Joseph and the Deadly Brothers: Part I

Joseph and the Deadly Brothers: Part I
D’var Torah on Parashat Vayeishev (Genesis 37:1—40:23)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

The story of Vayeishev, this week’s Torah portion, picks up as Jacob is about to settle down in “the land of his father’s sojournings.”

There is both promise and foreboding in the opening sentence of the parasha. Jacob’s life up to that point had been anything but settled or peaceful. The words “his father’s sojournings” remind us that though Isaac, Jacob’s father, never ventured outside the Promised Land, he and the family nonetheless wandered about it extensively and restlessly. Would Jacob’s lot be any different now? As a child and as a young adult, strife and competition were common in Jacob’s life, often with him right in the middle of it all. His return home after 20 years in exile was fraught with strife, fear and tragedy. After the bloody Dinah affair, Jacob must have felt even less secure sharing his dwelling with his volatile and often violent sons. So, following the hopeful but uncertain opening verse of the portion, we are not surprised when things begin to slide rapidly downhill.

The well known story of Joseph and his brothers begins at this point. A true tear jerker, it is one of the most beautiful tales in the whole Torah. A story of love, brotherly hate and betrayal, adventure, discovery and ultimate redemption, it was turned into a multi-volume novel (by Thomas Mann); made into several films (both live and animated); at least one TV mini-series; and the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

In parashat Vayeishev, the first part of this story is told: Joseph’s status as Jacob’s favorite son is publicly established through the gift of a special coat or adorned tunic that Jacob gives him. Joseph abuses his privileged position, maligning his brothers to their father and belittling them through a series of dreams that he relates, in which they bow down to him.

Little wonder, then, that the brothers take the first opportunity to rid themselves of the little pest.

With the brothers away with their flocks on a particularly long journey, Joseph is sent by Jacob to inquire after their welfare. The brothers see him from afar and conspire against him. They capture Joseph and cast him into a dry water pit. At first intending to kill him, they are dissuaded by Reuben—who hopes secretly to release the boy.

It falls to Judah, however, to come up with the odious idea of selling Joseph into slavery. “What do we gain by killing him,” he asks just as a caravan of traders comes near, adding glibly, “He is, after all, our brother, our flesh.”

One can almost hear the snickering.

The trade is made—one boy in return for 20 pieces of silver. The brothers keep the adorned tunic Joseph wore.

On returning home, they show Jacob the tunic, torn and sullied with the blood of a goat they had killed. All at once, Jacob’s world collapses around him. He falls into a state of mourning, unable or unwilling to be consoled—perhaps holding in his heart of hearts the slimmest of all hope that Joseph might still be alive.

The reader knows well, of course, that Joseph is indeed alive, and that his own long journey toward redemption has only begun. Joseph’s narcissistic visions of grandeur have given way to a grim reality of slavery and abuse. Torn from the comforts of home, he becomes filled instead with resentment and ambition, motives he uses well—along with his charm and good looks—to get ahead in life.

It is at this point that a new hero rises in the story. It is Judah—the very same Judah who had suggested selling Joseph into slavery, abdicating any responsibility towards his brother; the very same Judah who, centuries later, will assume tribal leadership over his brothers; the very same Judah whose -ism we follow to this day. It’s a transformation that deserves its own chapter.

We can easily imagine the behavior of the brothers after they show Jacob the bloodied coat Joseph had worn. The guilty silences, the whispers, the downcast eyes, the lies—repeated and adorned through the weeks, months and years—which are like a festering wound. Judah finally breaks away from all this (or perhaps, according to some commentators, is cast out by his brothers who blame him for the disastrous state of affairs). He marries, fathers three sons and marries the eldest of them to a woman named Tamar. Sadly, however, the first son dies, and Judah has the second son marry Tamar with the purpose of fulfilling “levirate” duties (the ancient custom requiring a man to marry his brother’s widow if the dead brother was childless). This son, however, also dies. Fearful of losing his remaining son, Judah sends Tamar away, back to her father’s house, with the promise that when the young boy grows older, he will have her come back. Judah fails to keep his promise, however. Tamar tricks him into recognizing his responsibility—at which point Judah finally begins to comprehend the extent of pain and suffering he had caused his father and brother, among others. It is so that he first sets out on his road toward redemption, a journey that will ultimately earn him the right to represent and lead his brothers and people.

