Parashat Vayehi: Blessings Before the Pit

Professor Charles Griswold of Boston University wrote an article for The New York Times entitled “On Forgiveness,” where he asks the question of how we can frame the value of forgiving others in terms of moral ideals.  He writes:

"Why forgive? What makes it the commendable thing to do at the appropriate time?  It's not simply a matter of lifting the burden of toxic resentment or of immobilizing guilt, however beneficial that may be ethically and psychologically.  It is not merely therapeutic matter, as though this were just about you.  Rather, when the requisite conditions are met, forgiveness is what a good person would seek because it expresses fundamental moral ideals.   These include ideals of spiritual growth and renewal: truth-telling; mutual respectful address; responsibility and respect; reconciliation and peace" (Charles Griswold, "On Forgiveness," The New York Times, 26 December 2010).

According to Griswold, forgiveness is a moral value not because of its emotional value for us, but because forgiveness expresses a subset of moral ideals we want the entire world to follow.   This kind of modeling is exemplified in Parashat Vayehi, where Joseph shows his brother what it means to choose forgiveness and blessing over vengeance and anger.

Following Jacob’s death, the Torah reveals that Joseph’s brothers were quite concerned about how Joseph would treat them once their father was no longer alive.  The Torah states:

“After burying his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers, and all who had gone up with him to bury his father.   When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph hates us and pays us back for all the evil we did to him?”” (Bereishit 50:14-15).

In a fascinating midrash, our rabbis imagined that Joseph’s brothers were afraid because they misinterpreted an action performed by Joseph’s at Jacob’s burial.  The midrash states:

“And Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead.”  What did they now see that they were afraid?  When they returned from burying their father, they saw that Joseph went to make a blessing over that pit where his brothers had thrown him.  He made a blessing, as as person should do over a place where a miracle was done for him: “Blessed be God, who made me a miracle in this place!”   When they saw this, they said, “Now that our father is dead, what if Joseph hates us and pays us back for all the evil that we did to him!”  So they sent a message to Joseph, saying: “Your father left this instruction...’So shall you say to Joseph.’”  We have searched but we have not found that Jacob left any such instruction!  But see the power of peace, that God wrote such things in His Torah about the power of peace  (Midrash Tanhuma, Vayehi, 17).

I am always fascinated by this midrash, as it reveals something profound about Joseph’s brothers and Joseph himself.    Regarding Joseph’s brothers, we learn that their fear came from misinterpreting why Joseph stood before the pit in which the brothers threw him, believing that seeing the pit would lead Joseph to seek revenge, while Joseph sees the pit as a place of redemption.  Regarding Joseph, Aviva Zornberg points out that the miraculous aspect of this midrash is that Joseph “rereads the pit as a space of rebirth, transforming pain into hope,” even thanking God for what this pit ultimately meant to him (Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg,The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, 319).   Instead of revenge, this midrash acknowledges Joseph’s ultimate gratitude for the good that ultimately came from a bad situation.   

Joseph’s attitude is reflected in the way he responds when the brothers plead before him for mercy, with Joseph taking the stance of a reassuring figure.  The Torah states:

“His brothers went to him themselves, flung themselves before him, and said, “We are prepared to be your slaves.”  But Joseph said to them, “Have no fear!  Am I a substitute for God?  Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result-the survival of many people.  And so, fear not.  I will sustain you and your children.”  Thus he reassured them, speaking kindly to them” (Bereishit 50:18-21).

Reflecting the above midrash’s message, Nahum Sarna argues that Joseph tells his brothers they have nothing to fear because the very idea of revenge offends Joseph’s theology.  Sarna writes:

“Have no fear!”: Their anxiety is allayed at once.  Joseph has no interest in seeking revenge because the very idea offends his personal theology.  Man dares not usurp the prerogative of God to whom alone belongs the right of punitive vindication (cf. Lev. 19:18).   Moreover, human actions and their consequences are far more profound than human intentions. God may use man’s evil purposes as the instrument for ultimate good, beyond the knowledge, desire, or realization of the human agents involved (cf. Gen. 44:5-7).   What may seem to be a chance succession of disparate incidents is in reality a process, so that what has happened and what is unfolding take on meaning when viewed from the perspective of God’s time (cf. Prov. 16:9; 19:21; 20:24) (Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 350).

