Pushing Through the Pain: A Lost Art?

Yakov Danishefsky on Parsha Vayera

Reading Jewish History in the Parsha segment is entering a new chapter. With Rabbi David Bashevkin wrapping up his year-long parsha and Jewish history reflections, we’re excited to share that this series will now feature past 18Forty guests as guest writers. Each week, they’ll bring their unique insights on how Jewish history connects with the weekly Torah portion.

This week, we’re excited to welcome Rabbi Yakov Danishefsky who joined us on the 18Forty Podcast for our exploration of “Mental Health.” Yakov is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. His book Attached explores the relationship with God from a psychological perspective. Rabbi Danishefsky also hosts a podcast called The Attached Life which focuses on recentering our lives around our most important relationships. He also shares daily insights on his Attached WhatsApp status, offering reflections on the ideas he writes and speaks about to inspire connection and growth.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

In 1926, in Pre-state Israel, my great-great-grandmother, Sara Backman, had nothing to feed her seven children. When I say nothing, I mean that a Christian woman found her children lying limp on the floor and rushed over with whatever cookies she had, fearing they wouldn’t survive. The cookies weren’t kosher, and my great-great-grandmother hesitated to give them to her children, only relenting after the woman insisted that her kids would die if she didn’t.

The family had recently fled Poland after a frightening surge of anti-Semitism had swept through the area. My great-great-grandfather couldn’t find work in Israel, so he left for Brazil, hoping he could support his family from there. A few weeks later, Sara received a letter from him saying he had found work and could provide better for them if they joined him. Instead of feeling relieved, Sara felt distressed. She had just arrived in Israel and did not want to leave. “I just left one exile,” she said, “I am not interested in going to another.” So, she decided to visit the great Rabbi Abraham Isaac haKohen Kook to ask for advice. 

She stood at the doorway to the Yeshiva and told the confused yeshiva students that she would not leave until the Rabbi came out to speak to her. Rav Kook heard about a stubborn woman outside and went to see what she wanted. She explained her situation and asked what she should do. After listening to her question, he was quiet for a moment and then told her that she should leave her children with him in the Yeshiva while she tried to find work in Tel Aviv. And so it was—the children slept in the Yeshiva, ate their meals with the students, and after Sara found work in Tel Aviv she returned to take them with her.

This story is remarkable to me on many levels, most of all because this woman had a form of strength, resilience, and determination that I could never imagine embodying myself.

Thinking about her, I feel similar to the way I feel reading about Avraham Avinu (Abraham our forefather). At 99 he has a bris milah, and almost immediately afterward, despite the pain, he’s up, rushing to welcome guests, and later willing to sacrifice his own son.  These acts of courage stretch beyond the scope of my wildest reach. So, as I read this Parsha, I wonder what to make of the seemingly chasmic gap between myself and these incredible stories.

I recently read the book, Bad Therapy. Personally, I didn’t love it. But when I think of my great-great-grandmother, or my very great-grandfather, Avraham Avinu, I wonder if there might be some truth to the idea that our therapeutically informed culture has made us weaker. Are we capable of more? Can we push and stretch ourselves to do more than our “feel-good” mindset tells us?

The way I see it, every dis-order in the DSM captures the extreme of an aspect of the human condition that actually exists on a continuum. Anxiety, for example, is a healthy and essential part of human functioning. But when it becomes more pervasive and intense, it becomes problematic. And when it becomes chronic and overwhelming, it becomes a dis-order. When it comes to productivity and accomplishment, there is also a continuum. The dis-ordered form of productivity is called mania (I am not talking here about mania with psychosis, which captures a different continuum of the human condition). 

Mania is, in a sense, hyperactivity that stretches beyond the range of healthy human behavior. But who says what’s healthy and what isn’t? Why is it a dis-order? One client of mine went through a manic episode and learned to play piano and tennis at a very high level, wrote a novel, and earned a promotion at his (very competitive) job all in a very short amount of time. So, what’s the problem? Well, this all sounds pretty impressive, except that along the way, he neglected his marriage and children, and his physical health, and landed himself in the ER for malnourishment while his wife filed for divorce. In other words, mania involves a heightened amount of energy in certain areas, resulting in close to no energy in other areas. This conceptualization is significant because it gives us a clue as to how to access our stronger and more productive selves without, of course, going to an unhealthy extreme. It shows us that productivity emerges from a powerful amount of energy condensed into a particular aspiration.

The Gemarah in Shabbos (118b) records a conversation between sages, where they asked each other, “What [area of Judaism] was your father most careful about?” And they each give different responses. In Chassidic sources, the Hebrew word for careful, “zahir,” is also linked to the word “zohar”, to shine or radiate. In other words, there is a deep connection between how well we do something and how much passion we feel towards it. Productivity is linked to passion. 

The manic individual experiences a profound amount of passion toward certain areas of his or her life. As a result, he generates a tremendous amount of energy towards those pursuits. So much so that he forgets everything else. In mania, this uneven distribution becomes problematic but if we shift this concept over to a healthier point in the continuum, we can imagine an individual whose passion yields supernatural results while still keeping life in balance.

Sara Backman was a uniquely strong person, but maybe her strength was the symptom, not the cause. Underneath her strength was passion. She was uniquely passionate about living in Israel and as a result, she had a unique amount of strength, courage, and determination to withstand any challenges that stood in her way. To hear her story, and stories like hers, and focus only on her strength, would be missing the point.

Parshas Vayera opens on the third day after Avraham’s bris milah. He is in extreme physical pain, but more than his physical pain is his emotional pain because his passion is being stifled. He so desperately wants to do what he loves most: helping people and teaching them about God. So, despite his pain, he sits in the heat, at the entrance to his tent, waiting, hoping to see a passerby. Suddenly, he spots three people. He is so excited that for a moment he almost forgets his condition. He jumps up, perhaps wincing in pain, and runs out to greet them.

When I reflect more deeply on my great-great-grandmother and Avraham Avinu in contrast with myself and the times we live in, I’m less focused on strength versus softness, and more on passion versus apathy. Did Avraham need to push himself to run after the guests, or did he so badly want to have guests that enduring the pain came naturally to him? The story suggests the latter. And so, I wonder—is there anything I am passionate enough about that I would naturally and excitedly endure such pain to pursue it? Are we less passionate today? And if so, what is passion and how is it generated?