Parashat Shemot: On Oppression and Thriving

“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.” So goes the popular saying, which traces back originally to Nietzsche.

Or maybe to the Torah. In reference to the Israelites’ suffering in Egypt, the Torah says, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out.” Suffering made them stronger.

Here we are at the start of the book of Shemot, the beginning of a long period of exile and oppression, an oppression planned by God for the people already at the time of Avraham. Why? Why not just go straight to the giving of the Torah?

According to the Sefat Emet, when God says, “I have taken note of you and what is being done to you [lakhem] in Egypt,” what He means by lakhem, is not “to you” but “for you,” i.e. “for your benefit” [lehana’atkhem]. The process of suffering – while taking its toll on the people in the short run – in the long run had some beneficial outcome, turned them into the kind of nation God had in mind.

New studies show that a moderate amount of adversity actually does make one stronger, makes a person more likely to be happy and satisfied in life, and also more resilient to further difficulties later in life. The key, according to Stephen Joseph, author of What Doesn’t Kill Us, is to be able to create a narrative about one’s negative life experiences in which one is not a victim, nor merely a survivor, but a “thriver,” someone who is able to take adversity and actually use it to his own benefit, as a tool of growth and greater life fulfillment.

The Torah models for us just such a narrative. The people begin as victims in Egypt, but ultimately that experience becomes the basis for a thriving religion. Judaism is a religion built out of the very stuff of this suffering. The ethical commandments related to the treatment of other people are powered by our memory of our own suffering; we must not hurt the stranger or the widow because we “remember that we, too, were strangers in Egypt.” And the religious commandments which structure our relationship to God are also powered by our memory of both the suffering and the salvation, by our sense of gratitude and by a sense of appreciation for the blessedness of everyday life which only one who remembers otherwise can truly fathom. Out of the straits of Egypt emerges a new nation, a new way of being in the world. We become thrivers, able to celebrate life through our national memory of tragedy.

Nor should the experience in Egypt be thought of as a one-time encounter with adversity, says the Netivot Shalom. The Torah is eternal; it speaks to our own daily personal struggles as well, no matter how small. What sense can we make of whatever suffering comes our way? How do we tell the story of our encounters with adversity? Are we victims? Survivors? Or thrivers? Can we learn to tell a narrative like that of Exodus, where we actually use life’s challenges to help us grow?