Tag Archives: Genesis

Vayeshev

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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.”

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

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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.

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Parashat Noach: how to avert the severity of the climate change decree

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What are we to understand about the biblical story of Noah? How are we to relate to a God who allows such terrible destruction? How are we to relate to Nature, and the world in which we live?

Coming so soon after the story of the Creation of the world – there are just ten generations between Adam and Noah – the story bears witness to the much more complex relationship between human beings and the earth than we sometimes read from the earliest chapters in the Book of Genesis.

As we read in the first chapter, the earth and all its accoutrements – plants fish, birds and beasts – are created before human beings, and God sees them as being good. They are not created for the human being but exist in their own right. While the vegetation is available as food for the human, the animals are not so designated.  As Maimonides commented “The right view, in my opinion is that it should not be believed that all creation exists for the sake of the existence of humanity. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes, and not for the sake of something else.” (Moreh Nevuchim 3:13).  The Tosefta (late 2nd century text) asks “Why were human beings created last in the order of creation?” and answers itself “So that they should not grow proud, and we can say to them ‘even the gnat can claim it came before you in Creation’” (Tosefta on Sanhedrin 8:3)

We are created within and alongside nature. Nature, in this biblical viewpoint, is not created as a tool for us to treat as we choose, but exists both symbiotically with us and independently of us.

When God blesses humanity with the benediction to be fruitful and multiply, to populate the world and to steward it, this is not something that changes the power in the relationship, but instead formalises  the responsibility we have to sustain both ourselves and our world.  The natural world is not given to us unconditionally, but exists in relationship with us. It is not subservient to us, but is the place where we may thrive together, or may fail together.

Many readers of Bible are tempted to read the first chapters of Genesis and find a divinely created supremacy of humanity. After all, we are the only ones created in the divine image, whatever that may mean. While all the vegetation and animals are created to be able to sustain themselves and produce offspring, only humans are told to multiply and to range over the expanse of the earth.

So one might want to read into the text the sovereign authority of the human being in the natural world, but the bible would like to warn us that this is a misreading of great proportion. While the earlier story has words which are potentially problematic, particularly in how they are understood (“subdue the earth/ have dominion over”) (Genesis 1:28), the story of the Garden of Eden clarifies the relationship – the human is placed into the garden to serve it and to guard it”. And while we read in the Midrash that “God showed Adam all of the beauty of the Garden of Eden, and God said, “See my works, how lovely they are, how fine they are. All I have created, I created for you” – we must note that the Midrash continues with the warning “Take care not to destroy My world, for if you ruin it, there is no one to come after you to put it right” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13).

Once the first human beings are expelled from the Garden of Eden, nature will become even less benign a partner, and more of a problem as we scratch our living from the earth through the sweat of our brow; the relationship of serving the land changed to one of working it.

But even more clear a warning to us not to read ourselves as somehow permitted to use the natural world as we see fit and for our own purposes, without thought of the effects of our actions, is the story of the great flood in the time of Noah.

The bible makes a clear connection between the behaviour of the people at that time – corrupt and violent – and the bringing of the flood.  As we will find later, in times of famine for example, or the plagues visited upon Egypt, Nature is a tool in the hands of God, used as a necessary corrective when humanity chooses arrogance and enormous self-centredness over the obligation to serve and to guard….  As we find in Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 8:12 (c200CE) commenting on verse 28 of the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, “I will make humankind in My image, after My likeness. They shall rule [ve-yir·du]…the whole earth”.… God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it;    and rule [u-re·du]…all living things…”  Rabbi Hanina said: “If humankind merits it, God says u-re·du [rule!]; while if humankind does not merit it, God says yé·ra·du [let them (the animals) rule].” (or Let them [human beings] descend [from their position of mastery]

 

The flood is a cataclysmic event. The bible records: “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh perished that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every swarming thing that swarmed upon the earth, and every human being; all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, whatsoever was in the dry land, died.  And God blotted out every living substance which was upon the face of the ground, both human, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. ” (Genesis 7:20ff)

The destruction is incalculable, bringing death to every living thing outside of the sanctuary of the Ark. Plants and animals and birds – all gone in the space of a few months, along with the majority of human beings.  Bible sees this as a consequence of the will of God, who having seen the corruption and wickedness endemic in the world, regrets ever having made it and chooses to wipe most of it out and begin again.  The story is a retelling of much older flood stories, where there had been no moral conclusion drawn, simply the random destruction of the earth and her inhabitants by water, at the whim of indiscriminate and uncaring powers.

