Parshat Yitro 5768: The Torah of the Everyday

This week, moving towards Sinai, Moses’ father in law Yitro catches up with the Israelites bringing Moses’ sons and wife with him. Yitro explains the concepts of delegation and bureaucracy, and then the people get ready for the Ten Commandments, which take up the last part of this portion.

I had a lot of interesting and positive comments last weekend concerning my comments about Roller coasters, Disney and applying them to Torah. I seem to do things a little differently than others, and definitely off the beaten path. I’ve been thinking about what I do differently and how it shapes not only what I write here but what keeps me writing when I could be doing so many other things.

This week, we have the setup and the delivery not of the Mitzvot, but the identity statement of He who will Give the mitzvot to Israel. Every part of the Ten Commandments will be restated in a far clearer way later in the Torah, much of it in the next portion Mishpatim. What we have here is a summary, and an introduction to the relationship between the mitzvot, God, and the Jewish people.

1. And God spoke all these words, saying, 2. I am the Lord your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3. You shall have no other gods before me. 4. You shall not make for you any engraved image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5. You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6. And showing mercy to thousands of those who love me, and keep my commandments.

Past this point the commandments we have more concrete ideas: Shabbat can be explained the way Philo of Alexandria explained it. A person rested can be more productive the other six days. The rest is simple ethics. Thus we have three parts of Decalogue. We have the exclusive relationship with God, the witnessing of God’s creation on the day of rest, and the rules to be civil to one another. Yet all of them are about the first part, the relationship with God. We do these things to be in relationship with God. How we define and perceive this relationship differs among individuals and communities.

I recently was at an Orthodox home for Erev Shabbos. For the traditional D’var Torah at the dinner table, halakah for Shabbat was recited out of a very thick book of halakic rulings. Based on the rules derived from the Mishnah’s prohibition against harvesting during Shabbat came a ruling of not using a Hammock, for fear of knocking anything off the tree, and thus unintentionally harvesting. I actually understand the rabbinic thinking here, and do appreciate it. So I took the next step and asked another question: What if the tree is dead? With a little searching on our host’s part he found out that at least for hammocks it didn’t matter if the tree was alive or dead, and though the derivation wasn’t clear, it was probably based on dead produce or branches falling off the tree. Along the way, we found out that you can sit on a dead tree stump but not a live one, though some authorities believe you can only do that in summer and not winter when you can tell the difference between a live one and dead one.

Several of the guests who were not very religious at the table later mentioned to me they didn’t get such hairsplitting. Nor did they understand the seemingly contradictory nature of first restricting then finding loopholes to that restriction. But for me it makes sense if you make certain assumptions. The most vital of those assumptions is the nature of the relationship between God and Man. For those who religiously follow Halakah, they need to follow the mitzvot explicitly, even when not given full directions to do so. Yet, to completely restrict ourselves in every case leaves us unable to do anything, including fulfilling other mitzvot. This is much like a pattern of relationship where we love our partner so much we would do anything for them, even when we are not completely sure what they actually said or wanted. Such is the nature of Halakic Torah.

On the other hand there is a pattern I’ve seen in my experience in Liberal Judaism. During many discussions I’ve had in Reform settings, the same questions keep coming back. What is the nature of divine revelation, or does it even really exist? Why do bad thing happen to good people? Even though those are the hard philosophical questions; the “hard portions” to talk about are those which are all halakic. Stories are good stuff, Halakhah is avoided in discussion. Theology or in Hebrew Aggadah dominates discussions and belief. This has been true since the inception of the Reform movement, and while traditional elements are bringing back some things, such as a more traditional prayer service as exemplified by the new siddur Mishkan Tefilah, the core of this way of relationship is discussing the nature of the relationship. It is like two people dating who always go out on dates and spend the entire time talking about what their relationship is, and whether it really exists. They never bother to get around to holding hands, kissing or really enjoying the company of their love.

Then there is the third kind of relationship what I would call the Everyday Torah. Many people, mainly mystics, have seen it before. Yet, I believe it is far more approachable than some esoteric mysticism. My first exposure to it was not Jewish but as a core value of Taoism. It is fundamental to Lurianic Kabbalah. The Baal Shem Tov certainly knew of it and based much of what he did on it. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Yiddish poetry sings of it. Probably of all movements the Renewal movement has the most consistent elements of this type of relationship. But maybe it is King David who sings of it most succinctly:

The earth is the Lord’s and all that fills it

The world and those who dwell in it

For he has founded it upon the seas,

And established it upon the rivers. [Psalm 24:1-2]

In this view there is a bit of holiness in everything, a bit of the divine in every part of our reality. The late Carl Sagan liked to talk that “we are made of Star stuff.” In this relationship, There is only God-Stuff, and everything is made of God stuff. God is everything and then some. Because the human mind needs to divide things to understand them, the “then some” part we call God, “the divine,” or the “worlds above.” The concrete part we can sense call “this world”, or “the worlds below.” We are in relationship with everything as we are in the relationship with the divine. One bittersweet way of looking at such a relationship I can find in my apartment, reminders of my late grandfathers (may their memory be for a blessing) On my desk, there are some letter openers and a big paperweight paperclip that used to sit on my Grandfather’s desk from as early as I can remember. Not far away is the talit katan and siddur of my other grandfather. In seeing those objects I remember my grandfathers and I get back into relationship with them. There is a tie I still have that I was given by an ex-girlfriend on Sweetest Day. I remember her every time I wear it. This often is the relationship we have with the Divine, as something that is not here, as transcendent, but there are reminders in our lives that if we see them we remember. The whole point of tzitzit is exactly that, to remember [Numbers 15:39]. Yet I believe not only in objects of holiness like tzitzit or an Eternal Light do this. Anything, a sign on a passing truck, a song on the radio, a bit of overheard conversation, we can remember God this if we only we make the effort.

Of course my ex-girlfriend is not the tie, and my grandfather is not a paperclip paperweight. To treat my tie like a girlfriend, buy it flowers, treat it to chocolate on Valentines Day, or even sleep with it would be outright insane. To say these objects are the person is wrong. That is idolatry, and that is the danger of misunderstanding this relationship, something I have seen on occasion. This is so much the case, God after saying “I am” in the Decalogue states not to get into this crazy thinking.

You shall not make for you any engraved image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5. You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

This is the relationship with the transcendent God. Yet Torah of the Everyday, like many mystic systems has no problems with paradox. God is both imminent and transcendent. God’s imminence means that every thing and action emanates God’s holiness out – it is not just reminder, but a conduit of the holy. It is the still small voice Elijah heard at Sinai [I K 19:12], a tiny spark in the sunshine, a small vibration. The Noise, vibrations and light of our secular world, tends to mask the holy world right there in front of us. Every action and every object is Torah and Midrash in this view, everything Divine Revelation and Miracle. They are not the thunder and fire of Sinai. Our experience is more like Elijah’s experience at Sinai, God was not in the fire. Instead God-expreience is very small or taken for granted but the experience is alwys there. We just have to get used to looking for it, and even then it’s difficult at times unless we make it habit. I’ve learned to see some of these, seeing roller coasters as Midrash or Harley-Davidson riders as a commentary on how to treat Torah. I often rely on such experience in writing this column, and in my view of holiness in general.

I have talked about Everyday Torah this week very inadequately falling back into that theology mode for some thing I usually do wordlessly. This is not about words but perceptions of the world around us, of perceiving what is really there. To help us in this, God mandated on Sinai a weekly practice day:

8. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work;

10. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

Shabbat is there not only to rest our bodies but for us to witness creation, to see the Divine in the mundane. It’s the weekly exercise in getting the Torah of the Everyday into our everyday lives, when it is so hard to practice such things the other six days.

I believe there is not one right relationship to God of these three, nor is there one right blend. Since I’m taking a painting class right now I’d compare it to painting with the three primary colors, blue, red, and yellow. We can use them pure in places or blend them to make oranges violets and greens, even blacks. We might thin them to paler colors, or we can darken them. We put those colors to canvas or paper in different shapes and styles of painting. In our painting of Life we use these all together to make a masterpiece. The skill is to know which colors to use in what balance to achieve this painting, which is as unique as the individual.

That is what I try to accomplish every week. By the time I’m done writing these words every week, I take a dab of the scholarly Halakic mind immersed in a variety of classical texts and blend with some Aggadah. With those ranges of colors I paint over a glaze of Everyday Torah, then highlight again with parable from more everyday Torah. In the end I come up with a picture, one that defines me and my world. Often I’ve been told how personal my Midrash is. Actually everyone’s Midrash is, I’m just a bit more obvious about that. Rashi, Maimonides, and Judah HaNasi put their personalities and biographies into their works as much as I have, it’s just we rarely look for their hidden bios since they lived so far in the past. Torah has been called the blueprint of the Universe. The Ten Commandments this week are the abstract of that blueprint. Shlomo’s Drash is my dynamic blueprint of Shlomo’s World. Hopefully this week’s column is also my abstract of what I want to do – Live Torah fully.