It doesn’t take much for repentance to begin. The first step is recognizing that we may have done something wrong. Fixing the wrongs is much tougher and may take a much longer route. It will take much work yet before Joseph and his brothers achieve reconciliation. For now, however, Joseph must continue his spiritual descent even as he sees growing success—first as a slave, then as slave maker to Pharaoh. The abused becomes abuser before he is redeemed. Judah, as yet unrepentant, must return to his father and brothers. The silent accusations will continue to fly like daggers among them.

And Jacob’s sorrow will continue unabated. At least until Part II is told.

©2010 by Boaz D. Heilman

The Blessing of Being Israel

The Blessing of Being Israel
D’var Torah for Parashat Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4—36:43)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

In this week’s parashah, for the first time after fleeing from Esau some twenty years earlier, Jacob has to face his brother. His early fears—though not unfounded—seem positively trivial at this point. Then, he had little to lose (OK, Esau swore to kill him, but things could be worse). Now, however, he has a family. He has children, wives, cattle and sheep, many servants, much gold. Life has become precious to him over the years.

And the news is bad: Esau is coming toward him at the head of a full contingent of men armed to the teeth.

Twenty years earlier, Jacob could run. But now? Then, with his whole life yet ahead of him, Jacob, youthful, hopeful and confident, headed east towards Haran, the home of his mother’s family. But now, having left that home—where he had found not only love and wealth, but also jealousy, cheating in-laws and budding anti-Semitism—he can’t go back there anymore.

Jacob has run out of options. He can’t run any more.

More than ever before, Jacob knows he has to rely on his cleverness and cunning if he is going to survive the faceoff with his brother. He musters all his strength, physical as well as spiritual. Sending forth several herds of livestock as gifts for his brother (Vayishlach means “he sent forth”), Jacob divides the remainder of his camp into two—Leah and her children first, then Rachel and hers. He sends them all ahead, hoping against all hope that Esau won’t attack—but that if he does, at least the beloved Rachel might be spared.

That leaves Jacob alone, on the far shore of the Jordan River, alone to figure out what to do next.

Years ago, when I first saw the movie Exodus, I was deeply affected by it. One of the scenes that always stayed in my mind was the one when, in anticipation of an Arab attack on Kibbutz Gan Dafna, the order is given to evacuate the women and children. With loud Hebrew music playing as a diversionary tactic in the background, the children—their mouths sealed with masking tape—are silently carried out under cover of darkness. The remaining defenders, camouflaged, lying quietly on the watch for the impending attack, are left alone with their thoughts, their fears, their hopes and their prayers. Just like Jacob—who after this night will be known by the name of Israel.

That night, Jacob has to wrestle a mysterious being, variously explained as an angel, a demon, or as a personification of Jacob’s own personal fears. The fight lasts all night. Just before daybreak—when, as we know from countless vampire movies and books, demons must flee into the darkness—Jacob finds himself hurt. Yet he does not loosen his hold on his adversary. At the last possible moment, as recompense for letting the angel go, Jacob demands a blessing from him.

The angel responds by renaming Jacob: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, inasmuch as you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed” (Gen. 32:29). Filled with renewed confidence and hope, Jacob releases the angel and moves on with his life. He is hurt—as are we all by our struggles with our own angels and demons in life—but he does not let that stop him. If anything, his limp will continually remind him of this night and its successful outcome.

It may have taken 20 years to learn, but the message—for Jacob as for the rest of us—is a hard-won lesson. Running away from our issues and demons is not a solution. Yet, for so many of us, that is precisely what we do through most of our life, devoting immeasurable energy into avoidance and denial. When Jacob asks for his adversary’s name, the angel refuses to divulge it. And that is the way it should be. Each of us has individual fears, unique to our experience and our life. Often, our fears have no name. We sometimes conceal these inner terrors with extroverted macho behavior; sometimes we resort to drug or alcohol abuse. We may spend countless hours at work, or sometimes we “shop till we drop.”

But eventually we all have to come home.

Learning this lesson is not easy for any of us. We are afraid of the night and its creatures, even if some of them live only in our minds.

Sometimes the fears are real. There may indeed be real dangers and real enemies lurking in the dark. But, real or imaginary, running away is not the solution. We may get hurt along the way, but, just like Jacob, in facing our adversaries and in overcoming our adversities, we may also discover our strengths.

