If I were in his place, I would have lost it. Completely lost it.
Yaakov made a deal with his uncle, Lavan, that he would work for him as a shepherd for seven years – a very, very long time – in exchange for the privilege of marrying Lavan’s daughter, Rachel. This was already not exactly a fair deal, but Yaakov happily agreed, due to his love for Rachel. But then, when the long-awaited wedding night arrived, Lavan played a trick on him. After seven years of devoted service and hard work, Yaakov was fooled. Lavan brought Rachel’s sister, Leah, to Yaakov instead of Rachel.
Yaakov, understandably, was upset. He protested to Lavan, who said, “Ok, you can have Rachel, too. You can marry her next week, and then work for me for another seven years.”
If this or anything remotely similar to this would have happened to any of us, myself included, we would have flipped. Another seven years!? Lavan played a cruel trick to get another seven years of free labor out of Yaakov. And how did Yaakov react? He said, “Ok.” He just went along with it. He knew there was no way out, so he just accepted the situation.
How did he do this? How did he accept this gross injustice so calmly? And what lesson is there for us?
Esav’s Fatigue
Let’s turn back a few pages, to the beginning of Parashat Toledot, to the story of Esav’s sale of the birthright to his younger brother, Yaakov.
Esav returned home from a long day of hunting and found Yaakov preparing a stew. He asked Yaakov to feed him some of the food, and Yaakov agreed – but on condition that Esav sell the privileges of the birthright. Esav agreed without a second thought, and Yaakov promptly fed him.
At first, it might seem that Yaakov acted here slyly and inconsiderately, taking unfair advantage of his brother. We might have expected Yaakov to happily share his food with his brother without asking anything in return – certainly without asking for something as precious as the birthright!
The commentaries explain, however, that Yaakov had no choice. Sometimes, we are forced to do something uncomfortable and less-than-ideal. Yaakov would have certainly preferred to have been given the birthright, the status of spiritual heir to Avraham and Yitzchak, without having to demand it before giving Esav food. But he was forced into this situation because of what was at stake. He recognized the vital importance of ensuring that Esav would not have the birthright.
So what was it that led Yaakov to this very difficult decision? Why did he feel compelled to do something so “un-Yaakov-like” and demand the birthright in exchange for food?
The Torah gives us a clue when it describes Esav’s condition when he returned home from the field: והוא עייף – “he was tired.” Rashi explains this to mean that Esav had committed that day the worst imaginable sins – sins like murder and adultery. We must wonder, what does fatigue – והוא עייף – have to do with sin?
The answer is that to be a Jew, to belong to Hashem’s special nation, accepting the challenges, obligations and responsibilities this entails, one cannot be “tired.” There is no room for fatigue. Statements like “this is too hard for me” and “I just can’t handle this” cannot be in our lexicon.
This is why Rashi – and Yaakov – took Esav’s “fatigue” so seriously, and understood that it reflected something much deeper and more significant. To be part of Am Yisrael, we need to come up with the strength to persevere, to continue working and struggling even in challenging situations. When Yaakov saw Esav fatigued, he realized that Esav cannot produce Hashem’s special nation. This special nation has to demand from itself excellence, the highest standards of achievement. The father of this nation cannot have the word עייף associated with him at all. There’s no room for that. Yaakov realized that if Esav was עייף, then he needed to take the birthright from him, even if this meant doing something uncomfortable.
Each morning, we recite a series of berachot thanking Hashem for the great blessings He grants us every day, such as the privilege of being Jewish, being free, and the ability to open our eyes, get out of bed and put on clothes. All these berachot are mentioned already in the Gemara, with the exception of one – the berachah of הנותן ליעף כח, in which we thank Hashem “who gives strength to the fatigued.” This berachah was introduced by the Geonim several centuries after the Talmudic period. The Geonim saw that as the exile progressed, and the Jews’ difficulties and hardships intensified, living among hostile gentiles, they could easily grow weary. The berachah הנותן ליעף כח was instituted in order to reassure us that Hashem gives us strength to continue, to fulfill our responsibilities and execute our missions in life, even when it seems our strength has been depleted. This berachah tells us that when we feel overwhelmed and begin to think that we’re at our breaking point, we must look into the mirror and say, “I can do this. I am a Jew. I have to find the strength. Hashem gives me the strength – I have to find it and use it. There is no giving up.”
“Yes, I Can Do This!”