Let me end with an invitation, which really is what Shlomo's Drash is, though an invitation rarely accepted to my knowledge. I invite everyone to write Midrash of the everyday, to see all the relationships we have with God and express them to others. Do this not to change other’s opinions as much as to report what one’s own unique perception brings to the Torah of the everyday. We each make a painting, Let us build an art gallery together.

Blessings and Midrash to all.

Parshat Beshallah 5768: Serious thrill issues Dude!

This week, we start with the Israelites leaving Egypt going the long way, so the Israelites don’t meet the Philistines and get discouraged by war. Instead, they get themselves sandwiched between Pharaoh’s whole army and the Red Sea, only to have a miracle save them. On the other side of the Red Sea, the people, and in a rare occurrence in biblical text, even the women led by Miriam, dance in joy. They sing that God is good, in their words mi chamocha, “who is like you?” From there, the people complain about the water and food, when miracles save the day, including the incredible food substance Manna. God also introduces Shabbat observance by commanding that a double portion of manna be taken on the six day, as he doesn’t cook on Shabbos. To end the portion, we are introduced to Joshua, who repels an Amelakite attack with the help of God, Moses and two very tired arms.

Last week, during my vacation in Disney world, on about my fourth ride on Test Track while turning a very tight curve at 64.8 MPH I had an odd thought. A man who only five years ago was terrified to get on this ride is riding it repeatedly. In the past, getting on thrill rides was merely an exercise in fear, seeing if I can get over my fear of such rides. Now, however they are actually fun and I’d do them over and over again. Screaming along the outside of the building, I thought: What makes such things fun?

While this may not seem to have a connection to this week’s portion, the answer to that question explains a lot of what happens through the portion of the people’s flip flopping between rejoicing and fear.

10. And when Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were very afraid; and the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11. And they said to Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? 12. Is not this the word that we did tell you in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. [Ex 14:10-12]

1. Then sang Moses and the people of Israel this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea…20. And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines, dancing. [Exodus 15]

2. (K) And the whole congregation of the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness; 3. And the people of Israel said to them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for you have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.[16:2-3]

First they leave, and then are afraid of death by Pharaoh’s chariots. The splitting of the Red Sea, and its subsequent closing, leads to big celebration. Then a few days later they are grumbling about water, only to have that relieved, then a few weeks later they are grumbling about food, only to be relieved with manna. The last part of the portion has the curious battle with Amalek which goes one way then another, depending if Moses’ hands are up in the air or not.

Over and over we have fear and resolution of that fear. As I’ve written before, every time I go to Disney World, I’m fascinated by fear. Most don’t think of amusement parks this way, but they are a laboratory of fear. It is here that some of our most hard-wired fears are exploited, and many people come here exactly for that reason. Somewhere deep in our most primitive brain, we have been programmed to react to falling, being in the dark, being flung from a tree or of something thrown at us. Our physiology changes to react to this event. When the crisis is resolved, we have this euphoric relief. Now imagine having all of that thrown at you within seconds of each other, and each time there is almost instantaneous relief. Essentially you end up with a relief as you hit a new obstacle, cumulatively building to a continuous and joyous thrill. Your fear of dying is around every corner, and when you don’t you become a very happy puppy. You become so happy you need to ride again just to get the same feel.

From the crossing of the Sea until Moses strikes the rock in the Book of Numbers, we get a cycle of this type of behavior from the people. People get afraid for their lives then start whining until Moses has to bail them out by interceding with God. It is clear from the episode of the spies this is a generational thing, and the generation that continually pulls this kind of stunt is not the one that enters the land. Interestingly, the last time people whine, we are told Moses too will not enter the land. For the first time we get a new idea, Moses won’t be there to intercede in the new land –it’s up to the people. At that point, they change.

There are different ways of having a thrill addiction. One is when you have someone in your life who keeps bailing you out of situations, not only are you relieved, but there’s even a psychological high, a thrill, one people can get addicted to. Watching little kids one can see this. Some kids invent small crises, such as needing that princess outfit or pirate sword, to get their parents to save them. That the toy is quickly ignored once bought underlines it was the crisis, not the object that was the issue.

In Torah from Exodus 14 through Numbers 20 we have the Israelites whining like such five year olds. Yet in that same text, there are people who somehow act differently, and do the courageous thing. Joshua and Caleb definitely fit in this category. I would argue Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu do in martyrdom. But there is one character mentioned the Rabbis ascribe courage to more than any of these: Nahshon ben Amminadab.

Each tribe was unwilling to be the first to enter the sea. Then sprang forward Nahshon the son of Amminadab and descended first into the sea…At that time Moses was engaged for a long while in prayer; so the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, ‘My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and thou prolongest prayer before Me!’ He spake before Him, ‘Lord of the Universe, what is there in my power to do?’ He replied to him, Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward. And lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thy hand etc. [Sotah 37a]

It was because of Nahshon’s actions that the sea split. My reason for being so interested in fear at Disney is not just about amusement rides. It’s a metaphor for something more. How do I, or anyone for that matter deal with fear? In our world there are far more complex mental fears that the basic physical fear of falling to our deaths. Social anxieties abound. For many, the fear of asking someone out on a date or of speaking in public is more terrifying than falling off a roof.

Nahshon showed courage and faith. That is why his otherwise obscure story becomes one of those rabbinic commentaries, like Abram smashing the idols, so beloved to be virtually part of the biblical story. Was his courage merely suppressing fear? I don’t think so. Why is it so many people, including me, seem to fail at being courageous? They try suppressing fear, and fear bounces back at them even stronger than before. Nahshon felt his fear, but not as fear but as thrill, and thus transformed it into a courageous act. Because of his perfect faith in God, Nahshon transforms his fear of drowning into the act the saves the people.

Nahshon felt thrill one way. The whiny Israelites before Moses struck the rock felt it another way. Yet I believe both enjoyed the experience. Like the party after the crossing of the sea, the people enjoyed it so much, they intentionally felt helpless so that they could feel it again. Nahshon on the other hand took control of his fear and changed it into thrill, which came out as courage. We can do either. Yet the way of the former Egyptian slaves condemns us to slavery. The way of Nahshon, turning our fear into something more powerful, opens the way to freedom.

Parshat Va’Era 5768: We need a (super)Hero

After Moses’ first disaster talking to Pharaoh and the Israelites, God talks to Moses again and tells him to talk to the Israelites again, they are so stressed out, they promptly ignore him. Then God tells a despondent Moses to talk to Pharaoh once again, and Moses objects -- again. God tells Moses that he will use signs and wonders in order to make completely clear God’s power. First there is the wonder of the staff being turned into a snake, then the staff eating the other snakes. Then begins the plagues, where we have the first seven of the ten: blood, frogs, lice, swarms, cattle disease, boils and hail.
Last week I asked some questins. One of those questions wasn’t answered: how does the Moses of Parshat Shmot differ in being a prophet from the Moses of after lat week’s portion?

1. And the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron
your brother shall be your prophet. 2. You shall speak all that I command you;
and Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, that he send the people of Israel
out of his land. 3. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and
my wonders in the land of Egypt. [Exodus 7:1-3]

The difference is wonderworking. It is the number of signs and wonders God brings during the period until the Israelites leave Egypt. On his first attempt, mild mannered Moses simply asks Pharaoh to let the people go. On his second attempt, Aaron’s staff eats the other staffs, and things escalate from there. While we will learn later in the Torah that magic is a prohibited practice, wonderworking is not. What’s the difference? Magic as described by Pagan peoples is a force that is separate and superior to the gods, and which the gods use to manipulate the world. However, this same force can be harnessed by people as well and used against the gods and against other people. Wonderworking on the other hand, only comes from one source. It is part of God, thus it cannot be superior to God and cannot be turned against God. Indeed it is the Magicians of Pharaoh who declare this succinctly.

