We Chose Pain

If there is a single moral to the tale of Creation it is that Adam HaRishon (primordial man) elected to take the path of pain instead of spending his days on utter comfort.  The Garden was perfect.  There were no needs or wants.  They did not have to work and the possibility of failure did not exist.  There could be no failure.  Likewise there was nothing to succeed at.  All Adam HaRishon had to do was breathe.  

In the taking the forbidden fruit shame launched itself in the consciousness of the two beings.  First naked and unashamed (2:25) Adam and Havvah felt their vulnerability grow into an unrelenting self-conscious throb.  Now, instead of roaming about the Garden Adam and Havvah now crouched in the bushes.  Just moments before the universe stretched before them.  Now, the world had closed in on them.  The skies felt like they were crushing down upon them.  
Self-loathing and fear gripped Adam and Havvah.  Dark suspicions colored the previously pristine Garden.  They accused one another, contemptuously.  He said, “The woman that You gave me—she gave the fruit…” The woman said, “The serpent…”  Perfection was blemished.  Shunned from Eden, Adam and Havvah now had to deal with unimagined pains that would assault their physical being and relentlessly pursue their consciousness.  They crouched lower into the foliage, terrified of the inner darkness.  
Why did they choose the path of pain?
On Hanukka we celebrate in many ways.  Among the more opaque observances is the tradition of spinning the dreidle. B'nei Yissachar said that the difference between Hanukka and Purim is best demonstrated by the dreidle and the gragger.  The dreidle is spun by taking hold of the top and twisting one’s wrist.  The gragger is sounded by taking hold of the bottom and yanking it around.  One is gripped from below; the other above.  That reminds us of the difference between the two holidays.  While Purim celebrates Esther’s ability to find her self and God and save the Jews (below); Hanukka recalls God’s intervention in coming to the aid of the Hasmonean warriors (above) with the miracle of the oil.  
Redemption has different origins in the two holidays.   There are times when we depend upon God and other times when we must depend upon ourselves.  Yet, the connection between Purim and Hanukka is that redemption only comes about through struggle, pain.  Both tales are pock-marked with rivalry, desperation and fear.
It would be nice if life was different…and it was for a brief flicker of time in our past.  We return to our first question: why did they do it?  Why did the sole inhabitants of Eden forfeit perfection?   Why could they not turn their backs from the Tree of Knowledge and forever walk in the Divine Radiance?
The searing question of pain is compounded in this week’s parasha as Jacob’s family descends into the grasp of Egypt.  At first it is a most that benefits everybody.  Prosperity swiftly turns to anguish as Jacob’s children becomes slaves to their present-day neighbors.  Why such pain?  Why must generation after generation endure agony?
In connection with the Torah reading, the Midrash offers:  A farmer needed to yoke his cow.  The cow had no desire to have the wooden plank placed and tightened around her shoulders so she balked. Turning her neck this way and that the farmer could not put the yoke on the animal.  So what did he do? 
The farmer went to the shed and led her calf out in front of the mother.  Pathetically bleating the calf caused the cow to lurch protectively forward. Because of her child the cow allowed herself to become yolked.
It was foreseen that Jacob would have to migrate to Egypt (15:13) long ago.  It was part of the pact that God made with Father Abraham.  There were countless ways to facilitate Abraham’s descendent leaving Canaan for Egypt but God decided to bring the calf first to induce the mother.  The Holy One declared: "He is My firstborn.  Shall I then bring him down to Egypt in disgrace?    I will draw his son before him, and so he will follow despite himself.”  Jacob was forced to go down to Egypt.
So God wants us to suffer?  He ordained the slavery?

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: The Holy One, Blessed is He, gave three good gifts to the Jewish people, and all are acquired through suffering: Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come. (Brachot 5a)

Chassidic teaching explains that two counter-objectives had to be achieved. On the one hand, Jacob had to be compelled to relocate to Egypt -- a voluntary migration would not have been an exile! Galut, by definition, is a place where one does not want to be -- a place that is contrary to one's intrinsic self and will. On the other hand, the fact that Jacob arrived in Egypt in honor, glory and in a position of power as the father of that country's ruler, rather than as a prisoner in chains, meant that he and his descendents would never truly be subject to their host country. Thus the key to Israel's eventual liberation from Egypt was already "programmed" into the circumstances for their galut (exile).

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai [the author of the "Zohar"] taught: "Come and see how beloved is Israel to the Holy One, the Source of all blessing. Wherever Israel went into exile, the Shechina went along into exile. They went to exile to Egypt, the Shechina went with them as it is written, Did I not appear to your ancestor's family when they were in Egypt [enslaved] to the house of Pharaoh (Samuel 1:2-27. They went to Babylon in exile and the Shechina went with them, as it is written, because of you I was sent to Babylon (Isaiah 43:14). And when they will eventually be redeemed, the Shechina will be redeemed along with them, as it is written, Then the Lord your God will bring back your captivity and have mercy upon you (Deut. 30:3). The verb used in the verse is not veheshiv, the proper grammatical way to express bringing back someone else in Hebrew, but veshov which expresses the idea of returning oneself; to teach you that God Himself returns along with Israel from its exiles. (Talmud, Megilah, 29a)