Parashat Yitro / פרשת יתרו
Torah Portion: Exodus 18:1 – 20:23

As a father and husband who is also a rabbi, balancing my dedication to my work, on one hand, and my dedication to my family and my personal well-being, on the other hand, is often tricky. When does my service to the Jewish people begin to encroach on the time and energy I have to devote to my family or myself such that I need to give less to the former and more to the latter? Alternatively, when must the demands of my family life give way to the responsibilities of my profession? Getting this balance right is crucial for all concerned. I take solace in knowing that this struggle is not mine alone; I am hard pressed to think of any adult who isn’t in this exact same position.

We find some guidance through our work-life challenge in this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Yitro. In Exodus 18:2-7, Jethro, a Midianite priest and Moses’ father-in-law, sets forth from his home in Midian to the wildnerness to reunite Moses with his wife, Zipporah, and their sons, Gershon and Eliezer. Earlier in Exodus (4:20), Moses had taken Zipporah and their sons with him to Egypt after God sent him to free the Israelite people, but at some point Moses sent them back to live with Jethro. Once the Israelites were free and in the wilderness, Jethro made sure his daughter and grandsons were reunited with their father.

We don’t exactly know when or why Zipporah, Gershon and Eliezer returned to her father’s house. Rashi, a medieval biblical commentator, speculates that Moses, upon Aaron’s advice, sent them back to Midian to spare them the distress of life in Egypt. Indeed, Moses had wanted to keep his family together so they could bear witness to God’s liberation of Israel and, later, to the revelation at Sinai, but to keep his family out of harm’s way Moses opted to part from them. Perhaps, Moses had faith that they would all come back together in this moment just before God gives Israel the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

No sooner does Jethro arrive with Zipporah, Gershon and Eliezer, however, than Moses gets back to the work of governing the people. Only one day after seeing his wife and children for the first time in a long time, Moses is described as “sitting as magistrate among the people, while the people stood about Moses from morning until evening” (18:13).  In response to what he sees, “Moses’ father-in-law said to him, ‘The thing you are doing is not right; you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone…’ (18:17-18). Thus, Jethro advises Moses to set up a judiciary system and to share the responsibility of adjudication with a host of capable, fair-minded men, which is exactly what Moses does.

What is Jethro’s concern? It may be, as Rashi, suggests, that Jethro sees Moses as being disrespectful of his followers by having them stand all day while he sits. It may also be that Jethro envisions Moses failing as a leader because he is taking on more than he can handle as one person. Both are logical suggestions.

Nonetheless, I would like to suggest an alternate view to why Jethro speaks up when he sees Moses laboring as the sole judge of the Israelites: Jethro sees the potential for Moses to become consumed by his role as leader and prophet and to neglect his family. To be sure, this is what happens. Aaron and Miriam end up chastising Moses over Zipporah, “that Cushite woman,” in Numbers 12. One midrash on this encounter depicts Aaron and Miriam as calling Moses out on his treatment of Zipporah. They see that Zipporah feels abandoned by Moses, who refuses to engage in sexual relations with her. Unfortunately, sexual relations would render Moses spiritually impure and/or direct his focus away from God (Tanhuma, Tzav 13 at http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/zipporah-midrash-and-aggadah). In essence, the demands of his job restricts Moses’ ability to please his wife, and he is either unable or unwilling to negotiate with God in order to maintain peace in his family. One commentator, Ibn Ezra, sees the problem as so severe that he even entertains the possibility of the marriage ending in divorce (commentary on Ex. 18:2). To his credit, Jethro realizes that unless Moses achieves better work-life balance, Moses won’t be able to make Jethro’s daughter and grandchildren happy.

Jethro has something to teach all of us. First, don’t leave your loved ones behind as you wind your way through the wilderness of life. Protect them from harm, as Moses was coached to do, but barring any extenuating circumstances, include your family in on your journey. Some of the journey will involve mundane tasks of daily life or schlepping from one spot to another. But some of the journey will entail spectacular, peak moments when you can all experience a glimmer of God’s radiance. Both the mundane and the spectacular are necessary for a family to grow together and, it is important to add, for an individual to thrive as well.

Next, Jethro teaches us to work smarter, not harder, for the sake of our families and ourselves. Jethro understands the gravity of Moses’ situation; he doesn’t tell Moses to find a new job so he can take better care of his family. Rather, he provides Moses with a strategy that will help Moses better execute his duties and, at the same time, conserve time and energy for his wife and children. Our task is similarly to devise a strategy that will enable us to excel both as professionals and as providers for those whom we love.

Moses carried the weight of Israel on his shoulders. I, for one, don’t envy him. As difficult as it is for me or any of us to find that perfect balance between time on the job and time with one’s family, for Moses this balance was truly elusive. Despite Jethro’s attempts to help Moses succeed in this regard, for Moses a work-life balance that would satisfy him and his family may simply have been impossible to achieve.

Fortunately, few of us are in Moses’ position. While work and life may fall out of balance for us from time to time, we are always capable of resetting the scales.

