The Immortal Woman
By TBA Rabbinic Resident Jacki Honig

Noah lived to be 950, according to the Torah; Abraham lived to 175. But what about a woman who was timeless? Noah, Abraham, and so many other biblical figures live for what seems like an infinite amount of time, but still confined to a generation. They live approximately the same amount of time as their partners and siblings, they die long before their children. While time may have been counted differently (or they were better hydrated and used way more sunscreen than we do!), people always lived within their generation. 

But in a midrash on this week’s parsha, we find reference to a character who seems to be beyond time itself: Serach bat Asher. We met her just a few weeks back, in Parshat Vayigash, in the list of all the people who go with Jacob to Egypt. She is the sole granddaughter of Jacob listed, among all her brothers and male cousins. AND, the amazing part is that we will see her again in a few months, in Parshat Pinchas. We will find her counted in the census taken right before the land is divided. So here we have a character, a woman no less, who seems to be beyond time, beyond her generation. So what? Why mention her here? 
 

While many people are familiar with the splitting of the sea, the drowning of the Egyptians, and especially the Song of the Sea, there is a small and beautiful moment that happens before that, and according to the midrash happens only because of Serach. The Israelites are about to leave Egpyt, and we know that it has to happen quickly - they do have to invent matzah after all! But before he goes, Moshe makes one final stop, the Torah tells us:

וַיִּקַּ֥ח מֹשֶׁ֛ה אֶת־עַצְמ֥וֹת יוֹסֵ֖ף עִמּ֑וֹ כִּי֩ הַשְׁבֵּ֨עַ הִשְׁבִּ֜יעַ אֶת־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר פָּקֹ֨ד יִפְקֹ֤ד אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶתְכֶ֔ם וְהַעֲלִיתֶ֧ם אֶת־עַצְמֹתַ֛י מִזֶּ֖ה אִתְּכֶֽם׃

And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had exacted an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will be sure to take notice of you: then you shall carry up my bones from here with you.” (Exodus 13:19)
 

Before he leaves Egypt, Moshe makes sure to fulfill the promise made to Joseph. One problem, though, that whole generation is gone. Where can Joseph’s bones be found? Cue the midrash. In the gemara, in Masechet Sotah, the rabbis pose this question: how did Moses know where to find Joseph’s bones? They explain that Serach bat Asher still remained from that generation, so he went to find her. She knew where it was to be found, in the Nile, so Moses went to find it. Somehow, the story gets even more magical from there: 

Moses went and stood on the bank of the Nile. He said to Joseph: Joseph, Joseph, the time has arrived about which the Holy One, Blessed be He, took an oath saying that I (i.e., God) will redeem you. And the time for fulfillment of the oath that you administered to the Jewish people that they will bury you in Eretz Yisrael has arrived. If you show yourself, it is good, but if not, we are clear from your oath. Immediately, the casket of Joseph floated to the top of the water.
 

Somehow, even with this incantation and floating casket, the magic of Serach bat Asher’s story doesn’t end there. She appears again hundreds of years later, according to Pesikta D’Rav Kahana, in the Beit Midrash with Rabbi Yochanan: 

Rabbi Yochanan was sitting and expounding “the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left” (Ex. 14:22). R. Yochanan expounded that [the wall of water] was a sort of netting. Serach bat Asher appeared and said: “I was there, and the water was not like netting, but like transparent windows.”
 

According to the rabbinic tradition, she not only went to Egypt and was part of the Exodus from Egypt, but she then managed to live hundreds more years to be able to sit and learn (and maybe even teach) in the times of the Mishnah and the Talmud! In Masechet Kallah Rabbati, it explains that Serach entered Gan Eden, paradise, in her lifetime, meaning the rabbis think that she never actually died. There are beautiful modern midrashim telling stories of her living among Jews up until today. 
 

We read the same parsha each year, and so often we focus on the same thing, especially when it seems to be the main idea, like this week’s splitting of the sea. Every so often, though, it's nice to take a break, take a small deep dive, and find something that we never knew was there. And I don’t know about you, but I definitely never knew about the immortal woman hiding in the midrash on this week’s parsha. Shabbat shalom.

Breathing into Redemption

by Rabbinic Resident David Kaplinsky

 

I have to confess that I have been feeling pretty down over the past few weeks. After nearly two years of Covid, and just recently beginning to feel a sense of normalcy, starting this secular new year back in a state of fear and frustration makes it difficult to say the words “Happy New Year” with a full heart.