I recall very vividly one weekend when I started telling myself, “I can’t do this anymore!” – and then had to remind myself that I could.
On a typical Shabbat, I speak seven times, between the various speeches I give and classes that I teach. By the time Havdalah is recited on Saturday night, I am very, very tired. I usually get into my pajamas right after Shabbat and then start preparing my classes for the coming week. One Saturday night, soon after I sat down in my office to start preparing, at around 7pm, my children asked me to join them in the kitchen where they were preparing a Melaveh Malka. I joined them, and then I went back to prepare. A little while later, my older daughter took my car to drive my younger daughter to an activity that was taking place in school.
Just a couple of minutes after they left, the phone rang. My daughter was in hysterics. She had been in an accident.
I ran outside into the rain – in my pajamas and slippers, without a coat – to where I thought they said the accident was, but there was nobody there. I ran back to the house, put on a coat, took my phone, and then ran outside again and spoke to them to find out where they were. When I got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes – the car was smashed. It turned out that a truck had tried to cut in front of the car from the right lane and hit it, knocking it out of control, and into the other side of the road, facing incoming traffic. Fortunately, thanks to Hashem, there were no cars coming from the other direction, and, due to construction that was being done, there were barriers in place along the sides of the road which stopped the car. My girls were shaken up, but were physically unharmed, baruch Hashem.
It took about three hours until we received the police report, and then another hour until the tow truck came to take the car away, so we ended up going to bed very late. The next morning, we celebrated my son’s putting on tefillin for the first time. We then had to file the insurance claim and rent a car to drive in the interim. During the day, I had several meetings with people who needed to meet with me and could not wait for another day. At around 11pm, when I still hadn’t prepared my speeches for the week, I started to break.
“I just can’t do this!” I cried. “I’m just one person. How can I do this all? This is just impossible. I can’t handle it anymore!!”
But then I stopped myself, and said, “Yes, I can do this. I must do this. I am here – Am Yisrael is here – to demand of ourselves excellence and greatness each and every day. This is what makes me part of this amazing team. I can do this. Hashem gives me the strength to do this. הנותן ליעף כח.”
I wonder if this is perhaps what went through Yaakov Avinu’s mind when he was told by his uncle, “Work for another seven years.” Maybe he said to himself something like, “I can’t let this break me. I can’t get tired and worn down. I am building Hashem’s special nation. I can get through this. Hashem will give me strength – because this is what this nation is all about.”
We are expected to do great things even when it is hard, when it is exhausting, when it is physically or emotionally draining. We are expected to attend a friend’s daughter’s wedding and dance exuberantly even if we have a daughter who is still single. We are expected to go out of our way to help somebody even if that person shows no appreciation. We are expected to be a good husband or wife, tend to the needs of each and every one of our children, earn a livelihood, manage the household, and still show up on time for prayers each and every day. Sure, it’s tiring. And it can be overwhelming. But we must never say, “I can’t do it,” because we can. Hashem gives us the strength, as long as we push ourselves to our limits to muster that strength.
Rachel’s Pain
Perhaps the most inspiring – and astonishing – example of this strength is the story of Rachel. We cannot possibly imagine the pain she felt when she discovered just before her wedding, after waiting for seven years, counting down the days, to finally marry the man she loved, that he was instead going to marry her sister, Leah. The only thing more difficult to imagine than this pain is the courage she then had to help make this scheme work – to ensure that Yaakov would not find out that he was tricked until the morning. She and Yaakov had arranged several “code words” that they would say to each other so they would know that Lavan did not give him a different woman. At the last minute, Rachel shared these words with Leah, so that Leah would not have to suffer the embarrassment of being discovered by Yaakov as the wrong sister on their wedding night.
This is the incredible strength that Rachel had. The job of building Hashem’s nation is not for the fainthearted. It is for people who trust that הנותן ליעף כח, that Hashem gives us the strength to do things which would otherwise seem impossible.
In the end, of course, Rachel did marry Yaakov. But over the next six years or so, she watched her sister bear child after child, while she was unable to conceive. Leah had six children before Rachel had any. She could have said to Hashem, “What do You want from me?! Look what I did – I helped my sister marry the man I was supposed to marry. And now I can’t have children?!”
הנותן ליעף כח. She endured this humiliation and heartbreak for several years until she eventually had a child, Yosef, and later, Binyamin. This is what our nation is about – mustering the strength, the faith, the courage, the conviction, the confidence and the patience to deal with the greatest challenges, to keep working and struggling even in the most difficult circumstances. We don’t get tired, and we don’t give up. We keep going.
