Shemot: God and we are both in the process of becoming. We will be what we will be.

Posted on January 8, 2026 by sylviarothschild

When Moses first encounters God he asks for God’s name so as to be able to prove to the Israelites that he did indeed meet their ancestral deity, and God tells him not a name he will understand, but to say “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh – I will be what I will be – tell them Ehyeh sent you to them”

The word Ehyeh is the first person future of the verb ‘to be’, and suggests that God is not a fixed and definable figure, knowable nameable and therefore predictable to human beings, but is rather an evolving, mysterious and dynamic power that is always in process of becoming more than what it was or is. The implication is that God grows and changes through contact with us, just as we grow and change in contact with God.

In the earliest books of the Hebrew bible God is very present – God speaks to individuals, walks with them, appears in our world. Encounters with God are recognised as being what they are, the significance is understood. And while much of the language describing the experience is of necessity quite simple and concrete – walking with, appearing, speaking – signs and wonders, outstretched arms, and so on, the writers of the text knew quite clearly that the real encounter was complex and abstract. There is no language even to begin to paint the sense of the evolving, mysterious and dynamic power which is always in process, always becoming rather than merely being. God may have been revealed to individuals, but making a sensible remembrance of that revelation is beyond the skills of human transmission.

Increasingly it seems to me we are losing the ability to communicate real religious experience as we more and more try to define, describe and explain everything around us, and more and more we seek to explain God. Scriptural literalists take refuge in the minutiae of the meaning of the bible as they read it; secularists scoff at what they see as the inability to transmit coherent systems of understanding; people searching for spiritual depth are put off by the archaisms or anthropomorphisms. How do we get across the reality of our encounters with God, the vibrancy of them, the totality of that transient understanding that has nothing to do with language? How do we begin to recognise God, to recognise the significance of our meetings with God when we have no framework to do so?

Every generation has created its own language for its religious encounters – the rabbis of the Talmud say that there are 70 names for God within the Hebrew bible, and they created many more. The mystics created the name EIN SOF – meaning “the entity without end”. The truth is that even after having called God every possible word, we still would not come close to revealing the mystery of the identity of God. But that doesn’t give us the reason not to try to come closer. Every generation is responsible for understanding God in its own way. If God is truly always becoming as well as always being, then what God is in the process of becoming must have something to do with us and our own evolving, our own developing, our own relationship with God.

If we are serious about our Judaism we have to base ourselves on the understanding that our own process is connected to God’s, the imperative for our continual ‘becoming’ is a reflection of Gods continual ‘becoming’, God is bound up with us and we with God: as God says at Sinai “You will be my people and I will be your God”. There is within such a statement the almost-heresy – if we no longer choose to be God’s people then God will no longer be our God.

For God to work in our world, we have to do God’s work. That we are partners with God in the world, Co-creators with God, is not a pious statement: it is an imperative we should not take lightly. God always ‘is’ regardless of what we do or don’t do, but what God ‘becomes’ is in our hands.

Vayechi: the deathbed blessing that bequeaths the certainty that the people and the land have an indissoluble bond.

Posted on January 1, 2026 by sylviarothschild

Twice in this sidra, Jacob issues instructions about his burial. The first time he speaks to Joseph alone, and the conversation is brief –“Don’t bury me in Egypt, bury me in the family tomb”

“And the time drew near that Israel must die; and he called his son Joseph, and said to him: ‘If now I have found favour in thy sight, put, I pray thee, your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt. But when I sleep with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place.’ And he said: ‘I will do as you ask.’ And he said: ‘Swear to me.’ And he swore it. And Israel bowed down upon the bed’s head. (Genesis 47:29-31)

But when the instruction is repeated shortly before his death, it is done in front of the whole family, and is much more detailed. Nothing is superfluous in biblical text, so what can we learn from this comprehensive deathbed request? Firstly, this final instruction is given to all of his sons, rather than just to Joseph. The language used with Joseph is framed as a request “If I have found favour with you, then please…..” and he then makes a formal ceremony of Joseph’s agreement with the swearing of an oath. With the other sons we have the firmer language of instruction that will – must – be obeyed. But possibly the most important difference is the framing of the two countries, Egypt and Canaan. When Jacob requests Joseph it is to ensure he will not be left in Egypt. When Jacob instructs the brothers about his final journey it is to describe the place in Canaan where he will be brought – given in greater detail than when Abraham bought the land – not only the location of Machpela near Mamre, bought from Ephron the Hittite – but also the clarity of who is buried there – Abraham and Sarah his wife, Isaac and Rebekah his wife. Leah (sadly not described as a wife).

“And he commanded them, and said to them: ‘I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpela, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is therein, which was purchased from the children of Heth.’ And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered unto his people.” (Genesis 49:29-33)

When talking with Joseph, his father treats him carefully – the burial in Canaan is requested briefly, the desire not to be buried in Egypt rather more forceful, but even so the language is that of asking for a kindness from someone who may or may not grant it. What stands out however is the swearing of the oath and the choreography of this event – the placing of the hand under the thigh, the act of swearing that he would fulfil the request. It is reminiscent of the conversation between Abraham and the unnamed elder servant of his household who ruled over his estate: “Abraham was old, advanced in years … and Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of his entire estate, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord … that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites amongst who I live..” (24:1-4)

The two oaths – one to ensure that Isaac did not marry a local Canaanite girl nor leave the land himself, the other to ensure that Jacob would not be buried in the local Egyptian way, but would be returned to the land of his ancestors, resonate with each other. They build into the narrative the primacy of the land that has been promised, the land that will become known as Israel. And at the same time they reject the “other” culture, the local culture of Canaanites or of Egyptians, in favour of the covenantal culture being formed between the people of Israel and God.

Isaac is perceived as being too easily swayed – either by the local pagan tribes should he marry one of their daughters, or that in leaving the land he might never return. Jacob now is concerned that his own children should not themselves be swayed – either into adopting Egyptian traditions or to remain in exile from the land of their ancestors. Joseph, who had left the land as a very young lad, has already married an Egyptian, taken an Egyptian name, and brought two children into the world who might easily become fully identified with Egyptian peoplehood and lose their patrimony. Jacob deals with that by blessing and essentially adopting the boys as his own. The other brothers are in a way more complex – their identity may flow in any direction – and Jacob is determined they will retain their Hebrew identity and connection to the land of Israel. So he describes in detail not only the place for his burial, but echoes the narrative of who bought it and why, who of their forebears is buried there, pressing home the reality that this is their real place, the place to which they must return, and the covenant with God that they must retain.

As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments: (on Genesis 47: 27-29)

“Jacob who had lived seventeen years in Egypt, must have noticed what a powerful influence the “being gripped by the land” (47:27) was beginning to have on his descendants. How they had already begun to see the Jordan in the Nile, and to find in their stay in Egypt no sad exile. This must have made him decide with such ceremonious solemnity the command that they should not bury him in Egypt, but that they should carry him to the land of their old true homeland. It was motive enough for him to say to them: You hope and wish to live in Egypt. I do not wish even to be buried there. This is also why he did not express this wish as Jacob, from his individual personal standpoint, but as “Israel” as bearer of the national mission, as a warning of the national future of his children.”

The metanarrative here is about the identity of the descendants of Jacob – the “Children of Israel”. We take our patronymic not from Abraham or from Isaac, but from this flawed patriarch who struggled with God and with humanity and who prevails. Indeed the very first time the phrase “Children of Israel” is used in bible is within this very narrative at the Ford of Jabok – (Genesis 32:33) explaining the origin of not eating the sinew of the thigh vein because it was there that Jacob was wounded in his night-time struggle.