            And yet, such trials are not foreign to the world nor to the Jewish people, whether in contemporary history or ancient legend. Our parasha, Va-era, begins in a moment where the Israelites momentary hope for redemption has been crushed under the ordered intensification of their brutal oppression. At the end of the previous portion, Moshe and Aharon’s attempt to free the people has been greeted by Pharaoh’s order that they now be forced to find their own straw to make the bricks for their building projects, where previously the material was provided them. Our parsha then begins with God’s affirmation that he will free them with signs and wonders and bring them into the promised land.

            However, when Moshe delivers these good tidings to the people, it is not well received. Exodus Ch. 6, verse 9 recounts:

 

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר מֹשֶׁ֛ה כֵּ֖ן אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֤א שָֽׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה׃

But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

 

While the New JPS translation above translates the reason for their inability to listen into one compound phrase— “their spirits crushed by cruel bondage”—the Hebrew actually gives two distinct reasons they could not listen: “קֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ” and “עֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה”. So what exactly is kotzer ruach? Literally, the words translate into narrowness of spirit. The Koren Jerusalem Bible adds some nuance by translating it as “anguish of spirit.” Rashi elaborates on this idea, explaining this difficult turn of phrase in a more physical sense:

 

מקצר רוח. כָּל מִי שֶׁהוּא מֵצֵר, רוּחוֹ וּנְשִׁימָתוֹ קְצָרָה, וְאֵינוֹ יָכוֹל לְהַאֲרִיךְ בִּנְשִׁימָתוֹ

Anyone who is in anguish, his breath is short, and he is not able to elongate his breath.

 

For Rashi then, “ruach” refers not to spirit but breath—claiming that their inability to listen or maintain hopefulness was due to their lack of ability to breathe deeply. Thus, Rashi identifies the way in which physical circumstances can influence one’s emotional state (and vice versa). And this inability to breathe is connected with the fact that the hope the Israelites felt in the last parsha has since been crushed—returning them to an even more difficult reality after they began to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Many of us, I’m sure, have felt this narrowing of our ability to breathe freely recently. Whether it stems from renewed anxiety over basic trips to the grocery store or a restaurant, or because we feel yet again constricted within our homes and apartments, our ability to breathe in life with joy and hopefulness has yet again been constrained. And we’re tired of it. As we stand now, we have difficulty seeing an end to this cycle of fear, followed by hope, followed by fear again.

But God, and God’s messengers, represent the firmness of the promise of redemption. Moshe tried to deliver that promise to the Israelites and they simply couldn’t breathe it in. This is altogether understandable and justified—like their feelings, we have a right to feel hopeless at times. But we also have a chance to take a moment in the stress of everything and breathe deeply. Our breath puts us back in touch with our immediate reality, the miracle of our being alive, and helps us to understand that “this too shall pass.” We don’t have all the answers and can’t look into the future, but we can trust in the truth that this moment of anguish will surely end. That for us is the trust that God represents.

So in the midst of this trying time, where we are at our wits end and ready to be done with crisis, I encourage us all to ground ourselves, breathe deeply, and remind ourselves that redemption is real. As we all do what we need to protect ourselves and others, we can take solace in our breath, allowing us to look forward to the moment where this will all be a memory—a reminder that “this too shall pass” through our persistence and patience.

Shabbat Shalom and a happy and safe 2022.

 

In The Heart of the Flame - And We Are Not Consumed

Rabbi Schatz - Parashat Shmot 2021

 

This is one of those weeks where I could choose so many different pieces of Torah that piqued my attention. Shifra and Puah as holy women literally birthing us into a nation. Moshe killing an Egyptian for dealing harshly with a Hebrew, even though Moshe did not know he himself was a Hebrew - feeling pulled by a part of his identity that he had yet to discover (for more on this, listen to the Parsha class with me and Rabbi Shapiro). Daughters standing up to their fathers for the sake of humanity and life giving - both in Midrash and in Torah. Moshe taking Tzipporah as his wife, which could be considered an interfaith and intercultural marriage. Etc. And yet, on this last Shabbat of 2021 the verse that caught my eye was the ever-famous burning bush. 