14. And the magicians did likewise with their enchantments to bring forth lice,
but they could not; so there were lice upon man, and upon beast. 15. Then the
magicians said to Pharaoh, This is the finger of God; yet Pharaoh’s heart was
hardened, and he listened not to them; as the Lord had said. Exodus
[8:14-15]

One way to look on such magic is in comparing two more modern stories. Coming into popularity in the 18th century, there is the story of the golem of the earlier Maharal of Prague. In the 19th century, Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein with its famous monster. For Shelly, to make life from inanimate material was against the will of God. The golem however was brought to life through prayer. Jewish thinking believes that the Golem came to life through divine will, humans only facilitated that will. The Frankenstein monster ran amok, and caused great devastation. The Golem was a protector of the Jews as long as it was kept under control and used responsibly. Both were inanimate men made real, something that is a wonder.
The story of the Golem inspired Frankenstein, yet one was Jewish thinking and one was Western thinking. But that is not the only story that the golem inspired, as several books published recently have come to note. In fiction, we have the work of Michael Chabon in the Adventures of Cavlier and Clay. However more authoritative non fiction works about this come from Rabbi Simcah Weinstein and Journalist and Author Danny Fingeroth.
While not as bad as Germany, Anti Semitism was rampant in the early part of the twentieth century in America. In one industry, commercial graphics and comic strips, this was particularly true. If you were Jewish, you could not find work. Two good Jewish boys from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster kept pitching this character they invented to newspapers. Being Jewish, the papers would not even talk to the duo. Eventually a New York publishing firm that was running not a single strip but a whole set of strips in a single book bought the concept: Superman.
Whether what they invented was Jewish or not is still a matter for debate. But the comic book industry in its inception was dominated by Jewish authors, editors and artists. With the exception of Wonder Woman, most of the major superheroes that came out of that early time including Batman and Captain America came from Jewish writers and editors. While reading the history of Jews and comic books stuff as my winter break recreation, I have been thinking a lot about one character doing one thing. In a lot of wish fulfillment in very isolationist America, months before Pearl Harbor, Captain America punches Hitler. Apparently a lot wish fulfillment: leading up to the war Captain America was outselling Batman and Superman.
While Superman’s origin story has a lot of overtones of Moses’ story, Captain America #1 has elements of Moses confronting Pharaoh – it is wonder he ever got that far to save the day. While debates of whether Superman is really an update of the Golem legend continue, one thing becomes clear about these characters. Very few of them went looking for powers. They were inherent or were thrust upon them, often in accidents or tragedies they could not have imagined. They work wonders, and they do so using their God-given powers. Even Batman, who uses his intellect and training alone, did this to avenge his parent’s tragic death. Superheroes use their powers to promote the good.
Prophets, on the other hand, don’t do a lot of good, they just talk up a storm. Even the few wonderworking prophets like Elisha and Elijah only give demonstrations of God’s power, and really do nothing that saves the people. Prophets might yell at you to not climb a tree, and tell you the consequences if you do, but only the superhero would fly up to catch you in mid air when you fall. Moses with the plagues, staff and the red sea, is actively leaving Egypt. This is not the actions of a prophet, but a superhero.
So, yes, what I’m saying is that Moses may have started as a prophet in the last portion, but ended up as the prototype of the superhero in much of the rest of the story. The next question is why. In time of darkness, there is a need for superheroes. The 1930’s and 40’s was a time where Antisemitism was rampant, the Holocaust was real, and FDR’s government actively suppressed information about the Shoah. In such times, a fictional character who had the ability to do the right things fired people’s imagination. With the Depression, one didn’t need to be Jewish to feel oppressed. To an oppressed people in Egypt, the plagues were not about Pharaoh, but about hope of the Israelites, the more wonders Moses does the more people get inspired. For the people who begin this portion who will not listen to Moses the prophet due to their “anguished spirit,” [Exodus 6:9] inspiration is just what they need, and Moses the superhero delivers.
Today, are we in need of superheroes? In the last two decades, Both Captain America and Superman died. Superman returned, but, Captain America is still dead. What does that tell us about ourselves?
Again, I’ll leave that as an open question.

Shemot 5768: What Manner of Man is the Prophet?

This week we start the book of Exodus and are introduced to the setup for the rest of the Torah. A Pharaoh who does not know Joseph arises and appealing to national security, has the Israelites enslaved. Things get worse. Pharaoh has the midwives try to kill all the newborn boys but they do not heed him. In response Pharaoh then decides to kill all male newborns by drowning, though one baby escapes this by being sent down the river, ending up living in the palace, until he murders an Egyptian task master. The slave who this guy saves rewards him by ratting him out. To escape Pharaoh’s anger, this man flees to Midian where he finds a bride, becomes a shepherd and has a rather interesting conversation with a burning bush. This man is of course Moses. And this week is really his story.

This week has been a challenge to write this. I had an idea and yet I have not been able to figure out what to do with it. So let me start with the idea.

The synagogue I attend is in a northern suburb of Chicago, but I live in downtown Chicago. On the many occasions I go from one to the other, I travel along Lake Shore Drive and turn off at Bryn Mawr Avenue. As I get to the first traffic light, there is a big pink stone building on the corner. My first recollections of this building were of my dad’s former boss and mentor living there. I learned less than a year ago about the time a boss and mentor of one of my teachers gave an address there and made a friend which arguably would change all of American history.

In January 1963, Abraham Joshua Heschel began a speech at the Edgewater Beach Hotel at the opening of the first conference of race and relations, quoting this week’s Parsha.

At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, let My people go that they my celebrate a feast to Me” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed their voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, And moreover I will not let Israel go.”

The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from being completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses. [The Insecurity of Freedom p.85]

Closing the conference was a speech by Martin Luther King. Heschel and King left the conference as friends.

Passing Bryn Mawr and Sheridan so often, I don’t always pay attention to the building. Yet this week as I passed the building early Friday morning to attend a class I had the strangest feeling, and a question would not leave me: “What manner of Man is the prophet?” This was the first sentence in Heschel’s Doctoral dissertation which eventually would be translated from German into English by Heschel as The Prophets.

I didn’t understand why this was going around in my head. It seemed like I found what my Shlomo’s Drash would be for the week. Yet this has been very difficult to write without writing another graduate level paper. So most of this week I’ve spent at Spertus’ Asher Library trying to figure out what I wanted to write. I’ve been failing badly at it.

On a fluke I checked the Encyclopedia Judaica on Heschel, and found a rather startling surprise. I was on my way to class on the 12^th of Tevet. Heschel’s 35^th yartzeit was the 11^th.

My original idea was to figure out is Moses was a prophet. However, it pretty definitive since we read in Deuteronomy:

Deut. 34:10. And there has not arisen since in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

Moses standing in front of Pharaoh makes him the first prophet of the biblical text to approach a king. As I wrote last year, his story parallels Jeremiah, including his reluctance to take on the role of prophet.

A few days before his death, in an NBC television interview with Carl Stern, Heschel summarized his view of the prophet:

The idea of a prophet is complex and consists above all of two things.

Of the message or the substance of what the prophet has to say from some extraordinary claim to an experience which is not given to other men.

In other words there are two parts to the prophet: the message the Prophet gives and the unique way the prophet receives that message, what some might call divine revelation. Heschel continued (bold mine):

Let us ignore the second, let us take the first.

What's so great about the message of the prophet, about the prophet as a character? I would say the prophet is a man who is able to hold God and man in one thought, at one time, at all times. This is so great and this is so marvelous. Which means that whatever I do to man, I do to God. When I hurt a human being, I injure God.

Moses was not one of the prophets that Heschel described in his book. Yet I wonder: how does Moses fit the Heschel’s model of the prophet? How, in this week’s portion, does Moses act the prophet? Does he act the prophet more now than he does in later encounters with Pharaoh? How given Heschel’s model do we become better people?

Those are a lot of questions for which I have no answers. Finding such answers, I could write a dissertation. But I’m not going to.

Instead, I’m going to make an invitation. You give me your answers.

For those of you in the Chicago Area who can get there, I will be leading the Torah Study portion of the service during the Kahal Shabbat Morning services this Saturday at Beth Emet the Free Synagogue in Evanston. Services start at 9:30. Come with your thoughts and your answers. Let’s discuss these questions together.

If you are not able to attend, then go over to my blog at shlomosdrash.blogspot.com and write down your thoughts as a comment on this weeks entry.

Winter Solstice 5768: Why We Eat Chinese Food for Christmas

After spending most of Friday wishing people “happy solstice holiday of your choice” The idea for this came about twenty minutes before sunset Friday. Since I was taking my weekly trip to Shabbosville, so I had to wait till today to write this.

My thoughts on one of the beloved Jewish American traditions related to this time of year, Chinese food on Christmas Eve, started actually at work. As a restaurant consultant, I once did a site meeting a few days after Christmas at an upscale Chinese restaurant, one of several restaurants in a chain of restaurants with a variety of cuisines. The chef had just been transferred from an Italian restaurant a few months earlier, and so this was his first Christmas Eve.

“So were you open Christmas Eve?” I asked him.

He looked at me. “Yes, we were the only restaurant in the chain open which I thought odd, until I was shocked at how busy we were” he replied.