Parashat Vayeshev

Genesis 37:1-40:23

Parenting is never easy, but one cardinal rule of parenting is to not play favorites. Favoritism leads to a sense of entitlement on behalf of the favored and resentment on behalf of the unfavored. The parent, too, suffers in the long term as the unfavored children bear a grudge and distance themselves from the parent who didn’t love them fully. While it is tempting to tip the scale of affection toward one child for many reasons, parents must avoid going there lest they sew the seeds of ill will for years to come. Don’t believe me? Ask our patriarch Jacob.

Jacob fell into the trap. Jacob is the father who “loved Joseph best of all” and gifted Joseph with an ornamented tunic, the “amazing technicolor dreamcoat” made famous by Andrew Lloyed Webber. Both father and son paid a heavy price because of Jacob failed to show his other eleven sons the same affection he showed to Joseph. Joseph becomes full of himself, flaunting his dreams of triumph to his brothers adorned in his beautiful coat. As a result, his brothers conspired to kill him, but instead sell him into slavery, and then they dip Joseph’s coat in the blood of a slaughtered goat and have their father believe that Joseph was devoured by wild beasts. Imagine the pain they caused Jacob until the truth comes out years later.

Why did Jacob make the mistake of lavishing Joseph with such affection before his siblings? Rashi, the preeminent medieval commentator suggests two reasons. The first is actually found in the Torah itself: Joseph was “the child of his old age.” Moreover, Joseph was the son of Rachel, the favored wife, and was born to Rachel after years of being unable to conceive. Interestingly, Joseph was not the youngest of the sons; Benjamin was. Perhaps it is for this reason that Rashi goes on to offer a second reason why Joseph was the favorite one: Joseph reminded Jacob of himself. He looked like Jacob in his “spiritual essence” (The Stone Edition ArtScroll Chumash), if not in physical appearance as well. Joseph was special in many ways, and Jacob couldn’t restrain himself from revealing his preference for this son over all the others.

I am taken with the idea that Joseph “looked” like Jacob because earlier in Genesis (1:27) we read that “God made the human in God’s image. In the image of God, God created the human, male and female God created them.” When we read that God created humankind in God’s own image, we are to acknowledge that God’s image is both infinitely varied and without form. We are also to imagine that God shows abundant love to all human beings. God doesn’t play favorites, even though all of humanity is made in God’s image. Maybe we are all God’s favorites because we all resemble God. Perhaps it was inevitable that Jacob would love the one who resembled him the most. Unfortunately, Jacob had other children who didn’t resemble him as much and they weren’t loved as Joseph was.

What if Jacob could have loved all his children as God loves all God’s children? What if Jacob could have seen sparks of himself in all the children, or even elements of his being that never came to the fore, potentiality that laid hidden? When it comes to loving all our children equally, that may be the key: love as God loves and when we can’t see our image in our children search to find ways in which our children resemble pieces of us that never saw daylight.

On this Shabbat, as we begin to read the story of Joseph, let us be mindful of how we love all our fellow beings and strive to love in a Godly way, without playing favorites.

Shabbat Shalom

Parashat Vayetzei / פרשת ויצא

Torah Portion: Genesis 28:10 – 32:3

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayetze, we find the first labor dispute in Jewish history. As agreed upon with Laban, Jacob works diligently for seven years in order to earn the dowry to wed his beloved Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter. After those seven years, though, Laban switches out Rachel for Leah so that Jacob would marry the oldest daughter first. Laban then requires Jacob to toil another seven years in order to wed Rachel. Jacob does, indeed, put in another seven years of labor and does, in fact, marry Rachel. Having now labored for 14 years to earn his dowry for two of Laban’s daughters, without ever acquiring any property of his now, Jacob negotiates a deal with Laban to acquire a portion of Laban’s flocks that Jacob himself raised. Again Laban cheats Jacob, this time by removing from the negotiated portion of the flocks the healthiest of sheep and goats.

Though Jacob himself had earned a reputation as a trickster, Laban surely exceeds even Jacob in his unethical labor practices. Much is made of Laban’s chicanery in biblical commentaries as well as in the legal literature of Jewish tradition, where Laban is held up as the model of one who deceives others for personal gain. To be sure, throughout Jewish history the highest value has been placed on ethical, just business practices; in that vein, our reading this week calls us to focus our attention on ethical lapses within our society and to redouble our commitment to justice.

It is unfortunately the case that in today’s world that both employer and employee too often seek shortcuts to improve their bottom lines. For their part, workers sometimes alter time cards to show more hours than they actually work or seek other ways to continue receiving a paycheck while choosing not to work for no good reason. Meanwhile, employer abuses are legendary in our culture and include wage theft, neglecting the safety of their workers, taking advantage of immigrants, and on and on. For many in today’s workforce, the story of Laban and Jacob sounds all too familiar, and because workers, especially migrant workers, lack the political clout to effect change, they are forever stuck laboring under unprincipled masters.

