Parshat Bo - "The Darkness of Personal Problems"
Rabbi Gerald L. Zelizer

Ok, so the psychiatrist can get away with telling his friend who asked him, "How can you sit listening to people's problems ten hours each day?" Who listens? But a rabbi can't - he/she does not have the luxury of not listening to those he counsels because his relationship and care for those suffering is not an hour, but a lifetime. A significant segment of a rabbi's week is devoted to the counseling of individuals who bring in problems of various types. The issues, in the order I hear them, consist of excessive grief therapy; the alienation of children and parents; marital strain. And, of course, in this economy, anxiety over jobs, and finances.

To be of service in such instances one must be first a good listener. The rabbi must hear what the other person is saying. As importantly he must understand what remains unsaid. In many instances the issue is too complicated for the rabbi to help with. In those cases a list of psychiatrists and psychologists who have had success with other congregants are useful for referrals. For example, in the current economic situation a good social worker or family agency know of multiple resources, many governmental, that rabbis do not. In these instances, the rabbi's function is to refer.

But when it is a matter which the rabbi can help with, how can he help? Not just be to hear the problem, nor even to solve the problem, for in the last analysis the solution can only be found by the person who is experiencing the issue. I find that the value of an able, rabbinic, non psychiatric counselor is to logically and clearly analyze with an individual ultimate courses of action which are available to him/her in the face of a problem, but which he/she because of his subjective involvement in the issue might not readily see.

In reading over this Sidrah of this week, and especially the Rabbinic commentary on it, I ran across a comment which is useful to human problem solving. You all remember the ninth plague in Egypt, "HOSHECH" - "darkness" - during the daylight hours. The language of the Torah in describing this darkness is unusual. It says "There was a thick darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness "VAYAMESH HOSHECH" - a darkness "which could be felt." The rabbis were curious about the odd phrase "VAYAMESH HOSHECH" - "Darkness which could be felt." Darkness is not felt, but sensed. They observed that the darkness that you and I normally experience at night is simply the absence of light. The darkness though which existed in Egypt was "BERIAH MEYUCHEDET HEE" - "it was a unique creation for that moment in history, and not just the absence of light." And that is what the Torah means by "darkness which could be felt."

So let's get back to personal problem solving. In personal darkness too, many problems are about the temporary absence of light. Others though are so lasting that they seem a special, horrendous creation in our lives.

Successful living then is the ability to distinguish between those problems which are only temporary absence of light and those which are "BERIAH MEYUCHEDET HEE" - "a special creation" - overwhelming darkness which is relentless. Mature living is to expend our energies on the latter and not the former. Sometimes in living through problems of family, of finances, of children, of spouses, it is difficult to distinguish between the two. Let me suggest three "ATZOT TOVOT" practical advice which I have gleaned over the years which I think can guide us to distinguish between the two kinds of personal darkness.

To begin with, many times a problem which seems to us to be "BERIAH MEYUCHEDET" - "a special creation" is so severe because we have overlooked alternatives. We see only one avenue to solve the issue. As just one example. There are individuals who confess to me about their inability to keep up in Hebrew with this religious service - to the extent that they either space out or walk out. That handicap becomes to some Jews "BERIAH MEYUCHEDET HEE" - "real cultural darkness," impeding their religious prayer participation. That apprehension itself causes the problem to expand psychologically. But there are alternatives. For example, I always advise that if one cannot follow this whole worship experience in Hebrew, one technique is simply to read the first few lines and last lines in each paragraph as the Hazzan proceeds. You will find over the years that the beginning and the ending come closer. I myself learned to "daven" that way as a child.

A second suggestion about problems which I might give is that sometimes the passage of time will diminish the importance which the problem has in our eyes, either because new facts come to the surface, because we willy-nilly get engrossed in other activities in life, or sometimes the problem will solve itself. Of course the approach is double-edged, the passage of time can sometimes make us accustomed to live with the problem, numb to it, rather than solving it. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this is the case when it is not, yet neither should we be impatient to seize upon the immediate gravity of a problem without seeing what happens to it after the passage of time.

There is a third and final insight from our religious tradition to personal problem solving. In the span of a lifetime it is logical that by the law of averages each of us will run in to our share of good and bad moments. To brood on them is futile. To claim that we get an overdose of those in bad moments is to engage in self pity. What mature religious people should realize is that simply by the law of averages we are bound to run in to those bad moments, but to save the law of averages can return us into the good moments. The believing individual says in the word of the Talmud "KISHEM SHEMEVARECH AL HATOV, MEVARECH AL HARA" - "As we bless the good we bless the bad." Bless the bad? How can that be? Perhaps that statement means that if you become accustomed to bless the good, the bad will not sting so much! We retrain our eyes and heart, to those blessings in our lives that we still enjoy instead of lamenting those that we don?t enjoy. This is not to deny the bad. It is to put the bad in a larger perspective.

In closing, one of the many human stories from the Madoff theft debacle. A story not of the foundations and organizations which lost serious money, but of an individual who was nearly wiped out. You probably never heard of Burt Ross. I never heard of him either. Until I read about him in the press. Burt Ross was the former mayor of Fort Lee who now owns a real estate firm. Mr. Ross became Fort Lee's mayor in 1972 at the age of 28, served through 1975 and once owned thirteen buildings. Over the years he sold eleven of them and invested his proceeds directly with Mr. Madoff's company. Mr. Ross said that he lost five million dollars in the scandal, the bulk of his net worth. Tragic, sad, and we can each feel his desperation. Certainly there are many other individual stories like that. But what impressed me is what Mr. Burt Ross said afterwards. "I felt very little anger during this whole thing, until I started reading about those elderly people who have been affected." Said Mr. Ross who is semi-retired at 65, "But for me it is not the end of the world. You realize that most of what we do is more luxury than necessity. You cut back on vacations and eating out - that's not a tragedy." Mr. Ross emphasized that he would simply go back to work full time to make enough money to retire. I'm not sure that I could have reacted in a similar sanguine fashion if I had been the victim of this Ponzi theft! What a response from Burt Ross! What he was saying was that "BERIAH MEYUHEDET HEE" - overwhelming financial darkness at a late stage in his life,- was transformed into "HOSHECH MAMASH" - "ordinary darkness." He found an alternate approach to the problem beyond bitterness and anger. Through his attitude, Mr. Burt Ross lives the insight of our rabbis on the nature of "HOSHEEH" in today's Parshah.