TorahParsha

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

 

 

Mercy

i

Jacob says to his sons: And God Almighty give you mercy.

Jacob is referring to mercy from Joseph.

Joseph having disguised himself as a tyrant. Joseph is in the process of exacting vengeance on his brothers—who cast him into a pit, plotting to murder him years and years earlier; they have not seen him since.

But when Joseph sees his brother Benjamin (his closest brother), Joseph’s mercy was kindled toward his brother.

*

Joseph tends to his brothers.

He feeds them in famine. He gives them land.

He forgives them.

 *

Then, Jacob’s family—Joseph, and his brothers, and the generations that come after—becomes a people.

ii

Mercy runs from God Almighty, down to Joseph. From God down to man.

Divine mercy becomes human mercy.

Divine kindness becomes human kindness.

iii

The nation of Jacob’s family is created in that translation.

The nation is rooted in that translation.

 

_____________________________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

Please pray for the recovery of Ahuva Rachel bat Orah.

www.TorahParsha.com

___________

Sources: Gen 43:14, 30

Memory is a Life-Giving Force

i
Joseph is in prison. Joseph correctly understands the dream of Pharaoh's cupbearer, who is in prison with him.

Joseph tells the cupbearer: When you go free from prison, tell Pharaoh that I have been imprisoned wrongly.

But when the cupbearer goes free, the cupbearer does not remember Joseph: and he forgot him.

And Joseph languishes in prison.

*
Later, Pharaoh has dreams that he cannot understand.

And the cupbearer remembers Joseph. And the cupbearer tells Pharaoh: I recall my sin this day. And the cupbearer tells Pharaoh of Joseph, the interpreter of dreams.

*
And Joseph is released from prison to interpret Pharaoh's dreams.

And Joseph is made ruler over Egypt because of his interpretation of those dreams.

ii
To forget someone is to make him absent: as a prisoner kept away from the world is absent.

To remember someone is to bring him back.

Joseph is forgotten, Joseph is remembered; the memory of Joseph is what makes Joseph absent or present, not there or there.

iii
We are so deeply intertwined, our remembering each other is the only way we can ever be truly embodied, the only way we really exist.

~~~

Based heavily on Avivah Zornberg's reading of the Joseph story.

Dreams, Clothes

i
When Joseph is young, in his father's house, and he dreams and tells his brothers and father of these dreams, Joseph's father gives him a special coat.

Later, Joseph is sent to interpret Pharaoh's dream. Joseph changed his garments to prepare for the dream-meeting. And after Joseph delivers his interpretation, Pharaoh arrayed Joseph in garments of fine linen, and put a gold chain around his neck.

Dreams and clothes come together.

ii
Dreams and clothes both come from the world of symbol.

Dreams are meanings waiting to be deciphered. Clothes are patches of cloth that signify (think of fashion).

Clothing is a symbol in the external world. Dreams are a symbol in the internal world.

*
If clothes and dreams are linked, then they are two parts of a whole.

iii
Now think of tzitzit.

You must put tzitzit—specially-tied strings—on your clothes. They are a reminder to follow God, and to not follow after your heart and after your eyes, after which you stray.

Your inner world and your outer world are joined. Your eyes and your heart come together.

Just as your clothes and your dreams come together.

*
If the outer world and the inner world are joined, the tzitzit say, then the external life must guide the inner life: the heart and the eyes guided by the stringing of cloth.

You must shape the realm of cloth to guide the space where dreams live.