Toldot: Staying Hungry “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” Those were the closing words of Steve Jobs’ famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford University. It is a provocative idea. How is staying hungry helpful? Isn’t the sensation of hunger uncomfortable, painful, and even sometimes intolerable? I am not talking about actual hunger or malnourishment. I’m talking about the daily feelings of desire and craving that seem to bring us a lot of pain and suffering. Esau in this week’s Torah portion is this type of hungry. Walking in from the fields one day, he is so ravenous he demands his brother Jacob give him some stew. Esau’s discomfort with his hunger is so extreme that he agrees to Jacob’s outrageous bargain of food for Esau’s birthright: 32. Esau replied, "Behold, I am going to die; so why do I need this birthright?" -
וַּי ֹאמֶר ֵעׂשָו ִהּנֵה ָאנֹכִי הֹולְֵך לָמּות ְו ָלּמָה ּזֶה לִי.לב ּבְכ ָֹרה:
Bereshit 25:32
Was Esau really going to die in that moment? Unlikely. On a psychological level, however, I think Esau felt what many of us feel – A deep emptiness or lack at the center of our being. A hollowness. A place where no love can reach us. A place of constant, voracious hunger that all the soup in the world can’t fill. If our birthright is a sense of self worth, of love, of freedom, we sell this away all the time for quick fixes that temporarily make us feel better. We are supported in this by our popular culture, which tells us that not only should we fill every hunger, of every kind, as soon as possible – ideally, we should arrange our lives so that we never feel the hunger sensation in the first place.
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I noticed this in my own life years ago when I entered my house and automatically went to put the radio on as I did every day when I came home. No sound emerged. Before I realized the radio had become unplugged, I frantically hit buttons and started to grow panicked and afraid. When I was able to calm myself down, I realized that the radio was an everyday distraction from the hollow and painful ache of hunger and sense of lack I felt when I came home, alone. What is so interesting about this sensation is that it feels so real. Esau really believed he would die of it. It is actually just a powerful creation of our mind – a deeply held story we make up about ourselves. There is no actual lack or hollowness within us. If we cut ourselves open, we wouldn’t find a mysterious hole in our bellies. And yet, it is quite painful. What do we do when we encounter it? TS Eliot asks the question in different way: “Stillness often feels like abandonment. Why isn't Spirit communicating with me? What have I done to deserve such a stony, cold silence? How do I avoid filling with new terrors the emptiness that terrifies me?” - “East Coker”, Four Quartets How do we avoid filling the emptiness? We don’t fill it. We stay in the silent apartment. We get to know the hunger within us – and the stories that surround that hunger - with as gentle and loving a heart as we can. Right there, in that spot, the feeling of emptiness or lack is also our doorway to understanding all the suffering in the world. It is our doorway to feeling fully loved – to allowing ourselves to love others and be loved because we are finally fully loving the parts of us that are most shrouded in shame and pain. In the silence and the stillness, our painful histories emerge out of the place of our emptiness. In accepting them, we allow them to heal. As Leonard Cohen sings: Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen, Anthem When we practice staying with our terrible hunger and craving for as long as possible, we eventually grow bigger and more spacious around them. Eventually, we have a larger frame of love and compassion that can hold that original longing and is not overtaken by it.
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And then something interesting happens. We may actually find the feelings of hunger to not be painful at all. As psychologist Mark Epstein says, “By going into the experience of desire itself, rather than acting on it, you let go of the belief that you are incomplete. The energy of desire ceases to dictate behavior and, instead, fuels presence: being completely in the experience of what is, internally and externally.” That energy can be invigorating. Our sages knew this. In our Shacharit service each morning, we pray in Ma Tovu, “V’ani T’filati lecha YHVH, et ratzon” which the the Kol Haneshama siddur translates as, “as for me, my prayer is for you, Gentle One. May it be for you a time of desire.” I love this unusual translation. We have moved from spending all our energy running away from or trying to end our desires to actually wishing this powerful and beautiful emotion on God itself.
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Toldot - The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection. Learn more jewishspirituality.org
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