TorahParsha

Should we cut ourselves off?

for Parshat VaYigash

 

i

God tells Abraham:

Leave your homeland

your birthplace

your father’s house,

go to the Land of Israel,

I will make you a great nation there.

 

There,

Abraham parts ways with his nephew

parts ways with his son

nearly sacrifices his other son upon the altar

becomes the lone Man of God.

 

ii

Jacob and his whole family

go down to Egypt

reuniting with Jacob’s beloved son,

Joseph,

who lives there

who had been estranged from the family

for twenty years.

 

It will be centuries

before the family returns to the Land.

 

God tells Jacob:

Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt.

I will make you a great nation there.

And Joseph

your beloved son

will lay his hands over your eyes

when you pass.

 

iii

Abraham begins a great nation

going to the Land.

Jacob begins a great nation

leaving it.

 

God makes us a great nation

when we are ready to give up

the people we love

the family around us

to follow God to His Land.

 

God makes us a great nation, too,

when we are ready to give up the Land

following the people we love.

 

_____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

Please pray for Yechiel ben Michal

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What it means to see someone

for Parshat VaYigash

 

i

Joseph tells his brothers of his dreams

that predict his greatness

that make his brothers hate him so much

they send him off to slavery in Egypt.

*

In Egypt

Joseph becomes a powerful man.

The brothers, not knowing who he is,

come to him for bread.

*

Joseph throws them in jail

plays tricks with their money

calls them spies & thieves

until Judah, Joseph’s brother,

tells this unknown man

all he has wrought upon them

and how the game he is playing

will break their father.

*

Joseph breaks down

he cries: I am Joseph

he says: you had thought to do me harm;

through you,

God has brought me

to sustain a great nation.

*

And Joseph cares for his brothers

the rest of their lives.

*

And this is the first time

anyone acknowledges God

as overseeing the brothers’ whole story.

 

ii

In anger,

Judah tells Joseph

what he could never say before:

how much Joseph matters to this family.

*

And that is what breaks down the walls

between Joseph and his brothers

and takes the curtain away

between the brothers and God.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

___

For simplicity, I wrote that the brothers send Joseph to Egypt, but the sale of Joseph is far more indirect. See Gen 37:18-29

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What to do with impossible differences

for Parshat VaYigash

 

i

God accepts Abel’s gift but not his brother Cain’s.

God tells Cain:

If you are good, it will be well;

if not, sin crouches at the door.

Then Cain kills Abel.

 

ii

Joseph is his father’s favorite.

His brothers hate him,

they could not speak to him peacefully,

they plot to kill him.

*

Joseph becomes leader of Egypt

though his brothers do not know.

And Joseph does not let his brothers know it is him

when he demands that they give him their youngest brother,

Benjamin,

as a slave.

*

Judah says:

it would kill my father

to part with Benjamin.

I cannot bear the sin

of letting this happen.

I will be a slave instead.

*

Then Joseph cannot contain himself.

He reveals himself as Joseph.

And Joseph and his brothers

speak together at last.

 

iii

Cain will not face his own sin.

Judah refuses to fall into sin.

Cain cannot reconcile with his brother

but Judah can.

*

You can face the impossible divide with another

by destroying that other person,

or you can see your own responsibilities

that you bear yourself.

But only the second way

can bring reconciliation.

 

 

_______________

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

What are years?

 

for Parshat Terumah

 

i

God tells Noah

to build a great ship

out of gofer wood

three hundred cubits long

fifty cubits wide

thirty cubits high

to carry the creatures through the storm.

*

God tells Moses

to build a Holy Ark

from shittim wood

one and a half cubits long

one and a half cubits wide

one and a half cubits high

to carry God’s Testimony

across the Desert

to the Land.

*

Pharoah asks Jacob

How many are the days of the years of your life?

Jacob

who has had a difficult life

who is old

answers Pharoah:

I have lived one hundred thirty years,

few and bad were the days of the years of my life. 

 

ii

A number is a measure

of material for carrying things:

cubits of wood for voyagers

cubits of wood for holy cargo

years of life for bearing good

or bad.

 

iii

A number is a question:

With only so much material

so much wood

so many cubits

so many years

—nothing more—

what can we carry

and how much

how will we carry good

and not bad

what is in our power

to justify the measure we have?

 

 

 ____

Title taken from the title of a poem by Marianne Moore

 ____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

TorahParsha.com

 

Please pray for Neshama Emuna bat Batya

 

 

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

 

Burden of Sin (VaYiGash)

i

When the Cupbearer leaves prison, he does not speak of Joseph to the outside world.

 

Though Joseph has helped him.

 

Though Joseph has asked the Cupbearer to tell Joseph’s story.

 

Joseph languishes in prison.

 

*

Later the Cupbearer says: I recall my sin today.  

 

He tells Joseph’s story at last.

 

Joseph goes free.

 

ii

Judah says to his father: If I do not bring Benjamin back to you, then I shall have sinned.

 

So when Joseph (disguised) threatens to enslave Benjamin, Judah says: enslave me instead.

 

And Joseph is  overwhelmed.

 

And Joseph reveals himself to be Joseph.

 

And the questions of enslavement are tossed away.

 

*

Then Joseph says to his brothers: You cast me into slavery years ago; but this was God’s plan—so I would grow to be powerful during famine, to save your lives.

 

iii

The Cupbearer acknowledges his sin, and Joseph goes free.

 

Judah veers from sin, and takes the whole question of slavery away.

 

Taking up your burden—bearing responsibility in the world—you give freedom to the people all around you.

 

*

Then Joseph says: even enslavement can become a holy burden, a kind of gift: as God wants us to care for each other wholly.

____________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

This argument draws upon other ones I have encountered, such as this work of Rav Yaakov Meidan (scroll down).

www.TorahParsha.com

Trade

i
Pharaoh invites Jacob and his family to live in Egypt, where there is food, to live out a famine that has struck across the land.

*
And Pharaoh tells Jacob and his family: do not bring your possessions from Canaan over to Egypt. There is no need. Because all the good of Egypt is yours.

*
But when Jacob and his family do come, they do not follow Pharaoh's advice. They take their cattle and their possessions they had acquired in the Land of Canaan along with them.

How, after all, could they not take their possessions?

How could they cast the things of their homeland away?

*
So Jacob encounters in Egypt a culture in which possessions can be traded up, and the good things can readily replace the old things; and where you can leave your old life easily behind: because everything is a commodity, is so much chattel, is an exchangeable good.

Jacob rejects this worldview.

ii
Later the people of Egypt, themselves caught in the famine, must sell themselves as slaves to Pharaoh in exchange for food.

The Egyptians become commodities themselves: they are enslaved.

(And Jacob and his family are spared from this.)

iii
If you live in this world of things—in our world of money—you must ask yourself if you will take the worldview of Egypt, or of the worldview of Jacob.

You become your own worldview, either way.

~~~~~~~~

Israel is Born in Egypt

i
Jacob and his sons come down to Egypt. They are fleeing from famine. This flight begins the time of the Jewish people in that land.

And the verse says, And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen…and they took possession of it.

*
Note how the verse says they. They took possession of it.

Before, Israel was not a they. Israel was a man. Israel was the name that God gave to Jacob, the patriarch, God's angel telling him: Your name will no more be called Jacob, but Israel.

Now, in Egypt, Israel has become a they.

Israel has become a people.

ii
This happens in Egypt.

This happens, too, in Goshen: a land tucked within the land of Egypt.

iii
We are separate from the nations of the world (we were born in Goshen).

We are bound to the nations of the world (we were born in Egypt).

We are both of these things, from our birth.

~~~~~