Genesis - בראשית

Genesis

בראשית

B’reishit Genesis 1:1 – 6:8

NOT “HOW” BUT “WHY”

October 5, 2002

This week we begin our annual reading of the Torah with the first few chapters of B'reishit, the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The Torah opens by picturing God hovering over the primordial waters and calling creation into being. In six days, our created world evolves through God’s commanding voice from the first “let there be light” on day one to the last “let us make humanity in our image” on day six. Then, on the seventh day, after all was created, God ceased from his strenuous activities and rested.

For many readers of the Bible, this highly patterned six-day story of creation read in harmony with the following highly evocative story of Adam and Eve in Eden forms the Bible’s “Creation Story,” and provides for them an explanation of how the world came into being. Yet, this reading of these accounts does not do justice to our Israelite ancestors’ exploration of the concept of God as Creator. Their interest in God’s role is creation was not focused on the abstract question of how God formed the world but why. They wanted to understand the deeply human question of what it means to be part of creation and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis do not present the full range of their spiritual investigations.

As we look into the Bible we see that our forebears cherished other descriptions of God’s primordial activities as well. We soon understand that the Bible is not concerned with telling us how the world came into being in a manner that would satisfy our scientific inquisitiveness. By the multiplicity of images, our Sacred Scriptures helps us explore what it means to live in creation and be in a relationship with creation's divine author. By picturing God, for example, as a commander, a planter, an architect, a contractor, a father, and a mother, the Bible addresses our sense of spiritual curiosity.

Following the insights of our biblical ancestors, our teachers and sages helped us in this task by pointing out the connections between the various images of creation and the way our faith structures our lives. Jewish life, as it evolved, underscores our intimate bonds with the world in which we live and helps us explore the significance of those bonds in our lives. What are some of these biblical images and how might they guide us in our religious journeys?

Even in biblical times, our celebration of Shabbat, our Day of Rest, was tied to the first story of creation which ends with God’s Day of Rest (Exodus 8-11). Binding Shabbat with creation teaches us that we need to honor our efforts and struggles as we create a world for ourselves and our loved ones. Our meager resources are thereby associated with God’s unlimited creative powers. It provides us with a spiritual framework live out our Jewish sense of being in partnership with God in the unfolding of creation.

The language used to describe God’s setting the foundations of the earth, setting the world’s pillars, and stretching forth heaven and earth, an image of creation favored by the psalmists and prophets (Isaiah 48:13; 51:13, Amos 9:6; Psalm 104:1-9; Job 38:4-7), parallels the words used to describe the construction of the Mishkan, the portable desert shrine, and the erection of the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple in Jerusalem. Our most sacred place where God’s presence was most strongly felt was a microcosm. It was a spiritual mirror through which our ancestors could experience all creation in the presence of creation’s God. Although this physical model of creation is no longer available to us, our sages, following the insights of Proverbs 8 where Wisdom is God’s companion in creation, teach us that our Torah, the manifestation of Wisdom, provided the world’s spiritual blueprints.

Descriptions of God establishing the earth after subduing the chaotic energy of the primordial waters (Psalm 74:12-17; Psalm 89:10-11; Psalm 93:3-4) seem to draw on the image and vocabulary of Ancient Near Eastern legends. The Bible, however, separates them from their mythic past by connecting them to Israel’s story of liberation and dream of redemption. God’s mastery over the ancient waters comes alive in Israelite history in our descriptions of the crossing of the Red Sea on our way to freedom (Isaiah 51:9-19) and of the messianic age to come (Isaiah 27:1). Our tradition helps us find justice and order in a world we still find unjust and chaotic. Not only does our external world often seem chaotic, we often find our interior world in shambles. Images of God’s ordering creation, help us understand our struggles to bring order in our world, our lives, and in our hearts.

The images of God as creation’s father and mother (Job 38:4-11, 28-29), help us cherish our roles as parents of the generations that will follow us. These images help us understand the rabbinic understanding that each and every one of us is capable of bringing an entire world to life. Descriptions of God’s engendering and birthing our world, helps us find spiritual value in our own sexuality as a way of creating the most intimate human institution, the family.

Finally, the story of Adam and Eve, the primordial couple charged with caring for God’s garden, helps us personalize a vast creation (Gen 2:5-3:24). We can see our journey from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to responsibility, and from caretakers to creators reflected in their moving stories.

All these visions of God as Creator help us grapple with the great spiritual issues that address our deepest human needs – our search for meaning in our lives and for our place in creation. Each year we return to the opening chapters of the Torah, the stories of creation, not to learn how the world came into being but to begin once again to explore these deep philosophic concerns. On Simchat Torah, we concluded the last book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, with the traditional prayer that we might be strengthened through our study of the Scripture. May our study of Torah this Shabbat, the Shabbat of Beginnings, Shabbat B’reishit, and every Shabbat during the year fortify us as we renew our spiritual pilgrimage through the Torah and through life.

Noach Genesis 6.9 – 11.32

THE GATEWAY TO GOD

October 28, 2006

Pluralism is not a bad word in the Jewish tradition. For Jews, unity does not mean uniformity. Homogeneity, while it may be a “good” when it comes to milk, is not a “good,” not a “value,” for humanity. We Jews relish diversity. We see the wide variety of plants and animals, the diversity in the natural world, as a tribute to God’s greatness.

An ancient midrash, that is, an interpretive story, contrasts God with a human king. The rabbis of old who wrote the midrash addressed themselves to the question of why did God only create one primordial couple, Eve and Adam, to be the progenitors of all humanity. When a human king wishes to show the wealth and power of his realm, they argued, he mints coins. Each coin comes from the die identical to all the others. However, when the Holy One, the King of Kings, wished to show his wealth and power he produced a world full of unique individuals, although each one of us was minted, as it were, from the same die—our primordial grandparents, Eve and Adam (B. Sanhedrin 37a).

The God of the Jews is a God that creates and sustains a world full of diversity. Our task, therefore, is not to destroy this diversity but to hallow it. It is a sign of the power and the glory of God. The goal of humanity is not to create one faith, one people, or one nation. The goal of humanity is to create a world in which the diversity of the world is cherished.

Our sacred tradition teaches us this lesson from the negative example — the story of the Tower of Babel — the story of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of humanity throughout the world. The Biblical Story and its rabbinic interpretation teach us to cherish the diversity of human experiences, the pluralism of peoples and cultures, because the true Gate to God is found through diversity. The error of the builders of the Tower of Babel was the belief that through the unity that results from uniformity and homogeneity, people could have access to heaven, they could come closer to God.

The rabbis in their interpretation of this story alert us to the practical dangers of this mindset. They describe the city of Babel as the first and the archetypical totalitarian and authoritarian state. Its ruler, Nimrod, is the model for the despot, the strongman, the dictator, and the sovereign—who binds his society, who rules his domain as if it were the expression of his singular rule. Although the rabbis had not experienced the tyranny of modern colonial empires, communist regimes, and fascist dictatorships, their experience of life under Roman domination taught them well the dangers of totalitarian rule.

The rabbis also describe Babel as the model for corporate enterprise in which the product was more important than the worker, in which the concept of “teamwork” was employed to, force the worker into a mold. In the building of the tower, the rabbis teach us that a brick was considered more valuable than a person, that women could not even stop working even to give birth. Although the rabbis did not experience the excesses of modern industrial concerns – the thoughtlessness of corporate oligopolies, the addiction to the bottom-line mentality of corporate managers – their experience of pre-modern industry, ancient mining techniques, and agricultural enterprises taught them well the dangers of the corporate mind.

The rabbis also describe Babel as the model for the attempt to assert an ideological or religious uniformity. At Babel, they argued there was but one faith, one belief, one way. The medieval Italian Jewish bible scholar Sforno claimed, “The real crime of the builders was that they tried to impose one religion on humanity. God prevented this and by dispersing the people, kept alive a variety of beliefs. But he knew that out of this diversity would eventually come the recognition of the One Supreme Ruler.”

Our Rabbis teach us that uniformity, homogeneity, and sameness do not lead us to the gateway of God. The goal of human life is not to be the same. We do not hold as our motto: “Come let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, let us make a name for ourselves, else we be scattered all over the world.” (Genesis 11:4)

For Jews, the goal of human life is that each one of us can reach fulfillment according to our unique needs. We hope for the time in which each and every one of us can live in peace and security under his or her fig tree, beneath his or her vine. (Micah 4:4) We believe like the prophet of old that the Divine will for each and every one of us is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his or her God (Micah 6:8).

While Judaism held the promise of fulfillment through pluralism for the world, this same vision has only been recently applied to Jewish people. But the Jewish insight, that through pluralism we gather strength or, to use their ancient image, that the cable – the twisted coil – is stronger than the single thread, applies to Jews and Judaism as well. (Kohelet 4:12) Our Jewish world is a pluralistic world. We are separated from our fellow Jews by language, geography, religious temperament, and organizational loyalties. Yet strength cannot be found by forcing us to be cast in the same mold—to have one language and uniform words.

Only by accepting our differences and learning to work together in spite of them and because of them will we find strength. The name Babel is a pun—a multilingual pun. It shows the cultural sophistication of our ancient ancestors who wrote and read the Bible. In Akkadian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia, the name of the city, known as Hebrew as Bavel (Babel) or in English as Babylon, was bab-illa – Gate of God. Our biblical author plays with this, knowing that Babel in Babylon means God’s Gate. He tells us a story that by uniformity and homogeneity, the inhabitants of Babylon thought that they had built a city in which they could have access to God’s own Gate.

But they were wrong. What they thought was God’s Gate, bab-illa, was in reality only Babel—only confusion. We do not approach God by reducing God to the level of a human being—by making each of us like the other, like the coins in our pockets. Rather, we come to God’s Gate when we open up to the experience of God’s full glory in the incomprehensible diversity of God’s creation and celebrate the pluralism inherent in the fullness of the varicolored nature of human life.

