Ways of Looking at Suffering - It's Not Just About You

In the run-up to Rosh Hashanah, I’m sharing reflections inspired by Scott Samuelson’s Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering. Previous posts are [here - http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/search?q=seven+pointless+suffering]. I’ve been hugely touched by members who have shared their appreciation for these reflections. Thank you.

Actually, for this reflection, I need the full title of the work, “Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All.” I’m not opposed to philosophy. In fact, I quite like it. But the biggest failing in Samuelson’s, generally excellent, book is a classic philosophical failing - a religious book would get this one quite right.

Philosophy books tend to over-value thinking about things, and sometimes it’s more important to do something. Judaism places a greater emphasis on observance of Mitzvot than mental states perhaps for two reasons; one being that an over-emphasis on thinking can become solipsistic - we can lose ourselves in the consideration of our private grief. The other being that doing something for others is, perhaps, the best way of losing sight of our own pain.

‘Tzedekah Ma’avirin Et Roah HaGezerah’ we’ll pray on Monday - ‘charity draws out evil from the decree.’ Suffering is eased by doing things for other people, it’s a curious but glorious oxymoron - the more we give away, the richer we feel. One of the remarkable demands in Judaism is the demand that everyone, even the poorest, need to make financial charitable contributions. There is no-one spared the call to care for others. We feel more joy through bringing joy to the lives of others than serving our own ends. Similarly, we ameliorate our own grief by looking out for others’ suffering. The religious command to consider others is, again, one only rarely heard in the philosophical realm. There are greater, and there are fewer experiences of suffering we all carry. This year, set off the experiences of suffering by doing something for someone else.

Shabbat Shalom,

Shannah Tovah

Rabbi Jeremy

To Choose Our Own Way

My thanks to all who made our Rosh Hashanah services so special; from the main service where Chazan Stephen’s leadership was so appreciated to the hall and children’s services, it was a wonderful honour to celebrate 5779’s arrival with you all. Yom Kippur begins with Kol Nidrei on Tuesday evening.

This is my final reflection on Scott Samuelson’s Seven Ways at Looking at Pointless Suffering. Previous reflections are [here - It is a remarkable and warmly recommended book, combining both rigorous reading of philosophical masters and more personally grounded insights drawn from Samuelson’s experiences as a teacher of philosophy in prison. But the title ... I don’t like. I get that titles need a certain ‘snap.’ But that word, ‘pointless’ sticks. At one point in the book, Samuelson gives an example of the level of suffering he considers pointless. It’s a brutal narrative, his neighbour was born with a “broken brain” and lived her a scream ‘that was a pure siren of misery,’ It sounds awful and I wouldn’t dare presume to find in her suffering point and how much the more so reason or justification. But I’m nervous about imputing pointlessness on anyone’s experience from the outside.

Dr Ros Taylor, one of the country’s leading palliative care physicians, was a member of my previous Synagogue, SAMS, and we did a series of sessions together on end of life issues. She was strongly opposed to softening legal positions on euthanasia. Her experience was that while many people could come up with theoretical positions in which they would wish for euthanasia, for themselves or for a loved one, when - God forbid - these awful situations unfolded it was only very rarely that the experience of even a slither of what we call ‘quality of life’ was not cherished. The point is that the pointlessness of suffering is a decision that should not be made from the outside of a direct experience. It is a subjective call, one that can only be made by a person suffering, not by a book.

My most cherished heroic insight into this perspective on suffering comes from the Auschwitz survivor Victor Frankl, who lived through Holocaust and reflected on the single thing that can never be taken away from a sufferer; their ability to find purpose and value even in the most barbaric of circumstances;

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been a few in number, but they offer sufficient proof, that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of freedoms – to chose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose one’s own way.”

May we all be spared suffering in this year and for many years to come. But - should it come, and frankly, of course, it will come - may we find the ability to chose our own way, even there.

This is Shabbat Shuvah, I’ll be sharing some of the great insights of Maimonides into Teshuvah on Shabbat. All welcome.

Some Light Summer Reading - Ways of Looking at Suffering - Part One

I’ve been making my way through Scott Samuelson’s newly published, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering. I know, there are lighter offerings on the shelves, but I’m drawn to this stuff. I should probably consider a career in the Rabbinate or something. En route to my Yizkor sermon (and again Rosh Hashanah falls on the evening of 9^th September), I’ll be sharing in this blog from some of the insights in the book and suggesting a Jewish response to them.