Many organizations work to ensure fair employment practices in the U.S. and abroad. One such organization within the Jewish community that is working on behalf of worker and human rights is T’ruah (www.truah.org), an organization of Jewish clergy who work “together with all members of the Jewish community, to act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people.” Meanwhile, Interfaith Worker Justice (www.iwj.org) “advances the rights of workers by engaging diverse faith communities into action, from grassroots organizing to shaping policy at the local, state and national levels.” It is incumbent upon each of us to learn about the issues facing workers and to advocate fairness in the workplace. Visiting the websites of Truah and IWJ are two places to begin that work, though searching the internet will reveal many, many more.

There is a succint commentary on this week’s parasha at http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ written by Jeremy Burton, former chief of staff at the Jewish Funds for Justice, which merged in 2011 with Progressive Jewish Alliance to form Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice (http://bendthearc.us/). In his article titled “Laban’s Excuse: Labor Ethics and Community Standards,” Burton demonstrates that Laban was able to get away with his unethical behavior because Laban refused to take responsibility for his actions and no one held him accountable. Ultimately, the mission of those working on behalf of workers rights and all of us, really, is to ensure that employers are held accountable for their actions and that they take responsibility for ensuring fairness in the work place.

This year, we read Parashat Vayetze on the weekend following Thanksgiving. What better time to turn our attention to those struggling within a system in which workers are too often ignored or oppressed than when we gather with friends and loved ones to give thanks for the bounty with which we’ve been so blessed but eludes so many of our brothers and sisters?

Shabbat Shalom

Parashat Toldot / פרשת תולדות
Torah Portion: Genesis 25:19 – 28:9

This week’s Torah reading opens with the birth of the twins Jacob and Esau. Their mother, Rebecca, had been barren, and when their father, Isaac, pleads to God on her behalf, God responds and she conceives. The birth is not an easy one, however. The brothers are restless in utero, supposedly struggling with one another, and when Esau emerges first from the womb, Jacob is found to be grasping onto his heel.

Commentators throughout history have seen Jacob’s maneuver as an attempt to pull Esau back so that Jacob himself could be the firstborn. This view is supported by Jacob’s later efforts, first, to buy the birthright from Esau at a moment when Esau was hungry and weak and, second, to disguise himself as Esau so that Isaac, then blind, would give Jacob the blessing that Isaac had intended for Esau. One can only imagine how stressful it must have been on Isaac and Rebecca to raise these boys, one a boorish and impetuous hunter, the other, a conniving, cerebral homebody. In the end, it is Jacob who emerges as an adult with all the honor that would normally have gone to the firstborn, Esau.

Sadly for Esau, while Jewish tradition lavishes praise on Jacob, it portrays Esau only in a negative light. In their critique of Esau, the rabbis highlight Esau’s spurning the birthright and then marrying Hittite women to his parents’ chagrin. Since it is Jacob who ultimately inherits the covenant that God had made with Abraham and Isaac, Jacob’s faults are forgiven by the rabbis, who revere him as the father of Israel’s twelve tribes. Esau receives no such forgiveness, however, and instead, becomes identified with Roman oppression much later in history, (even though there is no good justification for this identification).

What is amazing is that, despite Esau’s shortcomings, Isaac loves and favors him over Jacob (Genesis 25:28). Commentators have minimized the significance of Isaac’s love for Esau by claiming that Esau manipulated his father into loving him. But not everyone sees Isaac’s love for Esau as empty or unmerited. Going against the grain of traditional biblical commentary, the Conservative Etz Hayim humash observes that Isaac may have appreciated the physical gifts in Esau that were lacking in himself (pp. 147-8). Other commentators credit Isaac for loving both of his sons unconditionally, even though each son troubled Isaac uniquely.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, a brilliant scholar and the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, is counted among this latter group. In his essay, “Why Did Isaac Love Esau?” (See http://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5771-toldot-why-did-isaac-love-esau/), Rabbi Sacks asserts that far from being deceived by Esau, Isaac knew full well who Esau was and loved him because that’s what Esau needed most. Rabbi Sacks writes:

It may be that Isaac loved Esau not blindly but with open eyes, knowing that there would be times when his elder son would give him grief, but knowing too that the moral responsibility of parenthood demands that we do not despair of or disown a wayward son.

There is great truth in Rabbi Sacks’s observation. Though parents need to enforce consequences — sometimes severe consequences — for their children’s misdeeds, these consequences must be dealt with an open heart that yearns for the children to grow into productive, caring, responsible adults. From such an open, yearning heart love flows abundantly.

It is my prayer that all parents will love their children as Isaac loved Esau and, moreover, that all people will extend this love to the rest of humanity. Much of humanity, through its indifference to suffering and its thirst for power, surely deserves the disdain of the civilized world. Nevertheless, let us keeping hoping that one day all will be right. That day will only come when we demonstrate the kind of love for humanity that Isaac had for Esau.

Shabbat Shalom,