Feared and Loved

Our Torah reading of Yitro begins with a heartfelt reunion between Moshe and his father-in-law Yitro, who listened eagerly to all that had happened to the People of Israel and the Egyptians.  The Torah describes Yitro’s reaction to the news of God’s kindness, using an odd verb: vayichad.  Explaining this word is where it gets interesting.

A popular translation, offered by Ibn Ezra and others, tells us that Yitro “rejoiced” at the news; the word comes from the root chedva, or “delight.”  Indeed, Rav, in the Talmud in Sanhedrin, says that Yitro actually converted on the spot, and vayichad refers to the sharp (chad) blade that he used to perform a berit mila on himself.  But Shmuel fundamentally disagrees with Rav: vayichad, he says, refers to the pain (“cuts,” or chiddudin) that Yitro felt upon learning of the deaths of the Egyptians.  Was Yitro happy or upset?

Rabbi Asher Wassertheil tries to resolve these contradictory emotions, suggesting that Yitro was upset on behalf of the Egyptians, who never got to acknowledge God’s power in their lifetimes like he was able to.  This answer, though, to me seems too pat.  It recalls The Office’s Michael Scott, who, when asked if he would rather be feared or loved, replied: “Both; I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”  You can’t be both feared and loved; you can’t be both upset and joyful.

Or maybe you can.  I think often of my teacher, Columbia Renaissance literature professor Edward Tayler.  When teaching us Hamlet, he distinguished between what he called a “Polonius couplet” and a “Hamlet couplet.”  The doofy Polonius talks a lot but says very little.  He tells his son Laertes: “And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Polonius could have just said “tell the truth,” but he can’t help blathering on and on.  Hamlet, though, is different: when he tells his mother, Queen Gertrude, “I must be cruel, only to be kind / This bad begins, and worse remains behind,” he says two things at once.  He will be both bad and good.  “You have to squint to see two things at once,” Tayler explained, in his cigarette-stained voice.  “Hamlet makes you squint.”

The greatness of being human is our ability to hold two contradictory emotions at the same time.  We hope for our kids to grow up and leave us just as we are terrified for our kids to grow up and leave us.  On a national level, we are overjoyed to see hostages return just as we are infuriated that Hamas remains in power.  One of the greatest challenges in parenting today can be the pressure that we need to choose one side, one feeling, over another — because only one can be right.

Tayler and Michael Scott have a point: we may not always have to make such a choice.  Finding such flexibility — and encouraging it to develop in our kids — will make them (and us) much more successful adults.

Shabbat Shalom.