When we read Joseph’s reactions to his brother’s fears, we see what Joseph knows what his brothers do not, for while Joseph did not choose the path he took from the pit to the highest heights of Egyptian society, both Joseph and his family were ultimately better off for the journey.   In the midrash, standing before the pit, Joseph realizes how, in so many unexpected ways, that he was and is a very lucky man.  

As you enter this Shabbat, I want you to imagine a moment in your life where someone caused you to experience hardship, but where you ultimately demonstrated your resilience and were better for the experience.   If you had the opportunity to enact revenge on that person, would you choose to show vengeance, or would you choose to show that you were strong enough to overcome even the harshest adversity?    The ability to forgive, however challenging, expresses the kind of world we want to build, the kind of world Joseph wanted to build with brothers after years of hurt feelings and family strife.  May we teach our children to be like Joseph, able to overcome adversity, yet also able to take the highroad and respond to adversity by demonstrating how much better we can be from the experience.   

Shabbat Shalom!  Hazak Hazak V’Nitzhazek!

Parashat Vayigash: It's Not About Me

One the greatest challenges of being a Jewish educator is helping each student see that their Jewish engagement is not only about their personal journey as a “sovereign self,” to use a term from Arnie Eisen and Steven M. Cohen’s The Jew Within, but a communal narrative that links each individual Jew with the story of the Jewish people.   In many ways, Parshat Vayiggash provides us a paradigmatic example of God reminding Jacob that his own needs are forever linked with the story of the Jewish people’s past and future that is yet to be.  As Jacob journeys to Egypt via Beersheba to reunite with Joseph, God appears to Jacobs in a dream and says the following:

““I am God, the God of your father,” he said.   “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation.  I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again.  And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes” (Bereishit 46:3-4).

When our commentators looked at this passage, they asked, “Why was Jacob afraid about going down to Egypt?” Was Jacob afraid of a dangerous journey, or what would happen when he arrived?  Was Jacob afraid of what going down to Egypt would mean for his present, or for his family’s future?   The answers brought by our commentators capture something important about what the conclusion of the Jacob and Joseph narratives represent for their family and, by extension, the Jewish people.

Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, otherwise known as the Hizkuni, states that Jacob feared that his going down to Egypt represents the final step before the eventual enslavement of the Israelites, and Jacob did not want to be the one responsible for completing this divine plan.  The Hizkuni writes:

“The expression “fear not” is only directed to one who is afraid.   Jacob was afraid and said: Now that I am about to go down to Egypt the days are at hand foretold my forefathers regarding the decree of bondage and affliction on my seed in a land not their own.  Thereupon the Holy One Blessed be God set his mind at rest, saying: “fear not to go down to Egypt.”  Notwithstanding that I warned thy father I have come to promise you that though the days of bondage and affliction are at hand, so too is the blessing wherewith I blessed your grandfather, “that I shall make you a great nation”” (Hizkuni on Bereishit 46:3).

In this commentary, while God does not deny that going down to Egypt means eventual enslavement, that does not mean that God will abandon the Israelites.   While Jacob may not want to be a party to future hardships for his progeny, God reminds Jacob that this journey is not only about Jacob, but about the great nation that is yet to be, and that nation will be protected by God through any and all hardships.