On his deathbed, Jacob is quite clearly doing all he can to infuse his sons with what we might now call a Jewish identity, to mitigate their Egyptian experience. He both refuses the siren call of Egypt and causes them to look towards the Land of Israel – specifically that land bought by Abraham to bury his wife, land to be part of the family holding in perpetuity. At this point the “Jewish identity” is a national identity – the earliest and deepest forms of our collective identity are not “religious” per se, but connected to land and to peoplehood. We are first and foremost a tribe and have tribal identity and behaviours. A tribe bound together in covenantal relationship with each other and with God, in shared stories and myths, in kinship with a sense of a shared lineage.

It is no accident that the children of Jacob become the exemplar for the twelve tribes of Israel. The first usage where the tribe is named as a tribe is in this sidra, (Genesis 49:16) when Jacob blesses Dan with the words

Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.

דָּ֖ן יָדִ֣ין עַמּ֑וֹ כְּאַחַ֖ד שִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:

With the death of Jacob we come to a pivot in history. The covenant between the patriarchs and God must now be reframed into that between the people and God. The endpoint of the process will be at Sinai, when the formal relationship is sealed with the giving of Torah. And with the last demands of the dying Jacob, the process is set in motion.

The sons of Jacob are a complicated bunch. Born of four different mothers – two full wives whose own sibling rivalry echoes in the text, one deeply loved, the other merely tolerated; and two lesser wives, the servants and surrogates for the sisters. It is a recipe for jealous competition among the offspring of Jacob, who are quarrelsome, violent and antagonistic men. It is clear from the story of the only daughter, Dina, that Jacob has no control over his sons, whose pride and anger are barely contained.

Now here they are in Egypt – having stayed for seventeen years already – dependent on the goodwill of Joseph, the brother so hated that they had plotted fratricide. Yet for all the imbalance of power among the brothers, life was clearly good in a material sense, and there was a clear danger that the brothers were accommodated to the situation and would forget their homeland, and the destiny of the covenantal promise Jacob had betrayed both his own father and twin brother to attain.

The tradition of a deathbed blessing is a powerful one. It is less an act of blessing than a statement of searing honesty, intended to hold the “blessed” to account and to shape their future in the light of their past. As Jacob says “gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what will happen to you in the later days….hear sons of Jacob, listen to Israel your father”

Jacob is manipulating time. He is holding both the past and the future together, setting his sons in both past behaviour and future destiny. He calls them the children of Jacob, and himself Israel their father. As time becomes increasingly fluid and unstructured, what becomes clear is that these men are to be the bridge between what was and what will be, they become less individuals and more exemplars, the covenant will not be passed to a single person but be shared and embodied in the peoplehood, divided into families, households and tribes. Whatever it was he did, it worked. As the book of Exodus opens some four hundred years later, we will find that the Jewish people identify themselves by their tribe as well as by their family name.

Jacob will bequeath the certainty that the people and the land have an indissoluble bond. By rejecting Egyptian burial in favour of being buried with his forebears, he recalibrates the mindset not only of his sons, but of the generations who will follow. They will never forget throughout centuries of slavery that they have a land to which they must return. They will never forget the names of their Hebrew tribe; they will not allow their identities to dissolve or to assimilate into the people among whom they live. Identity politics has been created and sustained. Joseph too will ask for his bones to be taken back home, and hundreds of years later those who rebelled against their slavery in the name of a never forgotten God and with the aim of return to a never forgotten land, will take his remains home with them.

We Jews have retained not only our tribal habits but also our attachment – often without being able to convey exactly why this attachment – to the land of Israel. Sometimes that attachment is expressed in life, sometimes in death. The Talmud already records the traffic in dead bodies being brought for burial in Israel, noting with some irritation that it is better late than never. Religious Judaism as we understand it is a post-biblical phenomenon. The deeper identity we share is a tribal one – we are a people with a shared story that is formed in us and accepted without conscious activity. And our identity shapes how we see the world and how we behave within it.

The deaths of Jacob and Joseph bring to an end the narratives of sibling rivalry that has plagued us since the fratricide of the children of Adam and Eve. And it sets up a different model – not individuals but tribes, no longer patriarchs but people.

The identity politics begun at Jacob’s deathbed are with us still, as are the internal rivalries that fracture but never break the collective. Jacob reminds his sons, and us too, that wherever life takes us and however we live there is an older and deeper identity that is rooted in us and that we must pass on down the generations.

We read in Talmud (Shevuot 39a) “Shekol Yisrael areivim zeh ba’zeh” – the whole Jewish people are considered responsible for each other”. This principle is actually found in two different forms, one “zeh ba’zeh” and one “zeh la’zeh”, leading to interpretations about what else may be understood. We generally accept the rabbinic idea that every individual Jew has responsibility for the moral behaviour of others, but there is another perspective open to us – areivim can mean “to be responsible for” but it also mean “to mix together”. The Jewish people, kol or Klal Yisrael, is a diverse and heterogeneous tribe, with different customs and differing appearances, organised in different families and groupings, the sub-groups mixed sometimes uneasily together. But in spite of our disparate and varied ways we all remain authentic members of the tribe “b’nei Yisrael” – and this is the legacy of Jacob, to whose tribe we all belong.

Haftarah for Vayigash – approaching and confronting – but will it lead to reunification?

Posted on December 26, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Ezekiel, master of metaphors and mystical visions, lived in the days before and after the destruction of the First Temple, and preached to his fellow exiles in Babylon in the early years of the 6th century BCE. They were captives in a foreign country, and they never ceased to hope for an eventual return to their homeland.

The sidra tells us of the reunification of Joseph with his brothers. Ezekiel foretells that the ten lost tribes will be reunited with the tribe of Judah, which, with Benjamin, had formed the southern kingdom. As we know, history did not bear out Ezekiel’s hope. The Northern Kingdom disappeared into the mists of history, and we Jews – Yehudim – are so called because we are the inheritors of Judah – Yehudah. Yet still we retain Ezekiel’s text, the story of his vision, because we see that it bears more than one interpretation, that the united Israel is more than the physical bringing together of the 12 tribes, but is the spiritual coming together of those who have held on to the vision, who are gathered in by being united in a return to covenant with God.

The sidra begins with the words “Then Judah came near to him”. This meeting between Judah and Joseph, and the dialogue which followed it, marks one of the most dramatic incidents in the whole narrative of the children of Jacob, the forefathers of the tribes of Israel, until their exile into Egypt. The midrashic literature makes a great deal of this drawing near, and the meeting is used as the model of the later interpretational rule that ‘the histories of the ancestors are the paradigm for the children’. Hundreds of years before the historic national events, here in vayigash we have recorded a confrontation between the tribe of Judah, (who settled in the Southern Kingdom,) and what would later be known as the kingdom of Israel, the ten tribes led by the tribe of Ephraim, Joseph’s son – and in this version in Genesis the confrontation ends with reconciliation.

It is curious that the haftarah chosen for this portion is that of Ezekiel’s vision of unification of the two kingdoms that existed in the land of Israel, for while one can read the text at its face value as being a reflection of the reunification of Joseph and his brothers, it is open also to reflecting on that reunification as superficial and temporary. Just as one could make the case that there was never a single state in which all the tribes came together as one easy unity, but that instead there was always some resistance to merger, so too one could read that the approaching of Judah and Joseph remained just that – a coming closer without the final step which would have brought about true shalom, completion.

There are those who say that even at the earliest time of a nation state, during the days of David and Solomon, there were effectively already two separate kingdoms under a joint king who ruled both, (Y. Leibowitz) so that immediately after Solomon’s death the formal partition was inevitable. So how then, if we see the two stories as intimately linked and commenting on each other, do we read of the approaching, the confrontation and the meeting of Joseph and Judah in Egypt, of what was really happening for the forefathers of the two kingdoms?

