Parashat VaYichi 5768/2007

Torah Gems - December 21

Friday evening services begin at 4:02 pm, 5 minutes following a 3:57 pm candle lighting (the latest appropriate time to light Shabbat candles - beginning 5 minutes following such a time, theoretically allows people 5 minutes to walk from home to shul for services) in our Rabb Chapel.

Saturday morning services will begin at 8:45 am.

Following a noontime Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open. Talmud will convene at 4:00 pm. Mincha will be in our Rabb Chapel at 3:42 pm. My Mincha and Metaphysics topic will be "Entering Exodus." Havdallah takes place no earlier than 4:57 pm.

--Rabbi Hamilton

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From the Torah Commentary of Richard Elliot Friedman

Commandments can be promises and blessings.

Chapter 48:4 I'm making you fruitful and multiplying you, and I'll make you..But God did not say "I'll make you fruitful.." God said, "Be fruitful.."(35:11). Why does Jacob tell Joseph that God promised to do it when God actually told him to do it? Perhaps it is because Jacob has only one more son (Benjamin) after God tells him this, and so the becoming fruitful must refer to the births of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Jacob would not see this as in his power but rather as God's doing, and so he understands God's words not as a command but as a promise and a blessing.

Judah's Preeminence

Chapter 49:8 Judah. Reuben is demoted from firstborn preeminence (49:4); Simeon and Levi are condemned to be scattered (49:7). The fourth-born Judah is the one to receive praise, success, and dominion. The fulfillment will come when Judah becomes the largest of the tribes, and its royal family, the kings descended from David, rule for centuries and hold the messianic promise, Judah was the brother who saved Joseph's life, who promised to be the protector of Benjamin, whose relationship with Tamar resulted in the birth of the clan of the future kings of Israel. The patriarchs will all be buried in Hebron, the capital city of the tribe of Judah. Here at the end of Genesis we find the denounement of the stories of the brothers, and we are made aware of their significance for the future.

Mourning and healing

50:16 Your father had commanded before his death. We never find out whether Joseph - or his brothers - ever told Jacob what his brothers did to him. The brothers claim that Jacob commanded that Joseph should forgive them, but we do not know if they are making it up or not. Either way, it is the right message: after a parent's death, the children should try to heal any old wounds and draw close.

Why is Joseph (eventually) buried in Shchem?

Chapter 50:15 When Joseph's brothers saw. According to a Midrash, (Tanhuma 17) when Jacob's body was brought to Hebron for burial, the brothers saw Joseph make a side trip to the pit into which he had been thrown as a child. Joseph went there to reflect on the wondrous deliverance he had experienced since that day, but the brothers feared that he was harboring thoughts of revenge. Where was that pit located? Shchem. I prefer to imagine that Joseph was offering a nod to his brothers that, in the future, their descendants will bury him in this place as a form of repair (Tikkun), as the Talmud states "from that place he was removed from the Land, and to that place he shall be returned to the Land."

From The Beginning of Wisdom (Leon Kass)

The last chapter of Genesis begins with the burial of Jacob at Machpelah and ends with the mummification of Joseph in Egypt. The contrast between burial and embalming/mummification reveals a crucial difference between Israel and Egypt: the difference between acceptance and denial or defiance of death. Embalming the body is an attempt at human control over death. The putative beneficiary of this treatment is the deceased: embalming resists time and change, prevents decay, beautifies the body, and prepares for reanimation and continued life - not to say immortality. Burial accepts that we are "dust to dust." It manifests a different attitude toward the body and its fragile beauty, toward time and finitude and memory...The way of Israel is the way of memory, keeping alive not the bodies of the dead but their ever-living legacy in relation to the ever-living God, who in the beginning created heaven and earth and made man alone in His own image, and who later summoned Father Abraham and his descendants to "walk before Me and be wholehearted."

In honor of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's yahrzeit, this coming Wednesday evening, I offer a couple of passages which I find particularly resonant.

"Mindfulness of God rises slowly, a thought at a time. Suddenly we are there. Or He is here, at the margin of our soul? When we begin to feel a qualm of diffidence lest we hurt what is holy, lest we break what is whole, then we discover that He is not austere. He answers with love our trembling awe. Repentant or forgetting Him even for a while, we become sharers of gentle joy; we would like to dedicate ourselves forever to the unfolding of His final order."

