Parashat Mishpatim: On Suffering and Compassion

Aside from the question of why suffering happens, there is the question of what to do with it, what to do in the throes of a painful situation or feeling. One of the most satisfying answers I have come across is to take the opportunity to learn compassion for other who suffer in just this way.

Embarrassment, anxiety, fear, shame, physical pain, grief – there is the emotion and then there is the opportunity for an “aha” moment – so that’s what it feels like to be made fun of, excluded, reprimanded, publicly humiliated, to experience professional failure . . . Instead of fighting the feeling, one can breathe it in and think about all the people that have and are suffering similarly across time and space. There is a world of suffering that our experience opens up to us, allows us to understand and relate to.

Egypt happened. The people of Israel suffered greatly. And out of this suffering comes just this type of compassion. “Do not oppress the stranger for you yourself were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Our oppression becomes an opportunity for personal growth, for learning to be compassionate. I don’t wish exclusion on anyone, but until we have personally felt excluded in some situation, it is hard to know how the “other” feels in our home situation.

There are other options. Suffering can make us bitter and angry, hard and closed inside, ready to lash out at others, to hurt them as we ourselves feel hurt. We often do this in small ways and large. But the Torah wisely reminds us not to become like the Egyptians in their hardness and harshness, but to use suffering as a tool to open our heart to the pain of others.