וַ֠יֵּרָ֠א מַלְאַ֨ךְ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֵלָ֛יו בְּלַבַּת־אֵ֖שׁ מִתּ֣וֹךְ הַסְּנֶ֑ה 

וַיַּ֗רְא

וְהִנֵּ֤ה

הַסְּנֶה֙ בֹּעֵ֣ר בָּאֵ֔שׁ וְהַסְּנֶ֖ה אֵינֶ֥נּוּ אֻכָּֽל

And he saw an angel of Adonai in front of him in the flame of a fire, from within the bush. 

And he saw. 

And behold! 

The bush was inflamed in fire and yet the bush was not consumed. 

Imagine that this was your life in metaphor. We come across burning bushes that are not actually becoming ashes all the time. Parts of life that seem to be aflame, but really just need different perspective. The part of the bush that is on fire is the heart, the lev, the center that holds the passion and feeling of the experience. It might feel as though something in your life is on fire, but are you really all consumed? 

 

My grandfather says to us all the time, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” And sometimes, we do not have a good perception on what “the small stuff” is because often we are living in this world of drama, jumbo size, Hollywood scene extremism that is unhelpful in our own emotional balance. 

 

Chizkuni comments through a quote from Shmot Rabbah “this was a symbol for both Israel and the Egyptians. The Israelites’ enemy, Egypt, is portrayed as an all consuming fire, while the prey, Israel, are supposed to be represented by the bush that refuses to be consumed by the fire.” I do not love the idea of Israel and Egypt depicted as prey and hunters, but I do value the idea of calm, strong, realistic goals not allowing us to be consumed by an overpowering fire. We each have our version of this metaphor. Whether work versus time off, or healthy versus toxic relationships, or bottled up emotions versus healthy sharing with loved ones or mental health professionals who help us offload. 

 

For some, 2020-2021 have been years of major forest fires; burning much of life, mental health, spiritual community and human relationship to ashes. And for others, 2020-2021 were years where those fires existed, and the challenge of COVID loomed, but we used our community, our friends, our professionals, our new-found hobbies, our guilty pleasures to recognize the fire and not let it consume us. 

 

Next week, as our Shabbos candles are melting away, 2022 begins. The fire goes out but the flames of life might still exist around us. How do we check in with the heart of our flames? How do we make sure that the fires surrounding us do not consume us? How do we assure ourselves that this year we will not see the fire as a bush that is not burning, but a sign that God is standing in front of us even in the scariest of moments? 

 

I cannot predict that this will be an easier year, or a better year, or a healthier or happier year. However, I know that because of the fires I have seen burning before me that this year I will be focused more on the heart of the flame that does not go out. Moses saw the angel of God in the heart of the fire and behold, you know what, it was not consumed. Moses was focused on the connection to the Divine being in front of him. Relationship. Passion. Connection. And yes, there will be fires, but if we can see into the heart of the matter, just maybe we will keep the fires from burning us down. 

 

Shabbat Shalom! 

The Invention of forgiveness

By TBA Rabbinic Resident Jacki Honig

 

If you could have invented any concept in human relationships what would it be? Love? Trust? Deceit? Revenge?

In this week’s parsha, according to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l,  we see Joseph invent a new concept seemingly never seen before in human relationships: forgiveness. 
 

In his book Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea, David Konstan explains that the Ancient Greeks and Romans had no concept of forgiveness. One attempted to appease one they had angered, or maybe divert or distract them, but there was no concept of interpersonal forgiveness. 
 

Up until now in our Torah, we have yet to see a concept of forgiveness. In the story of Noah the entire world is punished, there’s no opportunity there. When Abraham argues with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah he does not ask God to forgive the people for what they’ve done, rather he pleads on behalf of people in the city who may be innocent, lest they be destroyed along with the guilty. 

In Vayigash, however, we see something new. Joseph tackles the brothers’ misdoings head on and clearly forgives them: 

וְעַתָּ֣ה ׀ אַל־תֵּעָ֣צְב֗וּ וְאַל־יִ֙חַר֙ בְּעֵ֣ינֵיכֶ֔ם כִּֽי־מְכַרְתֶּ֥ם אֹתִ֖י הֵ֑נָּה כִּ֣י לְמִֽחְיָ֔ה שְׁלָחַ֥נִי אֱלֹהִ֖ים לִפְנֵיכֶֽם׃ 

Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. (Gen. 45:5).
 

