PARSHAT VAYESHEV

 (5768)

 

TWO KINDS OF SURVIVAL

 

“[Joseph replied, My master] …  has withheld nothing from me except yourself, since you are his wife.  How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God?”

                                                                        (Genesis 39:9)

 

            All living things have a built-in, natural drive to survive.  All living things learn to flee predators and take whatever precautions necessary for their physical survival.  But human beings, part animal and part angel, have a second kind of drive for survival.  It is the drive for spiritual survival.  Humans need not only to continue to exist in this physical world, but maintain their purpose for living, their spiritual integrity.

            This need for spiritual survival is clear in the Joseph story.  Joseph is thrust into a pit, taken by caravan down to Egypt, and sold as a slave.  He ends up in the home of an Egyptian aristocrat Potiphar.  There is no question that Joseph, with his good looks and his intelligence, will physically survive his stay in Egypt.  The question is whether he will spiritually survive.  Will he maintain the sense of purpose and values he was taught by his mother and father?  Will he continue to live under the covenant that God made with the children of Israel?

            Potiphar’s wife puts Joseph to the test; she tries to seduce him into an act of adultery.  But Joseph maintains his spiritual integrity and his sense of values.  Such an act would be a “sin before God.”  As a result Joseph ends up in prison.  His spiritual survival will be tested many more times in his lifetime.  The story of Joseph is the story of spiritual survival in a foreign land.

            Hanukkah which begins during the coming week is also the story of spiritual survival.  There are two important post-Torah holidays in the Jewish calendar.  Both Purim and Hanukkah contain similar passages in the liturgy and include a blessing for the miracles God performed for our ancestors and ourselves.  But the holidays are different in a fundamental way.  Purim is about physical survival.  Haman wanted to destroy the Jewish people.   In the book of Esther the king gave the Jewish people permission to fight back against Haman and his hordes in order to assure their physical survival. 

            If Purim celebrates the survival of the body, Hanukkah celebrates the survival of the soul.  The Syrian-Greeks were not trying to destroy the Jewish people but rather they were seeking to destroy the Jewish faith.  In fact the story of Hanukkah began as a civil war between Jews who wanted to maintain the traditional faith and Jews who wanted to assimilate the Greek ways.  The Jewish people might have survived the Syrian Greeks, but Judaism as a way of life would have been forever destroyed.  Therefore at Hanukkah we celebrate spiritual survival.  We light candles to proclaim the miracle and read from the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power but by my spirit says the Lord of Hosts.”  (Zechariah 4:6)

            There are two kinds of survival.  Obviously physical survival is vital; without the body the soul cannot do its spiritual work.  But we must also be concerned with spiritual survival.  The body alone can lose its sense of purpose and its very raison d’etre.  Animals exist, but only humans must constantly visit the question – why do I exist?

            This concern for physical and spiritual survival is vital this week as once again peace talks open up between Israel and the Palestinians.  As a lover of Israel, I desperately would like to see her make peace with her neighbors.  But as a realist about politics in the Mid-East, I remain skeptical.  Many Jews who are opposed to these peace talks speak of Israel’s physical survival.  They believe any compromise with the Palestinians is a threat to Israel’s very existence.  On the other hand, many Jews who support the peace talks are concerned with Israel’s spiritual survival.  There cannot be a Jewish, democratic state that continues to rule over millions of Palestinians.

            When we think of the future of Israel we must be concerned with both physical and spiritual survival.   A concern for two kinds of survival will allow Israel to take whatever steps are necessary to assure its future.

 

 

PARSHAT VAYESHEV

 (5766)

 

HAPPY HOLIDAY?

 

“Yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.”  (Genesis 40:23)

 

            There is a big controversy brewing here in America.  Do we greet someone at this season according to their specific holiday – Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah?   Or do we simply use a generic greeting – Happy Holiday?