It is clear from biblical texts that Nature is, by its very existence, to be respected and held in some careful awe.  Again and again we are reminded that God is the creator of not just us, but of the rest of the world; Again and again we are reminded that our time here is short and we have but a fragile hold on life.  As Kohelet writes “one generation goes and another comes, but the earth abides forever” (1:4)

The mystical tradition teaches that the universe is the garment of God (Zohar 3:273a), a position also taught by the Hasidic tradition: “All that we see, the heaven, the earth and all that fills it – all these are the external garments of God” (Shneur Zalman of Liady)

There is a persistent thread within all streams of Judaism to remind us that reading the beginning of Genesis must be done most carefully – that should we derive the idea that humanity is somehow so exceptional that we are beyond the rules of nature, and beyond the obligations and morality expected of us by God, then we will indeed pay the price for that arrogance, and the price will be extracted by natural environmental events. As the unetaneh tokef prayer recited so recently in the Yamim Noraim reminds us, we will surely die, and the list of ways of us dying is instructive:

“On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed – how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who in good time, and who by an untimely death, who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by wild beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague…….  But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severity of the decree.”

Repentance, prayer and righteousness may avert the severity of the decree. One might put it into more modern terms – we abuse the bounty of the natural world, are careless of its resources, wilfully blind to the effect of our actions but the actions of  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – this may avert the severity of the climate change already with us.

There is more – to Repair, to allow animals and land to rest; Regenerate;  Give animals freedom to range and to live a good and healthy life… Plant trees and grassland rather than paving over our environment, allow grasses to flower and insects to roam and feed, avoid pesticides and ensure our garden birds can eat safely….. these are the ways we can begin to avert the severity of the changes in our environment.

God saves Noah but repents the destruction after the event. The terror and trauma of the survivors is clear in the stories that follow, the rainbow a necessary but insufficient marker of security – the world may never again be totally destroyed by flood – but there are other ways we can destroy our world. The postdiluvian world is more complex, more violent and more painful than before. It is another kind of expulsion from Eden. Now every other animal – all living beings – will fear human beings (Genesis 9:2)– after all, it was human behaviour that had caused the destruction. Humanity is now permitted to eat anything that moves that has life – not just the vegetarian diet of before. Interestingly this permission is given only AFTER Noah has built an altar and sacrificed some of the animals on it in order for the smoke to reach God. Only the blood is forbidden to be eaten, says God. And anyone who takes the life of another – their life shall be required by God. There is a violent abrupt awareness of the flawed nature of humanity; the language is stark, unblinkingly focussed – it is ferocious.

After the flood, Noah leaves his ark, plants a vineyard and gets drunk. It is part of the story we don’t often tell. The trauma of the survivors is plain to see, the desperate fumbled attempts to rebuild the world which leads to the tragedy of the tower of Babel.

Humanity may indeed survive climate catastrophe, may go on to rebuild a new world. But would it not be better for us all to avert the evil in the decree, to help each other to rebuild this world to be a better example of what we would really want to create.

 

 

Toledot: the family ties that bind a people together

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 Jewish history is told in terms of Jewish family. We chart our progress through the generations, marvelling at how we are able to adapt and to change, to move countries and to begin again, yet never having to begin at the beginning – we take with us the wisdom and the tradition of our ancestors to support and nourish us as we add our own experiences and our own lives to the chain.

We are part of an eternal covenant.  Since Abraham’s first encounter with God that set him off on his journey as an Ivri (one who passes over into a new place), and since the encounter at Sinai when the whole Jewish people – (including all who were yet to be born and all who would willingly join with us) – we have been a family with a powerful tradition that has enabled us to retain our identity despite huge shifts in geography, language, autonomy, and cultural expression.  Whenever one tries to dissect and define Jewish identity, there is immediately a problem that no absolute characterization can be agreed upon – there are secular and religious Jews, culinary and cultural Jews, Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Italkit and Romaniot;  there are Jews who passionately believe in a personal God and others who are passionately agnostic. What binds us is the notion of peoplehood – specifically that of toledot – of family.

The word itself comes from the root to give birth, yet we first find it early on in the book of Genesis when God is creating the world: –  אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, בְּהִבָּרְאָם:  בְּיוֹם, עֲשׂוֹת יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים–אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם.:

“These are the generations (toledot) of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Eternal God made earth and heavens.  (Gen 2:4). 