NOAH WAS A RIGHTEOUS MAN, BLAMELESS IN HIS GENERATION

נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו

The Book of Genesis tells us that Noah was a righteous man, but the sages ask, “How Righteous was he,” and they base their answer on the second part of the phrase “blameless in his generation”. Rashi, as always, provides us with a good summary of the range of answers. In his commentary, we read:

בדורותיו IN HIS GENERATIONS — Some of our Rabbis explain “in his generations” to Noah’s credit: he was righteous even in his generation; thus, had he lived in a generation of righteous people he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of a good example. Others, however, explain “in his generations” to Noah’s discredit: in comparison with his own generation, he was seen as righteous but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance (cf. Sanhedrin 108a).

Here Rashi does not give us an answer but provides us with a valuable tool for understanding ourselves and judging others. That is to say, we all live within a certain cultural context and within a certain historical moment. Our righteousness or our sinfulness, for that matter, cannot be appropriately evaluated outside of that context. Noah was a person of his time and we are people of our time. Our lives are restricted by the beliefs and attitudes of our times, the scientific knowledge and technological achievements of our cultural setting, the sociological structures, and philosophic assumptions within which we live and think.

For the most part, we cannot go beyond these high walls. The best of us, do the best we can within the confines of our time. Those who are truly blessed will be able to see beyond and capture glimpses of a better world but despite their vision find themselves still stuck in their world.

Hopefully, over time human knowledge increases, human understanding grows, and human freedom expands so that the walls that restrained us in the past no longer stand. We can look back and see how we have changed. What once looked good and proper now seems wrong and misguided. But we need to remember that we have only achieved our clarity vision, through the dim visions of the best people of the past – those who were righteous in their generation, those who pushed the boundaries and slowly expanded the world of human experience.

Noah was righteous in his generation and that is a great accomplishment. The question “Would he have been able to apply his talents in the same way in another time and under different circumstances” cannot be answered. But talent is talent and desire for wisdom endures.

As we look at the heroes of the past, today we often focus on their shortcomings more than their achievements. We often take pride in the fact that we can see clearly what they only viewed dimly. We focus on the ways in which they were embedded in the unjust systems of their time, rather than consider how they began to explore the cracks in those systems.

Of course, we wish they could have been better. Thankfully we can see their limitations and hopefully they are not ours. But as we judge them with the wisdom of hindsight, we need to remember that some soon, we will be another generation’s rearview mirror. As we question Noah’s righteousness in his generation from the perspective of ours, we need to ask how our righteousness will be judged from the viewpoint of the generations that follow. While that question cannot be answered, it should evoke a sense of humility and a good bit of humility goes a long way in our striving to be righteous.

2021 Lewis John Eron

THE BEIT MIDRASH OF SHEM AND EBER

What happens to Isaac after God’s angel directed his father, Abraham, to sacrifice the ram caught up in the thicket, instead of Isaac? This story, known as “Akeidat Yitzchak -- the Binding of Isaac”, which we read a few weeks ago on Rosh HaShanah, ends with Abraham returning to his encampment near Beersheba without his son (Genesis 22:19). By the time Isaac returns to the Genesis narrative, he is already a grown man preparing for marriage. Where was he in the meantime?

Questions like this rising out of the Biblical text were seen by our sages of old as openings for their creative, interpretive imaginations. It gave them the opportunity to draw from their own life experiences and from our Sacred Scriptures for answers that expressed their own deep spiritual insights and ethical values. From this creative process came the Midrash, the narrative theology of the rabbis of the Talmudic Period, which still plays a central role in defining Jewish thought today.

But where did Isaac go? Many answers were offered, but one suggests that Abraham sent his son to the Academy of Shem and Eber so that he could study Torah with the great sages of the past. This famous Beit Midrash, House of Study, discovered through the spiritual imagination of the rabbis of old, appears many times in the midrashic accounts of our patriarchs and matriarchs. According to our sages, it served as the center of spiritual enlightenment and religious instruction in the early years of human history as seen through the biblical legends. For example, when Rebecca wanted to conceive, she went there to pray for a child, and when Isaac wanted to give his son, Jacob, a good Jewish education, Isaac sent his son to his alma mater.

The biblical foundation for this legend comes from this week’s Torah portion, Noach. In it, we learn that Shem, Noah’s eldest son, and Eber, Shem’s great-grandson, were Abraham’s direct ancestors and exemplars of the pious and moral life. Thus, to the rabbis of old, building on the biblical material, Shem and Eber were considered great sages and prophets who were instrumental in keeping the belief in the One God, who demands ethical behavior in the period of degeneration after Noah’s flood.

The rabbinic invention of the ancient academy founded by these two great sages does more than fill in some of the gaps in the early chapters of Genesis. It enabled the rabbis of old to argue for the antiquity of their characteristic institution, the rabbinic academy, the Beit Midrash, the “House of Learning,” and for the universal significance of the Torah they taught and studied there. But beyond that, it expressed our people’s hope that sometime in the future all people will return to the fundamental faith of humanity.

The rabbis’ legendary academy underscored the biblical contention that there was a direct line of belief in the One God which stretched from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham and that the essential principle of Jewish faith — ethical monotheism — was the common inheritance of humanity. It also served to mark their belief in the central importance of spiritual and ethical training. Just as their academies were the centers for the study of the Torah, the special covenant between God and the Jewish people, the Academy of Shem and Eber was the center for the study of the general covenant between God and all humanity, the Rainbow Covenant, which was established after the waters of Noah’s flood subsided.

By creating for us the image of Shem and Eber’s ancient academy, our sages reminded us that spiritual insight and ethical behavior are not the sole possession of the Jewish people but part of the common inheritance of humanity. But this is not all. By associating the basic institution of Jewish life in their time, the Beit Midrash, with Shem and Eber’s academy, and by claiming that our biblical ancestors received their spiritual education in that institution, they continue to remind us of the universal message and challenge built into Jewish faith and tradition — that the goal of our Torah is to teach us how to build a world in which all people can discover their own place of peace through the covenant of the Rainbow.

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS FOR ALL NOAH'S CHILDREN

The Jewish people have long believed that one need not be Jewish to receive God’s blessings in this world or in the next. Although we are thankful for our tradition and see it as our path to godliness, we recognize that there are godly and righteous individuals from all traditions and cultures. We call these people “righteous gentiles,” and we believe that they, too, have a “share in the world to come.”

What does it mean to be a “righteous gentile?” Today, we often use this term to designate those people whose faith and conscience impelled them to help Jews and other persecuted people during the Nazi Holocaust. But they, as a group, form only a specific example of a much broader grouping — non-Jews who have found spiritual and ethical excellence through the teachings and practices of their own culture and religion and through the goodness of their own hearts. In Jewish terms, these are people who respond to the covenant established with Noah.

Of all the covenants in the Bible, we, as Jews, are most familiar with the covenant made between God and the entire Jewish people when we were assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai to accept God’s Torah. We understand this covenant as an extension of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants. We are also aware of the covenant of kingship made between God and David and the covenant of priesthood made between God and the descendants of Aaron, the first High Priest.

But the Torah speaks of another covenant that precedes all these, a covenant between God and all humanity. The sign of this covenant is the rainbow (Genesis 9:13, 16-17) and it was established between God and Noah when Noah and his family and all the animals left the ark. After Noah offered thanksgiving to God for being saved from the destruction of the flood, God entered into a covenant with Noah and his descendants.

The biblical account that we read in this week’s Torah portion, Noach, presents only a broad outline of this covenant. In it, God promises that God will maintain the cycles of nature (8:21-22) and that God will never again destroy the earth by a flood (9:15). Human beings are once again commanded to be fruitful and multiply (8:17; 9:1,7). We are warned against bloodshed (9:5-6) and we are given permission to eat meat (9:4).

From a very early period, however, our ancestors have used the concept of the covenant between God and b’nei Noach, the children of Noah, which includes all humanity, to describe the basic expectations of humane and civilized behavior. According to the epic history of humanity in the Book of Genesis, the flood destroyed the lawless and violent generations that followed Adam and Eve. After the flood, God re-established the human race through Noah and his family. Jewish tradition holds that, after leaving the ark, Noah and his family accepted seven fundamental commandments, mitzvot, as part of their covenant with God and each other before they set out to restore life and civilization. In Hebrew, we refer to these seven commandments as the “Sheva Mitzvot L’vnei Noach” (The Seven Commandments binding on the descendants of Noah) and in English, we call them “the Noachide Laws”.

The Torah itself does not enumerate these mitzvot per se. Therefore, we look to the Talmud for the discussion of the nature and import of the Noachide Laws, a discussion that provides valuable insight into the ways our rabbis and sages expanded the depth and meaning of our Torah through interpretation. Although there are many suggestions concerning the scope and nature of the Noachide Laws, the most generally accepted enumeration consists of (1) the establishment of institutions of justice, (2) the acceptance of one divine principle, (3) the rejection of materialism, (4) the avoidance of sexual immorality, and the prohibitions of (5) robbery, (6) murder and (7) cruelty to animals.

Some Jewish thinkers over the centuries have tried to interpret the Noachide Laws within the framework of Jewish legal traditions and concepts of revelation. Such an approach is too narrow because it makes the study of Judaism a prerequisite to understanding universal principles. Therefore, many other Jewish teachers and philosophers have seen these mitzvot as articulations of natural law, those ethical values, and principles of behavior that all clear-sighted men and women can discover in the course of human life. In this way, we can understand the Noachide Laws as a Jewish manner of describing values and truths that belong to all people, to all Noah’s children.

In this light, the Noachide Laws speak to us, as Jews, in a number of ways. They remind us of our connection with the rest of Noah’s children because we, too, are heirs to the rainbow covenant with Noah. They also call upon us to recognize and appreciate the value of religious and cultural traditions other than our own because they can be paths to righteousness for their faithful adherents as ours can be for us. Finally, the Noachide Laws challenge us to join with good people everywhere, the righteous of all nations, in building a world in which all will care for each other and all God’s creatures.

The sacred legends of the Book of Genesis remind us that in the days of Noah, God gave humanity a second chance to build a better world. This Shabbat, as we re-read the story of the flood, let us remember that we still have not completed this assignment and all people have much work to do.

