The Jewish Divorce Project- Episode 12: Divorce Theology. Was this all part of a plan?

This week’s episode is theologically and psychologically deep. And there is plenty of good spiritual wisdom to take from divorce that applies to our lives during COVID.

 

In this episode, Noam and Sheva take a look at the tension between the way we think our marriages are supposed to turn out and the way we see them actually turning out. How responsible are you for creating that circumstance? Is there a plan that we’re supposed to find and follow? What is there to learn about myself from this life-changing event?

 

Vayishlach refers to the name of the Torah portion that Jews will study this Saturday. It means, “And he sent.” Which refers to the patriarch, Jacob, sending all his possessions and family away before he had a life-changing encounter. This experience is described as a wrestling matching between Jacob and mysterious stranger. Some speculate this could be God, or an angel of God. Others offer that Jacob experienced an inner-struggle as he was reconciling who he truly was the night before seeing his estrange brother, Esau, for the first time since deceiving him.

 

Suffering in itself does not heal. Only suffering that has meaning and is accepted willingly has the power to heal and to transform an individual into a whole person…. Jung named this process of growth from one stage of awareness to another individuation. Transformation, or real change of character, can take place in a person only when, through suffering, he engages in an active struggle with the Shadow, the dark side of himself. (Esther Spitzer, “A Jungian Midrash on Jacob’s Dream,” The Reconstructionist, October 1976, pp. 22-23)