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,

Parashat Chaye Sarah

Genesis 23:1-25:18

This week’s reading, Chaye Sarah, begins and ends with sorrow. Our matriarch, Sarah, dies at the age of 127, leaving behind Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish people and ten years her senior, and son Isaac, now 37 and not yet wed. Abraham mourns and weeps over Sarah then begins the difficult process of purchasing a burial place for his beloved and interring her there. Nearly 40 years later, Abraham also dies. Though he is 175 years of age and dies “old and contented” (Gen. 25:8), our own lived experience suggests that his family bewails his passing even as they give thanks for the fullness of life that Abraham enjoyed. Finally, Ishmael, Abraham’s son through his concubine Hagar, also dies at 137.

Many decades separate the passings of Abraham, Sarah and Ishmael, yet the succession of their deaths within a single parasha leaves us bereft. Our history as a people, after all, begins with this family. The loss of Abraham and Sarah within one literary unit should rightly leave us feeling the sadness that comes when a whole generation of family dies out.

The parasha, however, is not to be characterized solely by feelings of loss. Between the passings of Sarah and Abraham is a beautiful story of love discovered late in life that gives us hope for the future. Soon after Sarah’s passing, Abraham takes measures to ensure that the blessings that God had bestowed upon him, will be vouchsafed by Isaac and his descendents. Chapter 24 of Genesis tells of Abraham’s servant Eliezer journeying to the city of Nahor, Abraham’s birthplace, to find there a wife for Isaac from among Abraham’s kin. The one who emerges as Isaac’s prospective wife is Rebecca, who at once shows herself to be a kind, generous person. Eliezer brings Rebecca to Isaac; the two wed; and “Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:26). In between the loss of both parents, comes this “happily-ever-after moment” for Isaac. We have to think he deserves this pleasant outcome. After all, he had once been bound by his father on an altar and nearly sacrificed as a burnt offering.

This parasha illustrates a powerful truth about life. When confronted with pain and sorrow, as we ultimately all will be, it behooves us to be on the lookout for life’s beauty as well. We can hope that Isaac and Ishmael grow closer as they reunite at their father’s burial place. That would be nice for all concerned. While the Torah is silent on that count, it is very clear that the union of Isaac and Rebecca, ostensibly arranged by God with Eliezer as God’s helper, is intended as a moment of luminescence amid some darkness. No matter what straits we find our selves in, there will be those times when our hearts will be warmed and lifted. May we, as did our ancestors, recognize and appreciate those beautiful times when they arise.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Noach / פרשת נח

Torah Portion: Genesis 6:9 – 11:32

The second reading in the annual cycle of Torah readings, Parashat Noach, which we read this week, contains the stories of Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel and concludes with the genealogy of Abram, who, in next week’s reading, will become the first believer in the one God and have his name changed to Abraham. While the genealogy of Abram might be unknown to people not particularly versed in Torah, the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel certainly have made their way into popular culture and are generally familiar to people in title, if not also in content. Regardless of where you stand in relation to these three chapters in the Book of Genesis (Bereishit, in Hebrew), I highly recommend that you read the stories (click here: Genesis 6:9 – 11:32) and look at them with fresh eyes.

As I read the story of Noach (Hebrew for Noah) this week, a new question arose for me: Did Noah experience feelings of guilt or regret upon boarding the ark? The Torah describes him as “a righteous man… blameless in his age” (Gen. 6:9). Our sages looked at this description and said he might have been more righteous than others in his day and age, but had he lived in Abraham’s generation, he wouldn’t have stood out at all. He certainly wouldn’t have equaled Abraham in righteousness. (For more on the debate over Noah’s moral stature, check out http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/noach_hillel5762.shtml.)

Our sage’s understanding of Noah’s character leaves me feeling disappointed with Noah. He didn’t argue with God when God announced the coming of the flood. He didn’t appeal to God’s sense of mercy as Abraham and Moses would later do. Noah didn’t… You fill in the blank. Surely, Noah could have done something on behalf of humanity and the created world, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply followed God’s command to build the ark and saved enough people and animals to allow for the repopulation of the Earth.

I’d like to redeem Noah, though. I’d like to imagine Noah had a conscience and that while on the ark for 360 days he reflected on his life before the flood. I’d like to imagine that he asked himself if he could have done things differently, if he could have done more to try to save humanity from near total annihilation. I’d like to imagine that Noah felt something, either guilt or regret: guilt for abandoning his friends and extended family, perhaps, or regret for not having seized an opportunity to do something great. Of these two possibilities, I believe regret would be the most beneficial for Noah and for future generations.