Ezekiel prophesied after both the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom and the tribes who lived in Judah had already been exiled. His vision was that the two nations would return, and that this joint experience would somehow forge the full unification which had never quite taken place. Jeremiah, his contemporary, foretold in a very emotional style the return of the ten tribes, and of course, there were Hosea and Amos, Northern prophets who foretold the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, who also added their view that in the future Israel would return. We know all of these visions did not materialize in fact. And I think that we cannot reconcile this knowledge by accepting the midrashic view that prophesies that have not yet been fulfilled must be in abeyance, ready to be fulfilled at the end of days. Surely we must accept that the ten tribes, including the descendants of Joseph, were destroyed from the face of the earth, assimilated into other peoples, spiritually erased. Even in Talmudic times Rabbi Akiva stated that “the ten tribes will not return”. Even then he knew that they were lost.

But the fact that the prophecies didn’t happen needn’t undermine our understanding in the prophetic tradition, for the truth is that Jewish prophecy isn’t about fortune telling, but about what will occur if we carry on the way we are doing, or else what ideally should happen – as the Tosafot says “No prophet foretells but what ought to occur, if there is no sin”.

Judah approaches Joseph, comes closer. There is confrontation and there is meeting. One can read the text so that the meeting was a papering over the cracks; or one can read the text to see that the meeting was profound. Certainly it had the potential to be either. The haftarah leaves us with tantalizing hints – Ezekiel prophesying the reunification of the tribes which descended from Judah and from Joseph, should it be a superficial reunification or a will it be a complete one?

One can look at the sidra and the haftarah either way – either there is hope that even after a series of almost murderous problems with each other, the family of Jacob can come together in peace and harmony, approach each other and meet at a fundamental level; or that there has never been a true unity within the Jewish people, that we have always operated a model of dynamic tension, of coming closer but never actually merging. That doesn’t have to be hopeless of course; It could be said that it is the inbuilt diversity of such a model that actually allowed us to survive all of this time. But wouldn’t it change our perception of ourselves if we acknowledged it, that we have no one orthodoxy, there is no one form of the Jewish people, that we thrive on the antagonisms within our structures.

Our great prophets foretold events that never historically happened. Our midrashic literature relocated those events to some mythical end of days, when all problems will be solved and unity will be achieved. We could use our prophetic tradition as a guide to remind us that whatever our differences, our ideals remain – it is that matrix of ideas and beliefs which support us on our continuing journey in Judaism, that blend of varieties of vision which keep us aware of the significance of our journey.

Zot Chanukah

Posted on December 20, 2025 by sylviarothschild

The 8^th day of Chanukah, is the only day of the festival that is given its own particular name: Zot Chanukah, which means “This is Chanukah” . This special name for the last day of Chanukah is taken from the Torah reading from the end of Parashat Naso that emphatically announces ZOT CHANUKAT HA-MIZBEI’ACH – this is the dedication of the altar. But why is a special name given to just one day of the festival, and why to the very last one?

Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, suggested that it may have been given in case one might think that Chanukah should only be celebrated seven days, since the single flask of oil found by the Maccabees was sufficient for one day, and therefore the miraculous illumination was really only for seven days. The eighth day we celebrate could be understood then as a calendrical correction in case the commencing date was wrong, and not concerned with the miracle upon which our Chanukah is predicated. This, he said, is why the eighth day is called “ZotChanukah“ – “This is Chanukah“ – to emphasize that it is an actual day of the eight-day celebration and not merely a day celebrated because of ambiguity in the calendar as other festivals sometimes have extra days added.

Zot Chanukah: This is Chanukah. The 8th day of Chanukah issignificant. Being the last night and because of the ruling of Hillel that we increase in holiness and therefore add a candle each day of the festival, rather than starting with 8 and decreasing the candles, the eighth day gives us the brightest outpouring of light – in effect the eighth day is the essence of the holiday – the illumination of faith in the darkness of fear.

Much has been written about the significance of the number eight – and it is generally based on the idea of it being 7 plus one. The number seven signifies completion / perfection. Shabbat is the seventh day of the week; Creation took seven days to complete, so seven is the mystical number of wholeness and perfection in tradition. The number 8 is therefore said to transcend the realm of this mundane and physical world and allude to the exalted and holy. In the natural world, time is based on a seven-day week and according to mystical tradition by sheva kochavei lechet – the seven orbital planets but God transcends all this, and therefore the number eight represents God’s Holiness. The power of 8 is one beyond the completion often implied by the number 7 in our tradition. 8 is one more, beyond the limits of time, signifying the presence of God, whose light is ever present in this world.

According to the teachings of Kabbalah and Hasidism, this day is the final “seal” of the High Holiday season of Yom Kippur, and is considered a time to repent out of love for God. In this spirit, many Hasidic Jews wish each other G’mar chatimah tovah (“may you be sealed totally for good”), a traditional greeting for the Yom Kippur season and it is taught in Hasidic and Kabbalistic literature that this day is particularly auspicious for the fulfilment of prayers.

Zot Chanukah, the eighth day of special holiness, is a day that goes over and above the usual span of time The phrase “Zot Chanukah” can be translated as “this is dedication”. But at the same time as it reminds us that while every day of life is miraculous, even the mundane days of ordinary work or unexciting activities, it also points out that above and beyond these days there can be yet another miracle, one which is achieved by living as best we can, with persistence and determination, and our going over and above what we might otherwise offer.

Vayeshev

Posted on December 11, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Our Parashah is “bookended” with stories about dreams; both stories featuring Joseph as the central character. At the end of our Parashah, we are told about Joseph’s success in the prison of the court of Egypt – and of his insightful explanation of the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners: Each of the two men – the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison – had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own. When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected. So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so sad today?” “We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” (gen 40:5-8)

Dreams appear in the book of Genesis on a number of occasions. The first dreamer is almost incidental to the narrative, when Avimelech King of Gerar (Gen 20:3-7) is warned by God in a dream to return Abraham’s wife to him after he has taken her for himself when Avraham had said that Sarah was his sister in a bid to save his own life. The next dreamer is Jacob who dreams twice, the first time when leaving the land as a young boy afraid for his future, and his dream of the ladder with angels ascending and descending and the presence of God comforting him with the declaration that God would be with him and stay with him until his return to this land. The second dream while he is still with Laban but aware that the tide of hospitality is turning and he must return to the land. (Gen 31:10-13). After this God appears to Laban in a dream (31:24) in order to warn him not to attack Jacob who has prospered greatly at Laban and the family’s expense.

Within the Joseph narratives, there are three couplets of dreams. Joseph as a young boy dreaming of both the sheaves of corn and of the stars all bowing down to him; the dreams of the butler and the baker, servants of Pharaoh, And finally the two dreams of Pharaoh himself. Each of these dreams contains a message about the future, and seem to be dependent on interpretation in a way that the earlier dreams do not.

Joseph is confident about his ability to explain their dreams – and that confidence is quickly validated, as each of his explanations is played out in Pharaoh’s court. The butler is restored to his position and the baker is hanged. (40:21-22)

Where did Joseph get this confidence; indeed, where did he get the ability to interpret dreams? The earlier dream sequence in the beginning of our Parashah, involving Joseph, posits Joseph not as a dream interpreter; rather, as the dreamer. His brothers and father are the ones who make inferences from his dreams – but he just reports them. When did he learn how to explain dreams?

And why does the butler “finally” remember Joseph and report his successful dream interpretation abilities to Pharaoh. This ability will lead not only to Joseph’s rise to greatness (as a result of his explanation of Pharaoh’s dreams), but ultimately to our terrible oppression and slavery in Egypt. (See BT Shabbat 10b)

Dreams can bring about powerful events. As Bradley Artson wrote, ‘our lives are made full by dreams” “Aspirations for a better tomorrow, hopes for a world of peace and plenty, of inclusion and freedom, of spirit and dance – these hopes keep us alive and help us to live our lives with purpose. Were it not for our dreams, the world would be too narrow and too cold to contain us. As Theodor Herzl observed, “Every creed of man was once a dream.” Or, to use more religious language, Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi exults, “A dream brought me into the sanctuaries of God.”