Up until that fateful night, in addition to his own cleverness, Jacob had relied on luck, magic and superstition. The night that Jacob became Israel, he learned to rely on God. He learned to pray—not only for things, not even for victory, but rather to pray in recognition and gratitude for the values he was so richly blessed with: kindness, love and generosity. He learned to understand that his strength lay not only in his own cleverness, but in these values. The blessing he had wrested from his brother and father was small in comparison to the blessing he won through his struggle with God and the angel. He now knew for a fact that God—as God had promised him twenty years earlier—would always be there for him and with him. Jacob finally learned—through his spiritual struggles—to integrate God into his life.

No longer afraid, Jacob limps slowly forward. He meets his brother Esau and asks for his forgiveness. He offers Esau half of all he owns. Generously, Esau forgives Jacob, as the two brothers reconcile (at least for now).

Jacob is ready to move on. No longer running away, he is deeply aware of the dangers that yet face him and his family. But he knows he will survive. He has wrestled with God and with humans before, and he prevailed. He will prevail again and again, no matter what battles lie ahead.

Life is a series of struggles. Yet, if we, like Jacob, unflinchingly face up to these, we can be sure that we, too, will prevail.

Maybe it’s embedded in our genes. I don’t know. I prefer to think of it as a blessing.

©2010 by Boaz D. Heilman

A Simple Truth

A Simple Truth
D’var Torah on Parashat Vayeitze, Genesis 28:10—32:3
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

A person’s spiritual journey often mirrors his or her physical journey through life.

As the Biblical patriarch Jacob’s story begins, we find him a homeboy, cooking red lentil stew. Unlike his twin brother, Esau, Jacob does not venture far from home. He is described as an “ish tam,” a simple, whole or innocent man. The term reminds us of the third of the Four Sons that the Passover Haggada speaks of.

Yet, Jacob is far from simple. He is, in fact, cunning and shrewd. For better or for worse, he is lacking in one simple human quality—trust. We see proof of that as Jacob bargains with Esau for the birthright, where a simple “You got it” simply doesn’t cut it for him. “Swear to it!” Jacob demands, and Esau complies.

As this week’s parasha, Vayeitze, begins, Jacob sets out on the journey from his family home in Beer Sheba to his mother’s place of origin, Haran. He leaves with little more than the shirt on his back—symbolic of the emergency nature of his departure (after all, Esau has sworn to kill him). The dearth of physical comforts is paralleled by Jacob’s impoverished spiritual state. He has lost everything—home, love, security. As he lies down for his first night away from home ever, he uses a stone for a pillow. No goose down for him tonight. Jacob probably swears, as will the protagonist of another dramatic story from a much later time and place, that, as God is his witness, he will never go hungry again. But for now, he is going to have to rebuild his life from scratch.

Jacob has a dream. He sees angels going up and down a ladder; he sees God’s presence surrounding him, and he receives God’s promise to protect him along his journey and to see to it that Jacob returns home safely.

Now you and I might wake up after such a night feeling grateful and encouraged, but the practical Jacob needs more than a promise. “If you do that,” he replies, “if you safeguard me along my journeys and bring me back home safe and sound, if you do all that, then I will worship you as my God.” The sheer chutzpah takes one’s breath away.

Still, from this first encounter with God, Jacob is willing enough to learn a lesson: God is present in the least expected places. “There is a God here, and I did not know it” (Gen. 28:16). Yet he remains naive enough to believe that the very spot where he had his dream is God’s home. He has yet to learn that God is everywhere—a complex lesson that will come to him gradually during the course of this parasha and the rest of his life.

As children, our faith is similarly simple. The idea of God, even as it is mysterious and somewhat frightening, is also whole. As children, it is often clear to us what God expects of us—or at least, is made clear to us by parents and teachers. And we accept these simple truths.

I remember, as a child growing up in Israel, once praying and making a promise to God while walking somewhere. I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a yarmulke then (kippah is the Hebrew version of the word), but for days afterwards, whenever I passed by that spot, I covered my head with my hand, a simple and naïve gesture that brings to mind the physical gesture of bestowing a blessing.

Simple requests, simple gestures.

As our physical journey from childhood to maturity continues, so does our spiritual development. We leave home and encounter the world, complex, complicated, full of twists and turns and often problematic. The simplistic beliefs we had held as children are left behind. As we learn about ourselves and our growing role in life, we sometimes experiment with other spiritual paths. The many challenges of life, the losses and defeats we suffer sometimes leave us bereft of faith and trust—just like Jacob.