Chapter five of Samuelson’s work features the response of the Stoics. This response entails seeing suffering as no more and no less than the rules of game. As Samuelson imagines us playing chess, and wishing our pawn could zip up the board and take the opponent’s queen several ranks away, but that simply wouldn’t be chess. Similar we could wish that we, or a loved one, wouldn’t be suffering, but to wish for a life without pain is to wish for a breaking of the rules of existence. We can’t all live for ‘beyond average’ lengths of time. To think, says Epictetus, father of the Stoics, that “the fall of leaves is ill-omened, or that it is evil for a bunch of grapes to turn into raisins” is a waste of emotional energy, and worse, such an expectation only sets us up for disappointment and added heartbreak.

There is, clearly, an attraction in a stoic worldview. It’s safe from breeding disappointment. And, indeed, somewhere in a called-for Jewish response to our own bad things come the urge that we find a way to accept our experience of bad things in general and human fragility in particular. In Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur’s most magisterial prayer, the Unataneh Tokef, we acknowledge that ‘humanity comes dust, and ends in dust; like a broken clay shard, withered grass, a shrivelled flower ...’

But the response of stoicism is not the first response. And we cannot - must not - skip to the end of the story before its time. As well as acknowledging our mortality we are called to remember we are ‘little less than angels,’ that ‘the Universe is created for our sake,’ that we embody ‘the image of God.’ And so on. Life is precious, astoundingly so. Loss, pain and suffering are not invitations for cool-heads to nod coolly. They are tragedies to be mourned. In one of my favourite Talmudic passages, the young Rabbi Yochanan enters the room of the dying leader of his generation Rabbi Eliezer to see his teacher in tears. “Why do you cry?” the neophyte asks as if tears are somehow a failure of greatness. “I cry because of the beauty that is to rot in the earth” the Master responds, “And they cry together.” We don’t express our humanity through being so tough, so smart or so stoical that we feel no pain. That is the characteristic of a rock, not a being of flesh and soul. We should not feel called to transcend our humanity. For humans the more we love, the more we hope, the more we invest in the relationships which are the true touchstones of humanity, the more we hurt when these hopes are dashed. To hurt is to be human. Transcendence of our mortal realm is not the goal. Our suffering, as painful as it may be, is not pointless if it connects us to our humanity, rather it reminds us, even in our pain, of the importance of having a soul at all.

Ways of Looking at Suffering - Part Two

 I’m sharing, in my words at this time of year, insights sparked by Scott Samuelson’s newly published, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering.

Samuelson suggests that there are primarily two human responses to suffering; fix-it and face-it. He grants a third response; forget-about-it - which he acknowledges is practically common, but philosophically “not significant.” “Thanks to our fix-it energies,” he writes, “we’ve used our creative fire to forge all sorts of inventions to better our lives. A large portion of civilization arises out of the fix-it attitude, including a fair amount of science and politics, and nearly all technology.” Fixing things is good. But, Samuelson goes on to suggest, because up to the modern period we weren’t actually particularly good at fixing things we also had to develop our skills in facing-suffering.

Nowadays we are so much better at fixing things. Marvellously, infant mortality rates are down, desperate poverty is on the decline, we have and we are achieving so much. Our fix-it muscles are honed, taut and powerful. Long may they continue to be so.

But our face-it muscles have atrophied. In our fix-it obsessed modern age, we seem surprised we can’t fix our mortality and we don’t know what to do about it. We’ve lost our face-it fitness. Facing-suffering is a powerful skill to possess. Samuelson suggests facing-suffering “characterizes much of religion, art, and the humanities, as well as a certain significant portion of science and politics.” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are face-it moments in the year. We are called to feel fragile, as if we pass before our creator like sheep on a narrow path, each falling under the eye of a watchful shepherd, none knowing of its fate. But we don’t know how to do this well. “Rather than confront our anxiety at the sadness, we fidget on our tools of infinite distraction.” Yes, leave that mobile-phone at home when you come to shul.

Here are my three top tips to strengthen the face-it muscles we will need in our lives just as surely as we need strong fix-it muscles. Sit. Put everything down and sit in one place for a while without trying to do more things. Try - even if just for these coming awesome days of prayer - not to treat life as something to be fixed. It’s OK not to always be doing something. It might be the most important spiritual gift you can give yourself. Reflect on how you treat your life and the lives of those around you. And do something decent and kind for those less fortunate than yourself. Or, as the Rabbis put it, try Teshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah.

The best place, the best time to begin this face-it training, is Saturday evening, 1^st September, 10pm at the Shul. Do come, do support our Slichot service. It is a wonderful way to enter the spirit of the time.