Smirking, I asked “A lot of takeout business I suspect, and I bet they were all named Cohen, Levy or Schwartz”

He looked at me like I was a magician. “How did you know that?”

So I explained to him the great Jewish American tradition of Chinese and a Movie on Christmas Eve.

While jokes about Chinese food mandated in the Talmud abound, this curious tradition however does have its roots in the Talmud, In the tractate that describes how a Jew is supposed to live in a idolatrous world Avodah Zarah, there is a Mishnah that deals with the issue of Saturnalia and Kalenda, the Hellenistic winter solstice festivals, forbidding business transactions with idolaters on those days. But in explaining these two festivals, the rabbis provide us with a fascinating passage about the origins of these two festivals:

Our Rabbis taught: When primitive Adam saw the day getting gradually shorter, he said, ‘Woe is me, perhaps because I have sinned, the world around me is being darkened and returning to its state of chaos and confusion; this then is the kind of death to which I have been sentenced from Heaven!’ So he began keeping an eight days’ fast. But as he observed the winter equinox and noted the day getting increasingly longer, he said, ‘This is the world's course’, and he set forth to keep an eight days’ festivity. In the following year he appointed both as festivals. Now, he fixed them for the sake of Heaven, but the [heathens] appointed them for the sake of idolatry. [Avodah Zarah 8a]

The rabbis claim the holidays not just for themselves but all humanity, dating back to the time of Adam. And there may be something to this. Primitive man may have seen the days growing shorter and thought the end of the word was coming, and then rejoiced when the daylight began to increase. Besides Kalenda, there was another Roman related festival at this time of year, the birth of Mithras, a sun god prevalent in both the Middle East and the Roman military. Mithras was born (or resurrected depending on your point of view) three days after the solstice, on the 25^th of December. The sun was literally born on the 25^th, which was a time for some serious partying and feasting, and possibly a few human sacrifices. Most scholars point out that the “tax rolls” of the New Testament that Joseph and Mary were traveling to Jerusalem for had to be one of the harvest festivals, of which are spring and fall festivals. For the early Christians, however, all this festive activity around them made it difficult to get converts or keep converts from celebrating the idolatrous holidays. So they made a simple change: It was not the birth of the sun god Mithras, but the birth of the Son of God -- Jesus.

The Church fathers were not the first to pull this stunt. Several hundred years earlier, someone else did too. Judah Maccabee re-dedicated the temple on the same day of its desecration two years earlier: the 25^th of Kislev (I Maccabees 4:52-54). From the texts in I and II Maccabees, it’s likely that the desecration of the Temple which started the revolt may very well have been a Saturnalia or Kalenda festival. The Maccabees celebrated for eight days, claiming that since they were so busy fighting they could not observe Sukkot, and this was a replacement for Sukkot. Coincidentally, Kalenda and Saturnalia were eight days long, and this might have been a ruse to once again get people to celebrate within their religion at a time when the world was very busy partying.

Yet the book of Maccabees is not included in the biblical text, and Hanukkah is an extra-biblical holiday. The Maccabees, later called the Hasmonean dynasty, were extremely violent fundamentalist rulers. What’s worse, they asked for help in their activities from Rome, who would eventually destroy the temple. Neither of these facts enamored them to the Rabbis of the Talmud, who has very little problem banning the books of Maccabees from the Biblical canon. But Judah Maccabee’s assessment that there needed to be a religious cover for the solstice holidays was right on the mark. The rabbis just couldn’t have the military victory be the reason for the holiday. So they told this story:

What is [the reason of] Hanukkah? For our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev [commence] the days of Hanukkah, which are eight on which a lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden. For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit [the lamp] therewith for eight days. The following year these [days] were appointed a Festival with [the recital of] Hallel and thanksgiving.[Shabbat 21b]

The military victory was replaced with a miracle, using the rest of the story to maintain the tradition. Like the Church fathers, The Rabbis maintained the tradition by keeping the dates and changing the story slightly. Yet the 25^th of Kislev provided a problem in this observance. Jewish calendars are of course lunar. The date of Hanukkah tends to wander when compared to the solar calendar. Hanukkah might be celebrated before Christmas, and sometimes even after.

Yet halfway around the world, Chinese civilization influenced the calendar of most of the Asian nations around them. Using both a lunar and solar calendar the post-solstice festival occurs not days after the winter solstice but two new moons after the winter solstice. Chinese New Year usually occurs in late January or early February. The December holidays to most traditional Chinese was meaningless.

All this came together with the immigrant populations of the United States. Because their calendars used lunar dates, The Chinese and the Jewish immigrants had nothing to do on a day where everyone else, who was Christian, had closed their shops. The Chinese had found selling food was a profitable business, and Jews like to eat, particularly a food which was relatively easy to maintain the dietary requirements of kashrut. Thus a tradition was started.

In short, one could say the tradition of eating Chinese on Christmas was started by a bunch of American lunatics.

Parshat Vayechi 5768: The Plan

Seventeen years after Jacob moved to Egypt, he becomes ill and close to death. He first blesses Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, though oddly changing the birth order around. Later, he blesses, if not prophesizes about all of his sons. Jacob dies, is carried back to Canaan, and then the brothers fret Joseph will finally exact revenge. But Joseph tells them once again it was God who did all this and there is nothing to worry about. Fifty four years later, Joseph makes his brothers promise that when they or their descendants leave Egypt they will take his bones with them. Joseph lives to see three generations and then dies at 110, ending the book of Genesis.

Since last week, I’ve been thinking about something a friend asked as discussion questions in a study session I was at about last weeks portion. I was a little out of it at the time and didn’t answer then, but I thought about my answers, since mine are some of Joseph’s final comments in the book of Genesis:

19. And Joseph said to them, Fear not; do I replace God?

20. But as for you, you meant bad things against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is today, keeping alive many people.

These words are Joseph’s response to his brother’s agitation after the death of Jacob that Joseph will now take retribution on his brothers. They are the words of a wise seasoned sage, not the words of the haughty seventeen year old tattletale. They made me think this week about those discussion questions. While there were several, there was a question that stood out:

Does God have a personal plan for each of us, and if so what does that say about free will?

My answer is yes, I do have a personal plan given to me by God. Indeed we all do. Yet I think it’s important to remember something that seemed to be missing in that conversation last week. A plan is not a script. A script indicates all the actions and statements made. A plan gives the general idea, but not how it will really be implemented. Plans may not end up the way they started. There is room for variation in implementation. For example imagine the plans for a house. You can make a hundred houses from the same blueprints but the furniture, choices of paint, siding, roofing materials etc. could make for a hundred unique homes. Plans and free will are not mutually exclusive.

One problem with plans I mentioned last week. Some want to spite God through sin because an omnipotent God did not interfere with bad events. Most moderns think of the holocaust of course, but in the time of the Rabbis the brutality of Rome and the destruction of the Temple was just as horrific to the people of the time. How could God plan to have something like the holocaust?

Joseph is familiar with such bad things in his life. Joseph was a man who at seventeen was assaulted and almost murdered by his own brothers, sold as a slave, accused and jailed for Sexual assault. He spent thirteen years in the lowest worst conditions anyone could imagine. At many a turn his death looked imminent. Yet he survived and we are told at each of those points that God was with him. God was with Joseph because Joseph was with God. Although told to the People of Israel many years after Joseph’s death, there are words which summarize this plan best of all:

4. Hear, O Israel; The Lord is our God is the Lord is One;

5. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart; 7. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9. And you shall write them upon the posts of your house, and on your gates. [Deuteronomy 6:4-9]

Joseph may not have known the Shema, but he lived it. By living it he kept God close. Bad things still happened to him, but each was a challenge to his character. The obnoxious brat of seventeen would have lost his head in front of Pharaoh. The thirty year old convict knew how to play the game and not only survive the encounter, but end up second in command. The hardship in his life made him a better person. He was given a challenge and accepted it by moving with each experience to a more righteous character. There are plenty of prophets and patriarchs in Torah, but Joseph is the only Tzaddik. All the others heard the voice of God, Joseph never did. Like us, he only got dreams.

Plans change. People perceive the parts of the plan differently, and thus execute them differently. Our perceptions are unique as we are unique. Joseph realized by the end of his life he cannot know the whole plan, nor the plan for anyone else. A good thing for one is a bad thing for others. A bad thing in one’s life may be the entry point for something wonderful. We cannot know. Sometimes a dream, as in both my case and Joseph’s changes everything, but only if you know how to react to the dream. What we can do is change and improve our character and strive towards becoming a tzaddik, a righteous person, loving God and living in the way of God as we go down the path of our life.

