This dynamic is described by the psychoanalyst and philosopher Robert Stolorow in an interview in Psychology Today when he explains the dynamic between analyst and patient:“ If we are to be an understanding relational home for a traumatized person, we must tolerate, even draw upon, our own existential vulnerabilities so that we can dwell unflinchingly with his or her unbearable and recurring emotional pain. When we dwell with others’ unendurable pain, their shattered emotional worlds are enabled to shine with a kind of sacredness that calls forth an understanding and caring engagement within which traumatized states can be gradually transformed into bearable painful feelings.” Jewishly, the process that Stolorow specifies for an analyst, is upon each of us – to mine our own“ existential vulnerabilities” and emerge as a“ dwelling”( a term he uses elsewhere) for the suffering other.
The more we are able to enter the strangeness of our own hearts, the more we are ethically equipped to stand up for and stand by the stranger: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the father and child plucked off the street by ICE agents, those threatened daily by racism and xenophobia.
But the seder goes further, requiring of us something more radical, more intimate than imagination. Our tradition calls on us to literally consume our ancestral experience, to eat our heritage of slavery and liberation.
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