"How often does justice lapse into cruelty and righteousness into hypocrisy. Prayer revives and keeps alive the rare greatness of some past experience in which things glowed with meaning and blessing. It remains important, even when we ignore it for a while, like a candlestick set aside for the day. Night will come, and we shall again gather round its tiny flame. Our affection for the trifles of living will be mixed with longing for the comfort of all men."

"We must learn how to study the inner life of the words that fill the world of the prayer book. Without intense study of their meaning, we feel, indeed, bewildered when we encounter the multitude of those strange, lofty beings that populate the inner cosmos of the Jewish spirit. It is not enough to know how to translate Hebrew into English; it is not enough to have met a word in the dictionary and to have experienced unpleasant adventures with it in the study of grammar. A word has a soul, and we must learn how to attain insight into its life."

SHABBAT SHALOM

Parashat Vayigash 5768/2007

Torah Gems - December 14

Friday evening services begin at 3:59 pm, 5 minutes following a 3:54 pm candle lighting (the latest appropriate time to light Shabbat candles - beginning 5 minutes following such a time, theoretically allows people 5 minutes to walk from home to shul for services) in our Rabb Chapel.

Saturday morning services will begin at 8:45 am.

Following a noontime Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open. Talmud will convene at 4:00 pm. Mincha will be in our Rabb Chapel at 3:39 pm. My Mincha and Metaphysics topic will be "Jealousy's Test on the Tenth of Teveth." Havdallah takes place no earlier than 4:54 pm.

--Rabbi Hamilton

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Most of us love a good story. The Book of Genesis is filled with
elaborate stories with convoluted plots full of deception and
intrigue. Parshat Vayigash is no exception and begins with the
dramatic reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers. The Torah
has provided much room for the development of this story culminating
in the emotionally charged reconciliation that we read at the
beginning of this parsha. The story does not end here, but continues
until the end of the Book of Genesis with the dramatic and tearful
scene in which Joseph grants his brethren forgiveness and promises to
sustain them and their children in Egypt after his death.

Why does the Torah devote so much space to narrative while employing
brevity when prescribing mitzvot? For example, we are told to do no
work on Shabbat but we are not told what exactly constitutes work. By
giving so much room to the development of stories, is the Torah
acknowledging the power of the narrative to transform our actions and
our lives?

Jewish literature is replete with Agadot, Chasidic tales, and
speculative ruminations by rabbis and scholars concerning our history
and its various characters. Reconciliation is a theme that appears
more than once in the Torah especially in the Book of Genesis.
Forgiveness and the ability to forgive is a recurrent theme in
Judaism. Each one of us can certainly think of at least one powerful
example in our own lives of a strained relationship that has never
been resolved. It is most painful when this occurs between family
members. The story of Joseph and his brothers spans many years and
goes into great detail to both describe and define the nature of the
resentment, the wrong-doing, the estrangement, the reconciliation,
and the final forgiveness.

Though Joseph has every right to punish his brothers for the crime
they committed against him, he demonstrates the ability, one we all
possess, to transcend his bitterness. Rather than focusing on
revenge, which may certainly have been his right, he chooses
reconciliation. The ability to transcend one's more basic instincts
represents the development of mature reason and action - in essence
the ability to rise to the occasion.
Here are a few rabbinic comments on forgiveness:

Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel taught: "Each night before going to sleep,
forgive whoever wronged you." (Hanhaga, c 1320)

Raba taught: "He (she) who forgives ..will himself (herself) be
forgiven." (Yoma 23a)

Within great literature (and the Torah is no exception) the reader
often discovers a theme or situation that relates to his or her life.
Identifying with a narrative and with the characters in a story adds
legitimacy to our own stories. This identification can be especially
powerful when the story with which we identify contains a difficult
or painful situation that is finally resolved. The power of the
narrative can then give us the push we may need to resolve
outstanding grievances in our lives.

SHABBAT SHALOM

Parashat MiKetz 5768/2007

Torah Gems - December 7

Friday evening services begin at 3:59 pm, 5 minutes following a 3:54 pm candle lighting (the latest appropriate time to light Shabbat candles - beginning 5 minutes following such a time, theoretically allows people 5 minutes to walk from home to shul for services) in our Rabb Chapel. Saturday morning services will begin at 8:45 am.