One of the reasons I never answered this question last week was that the time of darkness outside reflects the darkness that I and many feel inside at this time of year. I really cannot complain about my life but there are places where it is painfully empty, and December always rubs it in my face a thousand different ways. I therefore was not in the mood to answer. Yet that pain and emptiness I have taken as a challenge. I have grown as a person, and continue to do so, much like the Bill Murray character from Groundhog Day did. A dream helped me realize that last week as well, a dream where much of my life in the last seventeen years never happened. I’ve faced many crises in that time, chiseling and forging me. Today, I’d rather be the Shlomo of 2008 with two masters’ degrees and a lot of charisma, than the agnostic shy computer geek Steve of 1991.

Joseph was very clear he should be grateful for his brother’s evil. Without it not only would they have died but Joseph would never have achieved the success he did. Moreover, everyone in the entire region might have died from starvation. God planned a famine. Joseph’s response to the warnings countered the plan and saved lives.

There is a plan. The plan for each of us is found in the Shema, though we each read it differently. Hardships do exist, some slight some horrible. Yet even those may lead to even greater things for us depending on our actions. We as limited beings cannot know. As Joseph Ha Tzaddik said, we cannot replace God with ourselves. We can only love God, and improve ourselves day in and day out.

Parshat Vayigash 5768: The Five Men

This week Judah pleads for the freedom of Benjamin, and is so moving Joseph reveals that he is their brother in a fearful and tearful reunion. Eventually Jacob and the whole Mishpocha comes down to Egypt. They all live happily off the fat of the land of Egypt at the request of Pharaoh.

When Joseph presents his family to Pharaoh, he does something odd:

1. Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said, My father and my brothers, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have, have come from the land of Canaan; and, behold, they are in the land of Goshen. 2. And he took some of his brothers, five men, and presented them to Pharaoh. [Genesis 47:1-2]

The Hebrew text, Targum Onkelos, Targum Pseudo Jonathan and the Socino translation all note five men went with Joseph. Of course this creates two questions: Which five? And why these five?

To understand the rabbinic answer we have to understand their source for this answer: the blessings for the Tribes by Moses in Deuteronomy 33. For some of the tribes, Moses repeats their name as follows:

33:7. And this is the blessing of Judah; and he said, Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him to his people; let his hands be sufficient for him; and be you a help to him from his enemies.

33:18. And of Zebulon he said, Rejoice, Zebulon, in your going out; and, Issachar, in your tents.

33:20. And of Gad he said, Blessed be he who enlarges Gad; he lives as a lion, and tears the arm with the crown of the head.

33:22. And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s cub; he shall leap from Bashan.

33:23. And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satisfied with favor, and full with the blessing of the Lord; possess you the west and the south.

33:24. And of Asher he said, Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil.

Why repeat these six names? The rabbis differ on that question. Midrash Rabbah to Genesis states:

And why did the righteous Joseph take these five of his brethren? Because he knew who were the strong men among his brethren, and he reasoned wisely: If I present the strongest to Pharaoh, he will on seeing them make them his warriors. Therefore he presented these five, who were not mighty men. How do we know that they were not? You find them in the blessing of our teacher Moses. Every one whose name he repeated in his blessing was mighty, while he whose name he did not repeat was not mighty. [Genesis Rabbah - XCV:4]

Using this argument, The Midrash states the brothers who were presented to Pharaoh were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Benjamin, and Issachar, whose names were not repeated. Yet the Talmud and Targum Pseudo Jonathan have a reversed list:

Thus said R. Johanan that ‘they were those whose names were repeated [in the Farewell of Moses]. But was not the name Judah repeated too? He replied: The repetition in the case of Judah was for a different purpose, [Baba Kama 92a]

So If Judah was for a different purpose, we have the five brothers as Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. We can see rabbinic commentary isn’t helping much.

Looking at this conundrum, I thought of two possible answers. One is a commentary on the commentators, the other on the text. Recently I was in a Talmud study session at my Synagogue, and we were studying a rather bizarre text about the biblical kings not allowed into the world to come. Among their atrocities:

Ahaz permitted incest; Manasseh violated his sister; Amon, his mother, as it is written, For he Amon sinned very much. R. Johanan and R. Eleazar [dispute therein]: One maintained, He burnt the Torah; the other, he dishonored his mother. His mother remonstrated with him: ‘Hast thou then any pleasure in the place whence thou didst issue?’ He replied: ‘Do I do this for any other purpose than to provoke my Creator!’ [Sanhedrin 103b]

The facilitator had one interpretation. This was part of a power struggle with the prophets. The law of Kings was struggling with the law of God. By violating the sacrosanct law of incest Amon tried to destroy the Torah. Our facilitator saw many problems and issues with modernity in his interpretation. Our group discussed, or was lectured to, on that point for quite a while. I never got to give my explanation, but my idea has a lot to do with the problem of which brothers were before Pharaoh.

I am of the opinion one cannot look at a piece of Talmud without understanding the people who were making these statements. In both the Baba Kama piece about the brothers and the Sanhedrin part about the incestuous kings one of the rabbis involved was the Amora R. Johanan. He lived at a time where most of Israel was overrun with Romans, many of them converts to Christianity. Given Roman oppression and increasing pressure to convert, most Jews were either converting or running away to the lands of the East, to the diaspora in present day Iraq. Torah knowledge was waning in Israel, and about 150 years after R. Johanan, scholarly work disappeared completely for close to a thousand years in the land. R. Johanan, seeing the warning signs, was instrumental in preserving that knowledge in the first Talmud, the Talmud Yerushalmi.

Alternatively, The Tanna R. Eleazar ben Azaria lived at a very different time. The time of the Tannaim were the times in the shadow of the destruction of the temple and the time of the massacres in the shadow of the Bar Kokba rebellion. The Jewish world was undergoing radical change, as sacrifice was no longer possible and Jews were severely punished and executed for the slightest offence.

For me, given this historical context, I saw something different in the Sanhedrin piece. This was not a fight between God’s law and Man’s law, but answering a question of why do people sin. For R. Johanan it was forsaking the tradition as a minority people for the majority. For R. Eleazar it was to spite the God who would allow such horrible things to happen to His people. My interpretation of the text was R. Eleazar was talking of the reaction to the Shoah of his day, R. Johanan to the assimilation of his time. After the session I told this to a friend of mine who had an interesting response: “I guess every generation has its answer”

It is these same two generations the Tannaim and the first Amoraim which flip the answers to which of Jacob’s sons appeared before Pharaoh. Both use the same proof text, but come up with different answers. These texts don’t give us enough information to make good assumptions, but there is one possibility I thought of based on the biblical text. With the exception of Zebulon, the brothers who appear in front of Pharaoh are the sons of the hand maids, of slaves. This was a prophetic message: Just as these were from slaves and are now free men, so too will we be free men again. How? Going back to the blessing we read of Zebulon

18. And of Zebulon he said, Rejoice, Zebulon, in your going out; and, Issachar, in your tents. 19. They shall call the people to the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness; for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hidden in the sand. [Deuteronomy 33:18-19]

It will be by sea split into two so the people can walk on sand the people will go out, and then go to the mountain to offer sacrifices. Zebulon is there as another statement in front of Pharaoh.: We will go out and it will be by sea. For the world of R. Johanan, who saw the Jewish world once again beginning an exile, the five repeated names show a prophecy of exile and redemption as in Torah’s story of enslavement and the Exodus from Egypt we will begin reading in a few weeks. For the Tannaim of the Mishnah, showing your mightiest heroes meant they would get conscripted – or killed.

That at least is my idea. Midrash is more a reflection of the person giving it than necessarily an accurate description of events. Not only in my own mind games with the text, but even in Talmudic times was this true. The redactors of the Talmud, centuries after Johanan, added their own editorializing. Each generation does interpret things differently. In my interpretation, it’s important to remember that every generation has its interpretation.

Parshat Mikkeitz 5768: The Land of My Affliction

This week Joseph gets his “get out of jail free” card, when Pharaoh has two nightmares that no one understands. When interpreting them to mean there will be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, Joseph goes on to suggest collecting the surplus in the seven good years as rations for the famine to come. Pharaoh thinks this plan so good he makes Joseph the second in command of Egypt. He also gives him a wife Asnat, and the couple has two children Manasseh and Ephraim. The years of plenty come and Joseph collects grain for the royal storehouses. When the years of famine begin it appears that Joseph has done such a good job, that not only the people of Egypt come to Joseph for grain but also the people of foreign lands come for grain, and Egypt actually makes a hefty profit on the whole disaster. Among the foreigners are Joseph’s brothers. Joseph decides to jerk their chain by imprisoning one brother, Simeon, and finally threatening to imprison Benjamin after framing him for stealing Joseph’s goblet.