Through our dreams, we imagine a world worthy of our efforts and responsive to our needs. Through our dreams, we preview ourselves heroic, as larger than life in bringing that better tomorrow today. Dreams offer dress rehearsals for the reality yet to be.

Yet precisely because dreams provide a chance to see ourselves as significant, to view our contributions as substantial, they can also become vessels for our ambition, and sources of jealousy to those in whom we confide. Such was the case for Joseph and his brothers. “

Joseph’s dreams may well have been prophecy. They may well also have embodied the sibling rivalry between him and his older brothers. He was, after all, ben zekunim, the child of his father’s old age, and therefore a favoured child. He was certainly the child of the favoured wife. His dreams and the way he presented them to his brothers were offensive to them, and quite rightly so. The brothers were offended not so much by the dream itself as by the apparent cause for this dream. They clearly thought that Joseph must be thinking about his takeover of the family so much that these thoughts have entered his dreams. Jewish tradition knew early on that not all dream was prophecy, but that it may be the expression of what we today would describe as subconscious desires and repressed urges. So for example the Talmud (Berachot 56a) records two incidents where the local (non-Jewish) governor challenged one of our Sages to predict the content of his dreams of the coming night. In each case, the Sage described a detailed and horrific dream – which so preoccupied the governor that he did indeed dream about it that night.

So the brothers must have thought at first that the dream was an expression of Joseph’s ambition, and they rightly would have hated him for that. But why did they keep silent at the second dream? There was a tradition that although a single dream may be caused by internal thoughts and ruminations, if that same dream (or the same “message” clothed in alternate symbolism) occurs twice, it is no longer a happenstance – it is truly God’s word. We find this approach explicitly stated by Joseph when he explains Pharaoh’s doubled dream:

The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon. (Bereshit 41:32)

So to return to Joseph in the Egyptian prison, when he learned that both butler and baker had experienced significant and terrifying dreams in the same night, he understood that these were more than dreams. Just like a dream that occurs twice to the same person is more than a dream, similarly, if two men sharing a fate have impactful dreams on the same night, their dreams must be divine messages.

His response: Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams – is not presumptuous. He was telling them that their dreams were more than “just dreams” – they were in the province of God and, as such, would not need sophisticated interpretation (as is the case with a subconscious-based dream). They would be fairly easy to understand – as indeed they were. Joseph earned his reputation as an interpreter of dreams – and his ultimate freedom and final rise to power by remembering the lesson from his father’s house – that the “doubled dream” is a mark of prophecy, and by applying it intelligently years later in Egypt. This is what gave him the confidence to interpret first for the butler and baker and then for Pharaoh himself.

Joseph’s dreams were easy to read, and they did of course, ultimately come true when his brothers were forced to bow down to him upon soliciting food in Egypt. But we should never forget the pain that was caused by his telling of them, and the circumstances that were set in motion because of that pain.

We too may have our dreams and our visions, and see them as being somehow stamped with the approval of the Almighty. But we, like Joseph, should take the time to see our dreams from a different perspective, to look at how they look through the eyes of others. For what may appear to us as a deservedly great reward may seem to other parties involved as conquest, exploitation, or marginalization. We need to strive for a God’s eye view, in which how our dreams appear to others can be factored into the unfolding of the dream into a more welcoming reality. Because our dreams don’t have to pan out exactly for them to come true, and we certainly have a role to play in bringing them forth. As we begin chanukah we should remember not only the dreams of the Maccabees, but the dreams of all who yearn for self determination and religious and national autonomy,

Bradley Artson wrote that “A world without dreams is too small for the human soul. But a world in which our dreams are projected onto the world without making room for each other is too brutal. Ultimately, Joseph and his brothers learn to bring each other into their dreams, recognizing that the greatest dream of all is the one God dreams for us all: “On that day, all will be one, and God’s name: One.”

Toledot

Posted on November 20, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Parashat Toledot is the one time that we focus on the life of the adult Isaac. His parents, Abraham and Sarah are dead and buried. He is married to Rebecca, whom his father’s servant has brought back from their ancestral homeland for this purpose. He is in love with her and faithful to her and she is apparently barren. So Isaac entreats God on her behalf and she conceives his children Jacob and Esau, twins whose struggle begins even in the womb. Isaac is set up to follow his father, and to become the Patriarch of the next generation – a man who speaks to God and is heard by God, who is the head of a large household and the father of sons. One would expect now that the stories of this new Patriarch would take us further into our history, give us new aspects to consider. And this does happen, but in a somewhat unusual fashion.

Following the birth of the children and the parental choices that will forever mark the relationship of Esau and Jacob, Isaac and Rebecca go on to repeat the journey taken by Abraham and Sarah. They go to escape the effects of famine just as Abraham and Sarah did, but theirs is not simply a physical journey – by virtue of the repetition something extra happens and defines the process by which Isaac becomes himself. Isaac and Rebecca have almost the exact same experience in the same city of Gerar as did his parents, Abraham and Sarah, and its effect creates something quite new.

The famine is described to us as being a famine Bilvad hara’av harishon asher haya bimei Avraham – not the same famine as before, that happened in the days of Abraham, so we are already conscious once more of the journey that Abraham took in his response to the famine. On this journey however, God appears and warns Isaac not to leave the land, not to follow his father’s example and go to Egypt.

Isaac goes to Abimelech, the king of the philistines, in Gerar, according to tradition the very same Abimelech that Abraham and Sarah encountered all those years before. There he tells king Abimelech that Rebecca is his sister and not his wife, just as Abraham had done with Sarah in Genesis, chapter 20. Of course this caused problems in both cases as the king was taken with first Sarah and later Rebecca. Abimelech is very upset when he discovers that these women are none other than wives, not sisters. Can this really be the same king? one would have thought would have learned his lesson! But that is exactly what this week’s parasha is about. Lessons learned and lessons not learned; encountering the same thing again and again, and responding to it differently or not.

We see this story as a slightly weak repetition of the Abraham stories, and might be led into thinking of Isaac as somehow a weak and uncreative man. He is indeed often described as being the middle link, the son of a famous father and father of a famous son who himself has no claim to fame except as the link between the two. But we can look at this story in yet another way. We might see that Isaac, as patriarch of the next generation, must first walk in the footsteps of his father in order to make his journey grounded. He has to plumb the depths of his father’s experiences in order to move on and to make meaning for himself and his family, develop the traditions of his growing tribe. When confronted with similar moments in time, the choices that Isaac will make will not only shape him but shape generations to come. He has lessons to learn. Will Isaac learn from these lessons? Will he miss them and miss how they relate to incidents in his own life? And how will we, the readers, know?

Though Isaac may once have fled from a father he may have feared, (after the Akedah on the mountain top Isaac is not mentioned as returning with is father and we later see him come together with Ishmael to bury Abraham – neither of them seem to have had an adult experience with Abraham the patriarch), he now meets him in a different way, by re-living similar experiences.

We learn about our ancestors when we have to grapple with similar decisions and incidents. We gain valuable insights into who they were and their character. What we could not understand as children or earlier in our lives, we understand differently when placed in similar situations. It is often only when we become parents that we understand better the feelings our parents must have had toward us. Only when we have to bury a parent or care for a sick spouse that we truly understand what an earlier generation must have gone through.

This repetition of the story of Abimelech and the wives/sisters is a vital requirement for Isaac if he is to grow into being his own person, no longer overshadowed by his father. By reliving some of the major events in the story of his father’s life, he will have to respond to many similar choices.

Isaac was almost sacrificed on the altar by his father in response to the command of God. His father apparently was fulfilling a divine call. Isaac will do the same to his son Esau when he gives Jacob the blessing even as he senses that Jacob is masquerading as Esau. And though Isaac won’t literally hold a knife over Esau’s head, he will sacrifice him and his future in a different way. Sometimes we repeat our parent’s mistakes; sometimes we are able to amend them. Sometimes we repeat our own mistakes, sometimes we are able to learn from them.