            I find such controversies rather silly, distracting from the joy of the season.  Personally, if someone wants to greet me with good wishes at this time of the year, I am happy to accept whatever language they choose to use.  If they say “Happy Holiday,” I appreciate the generic greeting, recognizing that not everybody celebrates Christmas.  And if they wish me “Merry Christmas,” I am aware that this is a holy day to the vast majority of Americans, and will return the words “Merry Christmas.”  Life is too short for such petty controversies.

            Having said that, I am not in favor of confusing various holidays which happen to fall at this time of year.  It is true that this year Jews begin celebrating Hanukkah on the same day that Christians celebrate Christmas.  But there is no such thing as Christmuccah, the syncretistic creation of the TV show The O.C.   Holidays have their own history and their own integrity.   For Jews, Hanukkah celebrates the right to be different, to celebrate their religion in spite of those who would force them to assimilate.  The events of Hanukkah took place over one hundred years before the birth of Jesus.  To Christians, Christmas celebrates the birth of the man who they believe was God incarnate.  It is far more important holiday in Christian tradition.  The holidays are not related.

            However, deep underneath the particulars of these festivals, perhaps there is a link.  Let us explore a very ancient Midrash (Rabbinic tale), one that I mentioned in my sermon last Shabbat.  The Midrash goes back before either holiday, all the way to the first man Adam.  Of course, Adam symbolizes universal man.  Could it be that there is a universal message behind both these festivals?

            The Talmud teaches, “When the first man saw the days getting shorter and shorter, he said woe is me, because of my sins the world is returned to darkness on my account; this is the death that I have received as punishment from heaven.  He began eight days of fasting and prayer.  When he saw the winter solstice and the days getting longer and longer, he celebrated eight days of festivity.  Every year he declared the days at the beginning and end as festivals.  He made them into days for the purpose of heaven, but idolaters made them into days of idolatry.”  (Avoda Zara 8a)

            The Talmud continues that this makes sense if you believe the world was created in the fall, for Adam has only seen days getting shorter.  (Jews believe the world was created on Rosh Hashana, in the beginning of the fall.)  But if you believe, as some Rabbis did, that the world was created in the spring, Adam has seen days get longer and days get shorter.  Why would he be frightened?  The Talmud comes up with an alternative Midrash.

            “When the first man saw the sun setting on the first day, he said, Woe is me, because of my sins the world is returned to darkness on my account; this is the death that I have received as punishment from heaven.  He fasted and cried all the night and Eve cried next to him.  When he saw the sun rise again, he proclaimed, This is the way of the world.   He then brought God the first offering.”  (Avoda Zara 8a)

            Adam is really each one of us.  Each of us has moments in our life when we believe that darkness will overwhelm us.  Each of us has moments when we believe the days will get shorter and colder and soon disappear altogether.  Or we believe the sun will set and never rise again.   Adam fasted before the winter solstice and after the first sunset.  Then when light came out again, he celebrated and declared days of joy and light.  Perhaps there is a universal human need to celebrate our darkest day with lights and joy.

            In this week’s portion, Joseph was thrown into jail and forgotten.  And yet, by next week’s portion Joseph will become the second most powerful man in Egypt, rescuing thousands of people from famine.  Joseph’s fate was to go from darkness to light.  So it is with all of us; when life seems darkest, there is a light around the corner.

            Hanukkah and Christmas, for all their separateness, share a deep spiritual truth.  Both fall at the darkest, coldest days of the year (at least for those of us who live in the Northern hemisphere.)  And both emphasize the lighting of lights to chase away the darkness.   Both hearken back to that early festival celebrated by Adam at the dawn of time.  Let us light lights and look forward to spiritual joy, whatever holiday we happen to celebrate.

 

 

PARSHAT VAYESHEV - HANUKKAH

 (5764)

 

HOW TO RAISE A DICTATOR

 

"Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age, and he had made him an ornamented tunic."