HUMAN SINFULLNESS

The opening chapters of the Book of Genesis do not provide us with an optimistic view of human nature. They picture a world full of violence and abuse. Even the heroes are imperfect. It is hard to find the goodness that the Creation story says is inherent in Creation (Genesis 1:23). Although these are ancient stories, their pessimism about people feels powerfully accurate today. People continue to do terrible things to each other and to our world. War, oppression, abuse, and exploitation seem to characterize the human experience. Evil appears real and deep-seated.

The first two parashot, weekly Torah portions, of the Jewish year – Bereishit and Noach – do not merely narrate stories of evil, but through narration ask us to examine the nature of sin and human existence. For our biblical ancestors sin is real and plays an important and sometimes overwhelming role in the way we conduct our lives. Sometimes we sin, like Cain, impulsively (Genesis 4:8). Sometimes we sin, like Lamech, with predetermination (Genesis 4:23-24). Sometimes sin pervades our entire social world and wickedness, abuse, and exploitation touches and involves all of us (Genesis 6:5). But what is our relationship to sin? Is sin inherent in being human or is it a challenge that continually confronts us?

As I read these stories through the lens of our tradition I get the sense from these narratives that sin is real and it is a perpetual challenge. Yet sin is not inherent in human beings and we have the capacity to resist it. “Sin couches at the door. Its urge is toward you. Yet, you can be its master.” (Genesis 4:7) The personification of “sin” in this, God’s advice to Cain, reflects ancient psychology which describes human beings as being subject to external forces.

But there is a sense of human moral entropy. Left to ourselves and without constant vigilance, we will succumb to "sin". At times our surrender can be so overwhelming that even to God people appear as completely wicked. The story of Noah's flood begins with God’s observation that humanity’s wickedness was great and how every human plan “was nothing but evil all the time.” (Genesis 6:5). This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Noach, opens with God’s plan to deal with human wickedness by overturning all creation but for a saving remnant – Noah, his family, and representatives of all animal species.

But sin, evil, and wickedness do not disappear. It remains a challenge. A year after the flood began and when its water abated, Noah and his family emerged from the ark to find the earth restored but humanity has not returned to Eden. We remained in the real world with all its obstacles. God’s renewed covenant starts with God's acknowledgment of our propensity to sin. “Never again will I doom the earth because of humanity, since the devisings of a person’s mind are evil from a person’s youth.” (Genesis 8:21)

The opening parashot of Genesis present us in a narrative form a theological anthropology. The opportunity and incentive to commit sins is present in the current order of creation but neither creation itself nor people are inherently sinful. To sin is a choice, albeit often an attractive choice, that is available to us but can be resisted. Our awareness of sin and the ability to choose emerges in adolescence. We can be forgiven of sins, but the opportunity to commit new sins does not disappear. The rest of the Torah strives to provide the tools we need to go beyond the temptation to sin. Divine wisdom and guidance fortify our resistance to sin and strengthen our ability to do good. Our ability to benefit from God’s wisdom, however, rests on our acceptance of the fundamental biblical assertion that all people are created in the Divine image. (Genesis 9:6)

Lekh L'kha Genesis 15:1 – 17:27

ABRAHAM"S FAITH THROUGH JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN EYES

November 12, 2005

Jews and Christians share a common scripture. It is the collection of sacred books Jews call Tanak (an acrostic made up of Torah, Nevi’im – the Historical and Prophetic Books, and Ketuvim – the Writings), and Christians call the Old Testament. This common scripture both joins us and separates us. Each community interprets our shared scripture through different lenses, which produces strikingly different interpretations. Certain biblical passages and verses highlight what brings us together and separate us. Perhaps the most significant of these verses occur in the center of this week’s Torah portion, Lech L’kha.

The verse is Genesis 15:6. It appears in the middle of the portion, long after Abraham received the call to journey to the Land of Israel and the promise that God would make him a great nation (Genesis 12:1-4). It comes at the end of a discussion between God and Abraham that precedes the first of the two covenants God makes with Abraham, the Covenant of the Parts (Genesis 15:7-21). In this conversation, God reassures Abraham, who is at this point childless, that he will father a child and will have countless descendants. Genesis 15:6 concludes the interchange by stating, “And he (Abraham) believed in the LORD: and He counted it to him for righteousness (King James Translation).”

Genesis 15:6 gains its significance for Jewish – Christian relations because Paul uses it in his Letter to the Romans to explore the meaning of the new covenant he believed God established through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul reads the verse as an introduction to the Covenant of the Parts and uses it to prove that all God’s covenants, especially the “New Covenant” he was preaching, were free gifts from our loving God. To Paul, no one could not earn God’s love, much less deserve it. All that one could do, is as Abraham did, is to believe in God and accept God’s gift. Only then could one enter into a proper relationship with God and be considered “righteous.”

So far Paul is in line with commonplace Jewish beliefs. The understanding that one cannot earn God’s love and forgiveness is a basic Jewish concept. All of God’s covenants were given out of love. In fact, we have just completed a series of festivals, the High Holidays and Sukkot, which celebrate God’s grace and forgiveness. The concluding verse of the High Holiday prayer Avinu Malkeinu captures this idea. In it we pray for God to treat us with grace and righteousness and to deliver us, not because we deserve it or have earned it, but because of God’s great love.

What makes Paul’s use of this simple idea revolutionary is that he uses it to argue that stipulations of the earlier covenants with Israel are no longer binding on those who found God through Christ. It appears that those gentile Christians in Roman to whom he wrote believed, as did many other early followers of Jesus, that emulating Jewish religious practice was the way one entered a relationship with God. Paul believed otherwise. In Romans, he argues that God made a covenant with Abraham before Abraham fulfilled God’s commandments. Abraham believed in God and that was sufficient. Thus faith was the sole entrance requirement for the “New Covenant”.

What makes Paul’s understanding so controversial is that his near contemporaries and later Christians used it to denigrate the Jewish commitment to follow the Torah, God’s Law, as a futile attempt to earn God’s love. Over the centuries, the Christian commitment to “salvation by grace through faith” was contrasted with the so-called “Jewish” belief in “works righteousness” in intra-Christian polemics and to justify the oppression of Jews.

But we know that “works righteousness”, trying to earn God’s love, is not Jewish in any way a Jew would understand Judaism. Jews have always believed that we follow Torah, the Living Word of our Living God, with a sense of thanksgiving and out of respect to the One who entered a special relationship with us. By imagining God as our Sovereign and Parent, we try to do God’s will out of respect and out of love.

Paul’s reading of Genesis 15:6 has always seemed strange to Jews. He interpreted the crucial words – the verb “aman” (to believe, to trust, to have faith) and the noun “tzedakah” (righteousness, merit, justification) – to fit the argument he was having with his now unknown correspondents about how to become a Christian. Jews, however, have read the verse differently.

The new Jewish Publication Society Torah emphasizes the traditional Jewish understanding. “And because he put his trust in the LORD, He reckoned it to his merit.” Here we see that for Jewish readers, Genesis 15:6 does not mark the beginning of a new relationship with God. It is just another step in their growing relationship. God and Abraham have already gotten to know each other well. Many times before this encounter, God has already promised Abraham the land of Israel (Genesis 12:7; 13:14-15), assured his family would grow to be a great nation (Genesis 12:2; 13:16), and informed him that through him other nations would find blessing (Genesis 12:2-3). Now, Abraham just received God’s assurance that he would have a son. One could paraphrase Genesis 15:6 by saying. “Abraham believed in God’s promise and God held Abraham’s trust in Abraham’s favor.”

As Jews, we also know that God’s relationship with Abraham and with his descendants would continue. There would be other covenants. There would be good times and bad times. Sometimes our ancestors would sin and, in the biblical view of the world, be chastised. Sometimes our troubles would just happen. But as Jews, we always sensed God’s presence in our lives and in our history. We follow Jewish traditions, not as a way to enter into a relationship with God but to celebrate that relationship throughout our lives.

In our contemporary dialogue with Christians, Genesis 15:6 remains a pivotal verse. Studying this verse and the rest of our shared scriptures together in a new spirit of cooperation rather than competition, we can see how our common heritage binds us and separates us. We can come to understand how and why Jews and Christians may read the same texts in radically different ways for different theological and spiritual purposes. Neither reading is right or wrong but they exist in different contexts. Only when we understand, can we appreciate the ways both communities respond to God’s eternal call and respect each other for our unique patterns of belief and practice.

THE HOLY CITY OF HEBRON

October 23, 1999

For the Jewish people, Hebron is one of the four holy cities in the land of Israel. It was the city of Abraham and home to the Cave of Machpelah, the tomb of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. It was a center of Jewish scholarship for centuries and the site of anti-Jewish riots during the late 1920s. However, unlike the other three holy cities, Jerusalem, Safat, and Tiberias, which are part of the State of Israel and easily visited by Jews, Hebron is part of the West Bank and is currently, for the most part, under Palestinian administration.

Hebron is also a sacred spot for Moslems. Abraham, traditionally the ancestor of the Arabs through his son Ishmael, is a hero of faith in the Koran, as he is in the Bible. The shrine that Herod, the king of Judea, built over the patriarch’s tomb in the first century C.E. has been used as a mosque for centuries.

It was only after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 that Jews, long excluded from that sacred site, have been able to pray within the ancient compound. Today, there is an uneasy peace in the city between a small group of Jewish settlers and the city’s Arab population. At the tomb, itself, conflict rests just under the surface as both Jews and Muslims worship at the grave of their common ancestor.

The sacred nature of Hebron and its shrines to both Jews and Muslims complicates the Israeli/Palestinian political negotiations. However, Hebron’s duality of religious significance also suggests a potential means to avert a diplomatic impasse.

We idealistically see holy places as retreats from the pressures of the world, but they are often places where those pressures are most keenly felt. Holy places are physical reminders that our religious identities and spiritual understandings are fundamental elements in our sense of who we are. They can be places where we find inner strength, but they also can be rallying focal points whenever we feel that our core identity is under attack. Conflicting claims to sacred geography have been the hardest disputes to resolve. Conflict over holy places has led to riots in India, battles in the Balkans, and struggles throughout the world.