It would have been easy for Joseph to take revenge instead. The brothers had done something terrible to him, he now had basically endless power, and they wouldn’t have even known who he was. Revenge would have been easy, and probably sweet, at that moment. This moment was the literal fulfillment of Joseph’s dream we saw a few weeks ago - his brothers all bowing down to him in his position of power. It would have taken so little for him to ruin their lives. But Joseph decided differently. He took the route famously suggested by First Lady Michelle Obama thousands of years later, “When they go low, we go high.” He put the past in the past, and moved himself and everyone forward. He decided to forgive the brothers and in it he changed their lives and the way of the world. 

There are so many times in life where it is easy to hold a grudge, for things big and small. It is easy to be upset about the unreturned phone call, the person who cut you off while driving, and all the more so the big things in life, like being sold to a band of Ishmaelites. It is easy to let these things stew and to promise ourselves that one day we’ll get back at the person who harmed us. Instead, though, there is always the option of forgiveness. It is a gift to the other person, and ultimately often a gift to ourselves. Forgiveness doesn’t have to be given willy nilly, but when it feels right, and sometimes we have to push to feel that way, forgiveness is a way that we can truly change our path and our future. 

This Little Light of Ours

In memory of Esther Blum z”l

Rabbi Schatz - Taste of Torah Miketz
 

Passover and Hanukkah start in the same way. I’m sure you’ve never heard that connection before, but just go with me. We search for hametz in our home at night, in the dark, with a tiny candle to see each and every crumb. So too, on the first night of Hanukkah, at the darkest part of the night, we light our Hanukkiah to see how a small candle can brighten a large dark space.

 

My favorite mitzvah of Hanukkah is that we are not supposed to use the light. On Shabbat, the lights are lit and the candles are used to make sure we can see one another and enjoy each other. On Hanukkah we can light the candles and just let them be, even sitting in another room if we wish. The lights of Hanukkah are not for us, they are for everyone else. And why? So that we can answer questions about them. So that we can share something about our tradition and our people and our fears and hopes and dreams with those who notice and ask. So that we can share our willingness to see in the darkness when others might not be able to.

 

In Masechet Shabbat 22a, we learn of the dimensions of the tallest Hanukkiah. One cannot be above 20 cubits or else it is invalid, just like the beam of an eruv or the schach of a sukkah. Why? The rabbis say because people do not usually raise their heads to see something that high up and Pirsumei Nisa, the publicizing of the miracle is the entire reason for lighting these candles. We must make sure they are at a height where people actually notice them and see.

 

In last week’s parsha we hear of the famous line v’habor reik v’ein bo mayim and the pit was empty and there was not in it water. Joseph was thrown in a pit and our Torah describes, in her economy of language, that the pit was dry and there was no water in it. Well dry means without water so why say that also? As you know, our rabbis come to drash that it was because though the brothers could see that there was no water, they could not see that there were snakes and scorpions that Joseph then was thrown into.

 

So we start off Passover looking for that which we cannot see. Those aspects of our lives, the shmutz, the chametz, the missing cheerio that was hidden and we didn’t even think to look for. On Hanukkah, we light a world, a time of deep darkness, to remind the world to intentionally see. To force ourselves to recognize how important it is to look for those in the darkness, to seek out those who are overlooked, to pay attention to something or someone that you might not have ever noticed before. We publicize the miracle to let others know that we are taking on this mitzvah and to encourage others to light their own lights into those darknesses.

 

This Sunday is Esther Blum’s shloshim and I cannot help but think that as Hanukkah ends and shloshim ends, but yet really begins the next stage of mourning, how Esther’s life and tragic death jolted us all to see a bit differently. To recognize those little lights and see how they light up a whole room of darkness. And more importantly, to acknowledge the darkness and figure out which small candle we can light to make sure a person, a community, an important matter of society is seen.

Dvar Vayetze: A Place for the Secrets of our Souls
By Rabbinic Resident Julia Knobloch

When I was a child, one place that stirred my imagination was Lisbon, or Lissabon, as I was used to calling it then. I didn’t know anything about the place when I first heard the city’s name and located it on a map or rather on a spinning globe, one of those that also serve as a lamp and turn any room into a magical realm.

For some reason, the sound of the name, Lissabon, touched something inside me that was part of me without my knowing it – or before my consciously knowing it. I believe that we know more about ourselves at a young age than we are aware of, and we are drawn to places, moods, songs, feelings because our souls are following a thread, a calling, a knowing that unfolds in hiding long before it becomes apparent to us and to people around us. Choices that seem random might sometimes be just that, random, but in other instances, they are very much in synch with an inner truth.