(Genesis 37:3)

 

At last, Sadaam Hussein has been captured.  Another dictator has fallen.  If the situation were not so serious and so sad, with troops still being killed daily, I would break out into song - "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

Dictators come and dictators go.  Over the course of history the good guys seem to win.  But there is always a new evil that seems to emerge after a period of time.  As we say in the Passover seder, "In every generation someone rises up to slay us."  Evil people seem as inevitable as the change of seasons.

First there was Pharaoh, who enslaved the Israelites.  This week we read the story of Joseph who was sold down to Egypt, the beginning of the epic that would lead to our enslavement.  Later, there was Nebucanezzer, the Babylonian tyrant who destroyed the Temple and dispersed the Israelites.  Then there was Antiochus, who tried to outlaw the Jewish faith.  This week begins Hanukkah, the celebration of the Macabees unlikely victory over Antiochus.  Then there was Titus, who destroyed the second Temple and sent the Jews in exile.  The list of madmen reads like a litany of evil - Chmielnicki, Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Sadaam Hussein.  The evil never ends.

I had a fabulous discussion with the teens who study with me each week in my Torah Corps.  I asked them the question, "Do you think parents raise their children do become evil dictators?  Do you think any parents are proud that their child grows up to be Idi Amin or Pol Pot or Sadaam Hussein?  What does it take for parents to raise a dictator?" 

We came up with three answers.  First, if you want to raise a dictator, teach your child to hate people who are different, people of a different race or religion or ethnic background.  When we first see certain people as "the other," as somehow less than human, it becomes easier first to discriminate and then to destroy.  The Nazis did not immediately start killing Jews.  First they had to see them as mere vermin, not worthy of humanity.  Hussein was able to gas the Kurds of northern Iraq because they were not fully human in his eyes.

How many of us grow up in homes where we fail to see the humanity of other people?  It may be Palestinians, blacks, evangelical Christians, Moslems, gays, or other ethnic groups.  How many of us stereotype, putting people in boxes because of their particular background?  The first step towards dictatorship is when certain people become less than human in our eyes.

The second step towards raising a dictator is to allow a child to have whatever he or she wants.  Children grow up thinking everything is coming to them.  They have never heard the word "no."  And so, when they are in a position of power, they will take whatever they want, whether such acquisition is just or not just.

Too many of us parents, myself included, make the mistake of overindulging our children.  Even Jacob bought his son Joseph a coat of many colors, a move that began the events leading to our exile in Egypt.  Perhaps Jacob should have demanded a little more self discipline rather than self indulgence from his favorite son.

The child who grows up hating others, and the child who gets everything he or she wants, is well on the way to becoming a dictator.  However, there is a third step.  Allow a child to join a group of like minded people.  Hitler never would have accomplished what he did without the Nazi party.  And Sadaam Hussein never would have come into power without the Baathist party.

There is a reason why the Torah teaches "Do not go after the majority to do evil."  And there is a reason the Midrash teaches that Abraham was called haIvri (the Hebrew - from a root meaning "across") because he was willing to stand across from everyone else.  He was will not to follow the masses when the masses were doing the wrong thing.

    In every generation dictators will rise up.  There seem always to be people who grow up hating other people.  There seem always to be people who have no self discipline but are prepared to take whatever they want.  And there seem always to be people who follow the crowd, even when the crowd is going the wrong way.  Our job as parents is to raise children who will be an influence for good in the world.  It may take a thousand generations, but maybe we can bring about a time with no more dictators.

 

 

 

PARSHAT VAYESHEV

(5763)

 

BEAUTY VERSUS HOLINESS

 

"He (Potiphar) left all that he had in Joseph=s hands and, with him there, he paid attention to nothing save the food that he ate.  Now Joseph was well-built and handsome." (Genesis 39:6)

 

It is official, at least according to People magazine.  The actor Ben Affleck is the sexiest man alive.  Not only is he a major movie star, but he is engaged to actress - singer Jennifer Lopez.  Many consider her to be the sexiest woman alive.  Imagine what beautiful children they will have.  (In a sense, I feel sorry for those future children.  Who can live up to such high expectations of beauty?)