The term is clearly much more than the physical giving birth – it has to do with developments, with outcomes, with the next stage, and virtually every time it is found in the book of Genesis it has a transitional function, introducing the new and concluding the story of the old.  In the ten passages in which the word is used in Genesis, each time there is an important liminal point –a break but at the same time a kind of continuation.   So for example we have the toledot of the creation of the world which is then left to run, the toledot of Adam whose sons bring chaos into the world, the toledot of Noah, upon whom rest the hopes of mending the world, of the three sons of Noah who are the founding ancestors of the known world, and then the specific genealogy of Shem from whom we descend and which takes us to Abraham. Then we have the generations (toledot) of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Isaac, of Esau and finally of Jacob.

I find it deeply interesting that the bible gives us the generations not only of the line from whom we ourselves descend, but also of those who are connected to us but who are no longer “of” us.  The recording of the other genealogical threads reminds us of what is truly important:- that there is family and family, connections and bonds, and some are closer and others less so, but we are ultimately all one humanity even when our stories and our lineages diverge.

The story today begins with the toledot of Isaac, but is really interested in the fate of his younger son Jacob.  And it is Jacob, shortly to be renamed Israel on account of his own encounter with God, who is the ancestor from whom we generate our own history. In this sidra Jacob is given two blessings by his father: the first is the blessing of the first-born that his father had intended for Esau, the second is given to him as he departed for Paddan Aram to find a wife for himself and to begin a new life. One blessing was about the recognition and importance of the ancestral tradition of covenant, the other was about striking out into new territory. One was concerned with material well being, the other about spiritual direction and the future of the Jewish people.

What becomes clear is the inextricable link between past and future, that to try to have one without the other is to misunderstand the nature of Jewish identity.  And what becomes clear too is that each new generation has to find their journey and their meaning for themselves, building upon what has been given to them by their parents and grandparents, but creating something new as well, to pass on to their children and grandchildren.

Our history really is about toledot – the concluding of the story of one generation and the new story of the next loosely threaded onto it.  With each new generation there is always going to be change, but at the same time we know that the fundamental blessings continue down the years, and that while some of the paths seem to disappear over the horizon and out of our sight, that is only to be expected and accommodated.

We do the best we can in our own generation, and we trust the ones who come after us to have their own encounter to add to the richness that is passed on.  Isaac cannot ever have expected the boy he named from youth as Ya’akov – the bent one, the one who clung to the heel of his brother, the one who delayed – to become Yisrael, the one who struggles with God and overcomes.

 

Vayeshev: the different personalities of Jacob’s sons bring balance to our tradition

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The Book of Genesis tells the stories of a succession of families, but the thread of sibling rivalry goes through them all – from Cain and Abel the sons of Adam and Eve, through to Joseph and his older brothers. And it has to be said that the rivalry between Joseph and his siblings overshadows all the other sibling squabbles in the intensity and passion with which it is played out – the near murder and the series of betrayals. From this sidra until we end the book of Genesis, everything, – including the going down to Egypt by Jacob and his family which will lead into slavery and ultimately the redemption by God – emerges directly from this sibling struggle.

On the one side of the conflict we have Joseph, oldest son of his mother Rachel, beloved and spoiled son of his father, the dreamer of dreams. On the other side we have ten of his eleven brothers, including Judah, the oldest son of his mother Leah, the son who loves his father much more than he himself is loved.   The struggle between Joseph and Judah is not only a personal one, it is ideological, and that ideology is played out in our history.

The language of Joseph’s dreams implies that he will travel far from his family’s home into the wide world outside it and live his life amongst other peoples. Joseph dreams universal dreams, and though only 17 years old he senses that his star is rising, he is destined to make his mark on history, and he is keen to go further into the world, to rise above the parochial concerns of his immediate family.

In contrast to the outward looking Joseph, Judah represents the brother who never even dreams of leaving home, nor of wandering very far from his father’s sight. Tradition tells us that he was a studious man, a conserver of traditions, a man who cared deeply for his family and his inheritance, and was not at all interested in any interchange with the world outside – indeed he actively chose to repulse any attempts to ally his family with other groupings.

So which of these streams, the inward Judah or the outward Joseph, represents authentic Judaism?