As Jews, we understand the challenges presented by holy places. We consider the ancient land of Canaan, the land given by God to Abraham and his descendants, according to this week’s Torah portion, Lekh L’kha, as our holy land. Our own historical experience teaches us that it is impossible to separate the spiritual aspects of the Land of Israel from the ethnic, political, and economic realities of life. Now that we have regained national autonomy in the Land of Israel, finding the appropriate balance between the sacred and the secular is one of the great spiritual challenges facing us as a people.

We understand the difficulty in creating peace in holy places claimed by rival religious and ethnic groups. Final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will be complicated substantially by the religious needs of their respective Jewish, Muslim, and Christian populations.

We also know that we diminish our spiritual insights when we try to reduce them to the language of politics, diplomacy, and economics. The value we place on sacred sites is not subject to negotiation. We can no more barter away our holy places than we can barter away our souls. When asked to make such a deal, the human heart rebels.

Fortunately, we are not limited to the language of negotiators. When we consider the spiritual reality of holy places, the language of faith can provide us with another vocabulary that can connect us with other ethnic and religious groups through our common humanity. The dialogue of faith, unlike that of diplomacy and commerce, is not a negotiation but an opportunity for sharing. Its objective is to foster spiritual understanding and growth. It is only after we learn to express our sense of the sacredness of a place and to comprehend our partner’s understanding of its holiness, that we can return to our conference tables and deal with the mundane aspects of life in the work-a-day world.

This is not an easy task. We are all bound to the demands of the secular world. But we can emulate our ancestor Abraham. He was far more than a tribal chief wandering through the ancient Near East in search of better tangible opportunities. He was foremost a man of faith who spoke the language of faith.

As we see in the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion, God’s promise that all the families of the earth shall be blessed by Abraham was central to God’s assurance to Abraham at the beginning of his journey of faith into the Promised Land. (Genesis 12:3) If the two peoples who claim descent from Abraham, the Jews, and the Arabs, can reclaim Abraham’s language and create ways in which they can share and celebrate the holiness of places revered by both, then the entire earth will, indeed, be blessed.

Vayera Genesis 18:1 - 22:24

THE SINS OF SODOM

October 27, 1998

The recent, callous, and brutal hate murder of the Wyoming young college student, Matthew Shepard, a murder motivated solely by hatred of his homosexual orientation, has shocked our country and focused public and media attention, once again, on issues of sexual identity and prejudice. People are struggling to make sense out of modern scientific insights into human sexuality and today’s realities in the light of traditional cultural and religious beliefs. People are appalled by the viciousness of the crime and are seeking ways to understand it in terms of their society’s and their personal approach to gay people.

Not surprisingly, the discussion of homosexuality remains current within the Jewish community. Jews today are re-examining our sacred texts and traditions in light of contemporary knowledge and experience to develop responses to the needs of gay and lesbian Jews within our communities. Thoughtful Jews from all religious movements understand that this discussion is not an abstract intellectual debate, but an attempt to deal with the real needs of real people who are, literally and figuratively, our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, neighbors, and friends.

Though there is no single Jewish position on homosexuality, Jews are united in our rejection of homophobia, the senseless hatred of people because of their homosexual orientation. As Jews, we are all too familiar with violence growing out of senseless hatred, and as a community, we instinctively protest crimes arising out of hatred. We know from experience that racism, antisemitism, sexism, and homophobia shatter lives and destroy communities.

In the popular imagination, homosexuality’s sinful nature is associated with the wickedness of the city of Sodom, of whose destruction we read as part of this week’s Torah portion. In fact, the English word “sodomy,” which has a range of meanings that stretch from intimate behavior between two men to bestiality, derives from Sodoma, the Latin form of the Hebrew city name, Sodom. Yet, the association of the sinfulness of Sodom and its inhabitants with sexual behavior of any kind is a misreading of the Torah story within the biblical context and is only poorly supported by later Jewish literature. As we will see, the crime of homophobia is far closer to the biblical understanding of the wickedness of Sodom than almost any other sin.

In this story, the utter wickedness of the Sodomites is illustrated by the attempt of the men of Sodom to brutalize, en masse, the two angelic figures who arrived in the city in human form to warn Abraham’s nephew, Lot, of the forthcoming destruction of the city (Genesis 19:1-11). Lot, deeply committed to the traditions of hospitality to and protection of strangers, is willing to offer his daughters to the crowd as substitutes for the men, and in this way is willing to sacrifice his honor and status for the protection of his guests. Although we may question the propriety of Lot’s offer, the mob rejects it out of hand and turns its hatred against Lot, whom the people condemn as a foreigner himself. The horde then moves to attack Lot and is disbursed only by miraculous means.

It is clear from the story in this week’s portion that the sin of the Sodomites is their utter rejection of the traditions of guest hospitality, an act whose sinfulness is underscored by the portion’s earlier account of Abraham’s generous welcoming of the same guests they wish to attack (Genesis 18:1-8). The Sodomites’ desire to assault the angels and their condemnation of Lot for being a foreigner manifests their sin as violent hatred of those who differ from them, those who appear as strangers. The Sodomites express a vicious narrowness of spirit that still surfaces as racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and other forms of ethnic and religious prejudice.

As we look into the rest of our Bible, we see that Scripture does not describe the Sodomites’ evil as sexual wickedness. Rather, the prophets charge the Sodomites with a variety of other offenses, including a lack of justice (Isaiah 1:10; 3:9), a general disregard of moral and ethical values (Jeremiah 23:14), and ignoring the needs of the impoverished (Ezekiel 16:48-49). These themes are picked up later by the rabbis of the Talmud who describe the Sodomites as mean, inhospitable, uncharitable, and unjust.

In the Jewish community, as well as in religious communities throughout North America, people are re-examining traditional attitudes toward homosexuality. In the Jewish world, we see a variety of approaches expressed by thoughtful and religiously committed people and supported by various religious movements. However, when it comes to hatred and violence in general and to homophobia in particular, I believe that as a people we are unequivocal in our condemnation.

From the perspective of almost a quarter-century, I am pleased to see how the Jewish world, and to a growing extent America, in general, has opened up to LBGTQIA people. We have been and will continue to be enriched by the participation of diverse backgrounds and we diminish ourselves by avoiding, ignoring, dismissing, and denying the wisdom all people bring from their unique life experiences. By excluding others, we exclude ourselves. The walls of perceived fear, willful ignorance and self-righteous arrogance imprison us as they entrap the ones we see as the other. As we look at the sins of the Sodomites through the lenses of tradition and contemporary experience, we see that "sodomy" still exists in the violent, hateful, life-diminishing, soul-sapping words and actions that are motivated by homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and all beliefs and assumptions that treat others as less deserving than ourselves - the refusal to see God's sacred image in every human being. When I wrote this piece twenty-five years ago my goal was to undermine supposed Scriptural support for the rejection of gay people by members of the Jewish and general community as well as condemn hatred and the violence hatred excuses. The struggle is not over. The full acceptance of LBGTQIA people in American cultural, religious, and political is far from being realized. Many doors still need to be opened. Many walls still need to be torn down. Many hearts still need to be changed. But there has been movement in the direction of freedom, love, and inclusion, and for that I am thankful. (Lewis John Eron October 10, 2021)

THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH INVESTIGATION TEAM

November 17, 2019

A fundamental Jewish understanding of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel, the collective name for the Jewish people, is that of a partnership. Through Covenant, God has invited human beings to participate in God’s task of nurturing our created world and bringing it to the time in which God’s presence will be appreciated by all. Through Covenant, the realm of human responsibility expands from a narrow concern for oneself and one’s immediate circle, to one’s community, to humanity, and to the entire world.

While the Bible initially places all humanity since Noah in a covenantal relationship with God, the Bible explores the notion of Covenant by focusing its attention on a specific set of covenants with the people of Israel starting with the covenant with Abraham. Building on their biblical foundations, Jews developed the guidelines for participating in covenantal life, that is the system of mitzvot, “divine directives”, to structure ways in which Jews can work with God in caring for and ultimately redeeming our social and natural world.

The Bible illustrates this seriousness of this partnership early on in its story of covenantal life. Shortly after God cemented his promises to Abraham in the covenant narratives of Genesis – the mysterious ritual of the Covenant of the Parts, (Genesis 15) and the covenant of circumcision (Genesis 17:1-14) – and immediately after the annunciation of Isaac’s impending birth (Genesis 18:1-15), God reaches out to Abraham as God considers what to do with the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33).

Jews have often read this account as Abraham standing up to a God who appears to be acting rashly. But the interaction between God and Abraham is more complex and subtle. Abraham does not confront God, but rather, God invites Abraham into God’s investigation of the wicked cities.

Unlike the story of Noah’s flood in which God’s decision to destroy the world (Genesis 6:5-7; 12-22) appears as a proclamation to the celestial court and those loyal to Sovereign of All, the angels on high and Noah below, bow obediently to God’s will, here God acts differently. God wants to show Abraham that there is a different way to rule the world. Since Abraham will be the progenitor of many nations, including the future people of the Covenant, Israel, God desires to show Abraham the proper way to administer justice. So God intends to show Abraham what God plans to do.

In retrospect the plan seems obvious. The wicked nature of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were well known. The report had already reached as far as heaven, God’s palace. Rather than summarily pronouncing sentence on the Sodomites, as an authoritarian ruler could, God conceived another plan. God decided to conduct an investigation, to understand the scope of wickedness and bring Abraham in as part of the team. At this point in the account, God had not as yet been convinced on the accuracy of the reports, much less, decided on the nature of the punishment (Genesis 18:21).

From other biblical stories, we know that God had a number of options to selectively or collectively punish the wicked people and places. In this light, the interchange between Abraham and God is a discussion concerning the proper penalty for the corrupt communities of Sodom and the surrounding cities and not an argument whether or not God should destroy them.