We live in a beauty obsessed culture.  Everyone wants to be young and beautiful.  We pursue makeovers, intense diets, botox treatments, plastic surgery, whatever it takes to look like the people on the magazine covers.  Later this year People magazine will come up with their issue of the fifty most beautiful people.  (I never made the list, but one year I believe a rabbi did make it.)  That issue is a perennial best seller, another sign of our obsession with beauty.

There have been scientific studies whether beautiful people are more successful in their professional lives.  The answer seems to be yes.  Even in our Torah portion, Josephs good looks and handsome physique help him become the man in charge of Potiphar's home.  Of course, these same good looks will get him into trouble when Potiphar's wife became attracted to him, the first case of sexual harassment in the Torah.  Joseph does seem somewhat obsessed with his looks; as a young man he paraded around in his fancy coat of many colors.

I often speak to the young people in our synagogue about the obsession with beauty.  They all admire the celebrities, rock stars, actors and actresses, professional athletes, supermodels, the people who define beauty.  I tell them to look not at looks but at values, at kindness, at how they treat other people.  "Grace is deceptive and beauty is illusory; it is for her fear of the Lord that a woman is to be praised."  (Proverbs 31:30) Or as I tell people looking for a life partner, "Don't look at physical beauty, for it can always fade.  Look for values, which can never fade."

Hanukkah begins this Shabbat.  Hanukkah is not just about a military victory or oil that burned for eight days.  It is about a war between two world views, that of the people Israel and that of ancient Greece.  To the Hellenists, beauty was everything.  The human body in its perfection was celebrated.  The Olympics were done in the nude.  Circumcision which marred the human body was condemned.  And babies born with physical impairments were often left to die. 

To Israel, beauty was a secondary value.  Certainly there is nothing wrong with caring for one's body.  The ancient teacher Hillel left his teaching to go to the bathhouse.  When questioned why, he replied, "See those statues of the emperor and how they are cleaned and cared for.  How much more so should my body, created in the image of God, be cared for."  Still, even Hillel would admit that we care for the physical body as a means to ethical perfection.  The ultimate value is goodness.

I have often summarized the difference between the Jewish and Hellenistic view of the world.  To the Greeks, beauty is holy; to the Jews, holiness is beautiful.  Even Joseph in the end learned that holiness and ethics are far more important that physical beauty.

I once saw an article in a popular magazine like People.  It looked at the celebrities and movie stars, to find who were the nicest people.  Who were the easiest to work with, the most even-tempered, the kindest to employees and subordinates, the most charitable, the friendliest to strangers.  If anyone knows an editor at People magazine, have them put out an issue The Fifty Nicest People.  In our beauty obsessed culture, it may not become a bestseller.  But I would be the first to buy a copy.

PARSHAT VAYESHEV

(5762)

 

THOSE WHO WOULD KILL

 

"They saw him [Joseph] from afar, and before he came close they conspired to kill him."                                (Genesis 37:18)

 

One Saturday night last July I wandered down Ben Yehuda Street in downtown Jerusalem, mingling with the hundreds of young people enjoying the open air mall.  It was my last evening in Israel, a wonderful spiritual high.  Had I visited that same outdoor mall last Saturday night, I might have been the victim of a terrorist bombing.

Two weeks later, back in the United States, I visited the top of the World Trade Center with my twelve year old son.  Looking back on this past week and these past months, I realize how easy it is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and lose everything.  I feel grateful to be here, and both saddened and infuriated by these events.

Americans are learning what Israelis already know.  What is it like to live life when someone is trying to kill us?  They are not trying to kill us for anything we did?  And there is nothing we can do differently that would stop them from trying to kill us?  They simply want to kill us because we exist.  Israel can stop the terror by folding up and dismantling the Jewish state.  America can stop the terror by ceasing our very way of life.