The sedra concludes with Rebecca helping Jacob to receive the blessing by apparently deceiving the blind and dying Isaac. It is never clear quite whether she does so because she remembers the divine prophecy about the older child serving the younger when her pregnancy was so painful she too enquired of God; it is never clear if this prophecy was the reason she so favoured her son Jacob over her son Esau. But it is clear that she will act to achieve the succession for her favoured younger son Jacob, just as her mother in law Sarah acted in order to achieve the succession for her child, Abraham’s younger son Isaac.

With the help of the manipulation and skills of his mother, by the end of the sidra the focus is on Jacob, who has received the blessing of the heir from his father. Esau returns from his mission to get something special for his dying father and cries out in terrible pain “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too Father (27:36). He receives a blessing from his father which is perhaps more than Ishmael ever did, but not the blessing he so craved.

When we look at these stories of Isaac acting out the life of his more colourful and confident and arrogant father we see that Isaac does indeed walk in his father’s footsteps, and not only as a pale shadow. We see that Isaac was his father’s son, able to understand more about his father than perhaps he realized, able to repair some of the mistakes at least a little.

As we read his story in Toledot, maybe it will cause us to reflect a bit about ourselves, for perhaps all of us walk in our parents’ footsteps more than we would like to acknowledge, and maybe we have a chance to repair some of the damage done, rather than pass it on to the next generation.

Chayei Sarah – the lives of Sarah the matriarch

Posted on November 13, 2025 by sylviarothschild

“V’hayu chayei Sara meah shanah vesrim shana v’sheva shanim, shenei hayei Sarah. Vatamot Sarah b’kiryat arbah hi Hevron b’eretz Canaan, v’yavo Avraham lispod l’sarah v’livkotah. Vayakom Avraham me’al pnei meito”

And the life of Sarah was a hundred years and twenty years and seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriat-arba–the same is Hebron–in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to eulogise Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and spoke unto the children of Het”

Sarah, the first Jewish matriarch, is last seen in bible having given birth to Isaac through a divine intervention when both she is in her nineties and Abraham is a hundred. We see Isaac named – unusually – by his father, and circumcised at the age of 8 days old, as required by God. We hear Sarah say: ‘God has made me a laughing stock; every one that hears will laugh on account of me.’ And then: ‘Who would have said to Abraham, that Sarah should be able to feed a child? For I have borne him a son in his old age.’ And then on the day Isaac celebrates his weaning feast, Sarah, seeing Ishmael (the son born to Abraham through her own intervention in offering her Egyptian maid Hagar to him, in order to provide a child for Abraham so that God’s promise is fulfilled), recognised the threat Ishmael poses to his younger half brother, and tells Abraham’ Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.’ Abraham is upset but does not speak to Sarah – instead he goes to God who tells him “Let it not be grievous in your sight because of the lad, and because of your bondwoman; in all that Sarah says to you listen to her voice; for through Isaac shall your descendants be called.”

After that, we never hear the voice of Sarah again. Instead we have the two terrible stories of Abraham sending off his older son Ishmael into the wilderness to what he must believe is likely death, and then taking his second son Isaac up a mountain, to what he must again believe is likely death. And then we have a genealogical list which takes us to Rebecca the daughter of Betuel the nephew of Abraham through his brother Nahor. The next thing we hear is that Sarah is dead, that she has been living not at Beer Sheva with her husband but in Hevron, and that Abraham comes to eulogise her and to weep for her, before getting on with the practicalities of arranging a funeral.

What happens to Sarah in between her arranging for the removal of Ishmael, the person she saw as a threat to the wellbeing of Isaac her son, and the death as reported in bible? Where is the voice of the woman who has been a powerful presence up till now, a formidable partner for Abraham, a true incarnation of what the bible calls the ‘ezer k’negdo’ – a help who is equal and powerfully separate from her husband? Was Sarah’s death somehow related to what nearly happened to Isaac? And was that related to the choice she forced on to Abraham to remove a much beloved son from his household? Had she already removed herself from the household when Abraham went to offer Isaac on a mountain top?

We do know that Sarah is not herself party to what turns out to be the most important decision of her life. Abraham does not discuss with her the test he sees God as having set him. There is indeed a huge irony working in that once Abraham is told “in all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice”, we never hear her voice again. But what does her silence tell us? And what can we learn from the powerful absence we feel?

Sarah’s death is told us in the context of her life – indeed the Hebrew tells us clearly that her life was full and complex – the literal translation of the first verse would be “and the lives of Sarah were a hundred years, and twenty years and seven years, these are the years of the lives of Sarah.” And Jewish tradition takes from this the learning that a full life is made up of a number of separate strands, all of equal value though not all of equal length. So one might read this description as being that most of her adult life was as a barren woman, wife to a man who had been promised descendants. She then had a shorter period as a mother, and another short period living separately from her child. Each of these lives helped to define her, each was a fully experienced era, and the fact they were of unequal length is irrelevant in terms of the value of each life she lived.

Sarah was clearly a formidable woman. Any view that women in the bible were somehow simply adjuncts to their menfolk cannot be sustained in the face of any of our matriarchs, but it is Sarah who sets the pattern. She is named as an equal figure in the story of the travelling from Ur of the Chaldees with her husband – and from this text Sarah emerges in the Talmud and Midrash as an equal partner with her husband in God’s work, and a prophetess in her own right. She is described as someone who worked alongside Abraham to build up his wealth and “acquire souls” in Haran, where they stopped off before going to Canaan (Gen 12:5). She is the woman who intervened in order to bring what she thought was God’s promise to fulfilment – When she cannot have children, Sarah takes the initiative and gives her maid-servant, Hagar, to Abraham so that he can have children through Hagar on Sarah’s behalf. She is the woman who is taken – apparantly willingly – into the households of both Pharaoh and Abimelech in order to protect her husband, and then quickly released again untouched, and with compensatory wealth. Sarah acts independently on a number of occasions, taking the initiative to decide the future of her family, even against her husband’s wishes.

The modern scholar Tikvah Frymer-Kensky argues that although the Bible portrays a patriarchal social structure, it has a gender-neutral ideology. The women in the Bible may be socially subordinate but not essentially inferior; they have strong, independent personalities, and they often act to guide the course of events. So when Sarah gives Hagar to Abraham she is keeping ancient Near Eastern tradition. We have evidence of three ancient Near Eastern marriage contracts stating that if the wife remains barren after a specified number of years, she gives her husband her slave to have children on her behalf. On her behalf note, not simply for him.

Another scholar Carol Meyers applied insights from sociology, anthropology, and archaeology to reconstruct the ordinary women’s place within Israelite society in various periods of biblical history. She argues that when agricultural work and childbearing, two spheres in which women played an active role, were central to biblical society, social and religious life in ancient Israel was relatively egalitarian. Only when the political state and the monarchy emerged, and religious life was institutionalized in the Temple cult and priestly bureaucracy (beginning in the tenth century B.C.E.), were women increasingly excluded from the public arena and lost access to communal authority. Sarah then is from a period when women were able to be active in society and in determining how the family should operate, and we can see forcefully how she does this in a number of stories about her.

But however powerful she was in the prime of her life, in old age and with the added vulnerability of parenthood, Sarah found herself less able to voice her ideas. With the birth of Isaac she gained a new role and meaning for herself, but she also became more aware of her own mortality and vulnerability. So when God tests Abraham, seeming to require him to take the so beloved child of Abraham and Sarah and offer him on a mountain top. Is Sarah’s absence because she knows that this is happening and cannot stop it? Oris it a result of her shame at the treatment of Ishmael and desire to move away. Or is it something different – to do maybe with having now become a parent she no longer has the relationship with Abraham she once did. From being a tight unit they are now a family of three and having to adjust to the demands of another person in the relationship.