Following a noontime Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open. Talmud will convene at 4:00 pm. Mincha will be in our Rabb Chapel at 3:39 pm. My Mincha and Metaphysics topic will be "Havdalah's Bond with Hanukkah and Purim." Havdallah takes place no earlier than 4:54 pm. --Rabbi Hamilton

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Earlier this week, a member of our KI family asked me a question of Jewish law: "Should a blind person recite the early-morning blessing (pokeach ivrim) which thanks God for opening ours eyes to a new day." In pondering the question Tuesday night after lighting Hanukkah's first lights, several present suggested that a blind person indeed should say this blessing - even if she/he may not be able to experience eyesight.

Rabbi David Wolpe offers the following reflection, which seems fitting for our Festival of Lights. "What does it mean to have vision? The prophets and sages of our tradition had vision; they did not see or act like those around them. At times, no doubt, they seemed strange to their contemporaries. We can imagine the prophets eliciting the kind of remark that the poet William Blake once prompted when someone said to a friend of his, "I believe Blake is cracked." The friend answered, "Yes, but it is the sort of crack that lets in the light."

Religious vision means seeing beyond what is apparent. There is a blessing we recite each morning, thanking God for the marvelous workings of the human body. The chatima, the end of the blessing, declares that God is mafli la'asot, that in fashioning the human body, God acts wondrously, that God has fashioned miracles.

The author of that ancient Talmudic blessing was Rav Sheshet, who was blind. Imagine the vision granted to that sage. He did not see what was visible, but he saw what was essential. In his life and ours, Rav Sheshet let in the light."

A couple of comments from Richard Elliot Friedman follow. In this week's Torah portion, Miketz, we read (Chapter 42:1) that "Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt..and he said, "I've heard there's grain in Egypt."" How could he have seen it? Rashi says that he had a vision. This rather reflects the metaphor of seeing as meaning to know, to learn, to find out, to comprehend. It shows the high value we place on sight over the other senses. The Torah will convey this in many ways, including a progression: Isaac cannot see on his deathbed, and so he is deceived. Jacob cannot see on his deathbed, but he has more insight than he did when he was young and could see. (He sees his grandsons' destinies, when earlier he could not see what was going on among his sons.) And then Moses' "eye was not dim" up to the time of his death at the age of 120.

"And he asked if they were well, and he said, "Is your old father whom you mentioned well? Is he still alive?"(Chapter 43:27). Recall that the brothers were described earlier as being unable to speak to Joseph of shalom, that is, to say "hello" or "how are you?" (37:4). Now they and Joseph finally speak of shalom. Even though it is unwitting, it is the beginning of their reconciliation with their brother. Is he still alive? Here is an exceptional example of the emotional power that looms in the background of the Torah's stories. From the point of view of the brothers and Egyptians who were present, Joseph is just making polite conversation, graciously asking about "your old father whom you mentioned." But, inside, Joseph is about to find out - with anticipation, dread, even guilt? - whether his own father, who loved him the most, is alive or dead.

Finally, in the spirit of pausing to 'let in the light' this Shabbat, consider the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel on the soul's attentiveness to the uniqueness of the present. "No other deficiency makes the soul more barren than the lack of a sense for the unique. The creative man is he who succeeds in capturing the exceptional and instantaneous before it becomes stagnant in his mind. In the language of creative thinking, whatever is alive is unique. And true insight is a moment of perceiving a situation before it freezes into similarity with something else..At night - in the soul - all moments look alike."

Heschel has said elsewhere "There is hardly a soul capable of radiating more light than it receives." May this Shabbat Hanukkah offer you unique (soul-dilating) moments that receive and radiate the light of insight and wonder. A bright, happy, and health Hanukkah to you, and Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat V'Yeshev 5768/2007

Torah Gems - November 30

Friday evening services begin at 4:00 pm, 5 minutes following a 3:55 pm candle lighting (the latest appropriate time to light Shabbat candles - beginning 5 minutes following such a time, theoretically allows people 5 minutes to walk from home to shul for services) in our Rabb Chapel. Saturday morning services will begin at 8:45 am.

We're excited to be continuing a tradition we began last year of inviting members of our community to compose and share Torah Gems (insights from that week's Torah portion).

