In the Hebrew calendar, today is the first day of the month of Adar. In Judaism, new months are always a cause for celebration. Adar in particular is the happiest month because the holiday of Purim, when Haman’s plans to destroy the Jews were foiled brings to awareness, year after year that everything can turn around. God has His hidden ways to save us from our enemies.
For me the day has a tinge of sadness to it as well. It marks the day that my close friend Rivkah and her family, together with seven other families lost a loved one in the murderous terror attack on the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Avraham David was and will forever remain sixteen years old, as Rivkah continues to maintain a close connection with his friends who keep getting older as the years go by.
Today also happens to be the day I’ve gotten to pages 107-110 in The Doctor and the Soul where Frankl writes about suffering.
Practically speaking, it doesn’t make sense to grieve over a loved one or to repent for wrongdoing. What’s past is past. Why bring it up again? Yet no one will deny the importance of the grieving process and of feeling in our minds the presence of someone who is no longer physically with us. In repentance as well there is meaning to recalling the past, because on a moral plane the process of evaluating who we’ve been and who we want to be is transformative.
You can medicate yourself into oblivion, refusing to accept it. That still won’t make it go away. The more you think about how this should not have happened, how life is arbitrary and unfair, the more fiercely the agony will entrench itself in your thoughts. The more you try to fight reality, the more you will feel like its victim.
We don’t ask to suffer but suffering has meaning. The meaning that we can squeeze out of suffering is what Frankl calls the ‘fruitful tension’ between what ‘is’ and what ‘ought not to be.’ He writes: “In suffering from something we move inwardly away from it, we establish a distance between our personality and this something. As long as we are still suffering from a condition that ought not to be, we remain in a state of tension between what actually is on the one hand and what ought to be on the other hand. And only while in this state of tension can we continue to envision the ideal.” (p. 107-108)
By distancing yourself from what’s wrong, you get in touch with what you do want. Your suffering turns into a hope and a prayer. The suffering makes you aware of the evil that caused it and this brings a longing for a world where there is no more suffering.
The paradox of Purim and the month of Adar is that God can turn everything around in the blink of an eye. We believe in an ultimate power that runs the world. True inner joy is not a matter of fleeting happiness but a sense of security and a stubborn trust that despite what looks otherwise, the world was created with a good purpose in mind and is moving towards a good purpose.
It’s not only God that turns everything around. We too, turn everything around when we find meaning in our suffering.
Through suffering we become aware of what’s wrong and we come into partnership with the ultimate power-source to ‘right’ it. This is the source of our celebration.