by Rabbi Yaakov Danishefsky
We’ve all heard the chizzuk. Hashem only gives people challenges they can handle. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. Hashem loves you and has only your best in mind. One day you will understand why you needed this. These messages are true. They are important. Yet here we are. In pain. The pain is real. The situation is not fair and no one really gets it.
The children’s book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, tells the story of a family trekking across terrains to catch a bear. They get to a field of tall grass and say, “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it.” Next, they get to a deep, cold river, and again they say, “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it.” And so on and so forth.
Being single is lonely. Too lonely to put properly into words. And when it comes to loneliness, “We can’t go over it” and “we can’t go under it.” But perhaps “we can go through it.”
The poet, Hafiz, writes,
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
Going through loneliness can mean different things for different people. For Hafiz, in his poem, it meant finding G-d. This too can mean different things for different people. I want to try and share what it means to me, and what it doesn’t mean to me. For me, it doesn’t mean that the pain goes away. It doesn’t mean that I am now girded with an endless reservoir of optimism and positivity. But it does mean that profound experiences typically unfold.
Sometimes, sitting in loneliness becomes an experience of sensing a Presence with me. Right here. His presence like a canopy enveloping me from behind and wrapping itself tightly around me. Holding me. I feel this in my skin. Down into my bones. They shake from His warmth. And the tears flow more freely from my eyes because He too is crying.
Other times, I do not feel Him on me, but sense Him next to me. Looking at me patiently, with the most caring gaze. He sits with me on the floor. He has nowhere else He’d rather be. He might take my hand in His. He may not.
But there are also other times. Where I don’t feel this at all. Instead, I feel that He is my adversary. He is here but not to comfort, rather to listen. And He is okay listening to me. I am angry. Angry with Him. And I hurl my words against Him. Unflinchingly. And He takes them. I sense that somehow, He is both unhurt and hurt by them. He is not callous but He is rock-hard. And most of all, He does not go away because of my anger.
And yet, there are still even more times. Times that my sense of Him is through trepidation and awe. There is something mighty, powerful, and awesome about Him. He is mysterious. He is the Almighty. He is high above, majestic, and larger than the universe itself. In these moments, the captivation with Him dissolves my personal boundaries.
Finally, there is one more experience. The sense that He is nowhere to be found. That this life is too unfair and too unbearable to associate it with any caring presence. And yet, when I don’t try to go over that feeling or around it, but allow myself to move through it, I discover something unexpected — another doorway to Him. In not sensing Him at all, I may actually be encountering Him more deeply. If Hashem is truly infinite, and I am finite, then I cannot fully grasp or experience Him in any complete way. In a certain sense, the truest way to relate to the Infinite is to recognize that He cannot be contained or understood by me at all.
This is a paradox — and not an experience any of us would choose on our own. But it is powerful. When I do feel Hashem’s presence, it means I am sensing a form of revelation that can fit within human understanding and emotion. But when I don’t feel His presence at all, I may be touching something even more fundamental — the reality of a G-d who is beyond anything I can feel, grasp, or contain.
None of these experiences resolve our pain, but they do allow our pain to unearth levels of depth that remain otherwise unseen. One of the most pivotal moments in our history is when Moshe noticed a thornbush aflame in the desert. The fire, says the Medrash, represents the presence of Hashem and the thorns represent the pains of our lives. Some of them are very sharp. What made this vision unique was that the thorns were on fire without being consumed. In other words, the flame was present for the thorns. It was there, in the thorns, around the thorns. The transcendent Creator of all worlds came down to this tiny little bush to accompany and sit with the pain of these sharp ends. And yet, the thorns didn’t blunt or shrivel up. They stayed sharp. Because sometimes Hashem’s presence absolves our pain, and sometimes He accompanies it.
Rabbi Yakov Danishefsky, LCSW, is a Chicago-based therapist and author of the widely read Attached, the newly released Attached Haggadah, and the forthcoming sefer The Delight of Shabbos. He leads Avodas HaLev, a Chicago organization devoted to meaningful learning and community programming, and hosts The Attached Life Podcast. He is known for bringing depth, passion, and warmth to everything he teaches.
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