Rav Idi tells a story: There was a woman who was married for ten years without having children. [The couple] decided to get divorced but when they turned to Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai for advice he said just as you got married with festivities so should your divorce be festive. They made a beautiful party and out of his love for her the husband said “Though we have to get divorced and you must return to your father’s house before you leave choose the best thing from my house and take it back with you to your father’s house.”

She got him drunk and he succumbed to the wine and fell asleep. While he was sleeping she had her servants pick him up and carry him to her father’s house. When he awoke he asked her “What am I doing here?” She answered “You told me to take the best thing from your house. There is nothing that I love more than you.” When he saw this great love they went to ask Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai what to do and Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai prayed for the couple and they had a child. (Shir HaShirim Rabba 1:31)

The husband in this story was goal oriented. If this marriage is not producing results even if we love each other there is no point to the marriage. The woman though sees the world differently. The connection is enough. We are in this marriage not to produce but to be in the relationship.

In a beautiful and metaphorically powerful finale this couple merits a child only when the husband is shaken out of his goal-oriented approach by Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai’s validation of the wife’s perspective. Paradoxically it is when the couple begins to understand the purity of love that has no ulterior motive that their relationship bears fruit.

Before Penina instigated conflict with Chana the mother of Shmuel we do not find that her childlessness pained Chana. It took Penina’s goading to show Chana how crucial it was that her marriage to Elkana bear fruit — without Penina’s incitement it seems as if Chana would have been fulfilled simply by being in the relationship.

Rabbi Ostreicher in his interesting sefer on Navi Machamadeha Miyemei Kedem points out how fitting this was. Chana’s non-utilitarian relationship to Elkana mirrored Elkana’s life work bringing the Jewish people into the embrace of non-utilitarian relationship with Hashem; Elkana used to travel to Shilo for each of the regalim using a different route so as to encourage people he hadn’t met before to come with him on aliyah l’regel.

A relationship with Hashem just like a relationship between husband and wife can be used for an ulterior motive but as Jews we know that that’s not what we’re striving for. Yes we daven for our needs and hope our tefillos will be answered but we understand that getting what we want is not the point. The point is l’hisaneg al Hashem — to come close to Hashem and revel in that pleasure. Chana’s relationship with Elkana was a reflection of this; since it wasn’t focused on offspring it epitomized an ahavah she’eino teluya badavar.

Penina in her greatness understood the depth of this metaphor and realized the potential power of a child born as a result of a relationship with no ulterior motive. She felt it her obligation to goad Chana into having a child because she knew that only a child born of a pure relationship would have the power to bring Klal Yisrael back into a pure relationship with Hashem.

WHAT DID I BECOME?

This World is a world of building doing and perfecting. Because of this we often allow ourselves to be pulled into a vortex of whirling action. Sometimes we become human doings instead of human beings.

In this mindset we lose sight of who we become as we run along — the only question is: Are we making progress? We conjure up signposts of success along the journey to make us feel that we’ve arrived — high school seminary job marriage children grandchildren but we sometimes forget to check if those external signs of success mean that we’ve actually gotten anywhere. The main thing is that we keep moving.

The millionaire who made his fortune through dubious means the doctor who reached to the top of his field by stepping on lots of necks on the way up the lawyer who destroyed his family life by working 75-hour weeks — they will still earn our respect in the secular world. The process the how he got there doesn’t concern us. We want to hear the bottom line. Was he successful? Has the next frontier been conquered?

But while This World is a world of doing the purpose of all that action is to bring us closer to Hashem. Even if I accomplish great things the only really important question is: Who did I become while doing all those things? If we understood that it’s the process that is the result — that it is how I went about my journey that decides how close I will be to Hashem then instead of asking what is written on the diploma on the wall we would ask who earned that diploma.

Even doing mitzvos can confuse us. We may think since we are commanded to do chesed and give tzedakah that G-d actually needs us to help Him. In reality if G-d wanted to provide for the poor and hungry He could handle it on His own thank you very much! The reason He gives us the opportunity to be His partner Rav Wolbe tells us is to give us an opportunity to build ourselves to become compassionate loving and caring — in short to become more like Him.

If we escape from that relationship with Hashem and forget the ultimate purpose we can become mitzvah machines and in our mad rush to accomplish we can become nasty people even while doing chesed.

Like the husband in the opening midrash we feel like without something to show for it it’s not worth anything. We don’t realize that when we’re building a home together much more important than if the tiles match is whether we smile at each other as we hang them.

ROOTED IN EDEN

Unfortunately in a world focused on accomplishment and success it’s easy to create a complete split between process and result. In our world if you tried and did not succeed your efforts are worthless; you don’t get into college on the basis of having studied for hours for the entrance exam. And conversely if you passed the exam with flying colors even if it has nothing to do with your own efforts — you were born brilliant — we will still laud you for your accomplishments.  

In the ideal world of Gan Eden the tree (the process) was meant to have the taste of the fruit (the result). The earth was supposed to produce an eitz pri — a tree that itself had the taste of fruit even while producing fruit oseh pri. The process the way in which you got there (the roots bark and peel) like the myriad little actions that make up who we are should have been infused with the sweetness of the result (the fruit) — the relationship we’re building with Hashem.