Being God’s partner may be an honor but it is not always a blessing. Partnering with God does not result in moral clarity but means sharing the responsibility in discerning the relationship between tzedek (justice / righteousness) and mishpat (law / rule) in ambiguous situations. Abraham quickly realized the task facing him and God: in any community,even one pervaded by wickedness, guilt is not spread around evenly. Some are clearly more involved in pernicious behavior than others, some are not involved and there may even be some who are actively resisting evil. Abraham’s initial question, points out the problem, “Will You (God) sweep away the innocent along with the guilty (Genesis 18:23)

It is at this point in the story where accepting covenantal responsibility of partnering with God in governing God’s creation becomes challenging. Both God and Abraham, as partners in the dialogue and in the covenant, begin to understand that relationship between tzedek and mishpat can be incredibly difficult. The repetition of these words, tzedek and mishpat in God’s opening statement and in Abraham’s responses to God, underscores fundamental tension, particularly in questions of collective responsibility and collective punishment: to what extend are good people responsible for sinful people in their community?; what should be the fate of good people caught up in an evil situation?; what can one do when it is impossible to avoid harming uninvolved people?; how many good people are needed to effect positive change?

These are questions that arise in a wide variety of situations: the removal of a criminal who is a family’s breadwinner; the firing of innocent employees when a company is closed for the misdeeds of upper management; the fate of civilians trapped in a town overrun by criminals; and so forth. It seems that both God and people can find ourselves in ambiguous situations. Perhaps this is why God needs a partner – it is only through dialogue, literally “talking things through” that there is a hope to find some clarity.

In many ways the conclusion of the story of Sodom is too neat. After the conversation with Abraham, God finds a solution. While there are too few people to justify a punishment other than total destruction, there is a way to save handful of decent people. The next chapter deals with the rescue of Lot and his immediate family.

But the rest of the Bible continues to invite us as God’s covenantal partners into conversations with God and each other as we negotiate the ambiguous course of human events. The basic building blocks of our Jewish heritage – our ethical, spiritual and ritual traditions – grow out of these conversations and remain alive when we chose to enter into the dialogue and to participate in the study and practice of mishpat and tzedek.

Chayye Sarah Genesis 23.1-25.18

ABRAHAM'S SECOND LIFE

November 3, 2007

The brief note on Genesis 25:1-11, which summarizes Abraham’s life after the death of his wife, Sarah, and the marriage of their son, Isaac, to Rebecca in The Stone Edition Chumash reveals more about human life than, I believe, the editors intended. They tell us, “as is customary in the Torah when a person’s role in the development of the narrative is completed, his life is summed up, even though he may have lived for many years. Once Abraham, at the age of 140, had arranged for the marriage of Isaac, the destiny of the Jewish people moved on to the next generation, even though Abraham lives to the age of 175.”

This insight explains the narrative strategy of Sefer Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, but it, also, raises a disturbing question. If Abraham, the discoverer of the One God and the founder of the Jewish people, can so easily be dismissed, what does it say about the rest of us as we age? Does life really start, as in the old joke, when the children move out and the dog dies, or does it end? What will make our lives meaningful, when we, hopefully, watched our children embark on their life journey, entered retirement, experienced the losses and rewards of human experience and, like Abraham of old, look forward to spending another quarter-century or more on this side of eternity? Are we to be written out of our children’s story and our family’s history? Will we make a second life for ourselves or will we quietly fade from the world of those we hold so dear?

This is the challenge that faces each generation as the years pass on. Have the men and women of the “Greatest Generation”, those who grew up in the Depression, matured in World War II and Korea, and led us through the struggles of the rest of the 20th century, found meaning and purpose in their later years. Will the “Baby Boomers,” now entering retirement, be any more successful? What models of senior life will these generations leave to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? Can we find hope and guidance in Abraham’s experience or do we see it as a sad and frightening warning?

It is not that Abraham’s second life was terrible. The little bit of information we find in the Torah suggests that Abraham achieved a sense of contentment or serenity in his old age (Genesis 25:8). He found a new wife, Keturah (Genesis 25:1), and raised a family of six sons (25:2). He apparently remained prosperous enough to provide them all with enough resources to start their own lives east of the Land of Israel, in his old homeland (25:6). He remained in contact with his first two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and upon his death, the two of them ensured that he was properly buried in the cave of Machpelah, alongside Sarah (25:9-10).

Rabbinic legends do little to fill out the rest of Abraham’s story although they do tie up a few loose threads. In a number of midrashim, the ancient rabbis’ narrative expansions of scripture, there is the sweet note that Keturah was really Hagar (Genesis Rabba 61:4). Rebecca, the sages inform us, met Isaac on his way home from Beer-lahai-roi, where he had gone to escort Hagar back to Abraham after Sarah’s death (Genesis Rabba 60:14; Rashi on Genesis 24:62). At least, according to one midrash, Abraham found a retirement job. Projecting their values back to Abraham’s time, the sages claimed that Abraham, like any great teacher of Torah, established his own academy. There he had the special pleasure of having his grandson, Jacob, as one of his star pupils (Midrash Tanchuma (Buber) VaYishlach 9). At best, Abraham often appears as a “has been.” Even in the rabbinic retelling of his story, Abraham, in his old age, has become an incidental character in the ongoing life of his family. He no longer stands the center of the stage.

As Jews, this vision of aging presents us with a particularly difficult challenge. So much of our religious and spiritual life is spent engaged in the life of our community and our world. Our basic value words often imply action and activity. We perform mitzvot. We give tzedakah. We gather for prayer. We strive for tikkun olam. We build families, communities and prepare for yemei ha-mashiach, “the coming of the messianic age.” What are we to do, when we no longer have to do, or sadly, no longer can do?

Exploring further, however, we realize that in his retirement Abraham points to another Jewish path we can follow as we enter our second life. This path may lack the drama and thrills of the road we left, but as we walk it, we discover new challenges and new rewards. As we walk down this path, we have the time to review our lives, to tie up the loose ends, and to serve as an anchor for those who are still rushing down the highway. If the old road was the “Path of Action,” this new path is the “Path of Blessings.”

Genesis 24:1 introduces the story of Isaac’s marriage, the final great event of Abraham’s life, with the notice, “Now Abraham was old, well on in years and the Eternal had blessed Abraham with everything.” In a midrash found in Genesis Rabba 59:7, the Talmudic sage Rabbi Levi explores the spiritual significance of this verse. He suggests that the phrase “being blessed with everything” could in Abraham’s case be understood in three or four different, but complementary, ways. Put together, these interpretations present us with a new way of appreciating our second lives.

Rabbi Levi’s first understanding is that God made Abraham master of his yetzer hara, his emotional life. In his old age, Abraham had achieved enough maturity not to be ruled by his passions. By gaining control over his yetzer, Abraham received the blessing of spiritual freedom and inner strength.

Rabbi Levi’s second insight is that Abraham lived long enough to see that his rebellious son Ishmael had reformed. God blessed Abraham by allowing him to see his children grow into full human beings. Abraham received the special satisfaction reserved only for the elderly of seeing one’s children and grandchildren living full and rewarding lives, the sense of pleasure, which we, in Yiddish, call “nachas.”

The third blessing is a very practical blessing. Rabbi Levi states that Abraham had what he needed to survive, literally, “his storehouse was never diminished in any way.” Material blessings are never guaranteed, but a life well-lived, combined with the blessings of spiritual freedom and nachas, go a long way in securing this third of Abraham’s blessings.

Finally, Rabbi Levi adds one more blessing, one he learned from his teacher, Rabbi Hama ben Hanina. This blessing is the most wonderful. Rabbi Hama ben Hanina said that being blessed “with everything” means that God did not test Abraham again. Abraham’s blessing was that he no longer had to stand up front and center on the stage of life. He had passed all life’s challenges and now could enjoy the fruits of victory.

Following the interpretive trajectories implicit in the Torah and indicated by our ancient rabbis, we find that Abraham found in his second life another spiritual path. It was not the “path of action,” filled with trials and challenges, which make for a gripping story. It was another path — the quieter, and, perhaps, more rewarding “path of blessings.” This gentle path may not make a good subject for action thriller but has its own rewards. By telling us so little about Abraham’s peaceful second life, our ancestors did not write Abraham out of the story but gave him and us the opportunity to explore the special blessings we can find as we live our second lives.

Parashat Toledot Genesis 25.19-28.9

ESAU, THE GOOD SON

November 29, 2003

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face in our lives is caring for aged and infirm parents. While they are still vital, those of the older generation can be an unending source of love, wisdom and support. Their presence adds so much to our celebrations of holidays and life-cycle events. Many of us cherish wonderful memories of zayed’s toast at our son’s bar mitzvah or bubbe’s dancing at our daughter’s wedding or papa’s holding a newly born great-grandson at the brit milah. But as they grow weaker and sicker, our elderly loved ones begin to depend increasingly more upon us for even their most basic needs. Although our love for them is not diminished, this new set of responsibilities weighs heavy on our hearts and taxes our strength and patience. Most of us accept the challenge of caring for our infirm dear ones graciously and lovingly. But it is a difficult role to fill, and we are always looking for role models as guides through this stage of life’s journey.

One of the many rewards I have found in my service to the Jewish community of Southern New Jersey as Community Chaplain and as rabbi at the Jewish Geriatric Home is witnessing the high level of physical, spiritual, and moral support adult children give to their aged and ailing parents. The efforts of family members on behalf of their loved ones-- the love and respect they demonstrate, the sacrifices they willingly make, the blessings they receive in even the dark moments of life --often astonish me. There are many inspiring role models in our community.

There is no one way in which adult children express their love and concern for their elderly loved ones. Some people are able to open their homes to dear ones as they receive hospice care for the last few months of their lives. Others visit their family members in Jewish Geriatric Home and other old age homes so often that they become part of those communities. Some children living far away give up their few weeks of vacation, so that they can come and provide a respite for their siblings who are their parent’s primary caregivers. Others call every day, just to check that mom or dad is all right. Some children do the shopping. Some do the cleaning. Some do the laundry. Some pay the bills. Quite often, all do their part. It is good work, rewarding work, and without a doubt, hard work.

Being a responsible child is not easy, but people can do amazing things when called upon to do so. We often underestimate our own strength and surprise ourselves Meeting others who are facing the same set of challenges is inspiring and encouraging. We can never predict who they might be.

