Bearing the Burden: Patience, Suffering, and Hope

This past Shabbat I heard a profound insight from Rabbi Kaller that I found fascinating. In Hebrew, the word for patience is סבלנות – savlanut. Its root, ס־ב־ל, means to suffer, to bear a burden—but also patience. Hebrew is unique among languages in that every word grows out of a three-letter root with meaning at its core. The root isn’t just grammar—it’s the essence of the word.

From this root we get sevel — suffering, sablan — a porter who carries heavy loads, and savlanut — patience. I love that connection: patience is not passive waiting, but the strength to carry suffering with dignity, trusting that there is meaning beyond what we can see.

This connects beautifully to Parshat Ha’azinu, which Moshe delivers not as a speech, but as a song. What’s striking is that this song contains both blessings of closeness to God and warnings of exile and suffering. Why call it a song, when so much of it is painful? Because in music, harmony and dissonance are part of the same composition. Only when the song is complete do we hear how every note—pleasant or harsh—fits together.

So too in life: we all carry some element of suffering, moments that feel overwhelming or meaningless. And today, the struggle with the hostages weighs on us all. These are burdens that feel unbearable, dissonance without resolution. But perhaps savlanut means carrying both personal and national pain together with strength, refusing to give up hope, and trusting that even what feels broken now is part of a larger story not yet finished.

Ha’azinu reminds us that both joy and struggle are woven into the same song of Jewish destiny. My prayer is that we be blessed with the savlanut to carry this burden with strength—and that the music of redemption will soon resolve with the safe return of every hostage, so that we can finally hear the beauty of the whole.