The Talmud is clear that when someone tries to kill you, you are permitted to rise up and kill them first.  Self-defense is permitted.  Both America and Israel had to act to protect their citizens.  This action sometimes causes casualties of innocent individuals, including children.  War is never a cause for celebration.  But it is sometimes a necessary evil. I am saddened by civilian casualties in Afghanistan, as I am saddened by innocent Palestinians killed by Israel.  But unfortunately, in both cases the evil perpetrated upon us necessitated military action.

Besides striking back, what else can we do when someone wants to kill us through no fault of our own?  In this week's portion, Joseph knew what it felt to be the victim.  His brothers sought to kill him, and only through the intervention of one brother Reuben was he thrown into a pit and not murdered.  The Torah says that "The pit was empty, there was no water in it."  (Genesis 37:24) According to Rashi, there was no water but there were snakes and scorpions in the pit.  The pit was a place of death.  Eventually Joseph was pulled out and sold into slavery, but by the end of the portion he was in prison.

Throughout his ordeal, Joseph never despaired.  He had dreams that someday his brothers would bow down to him.  He knew that however dark the pit, God was with him.  He would walk through the Valley of Death and come out the other side.

When someone wants to destroy life, the best thing we can do is reaffirm life.  We can reaffirm that life has meaning and purpose, and the forces that want to destroy life will not win in the end.  We may despair while in the pit, but in the end God is with us.  In the face of murder, we must try that much harder to value the preciousness of life.

Television recently showed a movie Uprising, the story of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt against the Nazis.  What was so moving was the ways the Jews in the ghetto reaffirmed life in the face of Nazi murder.  There were powerful scenes of Jews in the ghetto playing orchestral music and enjoying ballet, observing their religion and displaying overwhelming acts of personal kindness as well as unbelievable courage.  The more the Nazis sought to kill, the more their victims sought to live fully.

How do we react to those who would kill us?  Let us reaffirm life in every thing we do, especially in our treatment of one another.  Life is a precious gift from God.  Too many people in the world would destroy life.  Let us be among those who embrace life.


PARSHAT VAYESHEV

(5761)

 

WHO NEEDS GOD?

 

"How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God."

(Genesis 39:9)

 

People ask me, "Who needs God? "  They tell me that someone can be a wonderful person and not believe in God .  (true!)  They tell me one can be an awful person and believe in God. (sadly, also true!)  There are a group of Jews who are trying to build a movement of Judaism that denies the existence of God.  They call themselves Humanistic Jews.  (The essence seems to be lacking in such an approach to Judaism.)

Who needs God?  Joseph, the favored son of Jacob, discovered that he needed God.  Joseph began as an arrogant teenager, brazenly displaying his coat of many colors and bragging to his brothers how they would one day all bow down to him.  Like so many teens, God seemed far away from his daily concerns.  Soon his brothers would cast him into a pit, and a passing caravan would find him and sell him as a slave down in Egypt.  Now, the presence of God became important in Joseph's life.

Potiphar's wife tried to seduce Joseph.  (The first recorded case of sexual harassment in history.)  Joseph refused her advances, saying "how then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God. "  He remembered the lessons of right and wrong he had learned at his father's knee.  For Joseph, God was a source of values and morality.

Joseph found himself confined in prison.  Far from home and family, in prison in a foreign land, Joseph must have felt depressed.  Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, in their popular musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat pictured Joseph sitting in prison singing "The children of Israel are never alone."  For Joseph, God was a source of faith when all seemed hopeless.

Soon Joseph would become an interpreter of dreams.  First he would interpret the dream of the royal cupbearer and the royal baker.  Then he would interpret the dream of the king of Egypt, Pharaoh himself.    When Joseph spoke of his dream interpreting ability, he says, "Surely God can interpret."  (Genesis 40:8) For Joseph, God was the source of vision about the meaning of events.  He saw the hand of God in history.

I believe that those who would base life on a humanistic philosophy without God are mistaken.  Like Joseph, we need God as a source of morals and values.  We need God as a source of faith when all seems hopeless.  We need God to give meaning to events in history.  Human beings need God.