The truth is that both are, and that both are needed to form the balance that makes Judaism the firmly grounded yet dynamic and responsive religion that it is. Our calendar contains festivals that are particularistic and festivals that are universalistic, our prayer books contain prayers that are particularistic and prayers that are universalistic. Judaism even recognises the possibility of two messiahs – one from the line of Joseph and one from the line of Judah (the House of David) because it understands and acknowledges both aspects of existence – the need to remain rooted in traditions and texts as well as the burning need to reach outwards and upwards – towards other societies and peoples, towards the stars.

Both aspects of Judaism are authentic and both are needed. Our texts and our historical narrative tell us that again and again. The problem we face is that in our day the polarisation between the two is again very strong: part of the Jewish world is increasingly internal, drawing stronger and stronger boundaries against modernity, and part of the Jewish world is choosing to be porous and open to the point of apparent assimilation. We need each other and we need the different ways to be Jewish, and as Jacob and Judah eventually do – but not yet in this sidra – we need to honour each other’s difference and recognise that we are and always will be family.

Vayechi – How we live our lives, and how we live on through how we lived our lives

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The book of Genesis comes to a close with this sidra, and many of the themes within it are addressed, if not resolved.  

The stories of sibling rivalry which began in the very first family with the tension between Cain and Abel and which continue down through the patriarchal enerations finally come to some sort of resolution, with Joseph choosing not to use his power over his brothers to hurt them, as even after all these years they fear he still might. His sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, also do not argue with each other, even when the younger is given special treatment by their grandfather Jacob. 

 The themes of blessing – in particular the special blessings from father to son, are also addressed: firstly in the blessing by Jacob of Joseph’s two children and the deliberate switching by the bless-er to give the younger one the more advantageous blessing. Somehow when there is no betrayal or rivalry between the bless-ees this is seen as a kind of concluding of the story of dysfunctional sibling relationship, though of course it does leave room for the jealousy to break out once more in the future. But while Joseph protests, his sons do not and sibling rivalry is not a particular theme of the later books of Torah.

 Blessings and the terrible burdens that can accompany them are also made explicit in the way that Jacob speaks to his sons on his deathbed– Reuben is as unstable as water, Shimon and Levi given to violence, Judah has the vigour and nobility of a lion, Zebulun would have a favourable territory with good coastline, Issachar is a large boned ass – physically strong and placid, Dan will be a judge but also a wily cunning foe, Gad would be constantly raided and raiding others, Asher will be happy and rich, Naftali would be both physically graceful and eloquent of speech, Joseph would be fruitful and honourable in the face of difficulties, someone who would surpass his victimhood, Benjamin would be a ravening wolf – warlike and terrifying.

 Can we say that these are blessings in any sense that we understand today? They seem to be comments on the characters of his children for them to learn from, or aspirations for them to live up to, rather than calling for the protection and support of God for them. 

 It also leads us to ask the question: is the expectation of our parents something that can or should shape our lives?

 Many of the blessings refer to the names given to the boys at birth – Dan, Asher, Gad, Naftali and Joseph all have names which imply characteristics or aspirations. Some of the blessings refer to actions we already know about – Reuben having betrayed his father with his concubine, Shimon and Levi whose violence to the Shechemites when their prince took Dinah has caused real heartache to Jacob that it seems he cannot let go even as he lay dying. Some of the blessings seem to refer to later events that he cannot have even dreamed of. The descriptions contained in these final words have a power and a hold long after their creator has left the scene.

 The deathbed scenes of Jacob and Joseph are narrated dispassionately in Torah. The point is made that both father and son are keen to be buried back in their ancestral home, not in Egypt where they are accorded so much honour. Both remember the promise that has been passed down their family, that God will remember them and will bring about their establishment upon the Land we know as Israel. They are pragmatic about their dying, passing on no material artefacts but certainly transmitting ethical imperatives to their descendants. Connection to the Land and honest evaluation of oneself along with proper thought about how one behaves in life, seem to be the two fundamental lessons they have to give their family. 

 Reading this final sidra in Genesis, named “Vayechi – And he lived” which primarily details the transmission of values after death, we are prompted to ask “What can we leave to our children that will resonate in their lives long after we ourselves are gone?” 

