Patience Suffering
New immigrants in Israel are often told to have patience – savlanut (סַבְלָנוּת) – with our new surroundings. Whether trying to explain to some hardened bureaucrat at the Ministy of the Interior or pleading with a cable rep to come to your house the cached response is savlanut, you must have savlanut.
It’s an infuriating irony that the people who are telling you to be patient never are. Countless times phones have been hung up, people have walked away and projectiles have even been thrown but rarely if ever has patience been exhibited.
I had been living in Israel for a couple of months when I had lunch with my aunt and another relative. I explained to them the ups and downs of immigration and how weary I was of savlanut.
My aunt laughed and said that I should consider the root of savlanut – saval (סֵבֶל). Saval means – why I never realized this… – to suffer. Realizing the emphasis behind the word is completely different than the English patience made the mantra of savlanut resonate more fully.
My aunt laughed (again) and said that it’s only natural that the Hebrew equivalent for patience would be rooted in suffering what with Jewish history being what it is. I conceded she had a point.
While patience has its origin in the Latin deponent verb pati which means one who endures it doesn’t have the same sense that savlanut does. There’s a clear distinction between one who is patient and one who suffers another. Patience carries with it a sense of one-who-is-caring or cared-for whereas if you must suffer someone, you do it because you are obligated and would rather not.
In Hebrew, there is no distinction as far as I can tell. Suffering and caring are wrapped up in the same word – savlanut – with suffering as the overriding force. So when people proclaim savlonut – sufferance – it smacks of “you came here, you deal with it. You had a choice.”