grandchildren, cannot evade his own gloom and doom. If we live waiting for death, the ravages of time show in our body and soul.
So is there an inoculation against the ravages of time?
I was recently listening to a podcast where Andy Stanley was interviewing a man named John Maxwell. John Maxwell is among the preeminent leadership gurus in the world He has written over 70 books on leadership, which have sold over 35 million copies. He is 77 years old.
He said something in that podcast that really struck me. He said he does not believe in crossing the finish line. Because when you cross the finish line, you are finished. He never wants to be finished. Rather, he believes that in every age and stage of our life, every day we can draw a breath, a healthy question is how can I grow today?
At 77 he dreams of pivoting to a whole new area of book-writing. His first 70-plus books were about leadership. He now wants to write about personal growth. Since he believes in metrics, he has quantified his aspiration: He wants to write another 13 books about personal growth.
13 books. Why 13? He is 77. What is that? Andy Stanley does not ask why 13, and John Maxwell does not say. But I have been thinking about it. And his 13 is the whole thing. His 13 is the key to everything he is suggesting. What does 13 books starting at age 77 mean? 13 means he is always going to be working on something. 13 means that every morning as he wakes up, he will work on something that causes him to grow and stretch. 13 means no finish line.
I don’t think he is saying never retire. I think he is saying never give up on purposeful activity. It’s not about a perpetual paycheck. It’s about perpetual engagement. For some their 13 is developing a killer Mahjong or bridge game. For some their 13 is becoming a master knitter. For some their 13 is reading all the books they’ve always wanted to read but never been able to. For some their 13 is spending more time with grandchildren and great grandchildren.
John Maxell’s 13 means that when his time is up, he wants to be running his race, writing his book, leaving it all out on the field—and not languishing while he waits for his end to come. No finish line.
These categories of John Maxwell map onto Jacob. Jacob in mid-life, full of struggle but full of spirit, was still growing and still living and still capable of seeing and saying son of my strength, Benjamin. Jacob at the end, even though he had so much to live for, in his own mind felt he had crossed the finished line, so he was finished.
Coda to the story. Jacob wasn’t finished. He just felt that he was finished, so he lived with diminished energy. In fact, we know that Jacob lived another 17 years. He spent years 130-147 in Egypt, with his family reunited, with Joseph alive and new grandchildren. But the ravages of time had invaded Jacob’s soul. He could no longer feel joy. He left 17 good years on the table.
The good news is that we do not have to do that. We can learn from Jacob not to do that. John Maxwell shares that a question he often asks people is: what is the greatest life lesson you have ever learned? He points out that in virtually every case, the greatest life lesson flows from a failure, an adversity, a setback, that somebody had, which caused them pain, even shame, at the time, but from which they were able to emerge. He never hears: I had this success, I had that success, I was crushing it, and I learned this great life lesson. Rather, he hears: I had this failure, this painful set-back, but I learned a lot about my life, and a lot about my character, and I was able to go forward with greater strength.
Which means that when we are in a funk as beset our ancestor Jacob those last 17 years, when we feel that we are finished, we do not have to be. Our greatest life lessons flow from how we process our pain, even our despair. So if we find ourselves in Jacob’s hard last 17-year chapter—and we can find ourselves in that funk in any season of our life—let’s redeem the pain by extracting a great life lesson that will enable us to emerge with ever greater strength and ever greater purpose.
Hanukkah is coming. The greatest gift that we can give ourselves, and our loved ones, is no finish lines. What new learning, what new chapter, what new energy, what new resolve, will be your gift? Shabbat shalom.