This week, we read Parshat Toldot (“descendants”), and learn about Jacob and Esau.  We all know the story: before Jacob and Esau are born, Rebecca learns that “one brother will be mightier than the other,” and “the elder will serve the younger.”  Jacob emerges clutching Esau’s heel, foreshadowing his later attempts to overtake and outwit his brother.  Years later, Jacob takes advantage of a faint and exhausted Esau by selling him a stew for the price of his birthright.  And at their father’s deathbed, Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him a blessing intended for Esau.

Rebecca has one of the most striking lines in the parshat.  She feels her twin sons fighting in utero and asks God: “If it is so, why am I like this?”  God’s response – the prophecy about the older brother serving the younger – seems to be an attempt to reassure her that her pains are serving a higher purpose.  This answer addresses Rebecca as if she is questioning the reason for such a painful pregnancy. But is that what she is asking?  I imagine that she was regretting both her painful pregnancy and that the pain seemed to add insult to the injury of so many childless decades.  Did she think that the universe was conspiring against her?  Was she questioning the wisdom of her life choices?  Ramban’s take on the text reflects an underlying existential angst – interpreting her cry as a question of why she must endure such pain.

With this latter interpretation, the response she receives presents not so much an answer as a challenge, and Rebecca becomes an active participant in the story.  She would have preferred to give birth as a younger woman to children who loved each other as much as she loved them.  But when life did not meet her expectations, she made the best of the situation.  We can see Rebecca’s preference for Jacob over Esau as a choice guided by her understanding of the potential of each child.  Indeed, recall that it is Rebecca who engineered the plot for Jacob to receive the blessing intended for Esau.  Jacob’s dominance over Esau was not a preordained decree; it was the consequence of Rebecca’s parenting.

We have all asked ourselves why our reality, despite our best efforts, does not conform to our desires and expectations.  Why didn’t I get that job?  Why didn’t that relationship work out?  Why do I always argue with my parents and siblings?  We create narratives about how we would like our life to turn out, we endeavor to realize those narratives, and we get frustrated and confused when the results fail to comply with our wishes.  Too often, we forget that some of the best things in our lives are the result not of careful planning and deliberation, but of accident, of happenstance, and of our own adaptation to changed circumstances.

I remember entering law school intent on pursuing a career in international development, and realizing after a summer abroad that there was a fundamental tension between the role of a development lawyer on one hand, and my basic values and expectations about life on the other.  Indeed, it took the rest of law school to reconcile my fascination with the world with my understanding of what an American lawyer can actually achieve in a place where he barely understands the language and culture.  I am now excited to pursue a career concentrating on issues involving New York City and State, but the transition from an international focus to a local focus was difficult.

With meditation, we can learn to accept the moments in life when we make a plan and pursue it to completion, only to find that the result brings us pain.  This week’s portion teaches us to take these hiccups as opportunities – to value the joy that comes only because something else did not work out.  When we refuse to submit ourselves to fate, we become active participants in our own lives.  For this week’s meditation, let us ask, “If this is so, why are we like this?”  Put differently: now that we see that our plans have not exactly met our expectations, how must we move forward?  We will then be prepared for Thanksgiving, an opportunity to reflect on the unexpected happinesses and the accidental fortunes.

This week’s parsha, Chayei Sarah, begins with the death of Sarah, at age 127. Abraham, her husband, purchases a burial property for her, and later marries another woman, Keturah,  who bears him six more children. He also sends his most senior servant to his birth land to find a wife for his son Isaac, and most of the parsha details this servant’s journey and discovery of Isaac’s bride, Rebecca.

The servant travels to the city of Nachor and begins his search for a wife for Isaac among the women gathering water from the well. Feeling unsure of how he will recognize the right woman, he prays to G-d for help, saying, “If I say to a girl, ‘Tip over your jug and let me have a drink,’ and she  replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels,’ she will be the one whom You have designated for Your servant Isaac.” The first woman he approaches is Rebecca; when she offers him and his camels a drink, he knows he has found Isaac’s bride.

In the servant’s journey and his prayer to G-d, I saw a reflection of something I often think about: when we’re searching for something – be it a romantic partner, a new job, a new house, a new community – we can put ourselves out there and look, but at the end of the day, there is a lot of luck involved in us finding what we’re seeking. Accepting this reality can often be a struggle for me, and at times I grow discouraged and think, If so much of life is random and out of my control, why bother trying? I risk shutting down and shutting myself off from new connections and new opportunities.

There was a second part of the parsha that seemed to offer some inspiration for this struggle: as the servant is bringing Rebecca to meet Isaac, the Torah reads that he “went out to meditate in the field toward evening. He raised his eyes, and  saw camels approaching.” With the camels came Rebecca, who he not only wed but loved. I love this image, of Isaac sitting still in a lush field as, unbeknownst to him, his bride and future love is riding toward him. In this picture I see what meditation does for me: it stills the fear inside of me – of being hurt and disappointed, of things being out of my control – and helps me live with the fact that much of life is uncertain, and see that sometimes uncertainty can lead to positive outcomes.

So my kavanah (or intention) for this week is the following: let our meditation practice help us open our eyes to whatever life is bringing our way, and let us recognize that sometimes those things might be just what we’ve been looking for.

Parsha Vayera describes perhaps one of the most renowned narratives in the Torah – the “Akedah,” the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham, as its conclusion. Vayera also contains many important and valuable stories – the birth of Isaac, the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham attempting to convince G-d not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the saving of Lot and his family. While preparing this kavanah, I decided to focus on the Akedah.  I came across a poem by Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan that spoke me, and I want to share some of its perspective on this story. Drawing from this poem, I was inspired to focus my kavanah on the journey that meditation provides and how my practice brings more joy to the world and myself.

Isaac’s name, in Hebrew, is a verb – he shall laugh, a cruel thought when I think that Isaac was to be sacrificed by his father, Abraham. While his name expresses action, Isaac chooses inaction and consents to his father sacrificing his life for G-d.

When Isaac acceded not to act, this was in fact, action, and he faced his own mortality. The poem linked above suggests that with this decision, he truly became a verb, realized that he must use his time on this earth to make a difference, and live fully without knowledge of how long his life in this world will last. Isaac learns that he must seek joy for himself and the world by doing good with his life and therefore. Because of this experience, he shall express the beauty of life with joy which he can express through laughter, his namesake.

Fundamentally, Isaac realized that life is tenuous and uncertain and he must begin his journey, on his own, without the guidance of his father and not knowing where it will lead him and how long it will be, to value each moment for what it is. I see this awakening as the paramount emphasis of the journey, not a destination. My practice of meditation is mindful of the journey, as I will never know where it will take me nor how it will end. This knowledge frees me to appreciate each step I take, because it is where I am meant to be. Each thought that appears is the place I am delivered to in that moment; one thought leads to another, the end of one is the beginning of another, and I need to simply observe the process. The opportunity to bind myself to G-d and others is present within each place I am delivered. This is the essence of the sacrifice of the journey of being alive: not knowing where I will be led nor when and how it will end, but simply, to savor the moment.

How does your contemplative practice allow you to appreciate the journey, devoid of a destination, to be one with this moment and each moment daily?