A few weeks ago I talked about Isaac. A friend of mine noted that my description of Isaacs was parallel to the thought of Elie Wiesel, who though Isaac the first Holocaust survivor. This week every year in the Jewish calendar, and very appropriately the week every year where identity is challenged the most, we read Parshat Mikketz, the story of Joseph, the first Diaspora Jew.

42. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in cloaks of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; 43. And he made him to ride in his second chariot; and they cried before him, Bow the knee; and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. 44. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without you shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. 45. And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnath-Paaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt.[Gen 41:]

A few verses later, the good life continues:

50. And to Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, whom Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bore to him. 51. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh; For God, said he, has made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house. 52. And the name of the second called he Ephraim; For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.[Gen 41:]

If anyone is living the dream, it’s Joseph. He’s #2 in Egypt, got Pharaoh’s chariot in his garage, dresses for success, and has the wife and two kids. It can’t get better than this. His old life in Canaan seems to be a thing of the past, a dream itself.

But there is tension in Joseph, and in many of his actions, the old world is still there. The tension shows in the names of Joseph’s two sons:

51. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh; For God, he said, has made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house. 52. And the name of the second he called Ephraim; For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

Manasseh is named because Joseph forgets his past. Ephraim is named for Joseph’s being successfully the land of my affliction. What has Joseph to be afflicted about? Interestingly is the verse from Exodus:

And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows [Exodus 3:7]

The affliction which we refer to in Exodus is of course slavery. Joseph was still a slave. Maybe he was in a very gilded cage, but he still could not leave Egypt. As we find in the case of burying Jacob, Joseph was accompanied by a large Egyptian military procession, not just for his protection or honoring Jacob, but also to make sure Joseph came back to Egypt. Joseph either dead or alive was bound to Egypt until the time of the Exodus. While there were things Joseph would rather forget, Joseph still had his identity in Canaan, as evidenced by his Hebrew naming of his sons, and the idea that this was about what God did, not what man did. Joseph kept his identity and God even in Egypt.

It is hard as a minority to keep an identity, the majority pulls at you. The Targum Pseudo Jonathan tells us he was not completely alone however. Asnat his wife was really his niece, the daughter of Dina and Shechem. But as a minority of two, it would be hard to cope with a world which does one thing, and the other one Joseph wanted to teach his two boys. There is the tension, one we feel between tradition and the secular world every day, but more acutely at this time of year.

There are parts of memory and of identity which are deep core beliefs, ones that don’t change at the whims of the majority. It’s surprisingly easy to slip into the person you were decades ago, as Joseph did with his skill at dream interpretation. That was something that was part of his early family life. He really didn’t think and ponder; he just came out and said something. There are parts of Joseph which was as natural as breath. No matter how much you forget in your conscious memory those stay with you.

I find that appropriate given Mikketz always falls around the 25^th of Kislev. For some, Hanukkah might be about your kids keeping up with the Jones’ kids getting toys, or you keeping up with the Jones’ toys. Yet I think it’s more than a commercial holiday issue. Too many candles are lit for that to be the only thing. According to the National Jewish population survey 2000-01, roughly Three quarters of the American Jewish population light Hanukkah candles compared to roughly a quarter lighting Shabbat candles. Hanukkah is about American Jewish identity even when we forget the practices of that identity. At a time where the world shows itself as non-Jewish, with every loudspeaker in every public place chanting the virtue of another religion, that core identity has to express itself. Lighting one candle for the Maccabee children, for religious freedom, seems as right as breathing.

Joseph did not light candles, but he did do something even more permanent: He gave his sons not only Hebrew instead of Egyptian names, but named them in way that everyone would remember that were still slaves. While the problems of the past are forgotten here, the ways of their family were not accepted in this new, foreign land.

Vayeshev 5768: What Colors was Joseph’s Coat?

This week we start the story of Joseph. Joseph, a spoiled brat and tattletale at seventeen, gets the ire of his brothers, who sell him down the Nile into slavery after one too many dreams of superiority over them. But in Egypt, Joseph goes from being a mere slave to running the household of Potiphar the chief executioner. Unfortunately, a case of sexual harassment gets Joseph in trouble. The chief executioner’s wife wants to sleep with Joseph, who refuses. In a turnabout move, Potiphar’s wife frames him for attempted rape, and Joseph is jailed. But even here he ends up running the prison.

Most people know the story of Joseph and his garment that became a flash point for his brothers’ anger and jealousy. Most think they know how to translate the garment, indeed it is the title of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The verse this week reads:

3. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat with long sleeves. 4. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.

If you read carefully you might have noticed what I did when reading the Socino translation. It does not say coat of many colors but instead coat with long sleeves. What is going on here?

The term in Hebrew is ketonet passim and there is a lot of debate about what it means. The term shows up in one other place, in II Samuel, after the incestuous rape of Tamar by King David’s son Amnon.

17. Then he called his servant who ministered to him, and said, Take now this woman away from me, and bolt the door after her. 18. And she had a long sleeved robe upon her; for with such robes were the king’s daughters who were virgins dressed. Then his servant took her out, and bolted the door after her. 19. And Tamar put ashes on her head, and tore her long sleeved robe, that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, crying aloud as she went. [II Samuel 13:17-19]

One possibility then is Joseph was wearing girl’s clothes. The Midrash also notes some of these tendencies, including eye makeup, curling his hair and lifting his heels. [Gen R. LXXXIV: 7] But lifting the heels is not putting on high heel shoes, but instead a sense of excessive false pride. The rabbis seem to portray Joseph not as a cross dresser but, for lack of a better term as a pretty boy, an immature male who is outwardly vain to the exclusion of all else. The Rabbis give a parable explaining the episode with Potiphar’s wife:

And Joseph was of beautiful form, and fair to look upon [Gen. 39:6]. And this is immediately followed by, His master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph. It may be illustrated by a man who sat in the street, penciling his eyes, curling his hair and lifting his heel, while he exclaimed, ' I am indeed a man.’ ‘If you are a man,’ the bystanders retorted, ‘here is a bear; up and attack it!" [Gen R. LXXXVII: 3]

The bystanders in this story according to the rabbis are none other than God testing Joseph’s vanity. The bear, Potiphar’s wife, is a difficult opponent to beat even for a strong man. Joseph, until he made his choices at the foot of her bed, was all style and no substance.

Yet this is not the only meaning of the term. A ketonet is mentioned in several places as the white robes of Aaron and his sons. They are described as fine coats of fine white linen of woven work for Aaron [Ex 39:27] and embroidered [Ex 28:39]. The coat itself was an important robe of some kind. As we learn in Leviticus 16, it may have had a protective property to it, as it is required when entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. Yet even the wearing of the ketoret had a basis in the Joseph story according to the rabbis, this time as atonement of sin:

The tunic used to make atonement for bloodshed, as we read, And they dipped the coat in the blood [Gen. 37, 31]. Some say it was for those who wore garments of diverse kinds, as we read, And he made him a coat of many colors [37:3] [Song of Songs Rabbah IV: 8]

Some of the rabbis believe that it is diverse kinds of passim, that the atonement is about. So the other key word here is passim. The Midrash goes into a brain storming session over this word. Some used an allegorical approach, stating that passim was foreshadowing of Joseph’s suffering in a variety of ways. Literal approaches to passim in the Midrash break the word into a plural of the word pas which mean stripes. Pas is also the point on the hand where stripes on the hand meet: the wrist. Thus the coat had sleeves which reached to the wrist, our long sleeved coat. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translated the whole term as a royal robe which is either painted or embroidered.

The thing that bugs me it that we assume the coat was colored. There is no evidence that it ever was from the rabbinic point of view. We assume if there were stripes, they were different colors. We assume that if it was embroidered, the embroidery thread was a different color than the material it was made of. Yet, white on white is a possibility. Looking at my palm the stripes on my hand are the same color as my hand. We know Aaron’s robe was white, and we can wonder if Tamar as a virgin would wear a white robe or a multicolored one. The sin atoned in the Midrash to Song of Songs is not about mixing colors, but mixing the two basically white fabrics wool and linen.

When I sat down to write this commentary, I wanted to write a commentary over what colors were used in the coat of many colors. As an artist, I wanted to link the metaphor of a painter’s palette to the colors in the coat. Instead, I end up with the amazing Technicolor dream coat may very well have been linen white. Coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t colored at all is enough of a Drash in itself. Maybe the question is why do we need the multihued coat to be part of the story that it got translated that way by a lot of people?