A few years after I first happened upon the name of this place, my parents visited Lisbon. I specifically always remember one photo: My mother, younger than I am today, is standing on the main square, the Rossio, next to a strawberry vendor and holds a few strawberries into my father’s camera. There it was again, the pull of that name, Lissabon. It was in the eyes of the farmer, in my mother’s smile, in the yellow facades and adobe colored shingles, the gray and beige pattern in the pavement. Maybe there were pigeons in the background, maybe even the hint of a cable car. Yet all those details are not the point – the photo of a happy tourist on vacation with a south-European city as background is nothing unique. And yet, for me, it was unique because I knew how it felt, would feel, to be in that place.

When I finally visited Lisbon for the first time, on a scholarship from the Portuguese cultural institution Instituto Camões, my intuition was confirmed. Despite my being tall and not particularly dark-haired, I seemed to blend in, locals often assumed that I was from there, the daughter of some Nordic immigrants, with odd idiomatic choices sometimes, but a local nonetheless.

It’s been like this with a few other places for me as well. And each of you may have similar experiences with different places that have touched you deeply because they reflect something inside you. When they reveal themselves to you everything makes perfect sense. It is like falling in love. It is like finding home. Some might say the way we experience a place is shaped primarily by moments of human connection. And that may be true on one level. Yet there also is the experience of knowing a physical place as if it were a living being, as if it were THE place, in a way that turns the earth-bound experience of being in a physical place into an inexplicable encounter with the divine.

Place, haMakom of course is one of the names of God and Judaism is a religion that is in love with, well, God -- but also place, the notion of place. It’s fair to say that at the core of the religion is a land, a place – the place, the land. And inside that land, there are many significant places – the Torah has a tendency to list and specify place names, to describe an exact location, to detail what’s in the east (the hills), what’s in the west (the great sea), and what name a place is called now or once was called. It is a tribal, visceral, intimate way of rendering the geography tangible, familiar, of situating the reader and saying: You know the place, too.

In Bereishit 28:10-11, we read:

וַיֵּצֵ֥א יַעֲקֹ֖ב מִבְּאֵ֣ר שָׁ֑בַע וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ חָרָֽנָה׃

Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran.

וַיִּפְגַּ֨ע בַּמָּק֜וֹם וַיָּ֤לֶן שָׁם֙ כִּי־בָ֣א הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ וַיִּקַּח֙ מֵאַבְנֵ֣י הַמָּק֔וֹם וַיָּ֖שֶׂם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֑יו וַיִּשְׁכַּ֖ב בַּמָּק֥וֹם הַהֽוּא׃

He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.

Abraham Ibn Ezra comments quite laconically that “one of the stones of that place” means – just that: one of the stones of that place. Nothing more. There is nothing special about that place, haphazardly chosen while the sun is setting and because Jacob, who hastily left home and didn’t plan his journey, didn’t book a proper lodging. Explaining that Jacob stopped there to pray because it was a holy place -- that the place WAS God – is letting one’s imagination flow too freely, says Ibn Ezra: “According to the plain meaning of the text, וַיִּפְגַּ֨ (‘and he happened upon’) is not to be translated as ‘and he prayed,’ because we never find in the entire Bible the word makom meaning God. Do not pay any attention to the Midrashic interpretation that explains makom, in makom acher (Esther 4:14), as referring to God, because it most certainly does not.

HaMakom is indeed one of the names the Rabbis, not the Torah, coined for God. Ibn Ezra seems eager to highlight that in a random place God appears to Jacob like he did to Abraham: in a dream. God reassures Jacob that he will protect him and that the ground on which he is lying will belong to his descendants.

וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it!”

This famous verse in Bereishit 28:16 is quite enigmatic and at the same time conveys a feeling many of us might be familiar with: We sensed a divine presence and only realize it later. We visit a place and are suddenly overcome by a feeling of déjà-vu. We didn’t know that we knew. Even the stern grammarian Ibn Ezra succumbs to the power of such a sensation: “Surely God is present in this place,” he says means “that there are places where miracles are seen. I cannot explain why this is so because it is a deep mystery.”

So, what is it? A random place or a divine place? Did Jacob stop there for the night haphazardly, or did he know without knowing that this place was going to be called Bethel -- the House of God – and no longer Luz. (As an aside, “luz” means “light” in Portuguese.) Is it a place of stones, pretty uncomfortable, or a place of divine appearance? Ibn Ezra’s two different comments seem to point to a probably unresolvable ambivalence: A random place can be the place. God can appear everywhere – yet that doesn’t mean that there is not a secret in our soul, mysterious like the light of a globe lamp in the dark -- a certainty that leads us to one and not to the other place. Where God appears to us, in whatever way that might be, will be forever a unique place that shows us what we knew all along.