But the earth in a foreshadowing of the human experience did not obey Hashem’s command and made the tree and the fruit two entirely separate entities — and introduced dissonance into our lives. In our current world the tree does not have the taste of the fruit — an unsuspecting Martian would never guess that an orange and an orange tree had anything in common — and we’re left in a world where the result is so estranged from the process we can disdain the process entirely. 

LIVING THE METAPHOR

Try as we might sometimes we are forced to come face to face with a process which can’t be ignored. While we can instantly e-mail our documents and zap our food in the microwave there is no way to have an instant baby. Pregnancy is process. Creating life isn’t just a nice theoretical idea for a woman where one can pontificate on the value of a child who will carry on my name; it is an actual minute by minute creation involving varicose veins and heartburn.

A woman doesn’t do pregnant — she is pregnant. A wise woman once said that what is nice about being pregnant is that even when you aren’t doing anything you are doing something. Every minute of the process is also the result.

HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE

We humans fight a losing battle against time. In our insatiable drive for control we set our pathetic little watches synchronize our calendars and take out our cameras. We yearn for a way to grasp this endlessly undulating existence desperate to feel that there is some permanence some solid accomplishment in our hands.

But even as we snap that perfect picture we know it will be outdated a minute later. No picture can reflect reality — time taunts the very idea of permanence in this finite world.

In the famous midrash Avraham Avinu sees the world as a castle going up in flames. Fire Rav Moshe Shapiro explains is a perfect example of the “ingraspability” of this world. Like time where the minute you grasp a moment it is already gone when we look at fire we think we are looking into an entity that exists and yet all we see is the action of combustion; what we were looking at a second before is gone.

But there is one way to hold onto this world before it slips between our fingers. Time that frighteningly slippery commodity can be held onto when each disappearing moment becomes the point of existence. When we realize that every boring mundane detail of our lives here can be part of the web that binds us to Hashem we can infuse every ephemeral minute with eternity.

This explains how Yaakov could have bargained with Eisav for the World to Come while he was still in This World. The World to Come is a world of result there we will be immersed in the joy of a relationship with Hashem — but that relationship grows and develops right here in this fleeting finite world. Someone who lives with that awareness is living in both worlds simultaneously.

LOSING THE BATTLE AND WINNING THE WAR

Whether it’s the dishes that never stay clean or the child who didn’t get up again for davening just when she felt she was making progress with him a woman’s work often seems like she is building sand castles in front of a tidal wave.

Sometimes in an attempt to feel some job satisfaction we latch onto that old standby “look at how much I have accomplished today.” But if my day can be summed up with “I cut five sets of fingernails gave five children baths and folded five loads of laundry ” then not only have I reduced the people who live in my house to objects to be processed down the assembly line I have missed the point. If the goal is being in relationship — with my child and through that with Hashem — then I might have to forego cutting one child’s nail because her finger is sore. Even though I want the task behind me I want even more to be like Hashem “rachamav al kol maasav.” If the process is the goal then instead of finishing all the baths quickly I might bundle one child in a towel so he can pretend he’s a hotdog let the other flood the bathroom while she practices her “swimming” and have the third take his bath later even though it will make me more work.

Beyond the ever-shifting never-finishing work of childcare and housework women often spend a lot of their time enabling others to learn and grow. It’s no wonder that in our anti-process accomplishment-worshipping world this idea has gotten extremely bad press. “Why send him to learn? What about you?!” They are only impressed with the man who made it to the top of the mountain — not the one who got him there.

Succos is our holiday of joy. Joy is the result of moving into a more feminine mindset described by the Navi Amos: “Behold days are coming … when the plowman will meet the reaper and the treader of grapes [will meet] the one who carries the seed …” The usual disconnect between the process and the result — the ugly black up-turned dirt of the plowman bears no resemblance to the golden wheat that the reaper is yet to reap — will no longer exist. The two the plowman and the reaper will meet in joy. The seforim say that the esrog itself — a fruit whose peel (which represents the tree) is also flavorful — hints to the joyous time in the future when the tree and the fruit the process and the result will share the sweet taste of the fruit.

At the Simchas Beis HaShoeivah the rejoicing surrounded the process — going down to the spring drawing the water and bringing it back to the Beis HaMikdash. “Whoever has not seen the joy of a Simchas Beis HaShoeivah in this world has never seen joy in his life” the Gemara tells us and we can understand why. Someone huffing and puffing along always trying to reach the next peak can never taste the happiness of having arrived. It is only one who understands the joy of the drawing of the water who understands that just driving down the highway together is the family holiday knows joy.

How is it possible to achieve joy in the rat race of life? Only when every figurative schlepping of the bucket to the spring and even every knock experienced on the way is accompanied by the understanding that those simple acts will be revealed as the lantern through which our relationship with the Ribono shel Olam will eventually shine.

Miriam Kosman is a lecturer for Nefesh Yehudi an outreach organization that teaches Torah to secular Israeli university students. Many of the ideas in this article are drawn from the Torah of Rav Moshe Shapiro shlita and are based on the writer’s understanding of his ideas. This article is excerpted from the writer’s forthcoming book on male and female forces in the universe and in ourselves.