With a little more research, it was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the bible that added the word many colors. Where they got it from is not clear, but the Septuagint was written in the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and it is from this I can make an educated guess. White was a common fabric color in Egypt. Indeed much of the white of the Middle East region was imported from Egypt, including the white linen for the fabrics mentioned in the Tanach. As late at the Persian Empire white linen still came from Egypt as we know from the first chapter of the book of Esther. As a production center unrivaled for centuries, Egypt may have suffered from the same problem moderns suffer from, thinking that pure white is a boring color. Yet for most of the ancient world it may have been the most impossible color to achieve – and thus the most precious. There were many off-whites. Indeed the most common word for white, lavan, is the same as Joseph’s deceitful grandpa Laban. White tones, lavan, were easy as is a white lie or white spots on those sticks Jacob swindled his father in law with. The pure white of Egyptian linen, however, was near impossible or as fleeting as snow in a desert – and that made it valuable.

In modernity, white has become cheap. The $5.00 white Bristol board pads I use up monthly Leonardo DaVinci or Michelangelo would have killed for. I’m staring at a white screen as I type. Even the top to my coffee is cheap, brilliantly white plastic. To think of Joseph in a white robe is to minimize his brother’s jealousy. Yet, to think of him in an exquisitely dyed garment increases the garment’s value, and makes the story work better. Yet in each of our minds, the colors of that garment are different, with differing patterns and stripes. In our minds, we design Joseph’s garment differently and no two are the same. Our expression of that garment is an expression of ourselves.

White is the color of the paper I start a painting on. White is the color of the screen on a new Microsoft Word file. Looking at the deviantart.com counter of 46 million works of art posted or a bookstore full of what was once white paper reminds me that both paper and computer screens have the potential to be an infinite number of things. I started with the wrong question. It is not the palette that is of interest, but the canvas. Joseph’s coat is the canvas of our personal painting – it is blank, and we as the reader add the Midrash of color.

So, what is on your canvas?

Vayishlah 5768: The Handmaids’ Tale

This week Jacob gets ready for this inevitable meeting with Esau, and then has an interesting divine wrestling experience. When Jacob finally meets his brother, he finds out that he and Esau actually can be civil to each other. Dinah is raped and then her rapist asks for her hand in marriage. To avenge the rape, Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi slaughter all the males of the rapist’s town as they recover from circumcision. Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin, and Ruben sleeps with his step mother, Bilhah. Isaac dies, and is buried by both his sons.

Every once in a while, my ideas for the Drash don’t start with me but are thrust upon me. This week for example, I got one of those signs I couldn’t ignore, and then some. A friend of mine asked a question, and then that question was repeated during a discussion of the new Reform prayerbook Mishkan Tefilah. It was too coincidental to ignore.

The Mishkan Tefilah question was based on the addition of a few decades ago which has spread to many other movements. In the beginning of the traditional Amidah, there is the invocation of the patriarchs with the phrase “the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.” The Reform movement added the matriarchs “The God of Sara, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah” But there is still something missing here. We read in this week’s portion:

23. The sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun; 24. The sons of Rachel; Joseph, and Benjamin; 25. And the sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant; Dan, and Naphtali; 26. And the sons of Zilpah, Leah’s maidservant; Gad, and Asher; these are the sons of Jacob, who were born to him in Padan-Aram.

Two of Jacob’s son’s come from Bilhah and two from Zilpah. Should they not be included as Matriarchs? My friend asked the question more succinctly: What is the status and role of these two women? How did they fit into the picture?

There is lot of evidence they are of lower status. Probably one of the most graphic is the one found at the beginning of the portion.

1. And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children to Leah, and to Rachel, and to the two maidservants. 2. And he put the maidservants and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. [Genesis 33:1-2]

If Esau attacks with his 400 horsemen, as Jacob believes, the first to die will be the maidservants and their children. Jacob’s beloved Rachel and Joseph would be the last Esau would reach. People are ordered according to their importance, and Bilhah and Zilpah don’t have enough importance to even be named here. The Midrash points at another example of a lower status for Bilhah.

22. And it came to pass, when Israel lived in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine; and Israel heard it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve;

The text appears to indicate Ruben, Leah’s oldest sleeps with Bilhah. Yet, the rabbis weren’t happy with that possibility, since it presents a bit of hypocrisy later in Deuteronomy, so they come up with a different story:

The truth, however, is that he vindicated his mother's humiliation. For as long as Rachel lived her bed stood near that of the Patriarch Jacob; when Rachel died, Jacob took Bilhah's bed and placed it at the side of his. ‘Is it not enough for my mother to be jealous during her sister's lifetime,’ he exclaimed, ‘but must she also be so after her death!’ Thereupon he went up and disarranged the beds. [Genesis R. XCVIII:4]

Essentially, Jacob promoted Bilhah, the handmaid to the position of wife that Rachel had held until her death. Reuben believed the legitimate wife of Jacob, his mother Leah should have that position. Reuben responds to this by moving the beds around, changing Bilhah’s bed with his mother Leah’s, and such moving of beds is the equivalent of sleeping with Bilhah.

We do have one other text that gives us some identity of who these two women were.

13. And Laban answered and said unto Jacob: the daughters are my daughters, etc. [Gen 31:43]. R. Reuben said: They were all his daughters, for the daughters are my daughters indicates two, while and what can I do for these my daughter's makes four. The Rabbis adduced it from this verse: If thou shall afflict my daughters [Gen 31:50] indicates two; while and if thou shall take wives beside my daughters makes four. [Gen R. LXXIV: 13]

In Hebrew the word “my daughters” is repeated in the two verses discussed. The rabbis conclude this is two sets of daughters. Thus this text implies that all four of the wives of Jacob were daughters of Laban. Rashi explicitly states that Bilhah and Zilpah themselves were the daughters of Laban’s concubines. In that light, there is the comment in Midrash about 17-year old Joseph, gossiping about his brothers:

R. Judah said: They [i.e. Leah’s sons] insult the sons of the bondmaids [Bilhah and Zilpah] and call them slaves.

Joseph as a young man was an annoying tattletale. This report to his father does have some justification, based on this Midrash about Joseph’s dream that the sun and the moon, representing his father and mother, would bow down to him [cf. 37:9-10]

“Rachel is dead, yet you say I and you mother will come to bow down to you”. But our ancestor [i.e. Jacob] did not know that it applied to Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, who had brought him Joseph up like a mother. [Gen R. LXXXIV: 11]

As Joseph spent more time with the sons of the hand maids than the sons of Leah, it makes sense for him to defend them, though they were silent when he got into trouble. Thus what we know about Bilhah and Zilpah is clear, they were second class citizens and even in the time of the rabbis such people did not have the rights and status of others. Being born from a second class status one inherited the second class status. Some did seek to change that, as did Jacob, promoting Bilhah to Rachel’s position. Yet society demanded things in a correct order, one corrected by Reuben. According to one Midrash by R. Berkiah, He didn’t just move Bilhah’s bed but also Zilpah’s as well away from Jacob’s. They were to be the inferior position to the legitimate wife of Leah.

Yet, interestingly, there is an opposing though minority opinion. One instance is here:

R. Joshua of Siknin said in the name of R. Levi: Why are not the names of the tribes in the same order in all places, but sometimes one takes the precedence and sometimes another? So that you should not think that the children of the wives come first, and those of the hand-maidens last, but to teach you that these were not greater than the others. [Exodus R. I: 6]

Most telling this comment from Midrash Rabbah to Numbers, repeated in the Midrash to Esther, and Midrash to Song of Songs

17. AND THEY BROUGHT THEIR OFFERING BEFORE THE LORD, SIX COVERED WAGONS, etc. [VII, 3). Six corresponding to the six days of creation. Six corresponding to the six Orders of the Mishnah. Six corresponding to the Matriarchs, namely Sarah and Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah. [Numbers R XII:17]

Bilhah and Zilpah, in the view of some rabbis are matriarchs as much as Rachel and Leah. Yet, in the biblical world where women are not equal to men and slaves not equal to free people, Bilhah and Zilpah were in some sense the lowest of the low, even though they were family. We tend to believe we don’t pull this lower status stuff any more, but even in the smallest of ways, it still happens all the time.

As things would have it, I had the chance to face such prejudice this week. After a long day at work all I wanted was a quiet good meal. I went to seafood restaurant I usually go to when I am in that particular suburb and asked for a table for one. The hostess asked me if I wanted to sit at the bar, and I answered no, I really wanted a quiet table. So she sat me at one of the bar tables even though they had an incredibly large dining room. When I explained I wanted one of the dining room seats I was told there were none available, yet I saw couple after couple enter the dining room from the seat which overlooked the hostess station. I got so angry at my treatment; I left the restaurant and ate somewhere else.

Braxton Seafood Grill pegged me for second class status, and I got the second rate tables in the restaurant. This was not the first but the second time this had occurred. Six weeks earlier when I went there to conduct the same business, I got that same bar seat. For some reason, I was not to be allowed in the dining room. Did I not fit the profile of a guest who belongs in the dining room?

