TorahParsha

For Parshat Bo

 

What does loneliness offer?

 

i

There was famine in Canaan and there was no bread

but in Egypt there was bread

so Jacob’s sons came to Egypt

and came to stay.

In Egypt,

where their grandchildren become enslaved.

*

Israel rose from Egypt

baking matzoh:

bread that would not rise,

bread that is not bread.

*

And Manna was the bread from God

that Israel ate in the Desert.

 

ii

Israel eats the bread of Egypt,

and then of God.

Israel belongs to Egypt,

and then to God.

You belong to the one

who gives you bread.

 

iii

But what of matzoh—

no-man’s-land,

bread and not bread,

not of Egypt, not from God?

Matzo is the bread of growing up.

*

When you grow up

you come to someone

not as a child

not as a slave

but as a partner,

a groom,

a bride.

*

Before this

you must learn two things:

that you can bake your own bread;

that the bread you feed yourself

is no bread at all.

*

So you need a time alone,

in-between.

You need matzoh.

 

iv

(This is a lesson for those who seek others,

and for a nation coming to God.)

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

For Parshat VaEirah

 

What do miracles show us?

 

i

God said

I will make many

My signs and My wonders

in the Land of Egypt

and this was the start of the Plagues.

God fought for the Children of Israel

through ten symbols.

 

ii

Symbols are an invitation

to depart from the meanings we give to this world,

to see the world as holding the meaning

someone else has laid down for us.

 

iii

At the end of the Plagues

Egypt captured the meaning of the Plagues

acceded to the will of God

accepted God’s view of the world.

Viewing the world through God’s eyes,

Egypt had no choice

but to choose to set others free.

 

 

(based on the Ramban)

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

What do we do if God is missing?

 

i

The time of slavery in Egypt

before God heard the cries of His people

and before He remembered His covenant with their fathers

and before He sent Moses to save them

was,

we could say,

a time when we felt God’s absence.

*

It was wholly unlike

the time in the Garden

when Adam hid

and God sought Adam out—

asking:

Ayekah

Where are you?

 

ii

And during the time

when we felt God’s absence,

Moses saves Yitro’s daughters

from the harassment of shepherds.

Yitro asks his daughters:

V’ayo

And where is he—

this man who helped you

whom we must thank?

 

iii

Moses marries Yitro’s daughter

and serves as his shepherd

and bears him grandsons

and it is while Moses lives with Yitro

that God heard Israel’s moaning

and God comes to Moses

in a burning bush

and God says:

Now I will rescue My people.

 

iv

When we cannot hear God seeking us

then we must seek each other.

And then God will hear us.

And then God will come.

*

That is the lesson

that Yitro offers.

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, andfor NeshamaEmunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

Does Judaism believe in nostalgia?

for Parshat VaYechi

i

Jacob flees home, fleeing his brother.

He asks God to return him to his father's house—

someday,

when the danger is gone,

when it will be safe.

Then he lifted up his feet

and he set off.

*

Decades later

he returns to his father’s land

only to leave

living seventeen years in Egypt

dying in Egypt

one-hundred forty seven years old

blessing his twelve sons.

And he gathered his feet

and was gathered to his nation. 

 

ii

Jacob asks God

for his father’s house,

for his childhood.

God gives him something else.

God gathers Jacob to his nation,

not to his father’s home.

God makes him an old patriarch

giving blessing,

years past being a child.

*

It is almost a return

but not a return.

 

iii

God sets us out on a journey

not for us to come back to the same spot

but also not to depart utterly.

We are to lift up our feet

and walk far,

to widen the story:

to make a nation

from a father’s home,

fatherhood from childhood,

our time of dependency

into a blessing for others.

*

That is the journey

of a good life.

 

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for NeshamaEmunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

Why the Torah is a story

for Parshat VaYigash

i

Telling

brings the listener

and the person told about

into one story—

across divides

across lands

across hearts.

*

Here is one example:

 

ii

Joseph rules Egypt.

He disguises himself from his brothers—

who have hated him,

who have tossed him from home,

from his father.

They come to him now

down from Canaan

to seek bread during famine.

*

But Joseph demands

that they leave their youngest brother,

Benjamin,

in Egypt.

Then the brother Judah

describes the whole story

of the brothers coming to him

from far away

and going back to Canaan

and seeing their father

and returning to Egypt

only for Joseph to demand

that Benjamin stay.

And Judah tells Joseph:

our father’s heart will break

there in Canaan

if Benjamin stays

here in Egypt.

*

Then Joseph says: I am Joseph.

And Joseph reconciles with his brothers

and Joseph reunites with his father.

 

iii

Another example

of uniting through story

is the Torah itself.

Because  sometimes God seems far from us.

But hearing the Torah,

studying Torah,

we are reunited with God

into one story,

into one telling

into one book

from across a great distance.

 

____

With special thanks to my wife Kathi, as always.

_____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

 

www.TorahParsha.com

 

What living through many lives teaches us

for Parshat Mikeitz

 

i

Pharoah dreams

of cows eating cows

and he wakes up

and he goes to sleep

and then he dreams

of corn eating corn.

*
Joseph tells him:

the cows eating cows

and the corn eating corn

all represent

one continuum of years.

Though you woke in between,

your two dreams really are one.

*

Through these dreams

Joseph shows how

to join seven years of plenty

with seven years of famine.