We cannot know what causes Sarah’s voice to fall quiet in the text. Whether it is protection of her that she does not have to be party to this most horrible test of faith or punishment for what happened to Ishmael. But what we can know is that in this final life of the lives of Sarah, she has struck out alone and left her husband behind. She is, once more a woman of strength, no appendage to her husband but living alone and with some status in Hebron.

When the last of Sarah’ lives are over and Abraham hears of her death, he comes to Hebron in order to fulfil the requirements of family and religion. And it is interesting what he does and the order in which he does them. He first come ‘lispod’ then liv’kotah and finally to buy a burial place and perform the funerary rites.

The first thing he does is “lispod” to give a Hesped – in effect a eulogy. He tells the stories of Sarah, who she was, what she did, how she lived her life in its many parts.

Only then does he mourn her through his weeping – livkotah. And then he gets up from before her dead body and takes on the practicalities of the living – to make a funeral for her, to perform the rites of burying the dead and then to go back into life. I can’t help wondering as I read this chapter whether the very first verse is indeed the hesped – that Abraham actually said “these are the lives of Sarah, who lived a hundred years and twenty years and seven years – three different and distinct lives all of which should be honoured, and which may have been of different lengths but are most certainly of equal and complete value.”

Vayera – we may not see the full picture, but that doesn’t mean we should not act on what we see.

Posted on November 6, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Parashat Vayera is packed with stories, a veritable smorgasbord of the founding myths of Judaism. Within it there is the story of Abraham and Sarah, now very elderly, still wondering exactly how the promise of God’s covenant with them is going to work out. The heir designate Lot had separated from them after a struggle over wealth and space with Abraham and his herdsmen, even though he had been with their household since the whole family were still in Ur Kasdim, after the death of his own father and the brother of Abram – Haran.

Sarah has organised for Ishmael to be born to Abraham via a surrogate, Hagar, but clearly that relationship is not one of ease and joy and it is not certain that Ishmael will indeed be the inheritor of the particular Abrahamic covenant. Now, Abraham having circumcised himself and his son Ishmael at the end of the sidra last week, we have the story of the mysterious visitors to Abraham and Sarah, and this elderly couple being told they will have a child within the year. Sarah in particular is clear that this prophecy is ridiculous – she is post menopausal and Abraham 99 years old. However Isaac IS born in this sidra, and then we have the story of the jealousy and anxiety of Sarah who tries to protect her son Isaac from the previous presumptive heir Ishmael. We have the story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away to fend for themselves. We have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed after the bartering of Abraham for the city to be saved does not go low enough for God to have to save it. And we have the story of the binding of Isaac and the grim reality that the relationship between father and son is broken forever.

So many stories, so many themes and threads. The most important maybe is the creating of the links in order to allow continuation of the covenant; then there is the theme of the treatment of women – Abraham using Sarah as a shield once again to save his own life, and claiming that she is his sister rather than his wife. And Hagar, used to supply a child and then once that child is seen as unwanted and maybe even a threat, sent off to probable death in the wilderness. And finally the women surrounding Lot, in particular his two unmarried daughters who are offered to the angry mob at door of the family home, in place of the visitors who have come to his house. Lot seems prepared to sacrifice his children, as of course Abraham appears to be prepared to do in relation to both his sons.

All these themes and threads fill the sidra, but there is one theme that we find resonates in modern life more than most.

Vayera also deals with challenging authority — not just authority in general, but the ultimate authority – that of God. And it also deals with what happens when authority is NOT challenged, when people just go along with what is happening.

The most famous example of the challenge to authority is the bartering that Abraham engages with God, who, when God decided he should include Abraham in his plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah since Abraham is designated the one in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, is appalled that the “innocent would be swept away with the wicked” and asks “shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?”

Much is made of Abraham’s challenging God’s authority, negotiating from 50 righteous people, five at a time, until he gets down to ten – a minyan – and God seems to quickly retreat at this point. Abraham, who has so much to lose if he loses God’s favour, still stands up for his values – justice and mercy, righteousness and decency. We model ourselves on his willingness to take on even the divine creator, seeing ourselves as Abraham’s descendants, who are willing to make a stand for morality, no matter who is the adversary. We do not see ourselves as people who submit thoughtlessly, but who need to have reason and rationale in order to follow a particular ruling or expectation. Faith without reason or understanding is not a stable Jewish position, even if we are willing to take on something as a matter of faith ab initio – famously we quote the descendants of Abraham at Sinai – na’aseh v’nishma – we will do it, and then we will gain understanding.

We also find Abraham challenging Sarah’s imperative that he must get rid of Hagar and Ishmael – that they cannot be allowed to be near her son as he grows up. Abraham here does not challenge Sarah, but he does go and challenge her demand to God. And God’s answer is clear. What Sarah tells him to do, he must do. And so, without further ado, though clearly with a heavy heart, Abraham gets up early in the morning, gives Hagar and Ishmael provisions, and sends them into the wilderness with no clear destination.

And so we slide into the time when Abraham offers no challenge to authority at all – when God tells him to take his son, his only son, the one he loves, and offer him on a mountain some days journey away. The Akedah can be read as either seeing Abraham as being a lonely man of total faith, upon whose full obedience to even the most dreadful demands of God we see ourselves provided with a powerful role model and also the zechut, the reward, of the religious Jew. Or else we can read it as a terrible failure of Abraham to challenge the divinity that looks to him to provide a balance in the relationship between Creator and created – a man who having started out challenging God on behalf of the moral imperative of protecting the vulnerable and innocent, whoever they may be – somehow lost his nerve when it came to protecting his own son, after his protest on behalf of Ishmael was brushed aside.

We see other instances here in this sidra about people not challenging the prevailing authority. Hagar for instance is not recorded as protesting at all at her treatment, though one could read through the text in order to hear her protest to God. Ishmael is not recorded as protesting his treatment, though God – as predicted by his name – in fact hears the boy. Lot does not seem to protest at either the appalling behaviour of the mob when they find he has guests in his house – indeed he panders to them by offering his unmarried daughters to placate them. And he does not protest when his wife challenges the authority by looking back at the city where they have left their older children and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot takes his lack of protest even further by abdicating from responsibility at all – he simply gets so drunk he is unaware of the rather unorthodox actions of his younger daughters in order to repopulate the world, and seems unaware too of the people who are the results of these drunken encounters. Only Isaac shows some desire to challenge when, walking up the mountain with firewood and knife, he asks his father about the whereabouts of the sacrifice they will presumably be making. The answer he gets – “God will provide, my son”, is ambiguous but also unanswerable. How is the young boy going to challenge his father’s apparently certain faith? One feels for the boy whose question could have provided his father with a platform for dissidence against an unfair test, but instead is used to close down just such an activity.

With the hugely powerful example of Abraham arguing with God, not just once but repeatedly, and God gently ceding to Abraham’s argument, why then do we have so many other examples of either half hearted or simply non existent challenge to authority? Is bible warning us that it may feel too hard to challenge? or is it reminding us that even Abraham fell prey to the uncertainty and self doubt that can undermine us all? Is it warning us what happens if we do not challenge unfair dictats from those in authority, having reminded us that such a challenge is actually welcomed by God?

What we know is that all those who do not take it upon themselves to challenge immoral and unacceptable behaviours do not ultimately profit. Sarah, having disposed of Hagar’s son, finds her own son in the firing line. Lot offering his daughters to a mob ends up in an incestuous union with them, bringing about the historic enemies of Israel, Moab and Ammonites. Abraham, not challenging God about Isaac, never speaks to either of them again. Isaac, having half-tried, remains somehow personally maimed in his own confidence and leadership skills.

The word “Vayera” with which the sedra begins means “And he appeared” – We are told clearly that God appeared to Abraham, though immediately we look through Abraham’s eyes and we see not God, but three strangers visiting. Appearances may be deceptive, may not be the full picture. But they are all we have, and we must respond to them. The truth may be more complex than we see, but that is no excuse to plead ignorance and to not react.