I was surprised to find that the biblical role model of the good son, at least through the eyes of the rabbis of the Talmud, is the most unlikely figure, Esau, Isaac’s wild and unruly son, the antagonist of this week’s Torah portion, Toledot. Unlike his quiet, stay-at-home brother Jacob, Esau loved to roam and to hunt. In the rabbinic tradition, he was in many ways a heartache for his parents. He was a mediocre student. He loved parties. He did not have the most desirable girlfriends. He was a difficult child.

Yet, when it came to caring for his blind, aged, father, Isaac, he set the standard. No matter what else he did, according to an insightful rabbinic midrash, an interpretive story, Esau treated his father like a king. He was the son who cooked and cared for the old, sick man with the highest level of love and respect. There is no wonder why his father wished to give him a special blessing.

In his midrash on the story of Isaac and his sons, the second-century sage, Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel wonders why Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, dressed her favorite of her twin sons, Jacob, in his brother Esau’s most precious garments as part of their plot to defraud Esau of his father’s blessing. While Esau, on his father’s behalf, was out hunting game to prepare Isaac’s favorite dish, Rebecca used freshly killed goats to cook the stew and dressing Jacob as Esau, sent him to Isaac in his brother’s place. Isaac, being blind, fell for the ruse because he recognized Esau’s special garments and bestowed the blessing Esau expected on Jacob. Apparently, Esau wore this distinctive attire when he took care of Isaac and the smell and feel of the clothes helped convince Isaac that Esau really was there. (Genesis 27)

Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel was impressed that Esau would wear his best clothes to take care of his infirm, elderly father. Comparing himself with Esau, he remarked “All the time I took care of my father, I did not do for him even one percent of that which Esau did for his father. When I cared for my father, I would care for him wearing soiled garments, i.e., work clothes. On the other hand, when I went out, I would wear clean clothes. However, when Esau took care of his father, he waited on him wearing regal attire, saying, ‘There is no other way to express the honor due to a father than to serve him wearing clothes fit for a king.’” (Genesis Rabba 65:16)

It is very difficult to care for an aged, infirm parent. The spiritual distress of caring for those who cared for us, of seeing those whom we depended on for strength depend on us, of watching those who guided us into this world slowly move toward the world to come can often seem overwhelming. Feeding, cleaning, dressing, walking, pushing, and, even, visiting can shake our souls. What we wear reflects not only on what we have to do but how we feel. I am sure Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel experienced sadness at the need to care for his father and felt inadequate to the task.

But I also believe that the rabbi was a very good son. Like most of us, he cared for his father with love and respect. At times, however, the going was tough. Thankfully, he found needed strength and inspiration in the care he saw others offer their loved ones and learned from even as unlikely a character as Esau that our burden is lightened when we understand that the opportunity to take for loved ones is a special privilege, a great honor, and a great blessing. It is not always easy, it is not always fun, but it can be transforming and, as with Esau, it can make us better than anyone might have thought we could be.
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© 2003 Lewis John Eron
All rights reserved

Vayetze Genesis 28:10 - 32:3

“MAY YOU FIND BLESSING IN THE PLACE WE KNOW AS GOD”

December 9, 2000

During a Jewish burial service, as the coffin, in Hebrew the aron, descends into the grave, we recite a short prayer, al mekomo yavo be-shalom, “may the deceased go to his place in peace.” These apparently simple words contain great meaning. They reflect the Jewish understanding of the healing presence of God in our lives.

On one level, this short prayer acknowledges the reality of the moment — a loved one’s body is being gently lowered into its final resting place. The power of Jewish funeral and mourning practices rests in their ability to focus our hearts and minds on the immediate situation and guide us, step by step, on our way to healing. By reciting them, we express our wish that our loved one finds the peace that in times of loss is absent in our souls.

On another level, however, these few words express our hope for the future. They form a prayer of healing as we look forward to the time when we mend the torn fabric of our lives and find a new harmony with our loved ones remaining with us through the gift of memory. This deeper understanding grows out of the meaning of two well-known Hebrew words that form the heart of the prayer.

The first is Shalom. While we commonly translate shalom as “hello, good-bye and peace,” its meaning goes far beyond any of those English words. When we say “Shalom” to friends as a greeting, we are not merely acknowledging their presence; we are saying a prayer for them. We are telling them that we hope that our encounter will be full of shalom and that we will end our meeting with a sense of shalom.

Shalom itself means more than the quietness suggested by the English word “peace”. Shalom refers to a sense of wholeness, completeness. It can be pictured as a full circle with nothing left out. In this sense, our souls are not fully at peace until we can gather together all our wounded parts and our world will not be fully at peace until all people feel that they have their full and fair share in its bounty.

The other word is makom, the common Hebrew word for “place,” as a grave is a place and our home is a place. But the word makom in the Hebrew of our sages and of our prayer book has a far greater meaning than the English word “place.” Our rabbis of old claimed that Makom is a name of God. When we call upon God as HaMakom, “the Place,” we call upon God as an intimate presence in our lives. We declare that the place upon which we are standing is a place infused with the holiness of the Divine Presence.

This understanding comes from the opening verses of the Torah portion Vayetze. Jacob, who had fled from his home in Beer-Sheba, out of fear of his brother Esau’s anger, had to spend a night sleeping outside in the wilderness. During that night he had the famous dream in which he saw a ladder (more properly, a staircase) connecting earth and heaven with angels climbing up and down. When he awoke from that dream, he declared, “Surely the Eternal is present in this place, and I did not know it! How awesome is this Makom! This is surely, Beit El, God’s dwelling, and the gateway to heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17)

In the magic of the moment, Jacob’s soul turned away from the fear of his brother towards the awesomeness of the place in which he had spent the night and of his experience there. He discovered God, his spirit was restored and he was able to continue his life’s journey with a renewed sense of assurance.

Thus, according to our sages, when we call God, “Makom,” we are praying that we find the fullness of God’s presence where we are. We are praying that, despite our fears, our hurts, and our sense of loss, God’s presence will become manifest to us and we, like our ancestor Jacob, will be able to declare, “How awesome is this Makom!”

Thus when we pray, al mekomo yavo be-shalom, “may our loved one go to his place in peace,” what we are saying is not that our loved ones should be laid to rest in the grave, but in our hearts, so that wherever we may go, their spirits may go with us and whenever we pause from our troubles, worries, pain, and loss, we may find them there with us. We pray that that place be a place full of Shalom, a place of wholeness and healing, a place, a makom, that is full of God’s sustaining presence, a place in which, in some mysterious and wonderful way, we are all together, whole and complete.

Vayishlach Genesis 32:4 — 36:43

EULOGY FOR DEBORAH, REBECCA’S NURSE
November 27, 2004

This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, contains a very brief death notice. It informs us of the death of Rebecca’s nurse, Deborah, and of her burial in the shade of an oak tree that was called from then on Allon-bachut, the Oak of Tears (Genesis 35:3). We do not anything more about this woman although we can assume that in ancient days stories about her were well known so that this odd notice would make sense.

For me, however, this brief mention of a humble woman reminds us that we are all important in the growth and transmission of our sacred tradition. We all have a significant role to play and that the Jewish story is not merely the story of prophets, heroes, scholars, and sages but also the story of tailors, shoemakers, accountants, nurses, mothers and fathers – the story of regular folks who every day do their bit to make the tradition live in their lives and in the lives of their loved ones.

No one knows what was said at Deborah’s graveside but in the course of my career as a rabbi, I have been at many gravesides of humble but wonderful people who meant so much to their family, friends, and community. I have heard many beautiful expressions of love, hope, memory, and vision offered by friends and family in tribute to their heroes. Inspired by their words, here is Rebecca’s hesped, eulogy, for her beloved nurse, Deborah.

A Eulogy for Deborah

It seems that my life has been a constant series of goodbyes ever since Eliezar, Abraham’s servant, met me at that well in Haran so long ago to bring me back with him here to Canaan to marry my dear Isaac. This is not to say that I am unhappy. I’m not. Life has been good here. I am happy that my two boys, Jacob and Esau, are together again and that both are very successful. I have a good husband. He’s hard-working, loyal, and sincere. But as happy as I am here after all these years I still miss my mother and father, my family’s home back in Haran.

Yet I never understood my mother-in-law’s sacrifice in going with Abraham as much as I do today as I say farewell to my dear companion, my dear friend, my second mother, Deborah – who raised me as a child, followed me loyally to Canaan, cared for my children, put up with my husband and was my constant connection to home. Deborah was my personal connection to my home and my childhood.

I can’t remember a day without her loving smile and gentle voice. My father, Bethuel, took her in shortly before I was born, just after her husband and baby died. She fed me, nurtured me, and raised me as if I were her own child. As I grew older she became my teacher and, then, my friend. My father, though loving was always busy with the clan and tribal matters, and my dear mother had to run the household and domestic industries, so Deborah was my constant friend and companion. She was truly a member of our family.

Yet, despite all we shared, she never told me or anyone of her childhood and her tragic losses. They were her secrets, her hidden pain. From the support she gave me when Jacob left us suddenly to live with my brother, Laban, I knew she knew deeply what it was to say goodbye to loved ones.

Deborah had a wonderful sense of humor. She never let me forget I funny I looked when I fell off the camel the first time I saw Isaac. Everyone thought I was star-struck, even though I insisted that I just fell asleep even though that was not really the truth. I still think that she gave me a little push.

Deborah never forgot a face or a voice. She just loved mimicking people. She did wonderful impressions of Abraham – she could capture his serious face and pretend to talk to God; and my father, Bethuel, – always fretting about some issue or another, and Leah and Rachel, you should have seen her do my brother, your father, Laban, – she could sound like him every time he tried to make a quick profit or a favorable deal. She could even do that thing he did with his hands.

Deborah was good to my boys, Esau and Jacob. She was the only one who could get them from fighting with each other. She could always see through Jacob’s tricks and when Esau got restless, she always had another adventure for him to go on. It broke her heart when you were so jealous of each other that it seemed that you would kill each other if you lived in the same place. Jacob, I know that when she heard that you married my nieces, Leah and Rachel, and had children, she really wanted to return to Haran and care for another generation but by then she was too old.

