The Young family is notoriously bad at waiting. I could blame this on the fact that my children’s formative years, the years where they would have learned the skills of waiting in lines or for food at restaurants, were the Covid years, and therefore they were not in those spaces to learn those life skills. Or I could blame it on Amazon and Netflix and our on-demand, instant gratification culture.
Or, I could just call it what it is: we’re a naturally impatient bunch. But we’re not without solutions. This is why we always travel with a pack of cards, especially to restaurants. If you’ve seen us out, you’ll see that Mark and I have given our children some very solid gambling skills. The kids are particularly adept at blackjack and 5 card poker. Maybe you’ll even be generous and say we have simply swapped out one life skill for another.
The proverb “all things come to those who wait” originated from a poem by Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie, who used to write under her pseudonym, Violet Fane. The poem reads:
All hoped-for things will come to you
Who have the strength to watch and wait,
Our longings spur the steeds of Fate,
This has been said by one who knew.
‘Ah, all things come to those who wait,’
(I say these words to make me glad),
But something answers soft and sad,
‘They come, but often come too late.’
All things come to those who wait…while Currie feels empowered by the sentiment, the final couplet expresses her true feelings: but something answers soft and sad…they come, but often come too late.
Indeed, there can be tremendous payoff at the end of a wait, but a delay can be its own difficult experience that colors the outcome. We certainly learned this lesson in last week’s Torah portion; how Moses was delayed on the mountain and because the people did not know where he went, or when he’d return, the anxiety of waiting got the hold of them. They built and worshiped the golden calf - idolatry at its most egregious.
Something answers soft and sad…Moses returns, but only after the orgiastic frenzy has taken over. The sad reality of the Israelites’ destructive impatience becomes a burden not just for the desert generation, but a warning to modern humans as well.
The Hebrew word for patience is “savlanut.” It shares its linguistic root with sevel which means “suffering” and sabal which means “a porter” - as in someone who carries a load. This all indicates that savlanut, patience, is not just about waiting, but being able to endure the heaviness of that wait.
The next time Moses goes up the mountain, he comes back to a repentant people and two new tablets to place beside the broken ones in the holy ark. The lesson is clear: we can learn the skill of waiting.
This week’s Torah portion then opens with what feels like aside: God repeats the law regarding keeping Shabbat. “On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a sabbath of complete rest, holy to יהוה; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the sabbath day.” After this rather vehement reiteration of the commandment, the text launches into the details of constructing the Tabernacle.
We have to wonder why the sabbath is singled out for repetition when, certainly, if you were picking one of the 10 commandments to reiterate it would have made sense to zero in on idolatry, right?
The rabbis wonder the same and, oddly enough, the midrashic answer leans uber-practical. They say that Torah reiterates Shabbat because the Israelites are about to begin a large building project. It is important that they know that the work on the Tabernacle, as holy as it is, pauses on Shabbat. While the construction of the Tabernacle is important, Shabbat supercedes and points to God’s spiritual blueprint that exists outside of and above these earthly matters. The Tabernacle honors holy space, but Shabbat honors holy time. As Abraham Joshua Heschel shares in his famous work, The Sabbath:
“To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks [as humans]. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”
Hence, the Sabbath reminder of this week’s parsha. Don’t get so sidetracked by holy space that you lose sense of holy time.
As a concept, it’s powerful, but as a modern, assimilated Jew, I struggle with how to incorporate Shabbat into my own life. I will even admit that sometimes Shabbat feels like a test of my savlanut, having to endure the pause of normal activity just because tradition says so. But the sages encourage us to consider that it's really the opposite way around: we are in fact bearing the burden of the whole week, exercising the patience to make it to Shabbat, which is the time of exhale and delight.
And yet it would be foolish of us to simply consider the workweek to be a transitory, burdensome bore. Shabbat is but one day among seven. The other six need to count in some way.
Perhaps the Tabernacle then represents the holy capacity of the workweek; that we can still be building something special with the emotional and physical burdens of regular life. The tabernacle, afterall, is built of precious stones and metals, tapestries exquisitely woven by rainbow threads. The description of this labor intensive project is really quite moving:
“Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to יהוה, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants —gold objects of all kinds. And everyone who possessed blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned ram skins…And all the skilled women spun with their own hands, and brought what they had spun, in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen…And the chieftains brought lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece; and spices and oil for lighting, for the anointing oil, and for the aromatic incense.” (Ex 35:20-28)
All things come to those who wait, but in the waiting, there can be gifts. In the waiting space, your heart can be moved, whether by delight or by challenge. Could it even be that there is something precious about waiting? That “ patience is a virtue” not because the poets painted it that way but that we might actually reap benefits from its discomforts, discovering new strengths within ourselves?
Kay Ryan, former US poet laureate wrote this of kind of waiting:
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time’s fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn’t be
Distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.
Now, this isn’t to say that every test of patience is a gift from God. If you are experiencing illness, or going through treatment of some sort, or waiting on social change, we should not be so cruel to say “well, it’s just making you stronger.” I believe that is why Ryan offers two types of diamonds - the genuine ones that come with the desired, long-waited-for outcome and the lab-grown ones, the ones that are fabricated from the harsh waiting environment. Both are brilliant and hard, but they are brilliant and hard in different ways.
The reality of the human condition is that things take time. Sometimes we are impatient, and justified in that impatience. Our tradition therefore comes to equip us with the skills to endure in that difficult space. Savlanut is not so much a character trait as it is a skill.
Patience is not about being docile, passive or uncomplaining. Patience is survival. Patience is continuing to exist without devolving into self-destruction.
Patience therefore requires feeling validated and seen by oneself and by others. It means we must know when to move closer and help shoulder the burden and when to separate and allow space and time.
It means looking for the Sabbaths - not just the calendar based ones - but the sacred pausing that can refresh the spirit and body of the laborer, the person waiting or suffering. Whether it's checking in by phone, or insisting on lunch together, or a small gift that elicits a smile. We tend to lose patience with other people’s waiting, so let us take a note from our tradition this week: seek the balance. Honor the work and honor the rest. Muster the strength and know when to put down the load. Seek the gifts of your loved ones and community, know when you need to be alone.