 One answer is the expectations we lay down for our children that they may internalise without our even knowing it – a sense of right and wrong, of honourable and ethical behaviour, of common purpose with our both our particular family and with the rest of humanity. We can teach them about God, about our history, about our connectedness to the other. We can teach them that one life is simply that – a life well lived will provide a strong link to both past and future, that there is a longer time scale than our own conscious existence. We can teach them that actions have consequences, that behaviour shapes character as much as character can shape behaviour. We can teach them that there is a great diversity in the world, and that everyone contributes something of value, be they passive or go getting, be they solid citizens or free spirits. 

 What is important is that we too begin to evaluate honestly our selves and the life we have lived so far, think seriously about what will be read into how we have lived, consider how we will be remembered after we are gone. 

 The end of a book of Torah is always a powerful reminder that endings are part of the cycle, and this particular sidra, with its emphasis on both life and death remind us to take a moment and consider. A lot of the most painful problems in the stories of the human relationships in this book are finally ironed out as people forgive, let go, learn, change. We are ready to face the next book which will take us into a different world, full of people who remember their history and people who have forgotten everything that came before. Winter is here, we are into the last month of the year and we are becoming aware of how the secular year is turning.  Many of us will try to achieve some kind of closure on unfinished problems before embarking on another new year.  But before we do that, there is just time to pause and to remember the stories of the early families in Genesis– Vayechi – how we live will impact on a future we can only imagine.

The Assaulting of Mrs Lot: Parashat Vayera

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I have a particular fondness for the bit part players in bible, and Mrs Lot, whose story is told in Vayera, is someone who deserves more attention than she often gets, and she certainly deserves a more appreciative inquiry into her story.

Poor Mrs Lot, who is given no name in the biblical narrative, and who seems to be chained in marriage to one of the less attractive personalities in Genesis.

Lot is the nephew of Abraham, the man who might have inherited from him, except that his behaviour was such that he ruled himself out of the dynasty. Lot shows himself in biblical narrative to be self centred, greedy, and without much common sense. When he leaves Abraham it is because they cannot reconcile their arguments over shared use of the grazing land, and Abraham says “”Let’s not have any strife between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.” And Lot’s response?  “Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Eternal…Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.  Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Eternal”.

When the Angels come to Sodom Lot does have the grace to invite them to his home – he clearly understands that they would be in danger alone in the town, but that is his one understandable action.  Mrs Lot is hidden when they come home. She is not involved in the work of hospitality, but her husband prepares the food. The angels do not seem to know she even exists until the following morning.  She does not go to try to persuade her married daughters to leave with them – Lot does, and his sons in law laugh at him. Presumably his reputation as a fool is known, but maybe Mrs Lot would have had a better chance. She is not consulted when her husband offers their two unmarried daughters as a sacrifice to the rampaging townsfolk who are angry that they cannot make sport with the strangers, and it is the angels who take charge after this extraordinary proposition. Her husband does not hurry to save her and the two daughters – again it is the angels who physically take hold of the family and transport them outside of the city walls. And critically nobody ever tells her not to look back when they flee – Lot was told, but he doesn’t seem to feel the need to pass on the information.

Now Mrs Lot had to die in order for her daughters to believe that no human beings were left and that it was their duty to repopulate the world with their father. She is a device in a narrative, not ever fleshed out or understood. The midrash tries to give her some background, but sadly cannot detach itself from protecting Lot and therefore deciding that she is the baddy in the story. They pun on the word ‘salt’ (melach) suggesting that when the poor came to the door to ask for bread (lechem, same three root letters) she refused them as she had no compassion (chemlah – same root letters). But I prefer to think of her as the victim who got away. The domestic abuse she clearly suffers is ended, and her husband becomes a drunken incestuous figure who fathers the two traditional inimical tribes the Moabites and the Ammonites. But she is free, standing tall and glittering with crystals, still there near the Dead Sea, and the Talmud (Berachot 54b) tells us to say two blessings when we see her – the blessing of God who remembers the righteous, and the blessing of God as the true Judge.  The rabbis who discuss this teaching assume the righteous who was remembered must be Lot, and the blessing “Dayan Emet” is to remind us that her death was a punishment, but in the words of Mandy Rice Davies: “they would, wouldn’t they”.

I like to think that she was the righteous one who had been through enough, had lost her home and two children in the cataclysm and was destined to live alone in a strange place with her abusive and foolish husband and her remaining daughters. God released her from that horrific future.

In life she was unnoticed and treated without honour. But in death she stands proud and dazzling, remembered and blessed long after the disappearance of her unlikable husband. Baruch Dayan HaEmet – Mrs Lot received the blessing of the righteous.