It was just us old folks with old memories then. And as her health failed and her mind clouded, we switched roles. I, can you believe it, became her nurse. I know we could have asked someone else to care for her, but I wanted to, I needed to. These last few years were precious. It was almost a miracle. God brought her back in her mind to her old home and together we would walk through the streets of Haran, we would meet old friends, we would sing the old songs, tell the old stories. I walked with her, I held her hand and cared for her as she cared for me so many years ago.

And now, as we stand by this beautiful old oak tree to say goodbye to Deborah, we know that God will bring her to her loved ones, keep her spirit fresh, and strengthen us in our time of sorrow with pleasant memories. Deborah, we love you. Deborah, we will never forget you.

Va-Yeishev Genesis 37:1 – 40:23

“FORGETTING JOSEPH”

November 4, 2013

The Torah portion VaYeishev ends with an unusual note. In non-judgmental, plain language the Torah simply states, “The Chief Cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him” (Genesis 40:21)

How can this be? Was Joseph so forgettable? Did he not correctly interpret the dreams of the Pharoah’s “Cupbearer” and “Baker”, the two high-ranking courtiers imprisoned with him? Did not Joseph explicitly ask the “Cupbearer” to remember him? Naturally, we, for whom Joseph is the focus of our story, are affronted by the Cupbearer’s apparently causal disregard for our hero.

However, we need to remember that the Torah relates the story of Joseph and not that of the Cupbearer. From the perspective of the Cupbearer, why should he have remembered Joseph? Being imprisoned and possibly facing execution for a crime he most likely did not commit, must have been exceedingly traumatic. How many other frightening dreams did he have? Who was Joseph to him? Joseph was a slave, from a foreign land, professing faith in an unfamiliar god. Although Joseph interpreted the Cupbearer’s Baker’s dreams correctly, to them he was neither their peer nor even a professional interpreter. The Cupbearer’s interchange with Joseph seemed no more than an incidental encounter in a terrifying time in his life. A time he surely did not want to remember. In fact, it is not clear from the Torah whether Joseph himself remembered the encounter.

This may reflect a common human experience. We very rarely pay much attention to the events and encounters in our daily lives. Often, we feel overwhelmed by life’s demands and challenges. We find ourselves focusing on our immediate concerns and ourselves. We often treat those with whom we meet casually. Even if we take the meeting seriously, we quickly forget, what we said and what we did.

Yet, these unpredictable, chance meetings can be the most significant events in our lives and in the lives of those whom we touch. The story of the brief interchange between Joseph and the two accused courtiers reminds us of the importance of every encounter. No matter how slight one might seem, not one of them is trivial. We do not know the long-term impact any encounter may have in our lives and in the lives of those around us. For the most part, we seem to be planting seeds – seeds of wisdom or folly, love or hate, peace or conflict, insight or confusion – only to sprout in the unpredictable future.

We cannot assess the future relevance of our words and deeds. What is important for us, maybe only incidental to others, and what seems trivial to us, might be life-changing to someone else. Yet, it is in the ways in which we intersect other people’s lives, that our lives attain meaning and purpose.

Teachers, physicians, and clergy often encounter people whom they no longer remember, who thank them for a helpful word, a transforming insight, or a supportive gesture that they still cherish. We are all familiar with the pain many carry from being ignored, overlooked, or dismissed by a perfunctory response or a thoughtless gesture. We find strength and sustenance from simple expressions of love and gratitude. It is not uncommon for us to remember a piece of wisdom we may have misplaced or the person we may have forgotten when events in our lives bring forth lost memories.

Every moment, every encounter, every word we say, and everything we do has life-changing significance. Small and seemingly trivial events can change the course of our lives as they changed Joseph’s. We do not know when chance and circumstance may bring forth that which was forgotten. May what we say and do always be remembered for good.

Two years after he was released from prison, the Cupbearer remembered Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams. When confronted by Pharaoh’s confounding dreams, he finds the courage to recall his traumatic confinement and Joseph, the Hebrew youth, who was able to give him strength and comfort during his time of trial. At that moment, the seeds Joseph planted starting to sprout and Joseph’s rise to power began. (Genesis 41:9-13)

Parashat Miketz Genesis 41:1 — 44:17

JEWS-BY-CHOICE: ASENATH AND RUTH
December 8, 1998

Throughout our history, and particularly in our times, the Jewish people have been enriched by converts, people who have chosen to cast their lot with ours, to make our history and destiny their own. We benefit from their enthusiasm, their insight, and their mature understanding of Judaism. We honor their new commitments by calling them “gerei tzedek” — “those who have chosen to dwell with us through righteousness” — and by declaring them to be the direct descendants of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. They, in turn, compliment us by accepting our sacred heritage and remind us of the life-changing, life-enhancing power of our traditions.

Our ancient traditions present us with two powerful visions of the conversion process. One, represented by the story of Ruth, focuses on the convert’s significant relationships with Jewish people. We all know many people who have chosen to join us because of their involvement with their Jewish spouse, their Jewish friends, and the Jewish community. The other, characterized by ancient legends concerning Joseph’s Egyptian-born wife, Asenath, stresses the convert’s spiritual journey towards Jewish faith.

The story of the Moabite woman, Ruth, who after the deaths of her husband and father-in-law, followed her Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi, back to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem in Judah, is found in the biblical Book of Ruth. The story focuses on Jewish values of peoplehood and community, which still play a central role in modern Jewish life.

Ruth’s story is a tale of love and loyalty. Ruth leaves her native land and adopts the traditions and beliefs of the Jewish people because of the depth of her relationship with Naomi and because of her admiration of Naomi’s words and deeds, which reflected the guiding principles of Judaism. Ruth’s declaration of loving loyalty — “Wherever you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people and your God is my God . . . (Ruth 1:16)” — is one of the most profound expressions of love in our tradition. But it is also testimony to the transforming power of the faith we express by the way we live our lives.

The legends concerning Asenath focus on the spiritual aspect of conversion and attempt to explain why Joseph, who was so loyal to the God of our ancestors, married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest, a detail seemingly overlooked in the biblical text. They come to us from a two thousand-year-old novella known as “Joseph and Asenath,” which circulated among the Greek-speaking Jews living in ancient Alexandria and other cities in Egypt and throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Jews of the ancient Greek-speaking diaspora knew that many non-Jews were attracted by the faith and traditions of Israel. In their time, many people converted to Judaism and many more worshiped the God of Israel without becoming Jews because of the spiritual and moral truths they discovered in the Jewish tradition.

The Bible provides us with little information concerning Asenath. This week’s portion, Miketz, only mentions her in passing. In it, we learn that her father was Poti-phera, a priest in the Egyptian city of On, and that she bore Joseph two children (Gen. 41:45, 50).

The ancient novella uses these bits of information from the Bible as a starting point for a moving romance. It describes Joseph’s initial rejection of Asenath because of her polytheistic beliefs and the challenges Asenath faced as she discovered the One God and shared that faith with others. Despite her high station and physical beauty, Joseph’s interest in her blossomed only after her conversion to monotheism. However, before the young couple could achieve happiness, Asenath had to overcome the resistance of the Egyptians to her new faith and new husband.

There are many today who say we are all Jews-By-Choice. In our open society, we not only have the freedom to decide how we wish to live our Jewish lives, but also the choice of whether or not to be Jews at all. The same factors that bring people into Jewish life, keep them in Jewish life — a deep personal commitment to Jewish people expressed in strong Jewish family life and in active participation in the Jewish community, and a sincere appreciation of the spiritual wealth of our Jewish tradition expressed in prayer, study and celebration.

Everyone’s tale is different but the biblical Book of Ruth and the post-biblical legends about Asenath underscore the motivations that bring non-Jews to the Jewish people and keep Jews Jewish — love of the Jewish people and love of God. Neither story provides us with information concerning the rituals of conversion in either biblical or post-biblical times, but they both provide us with a measuring stick to judge the strength of our own loyalty to our faith and our people.

Can we, like Asenath, stand up and witness our faith in God in an alien culture and can we, like Ruth, clasp the hands of our fellow Jews and say that we share the same heritage and destiny, and promise that “wherever you go, I will go . . .”?

Vayigash Genesis 44.18-47.27

RECONCILIATION

December 18, 1999

One of the abiding themes of the book of Genesis is that of family conflict and reconciliation. Each biblical generation tells its own version of the story of sibling rivalry, from the disastrous conflict between Cain and Abel at the beginning of Genesis, to the happy reunion of the sons of Jacob at the end of the book. In a broader context, this story is the story of all humanity and symbolizes the biblical dream for the now feuding human family to be reconciled with each other as loving brothers and sisters. In the specific context, each version of the story is a case study in family dynamics and ethics. Each time that Genesis replays the story, it holds up a mirror within which we can study our lives.

The stories of conflict and, hopefully, reconciliation are rooted in the most powerful of human emotions — hate, jealousy, fear, greed, pride, anger, and, primarily and ultimately, love — and in the most basic of human relationships — the family. Violence is never far from the surface. Cain kills Able. Esau pursues Jacob. Joseph’s brothers cast him into a pit. The consequences are never tidy. Cain is marked for life. Ishmael is expelled. Jacob spends decades in exile. Joseph is sold as a slave.

The stories are grounded in family life and the problems and conflicts involved in nurturing children. They reflect a child’s struggle for parental love and acceptance, the challenges of learning to live in a community, and the need for each child to develop an independent self. They show us how poorly the material expressions of parental love express the deeper values we want to impart to our children.

But each version of the story presents us with hope for growth and change. The book of Genesis shows us that we are not bound forever in the conflicts of our youth and that family members can learn to accept each other despite, or, perhaps because of their experiences. We can grow up.

Cain, after presenting the first moral dilemma, goes on to establish human civilization. Isaac and Ishmael go beyond childhood conflict to jointly mourn the passing of their father Abraham. Esau, having succeeded in his own right, is able to welcome his brother, Jacob, disregarding their earlier conflicts. In this week’s portion, in a dramatic moment, Joseph, having risen from slave to prime minister of Egypt, reveals himself to his brothers two decades after they had first cast him into a pit and sold him to an Ishmaelite caravan.