Shabbat Shalom!

“Bless Me Also”: Redeeming Esav to Redeem our World
By TBA Rabbinic Resident, David Kaplinsky

As a regular Torah reader and former professional performer, I have always enjoyed the challenge and the beauty of chanting from the Torah. Singing the lovely melodies, bringing the words to life for others, and achieving personal ownership of sections of our Holy story all made the task thoroughly enjoyable and valuable to me. But it wasn’t until a few years ago when reading the Torah for this week’s parsha, Toldot, that I had an experience of deeply feeling what I was reading. My performance of leyning had previously focused on being accurate and melodic but not on finding emotional connection. This new connection all fell into place the first time I read Esav’s words to his father Yitzchak right after he is told that his brother Yaakov has duped him out of the blessing. When Esav heard his father’s confirmation of this…

וַיִּצְעַק צְעָקָה גְּדֹלָה וּמָרָה עַד־מְאֹד וַיֹּאמֶר לְאָבִיו בָּרְכֵנִי גַם־אָנִי אָבִי׃…

…He cried out with an extremely loud and bitter cry and said to his father,

“Bless me, also me, my father!”

Chanting the words of Esav as a Torah reader caused me to embody Esav’s cry. The narration of his cry alone is enough to break your heart, but once the text quotes his own words the effect is immediate and visceral. His insistent repetitions further emphasize Esav’s feelings of being left behind, second best: “Bless me, also me!” It is a heartbreaking moment.  

            While our Rabbis often made a great effort in the midrashim to make Esav look like a villain who deserved to be duped, the Torah’s language itself seems to want us to empathize with Esav—to feel the injustice dealt him by Yaakov and Rivkah. Beyond his quoted words, the Torah goes out of its way to describe Esav’s cry not only as “loud” and “bitter” but also adds that it was “extremely” so. Why should a character who deserves no sympathy be described with such heartfelt empathy in the Torah?

            It is instructive that many of our great commentators (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rambam, Ramban, etc.)—who usually have so much negativity to cast upon Esav—are silent on this verse. To me, it is a subtle acknowledgement that this moment doesn’t fit quite so neatly in their picture of a bloodthirsty, amoral person. However, our rabbis in a midrash on this parsha in Genesis Rabbah recognize clearly the damage inflicted on Esav:

אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא כָּל מִי שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר שֶׁהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וַתְּרָן הוּא יִתְוַתְּרוּן בְּנֵי מְעוֹהִי, אֶלָּא מַאֲרִיךְ אַפֵּיהּ וְגָבֵי דִּילֵיהּ, זְעָקָה אַחַת הִזְעִיק יַעֲקֹב לְעֵשָׂו, דִּכְתִיב: כִּשְׁמֹעַ עֵשָׂו אֶת דִּבְרֵי אָבִיו וַיִּזְעַק זְעָקָה, וְהֵיכָן נִפְרַע לוֹ בְּשׁוּשַׁן הַבִּירָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַיִּזְעַק זְעָקָה גְדוֹלָה וּמָרָה עַד מְאֹד

Anyone who claims that The Holy One, blessed be He, is overly lenient will forfeit his life; rather, God is slow to anger and as a demonstration: Yaakov caused Esav to cry a single cry, as it is written: “As Esav heard the words of his father, he cried out…”  And where was he called to account for this? In Shushan, the capital [of Persia] as it is written: [Mordechai went through the city] crying out with an extremely loud and bitter cry (Est. 4:1) ]against Haman's decree to destroy the Jews[.

In a sharp intertextual reading, this midrash plays on the nearly exact shared wording of Mordechai’s cry in Esther and that of Esav in our parsha to demonstrate that what Yaakov did to Esav was indeed wrong and deserving of punishment. The pain that was caused Esav inevitably became our own pain, even if it took several generations for the backlash to materialize. Where so often our Rabbis only recognize our own people’s merit and pain—while characterizing people outside our family as enemies—this midrash recognizes that the cry of Esav cannot be drashed out of existence. It is our own pain. It is a recognition that a wrong was perpetrated and that Esav’s pain was real and legitimate.