Taking a different approach, Rabbi David Kimhi, known as the Radak, writes that Jacob was more afraid of the social mixing between his family and the Egyptians.   The Radak writes:

“Jacob was afraid that his seed would be absorbed by the Egyptian nation.  Only in the land of Israel could the unique Jewish spark be preserved down the ages.  It was on this score that the Almighty reassured him: “Fear not, for there I shall make you a great nation.”  Our Sages interpreted the “great nation” to imply that the Jews would preserve their national identity, and not be absorbed into Egypt” (Ha-Emek Davar on Bereishit 46:3).  

In contrast to the Hizkuni, whose commentary focuses on God’s role in shaping the future destiny of the Israelites, the Radak emphasizes how God’s statement to Jacob may reference the people’s role in shaping their own destiny.   While God might be able to ensure that the Israelites will remain safe in spite of their future enslavement, Jacob wonders whether or not the Israelites will protect themselves from losing their distinctiveness.  Responding to this concern, God reminds Jacob that even though the Israelites might mix with the population, God will keep his promise to make Jacob’s family a great nation.

Finally, in his modern literary analysis, Robert Alter points out that God’s message to Jacob takes place in the context of a journey that parallels the journeys taken by Abraham and Isaac, and a message from God that is parallel to previously established covenants.  Alter writes:

“Fear not...for a great nation I will make you”: Both the language and the action of this whole scene are framed as an emphatic recapitulation of the earlier Patriarchal Tales now that they are coming to an end as the last of the patriarchs with his offspring leaves Canaan for the long stay in Egypt.  Jacob, traveling south from Hebron, stops in Beersheba, where his father built an altar, and offers sacrifice just as both Isaac and Abraham did.   God appears to him and speaks to him, as He did to Abraham and Isaac.  The language of the dream-vision strongly echoes the language of the covenantal promises to Jacob’s father and grandfather” (Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, 266).

According to Alter, the context of God’s statement to Jacob reminds us that Jacob’s journey to Egypt is the culmination of not just the Joseph narrative, but of the entire narrative of the Israelites up until that point.   As a result, when God tells Jacob not to be afraid, God is telling the past, present, and future generations not to be afraid, as well, for God’s interest in them is eternal.

Each of the above commentaries take the long-view in understanding the source of Jacob’s fear, recognizing that Jacob must ask himself how his decision to travel to Egypt will affect generations yet to come.   Rather seeing God’s command as affecting him alone, Jacob is challenged in Parashat Vayiggash to see how his actions fit into the larger story of the Jewish people.   In our work at Schechter, may we have the merit of pushing our children to see their actions in the context of our people’s story, writing a chapter that lives out God’s highest aspirations for the Jewish people and all of humanity.   

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Miketz: Messages We Need to Hear

Sometimes, when I am trying to convince someone of something, I find myself getting incredibly frustrated when that person “just doesn’t get it,” which is a fancy way of saying that I am frustrated that what is obvious to me is not obvious to them (and I suspect I’m not the only one).  Every day, I try, with mixed success, to remember that the essence of influence comes not from the ability to make a persuasive argument, but from the capacity to hear what another person needs, a lesson that we learn from Joseph in this week’s parasha.

Parashat Miketz introduces us to a sleepless Pharaoh, who struggled over dreams he could not understand, and whose advisors “could not interpret the dreams for Pharaoh” (Bereishit 41:9).  Generally speaking, we assume that no one could interpret Pharaoh’s dream because none of his advisors had the ability to interpret dreams, yet our commentators paint a more complex picture, one that will reveal something about what it means to hear what another person tells us.  Nehama Leibowitz argues that Pharaoh’s dreams compel us to ask “What is the criterion of truth” and “How is it [the truth] to be recognized and detected by the hearers?” (Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bereishit, 451).   In particular, Leibowitz notes that our commentaries ask whether Pharaoh's advisors could not interpret his dream because they did not understand the dream’s meaning, or because Pharaoh did not like what he heard.

