Finding wisdom in the questions

"Wisdom does not come to a person at once. It only comes after struggles, quests, anguish and effort."
--Judah Barzeloni

Everyone struggles at some point in life with ultimate questions. Sometimes we ask difficult questions about the nature of God, suffering and justice when we are children and then find that, although situations change and our questions mature, they are often only more sophisticated versions of questions we've already asked. That process results in wisdom.

Judah Barzeloni was a 12th century kabbalist and wrote the quote above in his Peirush Sefer Yetzirah, a commentary on one of the foundational works of Jewish mysticism. The notion that wisdom is not linear counters much of what we are raised to think of as education from our earliest days in school. Learning is generally sequenced; we move in math and language studies up certain building blocks, referencing what we've learned before as if we were going up steps. Barzeloni throws out that notion when it comes to wisdom as opposed to the act of studying.

How we acquire wisdom is an ancient conundrum and one without a formulaic answer. Job, the asker of many ultimate questions, wonders about knowledge: "Wisdom, where shall it be found?" (Job 28:12). And yet, though he cannot identify where wisdom comes from, he also cannot minimize its importance. The Talmud takes a similar position: "One who has acquired wisdom has acquired everything; one who lacks wisdom, lacks everything" (BT Nedarim 41a).

If wisdom is so seminal to meaningful living then why don't we spend more time as adults pursuing it? Our lives narrow so much through the professional and domestic demands on our time that there seems to be little time and place for reflection. But it is not only an issue of triage. It is also a question of effort. Barzeloni tells us that there is both anguish and effort involved in the acquisition of wisdom. We can go through life experiences as passive recipients of fate, or we can delve into problems and squeeze meaning out of them in a search for self-understanding. Oscar Wilde said that, "The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves." Wisdom comes when we can be our own critics.

Wisdom also comes through quest, an intentional search for something and not only an after-the-fact contemplation of circumstance. Think for a moment. When is the last time you had a quest for knowledge? The word "quest" is so romantic. We think of knights and mythic figures in fairy-tales who make their life's purpose into a quest for something expansive and majestic. When we describe our own passion for knowledge as a quest, it assumes a grander status.

It is hard to achieve Barzeloni's wisdom without patience. It does not come all at once but is the product of a life's work. It is malleable and fluid. It changes over time as we grow older. But age is not a guarantee of wisdom; it may only represent greater cumulative foolishness. Aging only provides us more time for wisdom's acquisition if we have open hearts and minds to learn.

Sometimes I'm in a class with a person in his or her eighties who is still studying regularly. There is an animation, a humility and a dignity in that person that never ceases to amaze me. Learning with them gives me a model of graceful aging. With wisdom as a quest, life becomes a laboratory, a graduate school with no graduation date.

Shabbat Shalom.

P.S. Interested in Kabbalah? Who isn't? Join us starting December 9th for a 10-part course on Kabbalah taught by Rabbi Dr. Gary Fink. For more information, contact Aliza Sperling at asperling@pjll.org.

By Erica Brown  |  November 19, 2009; 12:45 PM ET Save & Share:                 
Previous: Bravo to the bishops | Next: Politicians should be open to input

The comments to this entry are closed.