It’s naïve to expect that faith will protect us from all harm. The universe sometimes seems impersonal and in fact downright cruel. Life often takes away from us our most precious possessions, leaving us feeling as Jacob did that first night—alone, abandoned and hopeless.

It isn’t easy to rebuild faith or trust once they’ve been shattered. It’s easier to rebuild our lives—or at least the outer shell. Yet the void inside us cries out to us.

Among my friends and family in Israel, there are many who, following their experiences during the Holocaust, lost all faith in God. They managed to rebuild their lives, growing beautiful and vibrant families, businesses, professions. They may even celebrate holidays and follow some Jewish traditions. Yet new traditions, secular and worldly, have replaced many of the old customs. Thus, for example, in many communities in Israel, Yom Kippur isn’t a day spent in the confines of a synagogue. Rather, it is a day of going out to city streets and public squares on bicycles. With little or no business traffic going anywhere, streets get closed off to cars and are soon completely filled with children and adults alike, all on bikes. It’s an amazing phenomenon, but its purpose and function are as spiritual and meaningful as going to shul. The tragic losses of the past have been replaced by new life and new energy. Ancient rites have been replaced by new rituals, centered on family, community and new-found freedom in the Land of Israel.

Our physical and spiritual journey continues to develop throughout our life. It wasn’t until I was in college—five or six years after leaving Israel—that I first felt myself in exile. There was a physical sensation of being separated from home that was accompanied by a great emotional yearning. It took another couple of years, and another exile (leaving my parents’ home as I transferred to college in another city and state), before I began to discover my personal spiritual space, my home-away-from-home. Through various connections and turns of life, I found myself working as counselor at a Jewish summer camp in Utica, Mississippi. Shortly after I arrived, I was asked by the educational director of the camp, a rabbi, to officiate at a havdalah service. Not uncharacteristically for me, I accepted the challenge even before I asked what a havdalah service was. As the saying goes, there is no atheist in a foxhole…. That, in turn, led me to a road I followed on and off for close to thirty years, culminating in my ordination as rabbi. It’s a journey I am still on.

I discover God in places I never knew God was present: On the day I was married; in the birth of my children; in the everyday interactions between me and the world around me. I sense God’s presence when I study Torah and when I teach Jewish history; when I counsel a distraught individual or a couple lovingly preparing to join their lives together. I find God in the prayers I say, and in the questions I’m asked by simple, naïve children who just want to know if God can feel sick, and how do we know God can forgive.

We live in the house of God, and we did not even know it! It’s a place that sometimes we think we leave behind, and that, at other moments, we come back to. The truth is, however, that it always surrounds us and is always within us. We don’t ever have to feel estranged.

All we have to do is come home, back to our simpler selves.

©2010 by Boaz D. Heilman

The Deeds of Our Parents

The Deeds of Our Parents
D’var Torah for Parashat Toldot, Genesis 25:10—28:9
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Parenting. It’s the hardest job in the world. Not only is it full time, we also never get a day off. Even if we aren’t supplying their every need, picking them up, dropping them off, they are always in our thoughts. When we go shopping for food or clothes, for holiday or birthday gifts—we always think of what they might like or need. Even when they leave the house—in fact, especially after they leave home—they are never far from our thoughts, as we worry about their ability to take care of themselves in this wild and unpredictable world.

As parents, we are always on call. We jump to the phone ringing at midnight, our heart skipping a beat in fright. How wonderful to let out the caught breath when we hear a question having to do with how to defrost meat (best in the fridge overnight), and can it be frozen again (no).

What makes it even more difficult is that not only are we the first teachers for our children, we are actually the most influential teachers. Long after we find ourselves unable to help them with their math or physics, we still find ourselves in the role of mentors. We may exclaim in wonder how much a baby may resemble a father or mother, but what truly amazes us is how much they are like us in personality—and how much we, in turn, are like our own parents.

The wise Sages of the Talmud taught: Maaseh avot siman l’banim—“the deeds of the parents are the model for the children.” Children learn more from the example set by the behavior of the parents than from all the verbiage we can offer as explanation. The way we react to life, whether in silence, with a sneer, with a smile, with an excuse or a kind word—these are lessons our children learn wordlessly from us by simply watching.