In a midrash from Bereishit Rabbah, our rabbis argue that Pharaoh’s advisors attempted to interpret the dreams, but could not find a meaning that convinced Pharaoh.  The midrash states:

“R. Yehoshua in the name of R. Levi: They interpreted it for him, but their interpretation failed to convince him. For example, the seven goodly cows signify seven daughters that you will father; the seven evil looking ones, that you will bury seven daughters; the seven goodly ears-seven provinces you will conquer; the seven withered ears, that seven provinces will rebel against you” (Bereishit Rabbah 89:6).

Paralleling the structure of our parasha, Pharaoh’s advisors offered interpretations that saw the seven figures in the dreams as denoting both future strength and weakness.  However, Pharaoh did not feel that any of those interpretations were accurate, and it was only when Joseph offered an interpretation with a similar structure, but a different message, that led Pharaoh to accept Joseph's alternative explanation.

Offering a modern commentary, Leibowitz brings the interpretation of Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto, also known as the Shadal, who argues that Pharaoh viewed his dreams opportunistically, wanting to find an interpretation that could place him at a strategic advantage.   Shadal writes:

“...None could interpret them”- no one provided Pharaoh with a satisfying interpretation.  He wished them to detect in his dream a message regarding the future of his people, and which it would profit him to know beforehand.  He believed that God had not vouchsafed him the dreams for nothing, particularly as they came to him on his birthday.  Otherwise what prevented them from offering any interpretation they could think up? According to this, we can appreciate why Joseph offered advice to the king.   The latter did not want to know the future but to know what was in store so that he could take preventative steps” (Shadal on Bereishit 41:9).   

Taking a different approach from the midrash, Pharaoh wanted to hear an interpretation that would lead to a strategy he could use for his advantage.  Since Joseph offered an interpretation that benefited Pharaoh and all of Egypt, Pharaoh viewed the substance of Joseph’s interpretation favorably.

In the previous commentaries, Pharaoh’s dream is seen as uninterpretable because of something lacking in the interpretations of Pharaoh’s advisors.   However, Nahum Sarna writes in his modern commentary that the interpretations were lacking because they reflected a deeper flaw about the interpreters (emphasis mine):

“It is inconceivable that the professional dream interpreters are unable to provide “interpretations.”  The key phrase, therefore, is “for Pharaoh,” that is, their solutions do not satisfy him.   The fact is that there is nothing in the dreams that relates in a personal way to Pharaoh himself.  This, incidentally, is in contrast to all previous dreams in Genesis in which the dreamer plays a central role.  It is therefore clear to Pharaoh that his dream experience has a wider, national significance.  The customary fawning and flattering expositions of the magicians were therefore unconvincing” (Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 282).   

Combining the interpretations of the midrash and the Shadal, Sarna points out that Pharaoh’s dream could not be interpreted because his advisors only offered what they thought Pharaoh wanted to hear, instead of what Pharaoh needed to hear.   Only when Joseph enters Pharaoh’s court, and says to Pharaoh that, “God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace” (Bereishit 41:16) does Pharaoh hear a message that resonates with him.  Of course, Joseph’s interpretation proves completely correct, yet had Joseph ineffectively delivered the message, his message would likely have been ignored.

At every stage of their lives, our children will need to persuade someone to do something, and it is highly unlikely that every person our children will need to persuade will be automatically amenable to whatever our children have to say.  As a result, it is essential for us to learn from Joseph’s example, first understanding the needs of the listener, and only then delivering a message that will acknowledge the vantage-point of both people in the conversation.   May we educate our children to be thoughtful communicators, so that they might reap the benefits that come when a person knows how to deliver a message that needs to be heard.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Vayeshev: The Cry of the Goat

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture by Rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar in Los Angeles, where she gave a speech at Mechon Hadar in New York City entitled, “Can Jewish Ideas Change Your Life?  Can they Change the World?”.   Rabbi Brous’ speech focused on Jewish tradition’s command that we see ourselves a part of a greater whole, and she makes the claim that all of Sefer Bereishit represents a journey to emphatically answer “Yes!” to Cain’s question of, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”   I thought about this speech for the past several weeks, and how we can teach our children to look beyond themselves and their own selfish needs, and what are the consequences for failing to achieve this ideal.   