In our world we see only a partial view, yet even that must be responded to with immediacy rather than delay. We see great deal that is immoral, that is improper, that is unacceptable. Vulnerable people of all kinds are taken advantage of or left to survive without proper resources. Our environment is plundered and damaged. Racism is on the march once more, xenophobia is evolving a new framework and vocabulary.

We must act whole-heartedly to challenge the abuses of power that we can see. and stand up and challenge them however frightening that may feel, or however we might undermine ourselves with the sense that we can’t know the whole story, that we should wait for some imagined clarity to explain what we see. Then maybe we too will become part of the narrative for good, fighting for the moral virtues of justice and righteousness, of mercy and compassion. And the one thing we know is that God, when challenged, responds positively. There is nothing to wait for, as Hillel said, “if not now, when?”

Lech Lecha – the covenants of peoplehood and land

Posted on October 30, 2025 by sylviarothschild

After giving a talk at a Muslim interfaith forum, entitled “One God, one humanity, many religions” I was asked after it by a group of interested young Muslim men – What makes the Jews Jewish? Christianity they understood, Islam they understood, but Judaism – what makes Jews Jewish?

What gives us our special identity and our difference is the way we see our relationship with God, the understanding we have of being in a relationship of Covenant. The contract/covenant we have with God is unbreakable, however many times we don’t keep to the rules, however many times we transgress. The covenant we have with God is always there, it is inescapable, it defines us and creates the parameters of our religious identity. We know of it, we live with it day in and day out, but I don’t think that any of us can say that we really understand it.

The bible contains within its narrative many different sorts of covenant. Already there has been a covenant with Noach, and one with all of humanity – defined through the sign of the rainbow. This sidra, Lech lecha, sets the scene for some of the specifically Jewish ones. Brit milah, the covenant of circumcision and more puzzlingly the “Brit bein habetarim” the covenant of the pieces.

God appeared to Abraham seven times in his career, and put him to the test, made demands, held our promises and endowed him with the blessings of land and of descendants. The fourth appearance, the middle one of the revelations, was different from those that came before and those that followed it – it came in the form of a vision.

This vision begins with God telling Avram not to fear, that God will be his shield, that he will ultimately have a great reward – but immediately we are into a problem – what is it that God thinks that Avram fears?

Only AFTER the divine reassurance does Avram speak, asking what of worth could God possibly give him, seeing that he has no child of his own to be his heir. His question is answered – his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven. God is the redeeming God who has brought him out, who will give him a new land to inherit. But Avram has another question – “how will I KNOW that I will inherit it?”

Maybe this second question is too much for God – although that statement may itself be a heresy. Whatever the reason for it, we are suddenly plunged into a difficult and obscure text. We don’t even know if the vision is the framework, or if Avram is operating in the physical world when, under divine instruction, he takes a three year old heifer, a three year old she-goat and a three year old ram, and two birds – a turtle dove and a young pigeon, and apparently slaughters all the animals, dividing each of the three animals in half, laying each half over against the other, and when the birds of prey come as they naturally would, Avram drives them away. What is the symbolism of three? Three animals, each three years old? And of the six parts as each of the three is halved? And what of the two, the birds who are untouched?

The vision deepens into a tardema– the kind of magical sleep that happened to Adam in the Garden of Eden during which Eve was created. And for a second time Avram hears the promise that he will be a father of a great nation, and also that the nation will know suffering, although not in his own lifetime. And then the covenant is ratified as a smoking furnace and a flaming torch, symbols we can only assume of the presence of God, passed between the pieces.

We don’t see Avram wake up as we saw Adam awake and meet his companion. We don’t know how Avram interpreted his vision, who he told, how it altered him. We are left only with a description, a sense of deep symbolism, an awareness that while the human side of the covenant is still unclear, God is obligated by the event. Just as with the covenant with Noah God is obligated but nothing is demanded of humankind. The later covenants don’t work like this – the Brit is generally dependent on Israel’s faithfulness to God, but here in the early covenants with humankind the remarkable fact is that they are unconditional, they demonstrate entirely selfless love given by a God who is prepared to be faithful and unchanging when responding to humankind.

The true symbolism of the covenant of the pieces is lost in the mists of the past, although we can intuit a reasonable amount of understanding. The three sets of three – a magical number long before the existence of Christianity, denoting a special kind of wholeness. The birds of prey driven off symbolising the nations who would try to pre-empt or even destroy the covenant, being defeated by Avram. The other birds, symbols of liberation, of perfections, of the divine presence, who become invisible in the text. And the cutting into two and then passing through the pieces denotes the parties to the contract guaranteeing the wholeness of it. Dividing as a way of symbolising completion has been around for a long time – even today we cut a deal. Or cut a ribbon or smash a bottle or a glass, and circumcision too requires the action of cutting.

We have a contract with God. Unlike any other formulation of any other religion, ours is based unequivocally on this idea of covenant of mutual obligation. God is our God because we are God’s people – that is the bottom line. But just how do we understand that contract and how do we honour it?

Traditional Judaism is clear about this –the system of mitzvot which provides a framework for all we do and all we are, this is the content of the contract. By observing the mitzvot the commandments, we are honouring the metzaveh, the commander. Whether we understand or not, whether we get a spiritual feeling or not, whether we feel good about it or not, this is the way of the relationship forged with our ancestor Abraham, this is the obligation to which we are signed up

Progressive Judaism has a slightly harder time of it, for the idea of covenant remains, and the framework of acting within a system of mitzvot remains, but quite what the content is and how one squares the unconditional acceptance of the obligation with more rational and libertarian thinking is, to say the least, problematic. And as soon as one begins the questioning there is the fear that the questioning will take over, that the precious essence of the covenant will in some way be lost to us.

What one might call the covenant par excellence, Brit Mila – has been the object of much questioning recently. It seems to be as obscure in its way as the covenant of the pieces, for there is the quality of unreality about it, of vision. There is the cutting of the flesh and the exposure of vulnerability, the division symbolizing the wholeness, Brit Milah perfecting the child on whom it is done.

Why do we circumcise our baby boys, and what symbolism does it hold for us? We do so at one level because it is a mitzvah, it is commanded of us by God, it symbolises brining that child into the covenant. Of course any Jewish boy remains Jewish even if Milah doesn’t take place, but somehow the ceremony is seen as essential in denoting the identity of the male Jew. Throughout history Jews have risked death to circumcise their sons, throughout history it has remained an act of pride, sometimes of defiance, always of inner if not outer freedom. We circumcise our sons to mark their bodies indelibly with this sign of our ancient covenant. Whatever we think it to be, deep down is that sense of unconditional obligation, of God being our God if we are God’s people.

The covenant is the framework for religious identity, forming the inner core and the outer parameter of Judaism. In an increasingly rational and libertarian world we need to understand the nature of covenant, to orient ourselves within it as best we can, and to teach its meaning to our children.

When God created two different covenants with Abraham, one to do with descendants the other with land, the model was set for all time – people and land, Jewish people and Jewish land. What each was to become was left unclear, but that both are necessary and each needs the other is certain to us.

So what is the meaning of the Jewish people and of a Jewish land? We are in a time of enormous uncertainty, of wildly differing opinions. I offer my own thoughts now – the Jewish people are neither more special nor more talented than any other, what we have is an attachment to being God’s people, by which we mean we try to bring God more closely into the world through what we do. Listening to the different voices from different traditions earlier this week, that idea is not unique to us, but what is unique is our covenantal relationship that both binds us and frees us to relate in our own way to God, safe in our chutzpadik challenges towards God that God will not ever abandon us for good.

And our land is where we are supposed to bring God’s presence most potently, a place where God’s eyes are always watching, a place close to God’s heart. I grieve for how little we are fulfilling our role there at the moment, I despair when I see the values and teachings of our religion traduced or ignored.