This week, Rabbinic Resident Jim Morgan shares with us a few words of wisdom on the story of Joseph.

Following a noontime Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open. Talmud will convene at 4:00 pm. Mincha will be in our Rabb Chapel at 3:40 pm. My Mincha and Metaphysics topic will be "The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars." Havdallah takes place no earlier than 4:55 pm. --Rabbi Hamilton

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The story of Joseph, which begins in this week's parashah and continues through the end of Genesis, is very different from the preceding stories in that God withdraws from the scene. Unlike his forefathers, Joseph does not converse directly with God. There are no obvious theophanies, and no wrestling matches with angels. Our tradition, however, starting with the Torah itself, locates God just behind the scenes, like a director moving actors around the stage. Or, as Avivah Zornberg suggests in her discussion of Va-yeshev, like an author who manipulates the characters to fulfill the demands of the narrative, in this case, the "plot" that requires Israel to go down to Egypt (see her The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 254-7).

All the seemingly free actions that characters perform, like the dreams that Joseph explains, all turn out to be "from God," a subtle way for God to communicate with people and effect God's will. As Joseph himself later tells his brothers "So, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt" (Gen. 45:8). On one hand, this assurance is comforting, as it absolves the brothers of culpability for the crime of casting Joseph into the pit and selling him into slavery. Joseph instead focuses on the positive aspects of the journey down to Egypt: his power and his use of that power to save Egypt and his family from the worst effects of famine. On the other hand, this affirmation of God's active manipulation of people and events is disturbing: is there truly no human freedom? Are the brothers really not responsible for their crimes because it "all turned out okay?" And what is more, can we really see the migration down to Egypt as a positive development when a new Pharaoh will rise and enslave Israel?

The Rabbis see both sides of this argument and, characteristically, present both: "And Joseph was brought down (hurad) to Egypt." [Gen. 39:1] This means, he subdued it, as in the verse, "May he have dominion (we-yard) also from sea to sea" (Ps. 72: 8); he ruled over them [the Egyptians], as in the verse, "For he had dominion (rodeh) over all the region, etc." (I Kings 5: 4) [Another interpretation]: He brought Jacob down (horid) to Egypt. R. Berekiah said in the name of R. Judah b. Simon: This may be compared to a cow which was resisting being dragged to the abattoir. What did they do? They drew her young one before her, whereupon she followed, albeit unwillingly. In the same way, Jacob should have gone down to Egypt in chains (since this was the beginning of Israel's servitude in Egypt), but that God declared: "He is My firstborn son; shall I then bring him down in disgrace! Now, if I inspire Pharaoh [with the intention to bring him down], I will not bring him down with befitting honour. Therefore I will draw his son before him, and so he will follow despite himself." (Genesis Rabbah 86:2; Soncino Translation)

In the first interpretation, the midrash suggests that the passive verb "hurad" (was brought down) points, paradoxically, to Joseph's ascension to power in Egypt, echoing Joseph's own interpretation of the events of his life. The second, by contrast, presents a horrific scenario, in which a cow, standing in for Jacob/Israel, is manipulated into entering the abattoir (slavery in Egypt) by a slaughterer who "kidnaps" her calf. The midrash presents God as a kind of puppet master, moving people from Israel to Egypt in order to fulfill the prophecy offered to Abraham: "Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years..." (Gen. 15:13). God is concerned about Jacob's honor--he doesn't want him to be led down in chains--but the fact of Israel's enslavement remains. And given what Jacob endures in contemplating Joseph's apparent death (the terror that the cow experiences in the apparent loss of her calf), I for one am not convinced that the chains might not have been preferable. The rabbis, by not choosing a single reading of this verse, point to the very impossibility of these questions: do the events of our lives, the decisions we make, all conform to a God-given plan, or are we all free agents? The impulse to make narrative, to assign a plot to what happens to us, and, like Joseph, to assign God the rights of authorship to that narrative is very powerful. But it also carries significant tension. In order to act in the world we need to see ourselves as more or less autonomous agents. Beyond that, we need to contend with question of interpretation: whose narrative is correct? The rabbis live with this tension, and so do we. As Rabbi Akiva says in Ethics of the Fathers, "all is foreseen, but free-will is given" (Avot 3:15).

SHABBAT SHALOM