A story told by the Midrash about Noah’s experiences in the ark captures this idea very powerfully. The Midrash describes the near impossible challenge Noah had throughout the months spent in the ark to feed all the animals. Each animal had a different feeding schedule, and so Noah was constantly running from one animal to the next, ensuring they were all fed. On one occasion, the Midrash tells, Noah was late feeding the lion, which was not very happy waiting for its food. When Noah finally came, the lion bit Noah and seriously injured him.
I’ve never been bitten by a lion, but I can relate to Noah’s experience very well, as I’m sure many others can, too. We run around frantically trying to do everything we need to do, to meet all our obligations to all the different people in our lives, and then, when something goes wrong, we are blamed. Each of our kids needs us. Our spouse needs us. Our employer needs us. Every customer or client needs us. Our parents need us. Our siblings, our friends, our synagogue, our community, our institutions, our friends…the list goes on and on. It seems impossible. How are we supposed to handle all this? The answer is הנותן ליעף כח. We can’t get tired, we can’t give up, and we can’t stop. We are Am Yisrael, and Hashem gives us the strength we need to get it done. And if we occasionally make a mistake, like Noah did, and we get blamed for it, we still don’t give up. We just accept it and keep going. This is what Jews do.
At one point during that very difficult week after my daughter’s accident, I was in shul, and I looked around and noticed that there were four men who had lost children. It occurred to me that it must be unfathomably difficult for them to get out of bed in the morning, come to the synagogue and declare, יתגדל ויתקדש שמיה רבא, expressing praise for Hashem. What superhuman strength this demands – far more than anything I’ve been asked to do. And yet, they do it. Every morning. This is who the Jewish People are. We are people who don’t get tired and overwhelmed, who are given unimaginably difficult tasks but proudly complete them. Instead of feeling intimidated by these tasks, we feel fortunate to have been chosen as Hashem’s special nation that is assigned challenging jobs, and we feel emboldened by our faith in the strength that Hashem gives us to meet these challenges.
These is one obvious but critical caveat to this message, which is that we must be realistic. It goes without saying that we need to know our limits, to know when it really is too much for us to handle.
The week of my daughter’s accident was the week of Thanksgiving. The school where I teach is closed on Thanksgiving Day, so I am usually free on that day. My sister, who is well aware of this fact, runs a seminary which holds classes on Thanksgiving. So, that week she called me up and asked if perhaps I could come give a special lecture in her seminary on Thanksgiving.
I answered with an emphatic, “NO WAY!!”
I felt that this would be too much. I felt that this would be crossing a line. Hashem gives us strength to do amazing things, but not to do everything. Sometimes there are things that are simply too much to handle. We need to be able to delicately balance our ambition with realism, recognizing that we are capable of greatness, but we will always have limits.
Drawing Strength
That Saturday night, after we had finally returned home, my son called from yeshiva. He normally called to speak to us soon after Shabbat, but on this occasion, he called very late. My daughter answered the phone, and excitedly told him the whole story of the accident.
“Wow,” my son said. “What time did this happen?”
My daughter told him the time, and he exclaimed, “Wow!”
He explained that a year earlier, my daughter had bought some books with her own money and gave them to my son to bring with him to yeshiva. She asked him to spend some time learning them in her zechut (merit). For several months, he set aside some time to study these texts.
That Saturday night, after Shabbat, for no particular reason, my son decided to spend some time learning one of these books instead of calling, as he normally does. It was around that time when the accident happened – smashing my car, but miraculously leaving my two daughters perfectly intact, baruch Hashem.
I did not know – and still don’t know – what exactly to make of this story. But I do know that hearing this helped give me strength. Hearing about these beautiful things happening in my family, how my daughter bought my son sefarim to learn, how he made a point of learning them in her merit, and how miraculously the girls were not hurt, gave me a great deal of encouragement, and this helped give me the strength I needed to get through the next few days without feeling עייף, without breaking down and feeling that this was all too much for me.
We can draw strength by looking around and appreciating what Hashem does for us, appreciating all those times when He has helped us, and appreciating all the beautiful blessings He has granted us. These reinforce our faith in הנותן ליעף כח, in the incredible strength that He gives us, and in our ability to handle and achieve far more than we at first think. And then we will never grow tired, and will always find the strength we need to overcome every challenge and be the truly great people that we are expected to be.