In Parashat Vayeshev, we are exposed to the harsh reality of what happens when Joseph’s brothers capacity for cruelty nearly destroys the Jewish people.  After their anger at Joseph reaches a boiling point, Joseph’s brothers spontaneously decide to enact their revenge against Jacob’s favorite son in the beginning of our parasha, ripping off Joseph’s multi-colored coat, throwing him into a pit, and ultimately selling him into slavery.  In order to cover up their crime, our parasha states that Joseph’s brothers, “took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the tunic in the blood” (Bereshit 37:31).  While an initial reading of our parasha might lead the reader to assume that the brothers only slaughtered the goat to find a suitable source of blood for the cover-up, our commentators argue that the brothers were as cruel to the goat as they were to Joseph.

Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, otherwise known as the Hizkuni, compares the sacrifice of the brothers to a text in the Talmud about Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian commander charged with destroying the temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. (Hizkuni on Genesis 37:31).   The Talmud states:

“R. Hiyya bar Abin said in the name of R. Joshua ben Korhah: An old man from the inhabitants of Jerusalem told me that in this valley Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard killed two hundred and eleven myriads, and in Jerusalem he killed ninety-four myriads on one stone, until their blood went and joined that of Zechariah, to fulfill the words, “Blood touches Blood.”   He noticed the blood of Zechariah bubbling up warm, and asked what it was.  They said: It is the blood of the sacrifices which has been poured there.  He had some blood brought, but it was different from the other.  He then said to them: If you tell me [the truth], well and good, but if not, I will tear your flesh with combs of iron.  They said: What can we say to you?  There was a prophet among us who used to reprove us for our irreligion, and we rose up against him and killed him, and for many years his blood has not rested.  He said to them: I will appease him.   He brought the great Sanhedrin and the small Sanhedrin and killed them over him, but the blood did not cease.  He slaughtered young men and women, but the blood did not cease.  He brought school-children and slaughtered them over it, but the blood did not cease.  So he said, “Zechariah, Zechariah, I have slain the best of them; do you want me to destroy them all?”  When he said this to him, it stopped.  Nebuzaradan felt remorse.  He said to himself: “If such is the penalty for slaying one soul, what will happen to me who has slain such multitudes?”  So he fled away, and sent a deed to his house disposing of his effects and became a convert” (Babylonian Talmud Gittin 57b).   

In this talmudic legend, a commander with a particular penchant for violence is mortified at the sight of blood coming from all the victims of his massacre, and changes his ways because he recognizes the horrors that come from his bloodlust.   For the Hizkuni, when killing the goat, Joseph’s brothers were like Nebuzaradan, so blood-thirsty that they would viciously slaughter any living being.

In the Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, the scene where the brothers slaughtered the goat was cruel and gruesome, and serves as an archetype for any instance where a person’s sanguine desire for blood and revenge dwarfs their sense of compassion.   The Guide states:

“The goat had no horns and it said to the brothers, “You are killing two lives”-this teaches that it was a female and pregnant.   When they came to slaughter it, it cried out in a voice that reached the heavens, so that the angels came down to see, “Joseph lives and I die!  Who will tell Jacob?”  One of the winds went and told Jacob what the goat said.  But in the end, “His heart went numb, for he did not believe them” (45:26).  So the goat cried out, “Earth do not cover up my blood!”  And till now, the goat’s blood is damp on the earth, until the Messiah comes, as it is written, “I will smelt them as one smelts silver “ (Zechariah 13:9)- the silver for which they sold Joseph, as it is said, “They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver” (37:28)” (Rambam, Guide for the Perplexed 3:46).

