Va’eira: Shortness of Breath
At the top of this parsha, the Israelites are promised redemption from slavery and a new kind of intimate relationship with the Divine, the likes of which they have not yet experienced.
6. Therefore, say to the children of Israel, 'I am the Eternal, and I will take you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will save you from their labor, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.
7
And I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be a God to you, and you will know that I am the One your God, Who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
8. I will bring you to the land, concerning which I raised My hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage; I am the One.' "
- Shemot, 6:6-8 The Israelites, however, cannot take in this information.
Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not hear/hearken to Moses because of [their] shortness of breath and because of [their] hard labor
Shemot, Chapter 6:9
What does it mean that the Israelites could not hear or hearken to Moshe out of kotzer ruach, shortness of breath and avodah kasha, hard labor?
Rashi writes that not being able to “hear” means not being able to accept consolation, or despairing of ever being redeemed. He goes on to write that the reason they couldn’t do so, their “shortness of breath and hard labor,” is because “whoever is under stress, his wind and his breath are short, and he cannot take a deep breath.”
In Rashi’s view, we have a people that are so deeply worn down, oppressed and miserable that they are despairing about the future. This despair is made manifest in their bodies – not just with exhaustion, but with an inability to breathe deeply. In that shallow-breathing, and despair-filled place, no beautiful words about redemption and freedom have the chance to break through.
In my experience, this is an apt description of despair. Despair is different from sadness, fear or even suffering. One can experience any of those difficult emotions or states of being and still have space in the mind and heart for the possibility of the unknown future – of things changing. In despair, one believes that there is only one answer you need, and it is no. Nothing will change. There is no hope and no possibility.
Despair, even though it is desolate and hopeless and filled with pain, is actually an alluring resting place when you are suffering. There are no unknowns. There is no possibility of disappointment, and none of the hard work required to keep the aperture of the heart open to the possibility of transformation. Despair offers a false sense of protection against future pain by closing us down in advance, locking all the doors, and wallowing in our suffering.
How do we emerge out of this place of extreme narrowness? How do we find our breath, our source of life, when the weight of the world is pressing down on us? In Avivah Zornberg’s words, “the sense of pressure that inhibits deep breathing is notoriously only aggravated by shallow breathing. ‘If they could take one deep breath,’ we may think, ‘the vicious cycle would then be broken.’ But this is precisely the problem: the psychosomatic condition represents a kind of “double-bind” situation.” (The Particulars of Rapture,110). We know that breathing and making space for redemption is the only way we will be saved, and yet, something has to crack through our despair in order to allow us to breathe in the possibility of transformation and redemption.
One clue comes from Ramban. He argues that kotzer ruach indicates the Israelites’ impatience of spirit, “as a person whose soul is grieved on account of his misery and does not want to live another moment in his suffering even though he knows that he will be relieved later”
If impatience leads to despair, practicing patience and trust is our path out of it. In the Torah, God backs off of the Israelites. God does not demand anything of them at that moment. They can’t hear the declaration of commitment and love that God is promising, so God starts the process of offering signs and signals that slowly peel
away the layers of doubt and closed-off-ness on the part of the Israelites. Trust slowly emerges in the place of doubt, melting the despair and hopelessness. Throughout this parsha, God (via Moshe) is outwardly having a conversation with Pharaoh - but I can’t help but think that God is having a much more intimate conversation with the Israelites. “Watch,” God seems to be saying, “I’m going to take care of you. You will be delivered. You will get out of this. All you have to do is be patient, and trust”
There will be more asked of the Israelites very soon. The Israelites will be told to pack up everything they have, and leave everything they know, for an unknown future on the other side of the sea. But for now, in the slow movement from slavery to freedom, the Israelites are just asked to show up, to witness God’s love for them, and to slowly open up to the possibility of change.
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