Through these dreams

Joseph’s many brothers

estranged twenty years

come to meet him now,

the leader in Egypt

far from home.

Through these dreams

Joseph’s brothers say finally

we are guilty

for the cruelty they had shown him

when they were young

in that past life.

 

ii

Life is full of lives

that do not seem to connect.

Some are unworkable

and some seem meaningless

and only in a different part of life

can we say at last:

Here is what it means.

 

iii

A people of history,

our lives bear the task

of weaving moments

from past to present

from present to future

of saying It is one dream,

a single story

a single life

that God unfolds.

 

____

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Urim Sameach, 

 Abe

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

 

 

What do Dreams Mean?

for Parshat VaYeishev

 

i

Joseph is his father’s favorite son

and his father gives him a special coat.

Joseph lives a charmed life.

*

At night Joseph dreams  

and his dreams imply that his brothers will bow to him.

But Joseph is taken into slavery

and from slavery to prison.

 

ii

In prison Joseph meets a cupbearer and a baker.

The cupbearer dreams

and Joseph says: your dream means that you will be a cupbearer again.

The baker dreams

and Joseph says: your dream means that you will be hanged.

*

And Joseph says: dream-interpretations are from God.

*
These predictions come true.

 

Pharaoh hears of Joseph’s dream-interpretation

and makes Joseph ruler over Egypt

and Joseph’s brothers do bow to him.

 

iii

In security Joseph thinks that dreams are promises,

But the promise never takes hold. 

 

Then Joseph sees  

that dreams are the signs of changing fortune:

—for good (a return to cupbearing), or for suffering (a hanging);

only God will say which.

 

Then dreams speak Truth through Joseph

and his dreams come true.

 

Because he has learned the heart of dreams, the core of Truth:

that life is changeable,

that God is the only Master of this tenuousness.

 

 

Inspired largely by Rabbi Alex Israel’s reading of Joseph, and other sources.

Originally shared last year for this week's Parsha.

____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

 

What do we do when we are afraid of others?

for Parshat VaYishlach

 

i

Joseph loves Rachel

so Rachel’s father, Lavan,

gives him her hand.

But Lavan also tricks Jacob

into taking Leah, Rachel’s sister,

and into taking Leah’s handmaid,

and into taking Rachel’s handmaid.

From these four women

Jacob sires thirteen children

only two of whom

are Rachel’s.

 

ii

Jacob sends a message

to his brother who hates him,

who has wished to murder him—

a message of peace.

The messenger answers back:

Your brother comes to you

with four hundred men.

Jacob says to God:

I am afraid.

*

That night

when Jacob is alone

an unnamed man

who is an angel

wrestles him.

This angel injures Jacob.

But even so

Jacob forces the angel to bless him.

 

iii

Jacob is afraid

because people overwhelm him:

more join him  than he had hoped

they are more dishonest than he would expect

they are violent when he seeks peace.

*          

What does Jacob do?

He reaches out

into this overwhelmingness:

and so he finds

how the man who hurts him fiercely

is also an angel who will bless him. 
 

 

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe 

 

Based in part on thoughts of Rav Moshe Lichtenstein 

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

Who can lead?

for Parshat VaYeitzeh

 

i

Lavan promises his daughter,

Rachel,

to Jacob

for a wife.

On their wedding night

Lavan switches Rachel

with Lavan’s older daughter,

Leah.

Jacob does not know

until morning.

*

(But Jacob does marry Rachel, too, in the end.)

 

ii

So Leah becomes

the accidental wife.

And Leah names her first three sons

saying these things:

- With this first son, now my husband will love me.

- God has heard that I am hated, so He has given me a second son.

- My husband will join me now  for I have birthed him three sons.

*

This is naming

of Lavan’s world—

where another decides

who you are;

where another decides

who is a bride,

the chosen daughter,

a wife,

beloved,

unloved.

 

iii

With her fourth son

Leah says:

this time

I will Praise HaShem.

She names him Judah,

Yehudah,

Praise God.

*

In Judah

Leah ends

Lavan’s worldview:

she becomes simply one woman,

praising God.

 

iv

And Judah will sire

the line of David,

father of kings.

*

—perhaps to show

that the leader we seek

will not rule us:

but he will bring us to know ourselves

enough to come to God.

 

 

Based partly on Rav Amnon Bazak’s writing on the Books of Samuel 

 
_____
Shabbat shalom,
Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for NeshamaEmunah bat Batya
www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

 

 

How do we enter the world of our fathers?

for Parshat Toldot

i

Abraham digs water-wells.

But later Philistines take dirt

and clog the wells up.

*

Later still, Isaac,

Abraham’s son,

re-opens the wells

his father had dug.

He call the wells by the names

that his father had called them.

*

But the people near the wells

trouble Isaac’s men

and Isaac digs new wells

and people trouble Isaac’s men

more.

 

ii

Then Isaac took himself away from there

and he digs a new well

and no one troubles him

and no one troubles his men.

And God appears to him,

saying: I am the God of Abraham your father;

saying: I am with you.

 

iii

Only when Isaac starts out

into a new life

into a new place

into his own life

away from re-creating

his father’s wells

his father’s life

is Isaac ready

to come to his father’s world,

to encounter his father’s God,

to have his father’s God

as his God.  

 

 
_____
Shabbat shalom,
Abe

 
To my American friends: I would be honored if you shared this thought at your Thanksgiving dinner.

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for NeshamaEmunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha