We Are Not Fated to Live Tragic Lives

The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is that a comedy has a happy ending. That distinction holds true between the classical and modern eras; readers familiar with Shakespearean comedies will know that they are not comedic because they are funny, but because they resolve neatly at the end and leave the audience satisfied.

The nature of tragedies, however, does change from the classical period to the modern world. In both cases, the storyline will be concerned with the downfall of its main character, or perhaps of multiple characters. In a classical tragedy, that downfall is inevitable. It is scripted by the Fates or the gods, and man may struggle nobly against it but in the end, he will succumb. As Hector says in The Iliad, “No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you, it’s born with us the day that we are born” (VI.581-4). By contrast, a modern tragedy is neither inevitable nor unavoidable; it is tragic precisely because the protagonist’s downfall is the result of his choices, and if he would have chosen otherwise, this ending could have been avoided. Macbeth himself expresses this when he stands at a crossroads, observing, “I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.134-6). He chooses to continue along his bloody path, and his eventual death (spoiler alert for a play that’s well over five hundred years old) is directly attributable to the poor choices that he makes from the beginning.

It has been difficult to watch France burning without seeing it as the falling action in a modern tragedy. (The French would, naturally, object to my calling this a Shakespearean tragedy; we’ll give credit where it’s due and call it Racine-like, instead.) At the time of writing, the protests have been going on for nearly a month; they have since devolved into full-fledged rioting, in which chaos, anarchy, and pandemonium are the new liberte, egalite, fraternite. The French president and his wife attended a concert as the riots escalated, the modern version of Nero fiddling as Rome burned, creating a picture of even greater instability.

Yet, these events are the results of human action, or inaction, rather than an inevitable, noble struggle against fate. France has a long history of tearing itself down: From the same year in which the United States adopted its new form of government in 1789, which remains to this day, France has had at least eleven different governments (possibly more, depending on how you count them), including its current Fifth Republic. And don’t get me started on French philosophy, which is most likely what got us here in the first place.

I have no love lost for France. They don’t have a great history when it comes to the Jewish people, they have had a terrible track record lately when it comes to Israel, and, frankly, I can get a top-tier croissant at the bakery around the corner here in Israel. Yet, I take no pleasure in watching France burn itself to the ground, because I know that it could have chosen better. This ignoble surrender to the worst natures of our beings is the result of poor choices that were made, again and again and again.

The character to whom we are introduced in this week’s Torah portion, the man who changed the world, is the one who instructs us in living well even in the face of difficulty. Abraham, the man who introduced the world to monotheism, was born at the end of last week’s Torah portion, but it is this week that he takes center stage, withstanding test after test that God sets before him. His life is not, by any means, an easy one. God does not appear to Abraham until the age of seventy five, yet the Midrash describes Abraham’s insistence in the years prior that there is a God and there is a better way to live. On God’s commandment, he leaves for a land that will one day be his, but he has no children and no way to pass along his legacy. When famine plagues the land and Abraham goes down to Egypt, Sarah is snatched away from him. He joins a war that is not his own to save his nephew, the same nephew who moved as ideologically far away from Abraham as he could by settling in Sodom when the two men parted ways. Abraham finally has a son at the age of eighty six, only to be told that this son will not be the one to inherit him.

To this point, Abraham’s life could be read as classically tragic. Yet, right before the Covenant of the Parts, Abraham challenges God and points out that while He has promised blessings, there is no one to be Abraham’s successor. Were this indeed a classical tragedy, Abraham would have been saying, “I did what I could. I lived as well as I could in the face of my fate, and now I shall pass from this world quietly, leaving no mark except my noble struggle.” That is not the case. Abraham knows that life is more than a struggle against fate, that it is the sum total of the choices that we make and that only we determine whether or not we live well, and God responds in kind: “And He took him out” (Genesis 15:5). On these words, Rashi cites the Midrash that says that God took Abraham out from under the burden of fate, corroborating his belief in a world of human action.

The final chapter in this week’s portion is that of Abraham receiving the commandment for a brit milah. Rabbi Akiva was once asked by a Roman legionnaire why milah exists: if God creates perfection, wouldn’t a baby be born already circumcised? Rabbi Akiva’s answer was brilliant in its simplicity: He pointed to stalks of grain and a loaf of bread, and pointed out that God did not make the bread. Man did. Because this world is not perfect, this world is not fated, and we are not asked to struggle nobly against fate but to partner with God in creation and in perfecting this world.

Abraham follows through on the commandment. At the age of ninety nine, he gives himself a brit milah, cementing for all time the knowledge that we are never wading in rivers of blood so deep that we cannot turn back. We do not have to live a tragic life.

Because we can always, always choose better.