Why did this cycle of hurt and punishment have to come in to being? One hint is that Yaakov and Esav’s relationship appears to have founded on the idea that their individual success had to be to the detriment of the other—only one could have the birthright, only one the blessing. Yet, one of the few notable commentators who does comment on this pasuk, the 19^th century commentator Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel or the Malbim, opens the possibility of a different way of thinking that is embedded in Esav’s request to also be blessed. He asks rhetorically, seemingly in the character of Isaac:

?הלא האב יכול לברך כל בניו בעושר ובממשלה וכל טוב

Is not a father able to bless all his children with success, stability, and all good things?

            This is a question worth asking. And indeed, Isaac does subsequently recognize that blessing is not a zero-sum game when he goes on to bless Esav also. His further blessing can be given equally, even if it happened to not be the first in reception.

Our success as individuals, as a community, and as a people does not have to be at the expense of those outside our orbit. We can cheer on their success and happiness even as we seek our own with equal vigor. And a major part of recognizing that blessing is ultimately shared among us all is recognizing that other people hurt too and that we may be the source of some of their pain. Even with the best intentions we are capable of doing damage to others on the way to achieving our goals. Our work then is to minimize that damage and acknowledging the pain we cause when we get too caught up in our own efforts. We must ultimately realize that true success only occurs when we lift up not only ourselves, but all those around us. Then we can all merit to be truly blessed with all good things. 

Moving Forward Together
Prepared by TBA Rabbinic Resident Jacki Honig

In some ways, our world has marched on towards normal. In other ways, it is so hard to be a human right now. People are still dying, the fear of COVID is real, and we are still just figuring out how to emerge from our protective cocoons of the last year and a half. As we return to navigating our complex “normal” lives, we have to figure out how to do this. During this last year and a half, we have faced challenges unlike any other. And also, we’ve been doing this for a year and a half. Why talk about it now? We know it’s hard, nothing has changed, and if anything things are easing towards better and more “normal” and life as “usual.” Torah is timeless and can offer us wisdom for each moment in our lives, and this time is no different.

This week’s parsha offers us an incredible example of how to work through these incredible challenges: together. At the end of our parsha, Avraham faces what is arguably the hardest thing that he has ever done in his life. G!d calls out to Abraham and tells him to sacrifice his son, and Abraham seemingly agrees to it. Preparations are made and Abraham, Isaac, and some servants set off on their way to the place that G!d will show them. Just two verses before the climax of our events, right before Abraham binds Isaac to the altar, Isaac speaks to his father, for the first time in the story. He says “Here is the flint and here is the wood, but where is the sheep for the offering?” Abraham responds that G!d will send the sheep. And then, and here it is, don’t blink or you’ll miss it וַיֵּלְכ֥וּ שְׁנֵיהֶ֖ם יַחְדָּֽו . They went. The two of them. Together. The Torah doesn’t include extra words for no reason, each and every word is meant to tell us something. So what does this together mean here? Why doesn’t the Torah just say “They went” or “the two of them went” or any other way of saying it, why does the Torah tell us that they went together? 

Rashi says that this means that they went with בְּלֵב שָׁוֶה, with an equivalent or fitting heart. From this, we might think that it means that they were both ready together for what was about to happen. 

Targum Yonatan, however, offers a slightly different explanation. It translates this section to say בְּלֵב שְׁלִים כַּחֲדָא, with a heart completely as one. These two men went together with one heart. 

This is such a challenging moment in the Torah, for us, and presumably for the players in the story. Abraham is about to sacrifice his son, his only son, the son that he loves and that he waited 100 years for, that can’t be easy. Isaac has just realized that something strange is going on, something seems off, his spidey senses are tingling, if you will. There could be an adversarial moment happening, there could be a lack of trust, there could be a feeling that the other person is just in it for themselves. And yet. They went. The two of them. Together. With one heart. Whatever they felt, they knew that they could not do it alone, the hardest thing they’d ever been asked (even if Isaac didn’t know it quite yet), and so they did it together. And this is our charge for today. What we have faced and what we continue to face, contain big challenges. It is up to us to come together, with one heart, and lean on each other to keep moving forward.  

DVAR TORAH Lekh Lekha 5782
Where Do I Go from Here?
By TBA Rabbinic Resident Julia Knobloch

The day olive trees breathed deeply
and the hills learned again to dance like lambs
I saw my son’s face when I was alone.
I was so alone that I saw.
Sleep in me, said the landscape, sleep, sleep.