In this interpretation, the slaughtered goat was not an ordinary sacrifice, but a vulnerable animal whose cries were ignored by Joseph’s brothers.  Furthermore, Aviva Zornberg writes that the blood from this goat “comes to represent the human responsibility for suffering,” a symbol of all that humans are capable of destroying (Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, 272).  One cannot read the account of Joseph’s brothers throwing him into the pit without recognizing the cruelty the brothers show towards Joseph, yet the Rambam’s interpretation reminds us that cruelty seldom exists in isolation, and those who are willing to debase the humanity of one living being will likely show a similar disinterest towards every living being.

At the beginning of her talk, Rabbi Brous pointed out that the moment that Judah stands up for Benjamin in front the mysterious Egyptian bureaucrat that turns out to be Joseph is the first moment someone in the Torah completely transforms their selfishness into selflessness (Bereishit 44:18-34).   I agreed with Rabbi Brous’ analysis, and think the moment the brothers are reunited several parshiyot later appears even more dramatic when one considers how cruel our rabbis felt the brothers were when they sold Joseph in the first place in this week’s parasha.   Sadly, while humanity has tremendous capacity for compassion, we also have tremendous capacity for cruelty.   By extension, as we teach our children at Schechter how to go out and make their mark on the world, we must remind them while they have the capability to use power in ways that will take goodness and holiness out of our world, Judaism commands us to use power to put compassion and transcendence back into our world.  May each of us embrace the challenge to see outside of ourselves, not ignore the cry of the goat or the needy person in our midst, and allow care for the Other to transform all of humanity.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parsahat Vayishlakh: No Words Necessary

On Tuesday morning, a number of Schechter parents gathered at our Upper School Campus to study the Parashat HaShavua with Rabbi Barry Chesler, our Upper School Coordinator of Jewish Studies.   At the conclusion of our study together, Rabbi Chesler remarked that Jacob’s complexity as a character is one the reasons why he is Rabbi Chesler’s favorite patriarch.   I share this sentiment, and think that the best way to see Jacob’s complexity as a character, and what it might teach us about developing a relationship with God, is seen most clearly in this week’s parasha of Vayishlakh.

Jack Miles writes in his masterful work God: A Biography that the relationship between Jacob and God is not as strong we assume, and we are oftentimes left to wonder what role God plays in the critical events in Jacob’s life, as Torah makes no direct reference to divine intervention in those instances.  Miles writes:

“Jacob has acknowledged the Lord God, but the reader cannot fail to recall that at three different turning points, Jacob’s victory has been transparently the result of his own resourcefulness, if not guile.  It almost seems that it is Jacob, rather than God, who is showing a degree of steadfast love and faithfulness, attributing to divine assistance happy outcomes that, by the word of the narration, comes from his energies alone.  Whether in tricking his father, outwitting his uncle, or appeasing his hostile brother, Jacob acts, to all seeming, on his own” (Jack Miles, God: A Biography, 74).

If the story of the patriarchs describes the emergence of a covenant between God and the Jewish people, we must grapple with the fact that Jacob seems to be the author of his own story, a particularly challenging question in Parashat Vayishlakh.   

Prior to his reunion with Esau, Jacob has a strange encounter with an unnamed man, where the Torah states that, “Jacob was left alone, and man wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (Bereishit 32:24).  While the entire wrestling episode makes no reference to the identity of this mysterious man, the Torah states that upon leaving, “Jacob called the place Pinei-El, saying, “It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared” (Ibid. 32:30).  When we read the name that Jacob gives to this place, Pinei El (The Face of God), this is the first time that God’s name is even mentioned in this episode.  Did Jacob somehow know that the nameless man was a messenger of God, or did Jacob simply assume that the man must be the divine presence?  Does Jacob merely mention God’s name after this incident to attribute divine significance to a confusing event?   Below, I will share two commentaries that respond to Miles' challenge, each of which captures something unique about the nature of the relationship between Jacob and God, and, by extension, all of humanity and God.

