December 2002 Living With Less Than The Ideal By Rabbi Alvin Kass Surely the most moving dialogue in the entire Bible is the conversation between Rachel and Jacob about Rachel's inability to have children. Her sister Leah, with whom she competes for her husband's love, has just given birth to four sons in quick succession. Rachel, frantic to have offspring of her own, exclaims to Jacob: "Give me children or I shall die!" Helpless to solve the problem of her barrenness, Jacob empathetically answers: "Am I in the place of God who has denied you a child?" Jacob's acknowledgement of his limitations is the most important insight at which any human being can arrive. We are imperfect creatures trying to survive in an imperfect world. That is likewise the theme of Tom Stoppard's new trio of plays, The Coast of Utopia, a nine hour saga that focuses on a group of Russian intellectuals in the middle of the nineteenth century. This is a pivotal time in Russian history as a backward country struggles toward transformation. At the outset we meet Mikhail Bakunin, who begins as a mild-mannered philosopher and ends up a fiery revolutionary, attempting to create the perfect world envisioned by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto. Stoppard's hero is Alexander Herzen, a progressive anti-utopian, who is too realistic to succumb to Bakunin's efforts to bring into being the perfect society. Herzen anticipates the horrors that will flow from political radicalism including massive incarceration and execution of dissidents. In response to Bakunin's contention that "Freedom is a state of mind", Herzen declares: "No, it's a state of not being locked up." Learning to live in an imperfect universe is a message of extraordinary relevance in this post 9-11 world, which has brought to light the terrorist network Al Quaeda which promises its adherents a paradise here on Earth when the Koran becomes the universal law of the world. In the meantime, the toll of death and destruction keeps climbing. The disastrous consequences of political utopianism are well known to all of us who have lived through the twentieth century. For eight decades Russian Communists proclaimed that the state would wither away as a Socialist paradise took its place. That never happened, but tens of millions of people were killed before the truth registered. During the 1930's, the Nazis predicted the arrival of a glorious 1,000-year Reich. However, by the end of World War II, all the world had to show for it was many more millions of victims including one-third of the Jewish people. The need to settle for a life that is less than ideal comes across brilliantly when Herzen's young son drowns. Bakunin views this event as evil. However, Herzen rejects that notion: "Because children grow up we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last." The pleasures the world affords us may be highly ephemeral including the joy of our children, but we need to be thankful even for transitory pleasures. The United States of America is far from a perfect country. We have every right and duty to strive to make it ever better. However, with all of its flaws, I suspect that we all agree that it is infinitely better than all the utopian alternatives. It promises us nothing more than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Mind you, there is no guarantee of happiness, only the right to pursue happiness. As we confront life's multitudinous problems and frustrations, we would do well to emulate Jacob and ask ourselves: "Am I in the place of God?" To be a human being is to recognize that perfection will always be beyond our reach.