At a funeral today for a beloved rabbi and scholar, I encountered a colleague whom I hadn’t seen since moving to her city. She is very sick and doesn’t get out of her home much, and for whatever reasons, I hadn’t yet gone to visit her. As I greeted her today, she said, “I’m going to take this opportunity to do a guilt trip,” and she proceeded to remind me that she doesn’t leave home much and that she’d appreciate a visit every now and then. My response was to say, “I don’t feel that you’re laying a guilt trip on me. You are advocating for yourself and that’s a good thing.” If my colleague’s goal was to make me feel guilty, she failed. She did, however, leave me with a sense of regret for not having reached out earlier.

This encounter, set amid a funeral of someone I knew by reputation alone, got me to thinking about the difference between guilt and regret. I could have felt guilty about not having reached out to either of the rabbis, the living or the deceased, much earlier. The living colleague certainly thought I should feel guilty. But as I was leaving the funeral, I realized that the feeling I had most about my relationship with both rabbis was that of regret over not having taken the initiative to build a relationship with either. The deceased thrived on teaching Talmud. Might she not have gotten pleasure out of having me as an eager student or, at least, a colleague who wanted to benefit from her teaching? Might I not have learned much from her or discovered someone worthy of great respect? Might not the living colleague feel acknowledged by a visit from me? Might I not discover a new friend in this still unfamiliar city? In the end, I left the funeral with a sense of loss. I had missed opportunities to do mitzvot and to bring joy to others.

It was regret I felt as I drove home from paying my respects, not guilt, and I can live with that. After all, little good comes from guilt. While guilt surely has a role to play in getting us to apologize and repent, guilt is essentially just a form of self-rebuke that leaves us feeling diminished. Regret, on the other hand, comes from a place of loss. Unlike guilt, regret doesn’t make us feel smaller. It measures the amount of growth since we chose a path that left us wanting. It motivates us to seize opportunities for productivity and connection that we’d been blind to previously.

I hope that after the flood Noah regretted that he hadn’t stood up for humanity when given the chance. I hope that as he raised his family, he instilled within them a sense of mercy and justice and taught them to defend their fellow beings against harsh judgment. Of course, we don’t know what happened. All we know is that upon disembarking from the ark he built an altar and offered burnt sacrifices whose smell was pleasing to God and that later he planted a vineyard and got drunk. Still, we can imagine that there’s something more to the story than meets the eye and that Noah went on to become a person whose righteousness was truly outstanding in the eyes of God and humanity.

What we know from the Torah is that God would go from choosing a helper like Noah, who missed an opportunity to show true greatness, to choosing ambassadors like Abraham and Moses, who would stand up to God in the name of mercy and justice and argue on behalf of humanity. We have no reason to believe that God felt guilt for having destroyed creation, but as we look at the unfolding of our mythic history, we do have reason to believe that God felt regret for choosing one such as Noah and was motivated to do things differently, and better, when given another chance.

I think there’s a profound lesson here for us. Though we strive to live our lives free of regret, most of us do make mistakes. We often wish we could have, would have, done some things differently. It is my prayer that, in those moments of regret, we follow God’s model and resolve to do things better the next time. We can only hope that that is what Noah did as well.

Parashat Ha’Azinu / פרשת האזינו

Deuteronomy 32:1 – 32:52

This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of Returning. It is so named after the reading from Prophets that exhorts us to return to God, a fitting message for the Shabbat that falls between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, a period known as Aseret Yemei Teshuva or Ten Days of Repentance.

Most of Ha-Azinu is a poem spoken by Moses prophesying Israel’s fall from God’s favor upon entering the land of Israel, but what I find most meaningful and apt for this time of year are the verses at the end of the parashah that speak of Moses’ death:

That very day the Lord spoke to Moses: Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding. You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend, and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; for you both broke faith with Me among the Israelite people, at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to uphold My sanctity among the Israelite people. You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it — the land that I am giving to the Israelite people. 

Here we have God telling Moses to climb Mount Nebo and there prepare to die. In essence, God is alerting Moses to the fact that his death is imminent. With this warning, Moses might have reviewed his life and asked himself how might he make the best use of the days that remain. Though he was soon to remove himself from his community, might he still be able to do things even a little differently?

I honestly cannot say what Moses might have been thinking as God instructed him to prepare for his death, but I do know that you and I could meet our end at any time and that we should very well be asking ourselves the question “How might I do things differently with the little time I have left?” Of course, it’s not enough to just ask the question. We must respond to the question and effect the change necessary to do those things we said we would do.

Psalm 90:12 reads: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. This for me is the ultimate lesson of this Torah reading and of the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a time to acknowledge the frailty of life and to recommit ourselves to making each day count. Most of us will live long after tomorrow. Unlike Moses, we have it in our ability to change in meaningful ways, to “return” to God, to make a difference in the world.

Let us not wait until our days are limited by age or failing health. Let us not wait until we walk up our own Mt. Nebo. Let’s begin to number our days now.