Braxton loses a loyal customer this week, who had been eating there eight times a year. I’m sure their competitors will not be upset, as I’ve been known to run up my food tab and tip generously. But the thing that I can do is make a choice. I can go to another restaurant that is very happy to treat me as a good customer. Bilhah and Zilpah did not have that choice, nor do many people today. It was only decades ago I would have been sure that the reason for my treatment in Braxton was anti-Semitism. I don’t believe that is the case this time. There are many people today who still given 2^nd class status in some major, but even more minor ways that we are not even aware of. Yet it happens. Why? I’m not sure. I suspect it is about making us feel better about ourselves. It’s an affirmation in the key of lashon hara we are not the most inferior creature in the universe.

Thanksgiving sets off a season of personal interaction between now and New Years Day. Repeatedly, we will be tested to think of people as equals. This particularly is true of salespeople, counter help, and restaurant servers. Most people don’t treat them as equals but as slaves, barking orders at them. Let’s avoid that this year, and treat the people behind the counter as people in a very stressful position.

I did think of one reason I became 2^nd class and it’s an ironic one. I treated the host staff like people, smiling, saying hello to not just the one who greeted me but the whole staff at the host desk. I treated them as real people as not as slaves and that got me the 2^nd class table in the restaurant – they didn’t know what to do with that (thought they killed that real fast). So I have a prayer and a vision for this Holiday season, my ultimate revenge for this incident is for this to be true:

God of our forefathers and our foremothers, God of Joseph, Aaron, Bilhah, Zilpah and Miriam. Let us remember in this season that we were once slaves in Egypt. In this season we celebrate with light our liberation from the second class status the Greeks imposed on us. Let us remember that all of humanity is B’tzelem Elohim, in Your image. May it be Your will that we see our transgressions between ourselves and others before we do them, and thus choose to not treat our fellow human being like a slave, but as a fellow human being.

Amen.

Parshat Vayetze 5768: Why I’m not a Rachel Fan

This week we begin Jacob’s journey to Padan Aram and his adventures there. After a divine encounter with a ladder, he meets his beautiful cousin Rachel, and instantly falls for her. After a bit of deception on his father in law’s part, and with a good grasp of genetics, Jacob grows rich and eventually sneaks away from him. His now rather large family of two concubines, two wives, soon-to-be thirteen children and lots of livestock goes with him. But as he starts home, he realizes something: he will have to eventually confront Esau once again.

Unlike the story of his father's dating experience, Jacob goes through a very different wedding experience. After traveling a while, he meets Rachel near a well. Jacob falls in love with this vision of beauty. He meets her father who happens to be his uncle Laban. After settling in, Jacob exchanges seven years of labor for the hand of Rachel. After the seven years, there is a great wedding feast. Laban switches brides at the last minute and Jacob unwittingly marries Leah, Rachel’s older sister. Jacob, although upset at this deception, simply negotiates another seven years to marry Rachel as soon as possible. The day after the mandatory seven days with Leah, he marries and jumps into bed with the prized Rachel.

But who are these two women? The text says Now Laban had two daughters, the name of the older one was Leah, the name of the younger one was Rachel, Leah had weak eyes; Rachel was shapely and beautiful. [Gen.29:16-17] This description has set up most of the folklore and Midrash about these two: an ugly sister and a beautiful one. More literally, a good looking one and one who can’t see.

It is clear Rachel is a good-looking woman. Once again, lovers are destined to meet at a well. But unlike Rebecca offering to water the camels, it is not the host who does the watering, but the guest. We are told by the text watering in this place is a communal event, an event all the shepherds get together and water their flocks together at the well. The well had a capstone, and it is only rolled off when everyone is there. For some commentators it was a matter of being too heavy, as the text says it is big. Yet I think there is something else going on here. Water rights as we have seen in other parts of Genesis is a big deal. A shared well could be a large cause for contention. With the amount of deception going on throughout this story, this might be a way to make sure no one takes more than their fair share of water. Jacob immediately breaks the rules and waters Rachel’s flock, and not the three flocks waiting for everyone. Here’s a case where everyone has been waiting in line for something and someone cuts in and takes for him or her self. No wonder when Jacob tells his story to Laban he says Surely you are my bone and my flesh [Gen 29:14]. Between the well and Esau, Jacob’s proven he’s just as much of a swindler as Laban.

After Leah and Rachel are married to Jacob, Leah pretty much pops out four children in a row, Rueben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Rachel throws a hissy fit. Instead of praying to God like her in-law’s did when infertile, she whines to her husband, Give me children, or if not, I die.[Gen 30:1] Later, she steals her father’s idols to take with her to Canaan without telling her husband. She even hides them by sitting on them when Laban searches her tent. So besides everything else, she’s a thief who still believes in idolatry.

In case you can’t tell I’m not the biggest fan of Rachel, yet we often venerate Rachel over Leah. I find Rachel to be one of the more reprehensible women in Torah. Yet this beautiful woman is what Jacob wants. Jacob, like many people in modern society, are only interested in Rachel: the eye candy, the supermodel or centerfold. This person is high maintenance and entirely self absorbed. She’s still a pagan, not believing in the god of her husband and his ancestors, but some small idols which can comfortably fit under her backside. But her physical beauty outshines everything else for Jacob. So he goes for it, and spends his time loving Rachel, who probably in today’s society would have left him or cheated on him the first time something better (i.e. richer) came along. In doing so, he ignores Leah, the one who can truly love him, and understand him.

All we are told of Leah is she feels unloved, and that she had weak eyes. In terms of Jacob’s devouring passion for Rachel, it easy to see why Leah would feel unloved. But it is this “The eyes of Leah were weak” that interests me more. As I mentioned, one easy interpretation of this is that Leah was blind. It wasn’t that she was ugly or had a bad personality, but that she was disabled. Of all disabilities, she has the same as Jacob’s father, Isaac, who had acquired dim eyes, very possibly at the Akedah. The Midrash comments on that weakness as an acquired disability:

That they had grown weak through weeping, for [people used to say]: This was the arrangement; the elder daughter [Leah] is for the elder son [Esau], and the younger daughter [Rachel] for the younger son [Jacob],’ while she used to weep and pray, ‘May it be Thy will that I do not fall to the lot of that wicked man.’ R. Huna said: Great is prayer, that it annulled the decree and she even took precedence of her sister. [Gen. R LXX:16]

The weakness came from the prayer of petition and lamentation. But unlike her sister, Leah prayed according to the rabbis. But weak is only one meaning for racot. It may also mean soft. While I was translating the Song of Songs, there is a line, repeated in several places

How beautiful you are my beloved
How beautiful you are, your eyes are doves [SS 1:15, 4:1]

While I was trying to figure out the imagery of this phrase, I learned a lot about doves. Doves are very strongly monogamous. So much so, they always are found as a pair. They hang out together and they often do not mate, or even find another one after the loss of their partner. Once I even saw an interesting, though sad sight. A dove had been hit by a car, and its mate just walked around it over and over, not matter what came near. It could not leave its partner. Maybe when we say that Leah had weak eyes, she did not see beyond the scope of her partner- she believed deeply in monogamy. Monogamy isn’t just an obligation to one's mate. It is a deep belief in knowing one partner, and investing the time and effort into knowing them well intellectually, physically, emotionally and spiritually. In doing so something deep and connecting happens.

Unfortunately for Leah, she had to get connected with a joke like Jacob, and was, as the Torah tells us, hated compared to her sister. [Gen 29:31] That’s when God takes action.

I’ve mentioned before not to take pregnancy just as having kids when it shows up in the text. Instead look at it as an expression of growth and creative energy in the people involved. It is telling that it is Leah who has the most kids. Rachel has to go the Hagar route and use a surrogate at first, spurring Leah to do the same. But in the end, if one keeps score, it’s Leah with six boys and one girl (Rueben, Simon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, and Dinah). Rachel with two: (Joseph and Benjamin), Bilhah with two (Dan and Naphtali), and Zilpah with two (Gad, Asher). In short, if counting Dinah, Leah is more productive than the three others combined. It will be Leah’s children who will lead the people out of Egypt, It will be Leah’s children who are the first into the Red Sea, and the Kings of a united Israel, unhindered by the Philistines, and who build and work in the Temple. What’s more, with the assimilation of the tiny tribe of Benjamin into the whole, it is only the tribes of Leah, Levi and Judah, who survive the entire adventure of the Tanach and who we are named for: Jews.

We are the children of Leah, not the children of Rachel. Thus the text supports the concept of commitment, not the concept of playing the field. In the books of the prophets, or the Song of Songs this applies to God as well. We are intimately connected to God like the song, not harlots who sleep with any old idol as the prophets admonish. While appearance is important to make a connection, ultimately it is our strength of commitment that defines us.