The first family of the Jewish people was far from exemplary. The zealotry of Abraham, the jealousy of Sarah; the preferential treatment that Jacob will display toward his favorite child, Joseph—these seem to follow patterns established by prior generations, precedents set by ancestors who didn’t think twice about their behavior and the impact it might have on the future.

In this week’s Torah portion, Toldot (“generations”), Genesis 25:10—28:9, Isaac and Rebecca find themselves parents of twin boys, Jacob and Esau. They each choose a favorite—Isaac prefers Esau, the hunter, the wild outdoorsman; Rebecca chooses Jacob, a meek and mild homeboy who prefers cooking lessons to archery. Isaac might be forgetting the jealousy that led his mother, Sarah, to demand that Ishmael—Abraham’s and Hagar’s son—be sent out of the house. Rebecca recognizes in Jacob—or perhaps instills in him—traits she learned in the bosom of her own family: Manipulation, wheeling and dealing, even cheating and stealing.

As Jacob follows the behavior modeled by his mother, he sets up repercussions for years to come.

We first encounter the jealousy between the twin brothers as Esau comes home one day, tired, hungry and thirsty after a wearying hunt. He happens upon Jacob, who is busy cooking some good-smelling stew. “Gimme some of that red stuff,” Esau manages to grunt. Jacob, seeing an opportunity, agrees to sell his brother a bowl of the stew—but at a steep price: the birthright. Esau, thinking himself at the point of death, blows off the implications and agrees to the deal.

All this is seemingly forgotten until many years later, when Isaac is on his deathbed and wishes to bestow the final blessing—the spiritual legacy that goes along with the material inheritance—to his favorite son, his oldest son (even if by a few moments), Esau.

Rebecca, overhearing Isaac’s request that Esau go hunt food for him in return for the blessing (a tradeoff that seems to be a family trait), urges Jacob to pretend to be Esau and secure the blessing for himself. Not protesting the immoral nature of the deed, Jacob recognizes only the difficulty of the task—“My brother Esau is a hairy man, whereas I am a smooth man!” Rebecca helps Jacob cheat Isaac, and the blessing is bestowed.

The consequences of these actions aren’t late in coming. Esau, realizing he has been cheated out of both blessing and inheritance, swears to kill Jacob. Fearful of her first-born’s son impetuous and violent nature, Rebecca arranges to send Jacob out to her family in Aram, where he would be staying with her brother, Laban. Any semblance of a happy household is shattered, as Jacob prepares to leave his childhood home—his childhood, in fact. Has he learned his lesson? Hardly. He is just starting off on a path that will be filled with people cheating him, where—among his own children—brother will set against brother, where he will be manipulated by almost anyone he comes in contact with.

Jacob’s life will be filled with sadness and tragedy. Much of that will be the consequence of behavior he had seen at home and followed innocently. He is as much a victim of his own choices and deeds as of those of his parents.

So much like us.

So where does this chain of events stop? How do we end the spiral? Are we all doomed to simply repeat the wrongdoings of the generations that preceded us?

If that were so, the Torah would be remiss. The lesson will come, albeit further down the story. It will appear at a moment of reckoning for one of Jacob’s sons who, all grown up and now a father himself, will come to realize that at some point we have to take life’s reins in hand and acknowledge responsibility for our own actions and behavior. Yes, there are patterns we follow, models and archetypes that shape so much of our personality and our life. Yet these cannot become an excuse for further wrongdoing.

I have always wondered about the Rabbinic phrase, Maaseh avot siman l’banim—“the deeds of the parents are the model for their children.” The word siman doesn’t mean only “model.” More strictly, it also means “a sign.” As such, the deeds of our ancestors shouldn’t be only a pattern we follow automatically. They should be a road sign to consider and learn from. No one is perfect—not even the first family of the Jewish people. Even they were only human and as such subject to human frailties. But just as they learned from their mistakes, so must we—from theirs as well as from ours. We are not merely following in the wake left behind by those who came before us. We can shape for ourselves the direction in which our life goes. What makes our work as parents so difficult is that we must remember that each choice we make, each action we pursue, is a signal left for our children and grandchildren, an opportunity for them to learn from. We never do stop teaching them.

It’s a heavy responsibility, but one we have no choice but to accept. The future depends on what we do today.

©2010 by Boaz D. Heilman