The centrality of God can best be seen in the way the Rabbis reinterpreted the story of Hanukkah.  Historically, Hanukkah began as a civil war between assimilated Hellenistic Jews and more traditional pious Jews.  Eventually, the traditionalists took on the entire Syrian - Greek empire.  Led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers, the Jews a guerilla war against the Syrians.  They were victorious in battle, rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem, and proclaimed eight days of celebration.  Many scholars believe the eight days were a belated celebration of the eight day festival of Sukkot.

Hanukkah was originally a secular holiday established by military leaders to celebrate a victory on the battlefield.  Unfortunately, the Hasmonean dynasty, established by Judah Maccabee became corrupt.  The Rabbis of the Talmud realized that this purely secular celebration of a military victory was not appropriate on the Jewish calendar.  God had to enter the picture.

A new story of Hanukkah developed.  At the center was a miracle of a small cruse of oil that miraculously burned for eight days.  The miracle of the oil that kept burning symbolized the miracle of the Jewish people who kept surviving.  It was not military leaders but the hand of God that created the miracle.

To drive home the point, the Rabbis chose a passage from the Prophets to be read in every synagogue on the morning of Hanukkah.  "Not by might and not by power, but by My spirit says the Lord."  (Zechariah 4:6)   The theme of Hanukkah became not human military prowess but the spirit of God.

At this holiday season, may we remember that we all need God.

PARSHAT VAYESHEV

(5760)

 

HOLY SEX

 

"How can I do this wicked thing and sin before God."

(Genesis 39:9)

 

This portion contains the earliest incident of sexual harassment in history.  Joseph worked as a servant in the home of the Egyptian noble Potiphar, and Potiphar's wife seduced Joseph.  Joseph refused her advances, saying such an act would be a betrayal against his master.  In addition, sex with a married woman would be a sin before God.

What if Potiphar and his wife had an understanding?  What if they had an open marriage?  Joseph stated that it does not matter; such an act would be wrong.  In our contemporary society, almost any sexual act is acceptable as long as it is between consenting adults and nobody is hurt.  The Torah takes a far different view.

Judaism teaches that sex is good; in fact it is a gift from God.  Sex with the right person, in the right context, with the right attitude, becomes a way of serving God.  To use the language of Judaism, sex is a mitzvah.  The mitzvah is not simply procreation, but the mutual pleasure of the sexual act itself.  To live a life of sexual abstinence is considered a tragedy.

Nevertheless, there is another message from Jewish tradition which is more sobering.  Sex, in the wrong context, with the wrong person, with the wrong attitude, can become a destructive force.  Sex can destroy families, damage marriages, cause disease, lead to premature pregnancies, or become addictive.

The sexual act itself is morally neutral, a mere biological act.  In one context it is a destructive force; in another context it becomes a way of serving God.  This point was best made in a wonderful rabbinic story.

  There was a young rabbinic student who was meticulous about the commandment to wear tzitzit, the fringes worn by pious Jewish men on the four corners of their garment.  The student heard about a prostitute who was the most beautiful and most expensive in the world.  He sent her the price in gold coins, set up a date, and went to see her.  When he arrived, she was sitting naked on the top of seven mattresses, each covered with beautiful bed­clothes, six made of silver and one made of gold.  He started to undress and climb up to her, when the four tzitzit flew up and hit him in the face.  He immediately stopped and sat sulking on the floor.

The young woman climbed down and sat next to him.  "Perhaps you see some blemish in me?"  "No," said the young man.  "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.  But I saw the four fringes acting as witnesses against me."

"Who is your teacher?" asked the woman.  The student wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to her.  Immediately she gave up her profession, sold everything keeping only the bedclothes, went to his teacher and converted to Judaism.  She married the student, and the Talmud ends with the phrase "the same bedclothes that were to be used in an illegitimate way were now going to be used legitimately."

The story of the bedclothes teaches that the sexual act may be the same in a biological sense, but changing the context changes the entire meaning.  What is improper or even harmful in one context is morally neutral in another, and in still another context becomes a way of serving God.