In his commentary on Sefer Bereishit, Nahum Sarna writes that we know that Jacob encountered God in this wrestling match because of what Jacob says regarding why he called this place Pinei El:

“Yet my life has been preserved”- The idea behind this statement forms a recurring theme in the biblical narratives.  At the burning bush Moses hides his face, “for he was afraid to look at God.”  Gideon and Manoah both fear death after experiencing God’s self-manifestation.   God explicitly tells Moses, “Man may not see me and live!”  This is the biblical way of expressing the intensity of the experience of the individual encounter with the Divine Presence-the utterly overwhelming nature of the mysterious contact with the awesome majesty of the transcendent yet immanent God” (Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis 228).

According to Sarna, while Jacob did not know that the mysterious man was actually God, the nature of the encounter itself leads Jacob to include that a personal encounter of that intensity must have been a divine encounter.   As a result, we can infer from the encounter itself that God was present, even though the text makes no mention of God during the encounter.

Taking an alternative approach, one Hasidic commentator, Ze’ev Wolf of Zhytomir, argues in the Or Ha-Meir that we should look at this episode typologically, and argues that we can infer from the dialogue between Jacob and the mysterious man that this figure must be an emissary of God.   The text states:

“...even ordinary conversations between people, as well as whatever happens to you in the course of time, becomes a place where you can find the shining presence, the face of God (Pinei El).  This face of the most supreme God, as it is cloaked in the particular place, reveals itself to the tzaddik so that he can raise up from there shekhinah’s limbs, which are called nefesh or “life”” (Ze’ev Wolf of Zhytomir, Or Ha-Meir on Bereishit 32:31).  

In the episode from our parasha, Jacob wrestles with this man until morning, and in the morning the man says to Jacob, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome” (Bereishit 32:28).  As a result, Jacob concludes that God must have been present in the struggle itself, for why else would the man give Jacob a name with such significance unless the hand of God was present?

In both Sarna’s commentary and the text of the Or Ha-Meir, each commentary answers the challenge raised by Jack Miles by arguing that we do not need to see explicit statements from God in the text of Jacob’s wrestling with the mysterious man in order to conclude that God was present.    Reading this passage reminds us that the divine comes into our lives in unexpected way, whether through a moment when the shock and awe of an event compels us to see God’s presence (in the case of Sarna), or through moments where the holiness of an individual encounter reminds us that God is in the details (in the case of the Or Ha-Meir).   May we have the merit of learning from Jacob, recognizing that God’s presence comes into our lives whether we hear a direct call or not; the challenge is looking for the clues that will uncover the gifts of God’s presence.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Vayetze: Torah Through Struggle

Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed includes a case study of teaching the skills of grit and resilience at the Riverdale Country School, an elite private school in New York City, and how teachers struggled with the challenge of helping their students learn how to overcome adversity.   When asked why teaching grit and resilience must be an educational priority, Karen Fierst, one of the leaders of the project, states,  

“Our kids don’t put up with a lot of suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it okay for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens” (Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, 84).

According to Fierst, if you do not allow yourself to experience adversity, you will never experience the satisfaction that comes from overcoming adversity, for that process of overcoming provides the richest opportunity for meaningful learning and discovery.   At any school, there is an inherent tension between encouragement and reality, between allowing each child to shine and allowing “real learning” to take place through struggle, a vision echoed in commentaries on this week’s parasha.

In his recent biography of Jacob, the Israeli bible scholar Yair Zakovitch asks us to imagine what was going through Jacob’s mind as he left home as a young man.   He writes:

“People can flee their pursuers while never breaking free of their conscience and past.  Jacob escaped his brother’s wrath but he left behind an elderly, blind father and a loving and worried mother without knowing whether he would see them ever again.  If he did turn to glance back, he caught a parting glimpse of his country, the wide fields in which he had shepherded his flocks and, stretched out above them, open sky.  Who can know his thoughts in those moments?  Did he reflect on his behavior toward his twin brother?  Did he feel regret?   The uncertainty of his present journey into an unknown fate must have weighed heavily on him” (Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch, 46).