Abraham is told lech lecha, to go – but where? The Hebrew is obscure. Is it to go to a different physical place or to go into himself and draw from himself his essential humanity? He is told to be a blessing. And this is our ultimate purpose, to understand that all humanity is under the special care of God, all humanity is equal in God’s eyes; to use this understanding to bring about blessing in the world.

Right now I fear that we are not doing our job well. The two contracts of peoplehood and land are both under threat from our own actions. But the imperative to go out and be a blessing, that still feels true and possible. And that must be our task – to speak out, to go that extra distance, and create blessing in our world.

Noach – A world washed away and the consequences of our actions and inaction.

Posted on October 24, 2025 by sylviarothschild

The stories in Noah are mostly well known. That society descended into a state of anarchy and utter corruption, and only Noah remained righteous and faithful to God’s ways. God warned Noah of a flood soon to destroy all of civilization, and only he and his immediate family would survive in a ark that he was to build. Noah was commanded to take seven pairs of each species of kosher animals and birds, and one pair of all other species. They all boarded the ark and the flood began with torrential rains lasted for forty days and nights. The waters covered even the highest mountains, killing all humans and animals; everything died except the occupants of the ark. After the waters raged on the earth another 150 days, God caused the waters to subside. The ark eventually rested on Mt Ararat, and Noah opened the window and dispatched birds to see whether it was time to leave the ark. First he sent a raven, which just circled the ark. He then sent out a dove. On its second attempt the dove went and did not return, signalling that the earth was once again habitable.

Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices. God blessed Noah and his sons and told them that he is establishing a covenant to never again bring a flood to destroy the world and the rainbow was the sign of this covenant:

What is less well known is what happened next. Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, became drunk and fell into a deep drunken slumber — while naked. Noah’s son, Ham, saw his father naked, did not cover him but informed his two brothers of their father’s state. The brothers, Shem and Japheth approached their father and covered him. When Noah awoke. he cursed Cham’s son, Canaan, and blessed Shem and Japheth. This section then names Noah’s seventy grandsons and great-grandsons, the antecedents of the “seventy nations,” and their adopted homelands.

Then we have another familiar story –that of the Tower of Babel. Noah’s descendents gathered in the Babylonian valley and started building a tower, in an attempt to reach the heavens. God disrupted them by causing them each to speak a different language, thus destroying their communications. This caused them to disperse and settle in different lands. The Torah then lists the ten generations of Shem’s descendents. The tenth generation is Abram (later to be known as Abraham), who married Sarai (later to be known as Sarah).

Utterly familiar stories which we can even see in our mind’s eye – all those nursery illustrations of arks with giraffes reaching out, and rainbows enveloping them. The crazy ziggurat tower of Babel, with people climbing up with bricks. But truthfully these are not cosy bedtime stories at all; they are terrifying narratives which attempt to give meaning to cold hard truths.

The clue is in the story that is less well known. How Noah built a vineyard, made wine and stupefied himself with it so that he exposed himself in his tent, causing one son to see and tell, the other two to carefully cover him without themselves looking at their father in such a humiliating and vulnerable state.

There is a Midrash that is telling about this post diluvian Noah.

“When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? … God replied, Oh Noah, how different you are from the way Abraham … will be. He will argue with me on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah when I tell him that I plan their destruction… But you, Noah, when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on behalf of the world. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch you. You thought of no one but your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned” (Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat Noach).

Noah is introduced to us right at the beginning of the story as “a righteous man in his generation”, and quite rightly the rabbis do not see this as a great compliment. The qualifying phrase “in his generation” makes it clear that his righteousness is relative rather than absolute. So this just about good-enough man is enabled to survive in order to begin the world afresh. But as starts to face the future, he realises all that he had not done, that his selfishness and narrow vision had allowed the great destruction to happen, that it didn’t have to be like this.

Noah, facing the new world, cannot actually face the past and his part in it, nor really can he move on into the future. He just gets stupefyingly, paralytically drunk, and his sons are forced to deal with the consequences. The younger one does not know what to do – Midrash suggests that he actually assaults his naked father as he lies dead to the world – but at the very least he does nothing; the older ones treat him with more respect, but reading the text one has the feeling that they simply cannot bear to see their father lying there, seeing what he has become. By covering him they are also trying to cover up everything that Noah has symbolises – his passivity, his refusal to engage with the situation God tells him of, his lack of compassion for other living beings, his lack of any timely compassion at all and his inability to deal with the consequences of his own inaction.

Upon waking, Noah curses Canaan, the child of the younger son, and blesses God on behalf of the other two, giving them an approximation of a blessing.

Why? Why curse Canaan, the child of Ham who saw him naked? Why not Ham himself? Noah is passing the pain down the generations, to those who are neither present nor responsible for the destruction. His own drunken misery becomes a curse for some of his descendants.

The truth that Noah doesn’t want to face is that he is in a new world now. A world washed clean of the violence and horror of the past, but also washed away – its resources, its people, and its structures all gone. This is no longer the world of miraculous creation, when God walked among the people in the Garden, and oversaw the perfection of the world. We are now in a world that Nechama Leibowitz described as ‘post miraculous’ a world where suddenly there are obligations – the seven mitzvot of the b’nei Noah are given here, … “It was in this renewed world — the world destined to be our world and not in the earlier, miraculous world — that saw the opening of the gate to the conflict between the values of tikkun olam (perfection of the world) and Humanity .Avraham, who appears at the end of Parashat Noach is the person who takes upon himself the mission of perfecting the world as Kingdom of God, rather than taking the world for granted as Noach had done”

Noach took the world for granted. When warned by God of what was to happen, he took that for granted too. And when the worst had happened and the world was washed away leaving Noah and his family to begin it once again, he failed to do what was necessary, and it took another ten generations – till that of Abraham, for the relationship between God and human beings to flower once more.

It is interesting to me that this parashah began with the phrase, “These are the descendants of Noah,” yet does not go on to list any people, but rather begins a discussion of Noah’s attributes. One commentator suggests that this teaches us that what a person “leaves behind” in the world is not only children, but also the effects of their deeds.

Noah left behind both of course – everyone in the world is a descendant of this man if the flood story is to be believed, and so everyone is obligated to the mitzvot of b’nei Noach. But he also left behind the effect of his behaviours, deeds both committed and omitted.

Noah did not help to perfect the world. He allowed it to be washed away. He didn’t appreciate the value of the world at all, focussing only on his own family and his own needs. Only after it was gone was he able to understand what was lost, and even then he was not able to deal with this loss. He curses a part of his family into perpetuity, his descendants go on to build the Tower of Babel in order to in some way find a purpose and meaning in their continued existence, and maybe also to challenge the divine using their newly created technology. So they too are forced to confront catastrophe as they are scattered across the world and left unable to communicate with each other. It takes ten generations, with the emergence of Avraham, for the world to begin to heal itself.

Like Noah we too are facing a time when the world seems to be set on a pathway to destruction: climate change, global heating, over fishing, the rainforest which once covered 14% of the earth’s surface now covers less than 6%, with all the consequences of loss of species that involves, years long droughts and famines. We can see the warnings of destruction, we know the consequences of what is happening now, yet somehow we walk about in a dream, neither warning each other nor challenging what is happening. We spend our time trying to ensure only that we and our families can be safe, that our houses are weatherproofed, that our pantries are stocked. We are behaving no differently than Noah. And if we give it some thought and project our ideas into the near future, we can see than those who survive this environmental tumult will not have the resources to cope.

It is our job to take the story of Noah seriously – not as a good enough man who was saved from cataclysm because he did what God said without question, but as a man who was at least righteous in his generation, someone who hadn’t completely surrendered to the corruption and destructive activities around him. And we should see the consequences of his inactions too – that the world he allowed his children to inherit was damaged and fragile and took generations to heal.

rabbisylviarothschild

the occasional thoughts of a working woman rabbi in England

Author Archives: sylviarothschild