Vayechi: Rabbi Ortzig's Tsuris Sack

By Stu Woolley, delivered Jan. 6, 2007

Generally, a D’var Torah is an explanation of sacred text – a scholarly or inspirational review that sheds light on the daily Torah portion or its companion Haftorah reading. Today, however, I’m going to depart from the usual plan and, instead, recount a story written in the style of a Yiddish folktale.

The title of this folktale: RABBI ORTZIG’S TSURIS SACK.

“Tsuris” is a familiar Yiddish word to most of you. I’m no expert in Yiddish etymology, but I define it as: “troubles”. Troubles on an individual scale; troubles on a global scale. Human life is full of tsuris. Not only tsuris, of course. Life is also full of joys and victories. But no one escapes their share of suffering. And, inexplicably, some suffer more than others, leaving us to question the true nature of G-d’s justice or His mercy – or both.

As we end the book of Genesis with Parshas Vayechi, one of the things we realize is that the gallery of great personalities of Bereshith – from Adam & Eve to Joseph and his brothers – is populated by men and women living human lives. They were all people of this Earth -- not gods from the heavens; they all had failings; and they all had tsuris – and plenty of it.

Tsuris is an essential, defining hallmark of human experience. No one is perfect, everyone makes errors, everyone suffers; yet, anyone can make tshuvah, anyone can bring tikkun. This appreciation of the imperfection of human existence is part of the beauty and wisdom of Judaism in its evolutionary moral design. The Jewish mind may contemplate Mashiach and the stars, but Jewish feet must always be planted firmly on the ground -- and in history.

The aphorism on which today’s D’var Torah is based will be familiar to many of you. It was in my mother’s inventory of Jewish sayings when I was growing up. And I’m told that it was a favourite saying of my maternal grandmother, Bertha Shillman Marcus, who was born into the tight-knit Litvak community of Dublin, Ireland in 1894. And it’s in remembrance of the Litvak world from which I’m descended that I set my recasting of this morning’s “tsuris” saga in the quarrelsome Litvak village of Ackmene.

RABBI ORTZIG’S TSURIS SACK
(adapted from Jewish wisdom literature)

The little shtetl of Ackmene was thick with complaints.  Everyone was miserable.  Everyone was whining.  No one was listening or helping, working or loving. They’d even forgotten how to daven.  The entire village, 40 miles southeast of Riga, was perpetually pulsing with self-absorbed kvetching.

It got so bad, in fact, that the wise and judicious Ackmener Rabbi decided that something just had to be done – and the sooner the better. All this constant, disruptive fussing had to stop. Shtetl life was coming to a standstill. But what to do?

Rabbi Ortzig (for that was the name of the 90 year-old rabbi of this poverty-stricken Litvak town) had a grand idea. So, shortly before noon on a brilliant summer’s day, he called the Ackmener Yidden together on the village common and made them all stand in a huge circle. Everyone was present -- from the oldest grandparents down to the youngest children. No one was forgotten.

“Not the old or the sick or the anti-social,” the elderly rabbi proclaimed in a loud voice unencumbered by the years. “Let this be like it was at Sinai. No one must be left behind in Mitzrayim.” And, of course, no one was. But such a racket! The great circle of shtetl Jews was buzzing with queries, theories and newly-minted complaints about why there were where they were. O, those never-ending Yiddishe complaints!

After calling for quiet, Rabbi Ortzig produced an immense sack of great age, which he placed at the very centre of the circle. This was the legendary Tsuris Sack passed down to him from his great-great grandfather, the famous Ackmener Rabbi of old, Itzik-Avrum, the Ackmener Klummer. Well, that got everyone’s attention – the young and the old alike! The fabled Tsuris Sack of Ackmene hadn’t been seen in the village since Rabbi Ortzig was a talmid of 14. And there was much wary speculation about its significance and use.

This cranky crescendo of Jewish gossip rose high into the noonday sky. So high, in fact, that -- busy though He was creating and destroying other worlds -- Hashem, himself, could hear the shrill obligato of human voices ascending from ha’aretz to shamayim. Such a village-of-complaint was this -- the fractious shtetl 40 miles southeast of Riga! “Jews!” the Almighty muttered. “Such a noisy, argumentative people!” (The cherubim nodded in sage agreement.)

Again, Rabbi Ortzig was compelling to call for quiet. Whereupon, he instructed the villagers to take their most painful and pressing problems to the centre of the circle and place them deep inside Itzik-Avrum’s Tsuris Sack. And since the old rabbi was a compassionate and scholarly man who had seen them through thick and thin and the many pogroms of the goyim, the villagers complied without question.  They did exactly what was asked. One by one, they advanced to the middle of the common and stowed their special sadnesses deep inside the rabbi’s enormous bag. Then, one by one, they returned to their places on the circumference of the circle to wait and to watch.

The anticipation was intense. The air within the circle felt electric. Sparks of divine light flew hither, thither and yon then rose high into the sky and out of sight behind the clouds. And it went on like this for hours -- the constant parade of miserable Jews divesting themselves of their life-defining distresses.

The afternoon wore slowly on, until, eventually, the rabbi’s empty sack had grown into an immense, swollen, lumpy mass of human aggravation. It was so filled to the brim, there wasn’t room enough for even the softest whimper of a teething baby. “So far so good,” the aged scholar thought to himself. “This is going well.”

Rabbi Ortzig was exceedingly pleased. But he was not yet done. There was something else still up his sleeve -- and it wasn’t his tefillin.

