Praying for Second Chances--Mikeitz

Praying for Second Chances

D’var Torah for Parashat Mikeitz

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Dedicated to the memories of the children and adults murdered in Newtown, CT

It’s even hard to begin.  How does one reconcile Torah with the awful events that have taken place this day?  For if there’s one thing—and one thing only—that is eternal and never changing, it is the Torah.  But life can change.  It can change in a minute.

For some 30 families in Newtown, CT, Chanukah and Christmas will never be happy again.

The cheer of this season, the lights and colors—they are dimmed for all of us today because of the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, because of the many innocent lives that were snuffed out like so many candles.

In the terrible sadness that this tragedy brings to us all, perhaps Torah can serve by shedding some light.  It almost seems right, at this point in our telling of the story of Joseph, to understand how brother can turn against brother, how jealousy can turn to hate, how years of repressed anger can turn to murderous rage. 

But, also from the story Joseph and his brothers, we can learn that it’s possible to overcome this smoldering yearning for revenge, to transcend the hate, to stop the wreck before it happens and, perhaps, begin again. 

As the news of the school shooting in Connecticut unfolds, there’s already talk about the person who may have committed such a heinous act.  What sort of deranged mind could even conceive of such a horror?

One commentator proposed a PTSD explanation.

 

Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome.  This all-inclusive term covers much.  It is a syndrome—a process that begins somewhere, with some experience that transforms its bearer.  It’s a chain reaction of physical and psychological consequences, like some sort of Rube Goldberg machine that sets in motion a whole series of events.

Traumas—the emotional as well as physical injuries that sometimes trigger such  reactions—never fail to change us in some way or another.  The man that Joseph’s brothers encountered in Egypt was not the Joseph they had sold as a boy to a caravan of slave traders some 20 years earlier.  He was transformed in character and essence.  That he was no longer a boy was only the tip of the iceberg.  From slave, he had become second only to Pharaoh; from forgotten captive in a dank dungeon, he turned to the second most powerful man in the world.

Inwardly, too, Joseph had changed.  Gone was his naiveté.  Deeper and darker passions conflicted within him.  Along with power came pride and arrogance.  After all, he knew, didn’t he, that one day the world would come to recognize him for his greatness!  But simultaneously, seething within him was also anger at the supposed brothers who had trapped him, mistreated him, tore him from his pleasant childhood and cast him at the feet and mercy of slave traders.  He was angry with his father, who seemingly had set him up for this betrayal to begin with.  He was angry with a God who had promised him greatness but never mentioned suffering.

As this week’s parasha (Mikeitz, Genesis 41:1—44:17) begins, Joseph reaches the zenith of his glory and power.  And it is exactly at this moment, too, that his brothers appear at the doorway to his opulent palace, asking to purchase sustenance.  It’s a dangerous intersection in anyone’s life, when we find ourselves able to do almost anything we had ever wanted to do.

What was Joseph’s first reaction at that moment?

How does a whole lifetime of putting up elaborate façades crumble at the onrush of one’s past?  Can anything withstand the repressed memories, the pain, the rage and the hate that all converge at that exact moment?

Joseph could have had them all killed in an instant without a word of protest.  He could have thrown them into a pit as they did him, or sold them as slaves and sent them in galleys to the farthest ends of the world.

What changed his mind at that fateful instant?  What stayed his hand?

Some say that Joseph’s next acts were devious.  He was playing with his victims.  He teased them with his supposed magical ability to tell things about them that only they could know about—such as about fathers and sons, and brothers, and trust, and lying, and selling one’s brother to slavery.

Others would say that Joseph was really wrestling with his memories.  As the terrible events of that day, frozen in darkness for so long, now awakened inside him, he could have exacted revenge at any moment.  But, instead, even as he accused his brothers of being spies, he was also searching their hearts for a higher truth.  While waging battle with feelings and emotions, Joseph gave his brothers a chance to tell the truth, to come clean, to make things right again.

Our choices determine the course of our lives.  Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt rather than expressing certainty of their guilt can change things and turn them around.  Joseph’s delay of judgment, his decision to give his brothers a second chance, triggers yet another positive reaction.  Back at home again, the brothers tell their father, Jacob, that they cannot return to Egypt without their youngest brother, Benjamin.  To Jacob’s objections, Judah offers to protect Benjamin; he pledges himself to ensure that no harm would come to the child.

You see, in the end it comes down to the children.  Whether we protect them, shelter them and shield them from harm, or cause them pain and hurt instead—that is the true test of our worth.

Who has changed the most in this story?  Was it Joseph or Judah, the brother who had suggested selling Joseph to the slave traders in the first place and who now offers to do things differently and infinitely better?

Does it matter?

 

What really matters is that we learn that we have a higher obligation than merely taking care of ourselves.  Joseph inherently understands the lesson no matter how deep the pain, we must control our anger.  No matter how profound the trauma, we must learn to see beyond ourselves, beyond our own needs, and turn instead to the greater good.

It is this understanding that stops Joseph from harming his brothers.  He remembers his father, his dead mother, Rachel, and his younger brother, Benjamin.  At that moment he knows for a fact that he has yet one more thing to do in life, and that is to protect them from further hurt.  His sense of love and obligation win over his selfish and short-sighted urge for personal gratification.

In Judah’s case, it was his realization of how much grief his past deeds had caused, and the   understanding he suddenly had that it was in his power to salvage some of the past.  At the critical moment, Judah realizes that it is yet in his power to turn events for the better, that he was given the gift of a second chance, and that that which he had broken, he now had a chance to fix.

But stories are only that.  They have a beginning, middle and an end.  Good stories contain lessons, not only adventures, and as far as that goes, the story of Joseph and his Brothers is a wonderful story.

But life is another matter altogether.  There are few neat endings.  From events such as today’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School we do not recover.  There is no ending to the grief.  All we can do is offer compassion and consolation to the families of the killed and wounded—and, really, to us all.  Because the senseless deaths of children hurts us all.  It shatters our sense of shelter and security.  It undermines our reason for existence as a species. 

Tonight we can only pray for second chances, for the hope that, somehow, we’ll be able to begin again despite the pain, that there will somehow be a less tragic ending to this story too.

©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman