The third aliyah of Bechukotai - it's just - wow. This is the aliyah of the absolutely brutal and horrific "curses" Israel will endure if they stray from the teachings of Torah. Some of them are so horrifying that one can only imagine why the Torah would have gone to such great detail and specificity (VaYikra 26:29 is one that really comes to mind here).
But one thing is abundantly clear - even when we "walk with indifference" with G-d, G-d will never stop walking with us.
Even when we flung about into the nations into ruin after ruin, genocide after genocide, G-d cannot and will not ever forget us entirely. That covenant really is eternal, even if G-d must remind G-d's Self of this covenant.
And all of this suffering - and the suffering is quite real - is in an effort to help us to teshuvah and return to G-d.
It speaks out another bitter truth that no one is comfortable saying anymore - your own suffering is in your own hands, or at least in the hands of your people and community. Whether on an individual or collective or world-wide scale, we are responsible for the consequences -- good and bad -- of our actions. Things do not, cannot, and will not "just happen." That is utter heresy and I honestly feel bad for anyone who is stuck in this mindset - of no agency, randomness, and misery.
I can only hope that I am close enough that my suffering and the suffering of my family and the entire Jewish people never even comes close to what the Torah describes here. But that life does achieve the enlightened state described earlier on.
And every painful opportunity is simply an opportunity to come closer, change, and return.
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