Dwarfed by the colossal container of complaint, the good rabbi announced that, “in accordance with generations of Jewish wisdom”, he could now reveal that it was not actually in Hashem’s plan to relieve the Yidden of Ackmene of their every trouble and worry on this particular day. Quite the contrary, in fact. “A human being is a receptacle for all that life has to offer,” he explained, “the good and the bad, the happy and sad. This is the Master’s Way. When Mashiach comes, we will all go greet him with perfect hearts because the world will be redeemed. But until that blessed day – may it come soon…”

Rabbi Ortzig’s commanding voice trailed away, leaving unsaid what didn’t need to be said. The village Jews understood. Oh, all too well, they understood! They were waiting for redemption: a consignment of cure from Above. But, no, the Mashiach would not come in their time. This was now certain. Maybe not even in the time of their children – or their children’s children. Yet, they were not free to give up hope that, somehow, miraculously, he might still arrive when they weren’t looking!

(Only the beleaguered Jews of little Ackmene could survive such existential ambiguity. And this was the true source of their power in the world -- a world so keen to see them utterly destroyed!)

Likewise, the inventory of village grievances could not remain hidden in the rabbinical sack – not until the time of the Mashiach, not even until Minchah that very day. They would have to be shared out anew. “Starting now,” said Rabbi Ortzig, “starting here. We will redeem the world, one Jew at a time.”

The Yidden of Ackmene groaned a collective groan. “Oy!”, they murmured. “Oy!” And Rabbi Ortzig was still not finished.

Imbued with sudden superhuman strength (for great wisdom in great rabbis often assumes the appearance of magical powers), the aged rabbi hoisted the weighty Tsuris Sack high above his head. He spun himself like a child’s top pulled the drawstring on the bag of gloom, deftly turning it upside-down, all in a single motion. And yasher koiach! For, o what happened next!

With a deafening roar and a great calamitous rush, all the miseries of the village spilled out into a mountainous pile, right before the villagers’ very eyes! They saw it all! A chaotic collection of personal catastrophe! A veritable Everest of individual woe!

The Ackmeners were dismayed. “Oy!”, they muttered again. “Oy!” Which was followed by a long and terrible silence that seemed to last longer than the already painfully long wait for the Mashiach of the House of David.

With the moment for Minchah fast approaching and not a moment to lose, Rabbi Ortzig broke the desolate silence. He ordered his flock to contemplate each of the many miseries now on display before them at the very centre of town. “Consider well every sorrow you see before you!” the trusted counsellor admonished. “Know what krenks fill your neighbours’ furklempt hearts!”

And because their beloved rav was an honourable, respected leader and a chacham of powerful and exemplary oratory, the men and women and boys and girls of the shtetl of Ackmene did precisely that. They contemplated and they considered. They ruminated and they cogitated. They imagined and they dreamed. Everyone in the little town assiduously studied the unhappy causes of their manifold miseries. They investigated them; they discussed them. They extrapolated them -- and they created exegeses as definitive as any commentaries by Rashi or Rambam or Itzik-Avrum, O”H”, the Ackmener Klummer!

And suddenly, unexpectedly, the sun began to set. How the day had flown!

Rabbi Ortzig was gratified, but he was still not done. In a booming voice (for such a frail-looking man), he instructed the Litvaken of Ackmene to go back to the centre of the circle, one by one, and take the one tsuris from amongst all the others that they believed they could live with for the rest of their G-d-given days.

And because the Jews of Ackmene trusted their communal sage, they complied once more. They had an appointment with Hashem at Minchah and knew they could not be late. They were quick but orderly. One by one, from the oldest bubba down to the youngest Yeshiva boy, they hurried back to the tsuris pile. Then one by one, they returned to their designated places in the circle, each schlepping his or her very own precious and life-defining misery!

It was all as it had been in the morining. Nothing had changed. Nothing – bupkis! For it was just as Rabbi Ortzig had foreseen: having borne witness to the crippling sorrows that the others of the village had been afflicted with for so very long, each Ackmener, regardless of gender or age or social standing, was only too happy to reclaim his or her own personal burden. As one young newlywed was overheard to say: “My sadness and I are one. We belong to each other from here to eternity. From now until the hour of Mashiach.”

And so it was for one and for all. They would learn to live with their own sorrows, shortcomings and uncertainties. They would wait in peace.

After davening Minchah-Maariv on the shtetl common, Rabbi Ortzig folded the tattered Tsuris Sack of Itzik-Avrum and finally dismissed the villagers – blessing each and every one by name: “Fraydel, Bryna, Berel, Yankel, Hindel, Yehude-Meshe.” And so on -- everyone! He shook the hands of the men and boys with great vigor; he bowed with dignified respect to the women and girls. And they all went about their business, smiling happily at one another and at peace within themselves at last.

From that day forward, they worked, they loved, they learned in cheder, they prayed in schul, and they hoped fervently for the redemption of the world. And as the French say: ainsi va la vie. “And so goes life.” Yes, spiritual harmony finally came to the Litvak shtetl of Ackmene, 40 miles southeast of Riga, because each and every Jew finally understood how serious and worrying were the troubles of his family, friends and neighbours.

In the months and years that followed, the Ackmeners lived and coped and waited patiently for the coming of the time of Mashiach. And they continued to suffer, too -- each in his or her own special way, as all humans do the world over. Their lives remained imperfect, because the world remained unrepaired (as it does to this very day). But somehow, they endured, these simple village folk. They had old Rabbi Ortzig; they had their faith in Hashem; and, most of all, they had one another.

Life wasn’t so bad, after all.