According to Zakovitch, when Jacob leaves home, he is completely unaware of the future that awaits him, and can reasonably assume that his relationship with his family will be forever severed.   At the same time, Zakovitch also acknowledges that Jacob’s journey becomes more than a journey to safety and find a suitable wife; Jacob’s journey is a journey for a young man to encounter what he could be, a point not lost upon our commentators.

Rashi’s commentary on the statement “And Jacob departed” contains what is known as a “double-Rashi,” where Rashi offers two potential meanings for a single verse, leaving the reader to decide which one appears to be the stronger interpretation.   The first interpretation Rashi offers considers Jacob’s journey in its textual context:

“And Jacob departed”: Due to the fact that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father, Esau went to Ishmael [to take a wife], [Scripture] interrupted the subject of the episode of Jacob, and wrote, “And Esau saw that Isaac had blessed, etc..”  And once it completed, it went back to the original topic” (Rashi on Genesis 28:10).

In this first commentary, Rashi argues that Jacob departed so that he might find a suitable wife, not making the same mistake as Esau, whose marriage to two Hittite women was a source of great pain for his parents (Genesis 26:34-35). However, Rashi offers a second commentary on this verse suggesting that the journey itself was meaningful because of who Jacob was:

“And Jacob departed”: It need only have written “And Jacob went to Haran.”   Why does it mention his departure?   But it tells us that the departure of a righteous person from a place makes an impression, for at the time that a righteous person is in a city, he is its magnificence, he is its splendor, he is its grandeur.   Once he has departed from there, its magnificence has gone away, its splendor has gone away, its grandeur has gone away” (Rashi Ibid.).

This second commentary, which takes a spiritual, rather than contextual, approach, argues that the Torah mentions Jacob’s departure because Jacob’s absence in his homeland affects the spiritual power of the land itself, decreasing in his departure from Canaan, and increasing in his arrival to Haran.   

However, Rashi’s commentary fails to address the rhetorical questions of Zakovitch, who wonders what Jacob’s departure can tell us about Jacob’s journey as a young boy who will eventually become Israel and father a larger nation than either his father or grandfather.   In a Hasidic Commentary on this question, the Meor Enaiyim, a commentary written by Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, considers Jacob’s journey to Haran the opportunity for Jacob to develop a meaningful relationship to God and God’s Torah.   He writes:

“Thus “Jacob left Beersheba.”   He went from that place of Torah’s hiding to bring it out into the open.  He did this by means of the purification he performed in Haran, the place of the “shells,” within which Torah had been hidden.  All this was to prepare the coming generations, so that they might attain in a revealed way what had formerly been in hiding...Everything he did with Laban, all that is told in the Scriptures, was for the sake of Torah and God’s service, to bring Torah forth from the depths beneath which it had been buried in Haran, rejoining it to the Torah above” (Meor Eniayim on Genesis 28:10).

While this commentary largely ignores the textual context of Jacob’s journey, it does reflect the fact that Jacob’s journey from home will mark a new chapter in his life where he comes into adulthood, confronts his relationship with God, and is challenged to ask whether or not he will become a person worthy of God’s covenant.    In this sense, Jacob’s journey towards Torah, as the Meor Enaiyim tells it, is a journey of struggle that all of us confront.

Like Jacob, sometimes we need to leave a place of comfort in order to stretch our minds in a way that might unlock the richest and most special pieces of ourselves.   Whether we are attempting to solve a difficult equation, going away from home for a Shabbaton or class trip, or reaching out to make a new friend, departing from a place of comfort might be scary, yet that departure is what opens us up for the benefits of learning that take place when we face a challenge and overcome it.  May we teach our children to be like Jacob, letting go at appropriate times so that they might leave a place of comfort, succeed in their journey, and be enriched for the experience.

Shabbat Shalom!