This reunion could only take place because Joseph and his brothers had long outgrown the pride and jealousy that marked their younger selves. They were able to use the challenges of their lives to help them build more mature personalities. The brothers who came down to Egypt seeking supplies were no longer the bickering young men seeking to oust a rival, but rather serious grown men doing all they could to take care of each other and the family enterprise. Joseph, too, had changed. No longer was he the dreamer who imagined how glorious ruling would be. Now, as prime minister, he had the awesome and difficult task to guide his adopted country through years of ever-deepening famine. By getting older, growing up, gaining insight, and uncovering wisdom, Jacob’s sons learned about themselves and their father — what we need to learn to go beyond the once passionate, but now half-forgotten, struggles, and conflicts of our youth.

As we grow older we learn that our parents have a history and that their past affects the way they relate to us. We begin to understand that parental love. In his explanation to Joseph of Jacob’s special relationship with Benjamin (besides Joseph, the only son of Jacob’s deceased, beloved wife, Rachel) Judah shows that he has come to appreciate his father’s past. He understands how Jacob’s life was molded by Jacob’s flight from Esau and the way that Laban, Judah’s grandfather, exploited his son-in-law and played with his emotions.

Part of maturity is the understanding that our own personalities affect the way we relate to our families. None of us is perfect and, in our own way, each of us is difficult to love. We are not objects of affection but active agents in dynamic relationships. We need to be responsible for each other. Judah’s concern for his brother Benjamin, standing accused of stealing Joseph’s silver goblet, and for his father, Jacob’s well-being demonstrates Judah’s spiritual and emotional growth.

If we truly wish to overcome family conflicts, we need to learn that the dynamic, interpersonal issues of family relationships cannot be resolved by mechanical means. Cleverly devised seating charts at bar mitzvahs and weddings and formal exchanges of holiday greetings do not solve family problems. These issues can only be resolved if we are able to meet each other as we are today and not as we were.

Joseph’s brothers soon came to realize that removing Joseph physically from the scene did not take him out of their father Jacob’s heart. In fact, the opposite happened and the memory of Joseph consumed more of Jacob’s emotional strength than did Joseph’s presence. Jacob’s sons could never be reconciled with each other as long as the memory of Joseph’s vanity and his brothers’ jealousy ruled their lives. Only a well-established but lonely Joseph and an accomplished but needy Judah could affect the reunion.

As we learn about love and loss, as we experience life’s frustrations, we understand how our own parents’ half-fulfilled dreams affected their lives and ours. Jacob, the golden boy who could wrestle both men and angels, found himself as a grown man to be the chief of an unruly clan in a world surrounded by enemies and rivals. Only as his sons learned to deal with the challenges and disappointments of their own lives and of their own children, are they able to make sense of their father’s soul-shaking concerns and go beyond their envy of Joseph as the perceived focus of their father’s affections.

Finally, as we grow older, we begin to sense our own loneliness. We begin to miss those who most closely shared our most intimate world and most cherished memories. Joseph, alone in Egypt, watching his own two sons grow, becomes aware of his loss. He needs to be connected with his brothers and with his past. This week’s portion, Vayigash, powerfully presents Joseph, no longer able to hold back his emotions, tearing off the trappings of his Egyptian office, and tearfully declaring to his brothers that he is Joseph, the one they thought was lost forever.

The book of Genesis ends with the brothers being reconciled. Jacob’s family is reunited and, as one, they are able to survive the famine of the seven bad years of Pharaoh’s dream and become the founders of the tribes of Israel. Their youthful rivalries, which at one time almost destroyed them, are now ancient history as they are able to meet as mature men dealing with the serious issues of adult life. They grew up and, hopefully, provide us with a model to use on our journeys towards true maturity.

STAYING CONNECTED DURING THE PANDEMIC

December 24, 2020

One of the most touching scenes in biblical literature is when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. After testing his brothers to try to understand their hearts and after hearing Judah’s cry of despair over the pain he would bring to Jacob if he and the others could not bring Benjamin back to Jacob, Joseph could no longer remain behind his disguise as an Egyptian prince. The Torah carefully describes this reunion in four steps.

First, Joseph dismisses his Egyptian attendants. One could only imagine how his brothers must of felt when they were now alone with this powerful Egyptian courtier,

Then, Joseph begins to weep. He wept so loudly that his weeping filled Pharaoh’s palace. What could his brothers be thinking – why was this powerful man, falling apart emotionally?

The Torah grants us a brief glimpse into the brothers’ response to the next step when Joseph declared, “I am Joseph your brother!” and asked “Does my father live?” They were terrified.

Finally, Joseph calls the frighten men close to him and declares once more “I am Joseph your brother!” and he tells them not to be afraid because it was God’s will that all had happened the way it did. He needed to be sent to Egypt so many years before, so that he could save them all today.

The Torah does not reveal to us the brothers response but the next twenty or so verses are filled with activity as Josephs sends his brothers richly laden back to Canaan to bring Jacob and the rest of Jacob’s household to safety in Egypt.

And then, after a careful listing of all the members of Jacob’s household – Joseph’s brothers and sister and their children – we read of the reunion of Joseph with his father Jacob

This story of a family getting together in a time of hardship, overcoming the pain, anger and guilt that had kept them apart for so many years is always powerful.

It takes on a special power, however, this year, when we are all trying to find ways to be close to our loved ones in our time of trouble. In times of crisis – famine in Joseph’s lifetime and a world pandemic in ours – reminds us of how much we need each other for physical, emotional and spiritual support. Even though we cannot embrace each other today as Joseph and his brothers could, the story of their reunion reminds us of the centrality family plays in our lives and how the bonds that tied us can overcome the acts that have drawn us emotionally apart.

Today we are blessed in that we no longer have to be together in the same place to share the same moment. How many of us have expanded our reach through the miracle of contemporary technology. Through Zoom and other platforms we were able to gather with family to celebrate Hanukah – lighting candles together, playing dreidel, singing songs – with more people than could make the trip to visit – with family and friends all over the country and all over the world.

The reunion of Joseph and his family is a story that talks to us today. Through love, patience and whatever technology we have, we can still maintain the family connects that give meaning and purpose to our lives.

Vayehi Genesis 47:28 — 50:26

THE GOAL OF LIFE

January 6, 2007

The goal of Jewish life is to embody Torah, the living word of the living God addressed to all creation through the life and experience of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. This Jewish insight teaches us that as Jews we have the opportunity to take the wisdom of our tradition and make it real in the world in which we live. What we say and what we do is consequential. By making the spiritual and ethical insights of our Torah the foundation of our lives, we transcend our human limits. We connect ourselves to God and can join our people’s prophets, priests, kings, heroes, and sages as one of those who live and teach Torah.

Our lives are our teaching. How we live and what we do reveal who we are and who we want to become. When we, as Jews, strive to make the Torah real in our lives, we partake of a living tradition. We become part of a human community dispersed over time and space whose struggles with life’s issues give us the wisdom and insights we need in our lives. We join our own life experiences with theirs as we take their teachings and transform them into our own. This becomes our own personal commentary on the Torah and is the heart of our legacy to those who follow us.

As Jews, we honor a life well-lived. We remember yahrzeits rather than birthdays. The thrust of our mourning practices is to make sure that the values our loved ones tried to live by become part of our lives. The hesped, the eulogy, focuses on the spiritual legacy bequeathed to mourners.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayehi, closes the Book of Genesis. It can be seen as a eulogy for the age of our patriarchs and matriarchs. It presents to us Jacob’s last days — his blessing of his sons, his passing, and his elaborate funeral and burial in the ancestral tomb, the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. The final verses of Genesis relate Joseph’s death and the placement of his embalmed remains in a casket, in Hebrew, “aron.”

Unlike Jacob, who made his sons promise to return his remains to the family tomb (Genesis 49:29-32), Joseph asked his family, his brothers and his children, to bring his casket, his “aron” with them when God will guide back all Jacob’s descendants back from Egypt to the Promised Land (Genesis 24-26)

It is through the Hebrew word for casket, “aron”, that the Jewish understanding that we are to embody Torah appears as we explore the Biblical text and later Talmudic commentaries. Although “aron” is still the common Hebrew word for a burial casket, in our religious and spiritual tradition the word, “aron”, has a broader meaning. Our Bible uses it most frequently to refer to the box in which Moses placed the Tablets of the Law. We preserve this spiritual understanding of “aron” by using the word to refer to the cabinet in our synagogues where we place our Torah scrolls.

Our bodies are like Torah scrolls. They both contain the living word of our living God. As long as we live, that word can be alive in us. When we die and the spirit that carried the word departs from us, our bodies still retain their sanctity. Like a worn-out Sefrei Torah, Torah scrolls, we bury them in the earth. Like a Torah scroll, we place them in an “aron”, a casket. As we lower our physical remains of our loved ones into the earth, we are asked to take up their spiritual legacy and make it our own.

The sages of the Talmud saw Joseph as the example of one who truly embodied Torah. During our ancestor’s forty-year journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, they carried two caskets. One was the ark that contained the Tablets of the Law, the aron ha-edut, above which hovered the Divine Presence, and the other was the coffin that contained Joseph’s remains. The sages envisioned the people who observed our ancestors in their wandering asking, “What is the meaning of these two caskets? According to our sages, our Israelite ancestors replied, “This one is the coffin of a deceased person and that one is the Ark which carries the Shekinah, the Divine Presence.” The onlookers then asked, “But is it proper that a corpse (normally seen as a source of ritual impurity) should move side by side with Shekinah, God’s Presence. To which, our Israelite ancestors replied, “Of course, the body in this “aron”, casket, fulfilled all that is written in that “aron”, that casket. (B. Sota 13a; Mekilta, Be-shallah, Va-yehi, 1)

While none of us can completely fulfill all the teachings of the Torah, as did Joseph in the poetic memory of our ancient teachers, we can, in our own way, make the Torah, the spiritual heritage of Am Yisrael, our own. To the extent that we can do so and let it transform us, we add our voice to the sacred conversation of the Jewish people. In that way, we, like Joseph, have reached our human goal. We have come to embody Torah, we have become part of Torah, and, through Torah, our wisdom and insights endure as part of Israel’s legacy to the coming generations.