I saw birds flying up and birds flying down
as when people leave you
and others come in their stead.

I saw men sitting in their homes
crying: “I want to go home!”
with the calm faces of men sitting
in their homes.

Sleep in me, said the landscape, sleep, sleep.

I resonate with this untitled poem by Yehuda Amichai, from his collection Time. It is like a mysterious prophecy, a somnambulant déjà-vu that evokes a truth I know I know, something I believe in. It has a reassuring, peaceful effect. The speaker doesn’t seem troubled. He feels safe in the landscape, surrounded—protected—by breathing olive trees and dancing hills. The hills are not jumping with fear, like the mighty mountains of the Lebanon at the sound of God’s voice in Psalm 29. Here, nature is rejoicing like the lovers in Shir HaShirim, conjuring up their reunion.

This bucolic atmosphere notwithstanding, the main sensation which emanates from the poem is loneliness. It is even stated twice: I saw my son’s face when I was alone. I was so alone, that I saw.

These two lines describe a vision: either of someone from the past—an absent son—or of a future son. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that an experience of loneliness lies at the core of prophecy. This loneliness arises from being different, from knowing differently than most “others” and can be literal or figurative: the prophets were not alone in their environment, and they must have felt very lonely.

This reminds me of the popular wisdom to deconstruct the word “alone” and remove its perceived negative connotation by focusing on the more empowering reading of “all one.” Amichai’s poem in fact is a good example of the overlap of both meanings: The speaker is alone, he is the only one in the landscape. He is all one with the landscape, he is all one with his vision.

Abraham may be one of the loneliest people in Tanakh, and there are many lonely people in Tanakh. While he had wives, a concubine, servants, and followers—and two sons, plus other offspring—he is a person set apart by his “vision and mission.”

When I think of the midrash about the Burning Castle, which explores why Abraham left his land, birthplace, and father’s house, I imagine a surreal landscape, like in a painting that Dalí and Hopper created in a team effort. Not at all like the landscape in Amichai’s poem. In the middle of a bleak nowhere, Abraham comes upon a burning castle and wonders why it is burning. Doesn’t it have an owner? The owner reveals himself to Abraham and thus makes him a partner in extinguishing the flames. Now they have a pact.

This powerful imagery seeks to explain how and why God chose Abraham to become the patriarch of (not only) the Israelite nation. Naturally, it focuses on a dialogue between God and Abraham. And maybe this is precisely the nature of a vision: there is no distinction between dialogue and monologue, between inside and outside.

Did Abraham intend or hope to change his luck by changing his place? It’s unclear. All that which seems clear is that he knew he had to leave. And that he knew that making a pact means to honor the promises one gave to oneself and to the covenantal partner, even if some visions may not come true right away, or exactly as imagined. Renouncing one’s initial certainty, faith, and trust would mean letting the flames consume the castle, instead of putting them out.

Arguably this is why Abraham, at the end of his life, insists that his servant must not return his son Isaac to where he came from, should no woman want to cross over and become Isaac’s wife: “On no account must you take my son back there!” (Bereisheet 24:6) Taking Isaac back to Haran would render the last 100 years of Abraham’s life as well as the pact he made with himself and with God in front of the burning castle meaningless.

Lekh Lekha is a parsha full of promises and covenants between God and Abraham. There is the initial command to leave Haran and the oft-repeated promise of reward. There is the Covenant between the Pieces. There is the Brit Milah.

Theologically, these covenants are the foundation of the bond between God and the Israelites until today. On a lyrical, mystical level, they are the visions of a man who was so lonely and all one that he saw. A man who believed in himself and in God and who honored the pact he had made. A man who felt so at home in his new land(scape), that he trusted her to protect him while asleep. And that land made him see his future.

This dvar technically ends here. As a coda, I am adding a poem I wrote a few years ago. It can’t aspire to Amichai’s mastery, but it, too, in its own right, is inspired by this week’s parsha and Abraham’s visions.

DO NOT RETURN

Why don’t you go home, they ask the immigrant
after all that went wrong?

Back to health care, passport, security
Family, the Yemenite rabbi said
is a husband, children

Does a niece count as offspring?

Make a chart, my neighbor said:

Why stay?
I want to
I left
G-d promised

Land, blessings, a name

I am the earth -- One grain of dust
I am the sea -- One drop of water
I am the sky -- One star

(From the collection Do Not Return, Broadstone Books, 2019)