Once Yaakov has told his future father-in-law that he would like to
marry Rachel, he offers to work for seven years for that opportunity, and Lavan
agrees.
And it is at this point that the Torah tells us something
interesting about how Yaakov felt while working all this time for the
opportunity to marry his wife-to-be.
Says the Torah:
(כ)
וַיַּעֲבֹד יַעֲקֹב בְּרָחֵל שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים וַיִּהְיוּ בְעֵינָיו כְּיָמִים
אֲחָדִים בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ אֹתָהּ:
And Yaakov worked 7 years for Rachel. And they were in his eyes like a few days
because of his love for her.
And, of course, many of the commentaries are perplexed by this
statement. After all, if he loved her so
much and could not wait to marry her, even a few days, weeks, or months would
have been difficult to wait! Yet,
the Torah seems to say that BECAUSE HE LOVED HER SO MUCH, the WAIT WASN’T SO
BAD!? HOW CAN THAT BE?!
Rashi points out that the language of “yamim
achadim” a few days does NOT come to reflect the fact that Yaakov felt that he
didn’t have to work so long for Rachel.
Rather, it is referencing the initial command that Rivka, his mother,
had given him when she sent him to Lavan’s house in the first place.
Rivka was worried that Esav was going to try to kill Yaakov for
having stolen his bracha. And so, she
sends Yaakov away, and she tells him:
(מג)
וְעַתָּה בְנִי שְׁמַע בְּקֹלִי וְקוּם בְּרַח לְךָ אֶל לָבָן אָחִי חָרָנָה: (מד) וְיָשַׁבְתָּ עִמּוֹ יָמִים
אֲחָדִים עַד אֲשֶׁר תָּשׁוּב חֲמַת אָחִיךָ:
My son, listen to me, and go run to Lavan my brother in
Charan. And you should stay there for YAMIM
ACHADIM, until the wrath of your brother has calmed down.
The Ibn Ezra there says what is “Yamim Achadim”? It’s certainly not a reference to going for a
FEW DAYS. Rather, Yamim can refer to
years, and ACHADIM, from she shoresh ECHAD, means SINGLE DIGITS, as he says,
less than 10 years.
And then, Rivka tells Yitzchak that she wants Yaakov to go to
Charan to find a wife.
So, when Yaakov gets to Charan, he finds the girl he wants to
marry, and he is able to make the deal for only SEVEN YEARS. And so, at that moment he feels that these
were the YAMIM ACHADIM his mother had in mind. He had found the woman he loved and was hoping
to come back in time that had originally been allotted to him.
Chizkuni, Seforno, and the Baalei Tosfos offer a different approach. Of course, they write, during the time
he was working for Rachel, Yaakov did NOT feel like it was a short amount of
time. In fact, because he couldn’t wait
to marry her, it felt like an EXTRAORDINARILY LONG time. However, Yaakov realized just how special she
was, and if Lavan would have asked him to work 14 years to marry her, he would have!
So, in that sense, B’EINAV, in his eyes, according to his
estimation, yes, it was hard to wait, but he would have been willing to do SO
MUCH MORE because of “Ahavaso Osa” how
much he LOVED HER and how special he knew she was, the work he put in didn’t
feel quite as difficult.
The Sfas Emes offers a third approach, and Rabbeinu
Bechayei seems to say a similar idea as well:
When the Torah tells us how Yaakov felt about the time and effort he
was going to have to put in to making his marriage with Rachel become a
reality, it is not simply offering us insight into his inner thoughts and
feelings about the length of time it would take.
Rather, the Torah is offering us a blueprint, and outline for how
Yaakov was going to make it through this extraordinarily long time. He loved her so much and could not wait to
begin his life with her, but waiting SEVEN YEARS was going to be so difficult
and painful.
So, what did he do? He
decided, I’m not going to look at this upcoming time as SEVEN YEARS, because if
I do, I’ll never make it through in- tact emotionally. Rather, I’m going to take it, literally, ONE
DAY AT A TIME. Because if I look at this as one huge, long amount of time, I
will be overwhelmed by the task at hand.
But, if instead of taking all 7 years on my shoulders all at once, I look
at it as 7 days, and then another 7 days, one month and then another month, or
even, quite literally, one day and then another day, then he felt he had a better
chance of making it through the other side of this immense challenge.
Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, who was the
brother of the Rav, and a Talmid Chacham and incredible Torah personality in
his own rite, suffered from a debilitating stroke in his later years.
I have shared with you in the past that my rebbetzin growing up,
Tova Siegel, is Rav Aharon’s daughter, so I had the zechus many times to see
Rav Aharon when he would visit, and my father would at times care for his
medical needs.
After the stroke, it was incredibly difficult for R’ Aharon to
walk, as half his body was left paralyzed. Nevertheless, he worked very hard to
regain his strength so that he would be able to continue to teaching Torah both
in Chicago where he lived as well as at Yeshiva University. And he would be accompanied each day by his
talmidim, his students.
One day during therapy, one of the students noticed that Rav Aharon
was saying something to himself as he struggled to take step after step. He
thought maybe his rebbe was reciting Tehillim or reviewing mishnayos.
But as he got closer he could hear him saying the following words: “Achas,
Achas V’Achas, Achas UShtayim”. This was
the unusual manner in which the Kohein Gadol would count each and every time he
sprinkled the blood of the korbanos during his unique Avoda on Yom Kippur. “Achas, Achas V’Achas, Achas UShtayim.”
Rav Aharon understood that even as he undertook the sacred work of strengthening
his body to allow him to teach Torah once again, he would only be able to do so
if was willing to take it, quite literally, ONE STEP AT A TIME.
I heard this story many years ago, but I then saw it again in an
article written by R’ Aryeh Zev Ginsburg.
Rav Ginsburg is the rav of the Chofetz Chaim
Torah Center of Cedarhurst, and had a very serious case of COVID, survived
after a very scary few months, and eventually needed many months of rehab,
himself, to regain his ability to walk.
He wrote an
article for Mishpacha Magazine where he related that many years before he was
ever sick, he had read this story about Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, and for
whatever reason he had decided to write it down and later forgot about it. It
was only once he found himself with the daunting task of rehab in front of himself
that he rediscovered the story.
He writes that
this story gave him such strength, and that as he took one step at a time,
learning to walk again, he would recite the same words that Rav Aharon had used
to help him take those difficult steps so many years prior.
There are so many times in our lives when we feel overwhelmed by
the task at hand. It might be a difficult
relationship we need to handle, a physical or psychological illness, managing
our emotions with all that is going on right now in the world, or a desire to
make a change in our religious life.
No matter the challenge, when it feels so big, and it is difficult
to imagine finding a pathway forward, remember that we don’t have to take everything
on all at once. Rather, we can take it one
day at a time, one challenging interaction at a time, one new initiative at a
time.
In fact, studies have found that when people take shorter, more
concrete steps and celebrate small wins, the mind receives that feedback and
increases motivation moving forward.
We all face challenges in our lives that feel like they are just
too much to handle. But when we are willing to break challenges down into
smaller parts – counting “achas, achas v’achas” – we set ourselves up not to
necessarily make the long days feel short, but to at least give ourselves the
strength and feedback we need to manage through the challenge and come out the other
side.