​There are many ways to interpret Torah, as we’ve discussed in various contexts.  One is the obvious one—the interpretation focuses on what is or what seems to be the literal message of the passage. That’s called pshat.  And there are other ways, too. There is also gematria, where we count words or passages based on assigning a number to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  When we know what the number is, we can often draw connections to other ideas or mitzvot in the Torah. 
But here I want to focus on another method of interpretation—a technique called gezera shava. In gezera shava, we look at how often a phrase or a word appears in the Torah; if a phrase or a word occurs only once in the entire Torah, for example, that may mean that there’s something significant about the phrase or word. And if a word or a phrase appears frequently, it doesn’t seem to have as much interpretive weight.  And if identical phrases, or sentences, or terms appear INFREQUENTLY, we look for what meaning they might share. 
This week’s parsha, parshat Yitro, which we read in its entirety, contains a phrase that has appeared in the Torah before, making it a gezera shava. Moshe’s father-in-law advises him to delegate some of the work he’s been doing. Yitro points out that Moshe is the only person the Israelites rely on, and that dependence is ultimately going to exhaust Moshe.  It’s good advice, something that all of us can learn from.  That we can’t do it all.  But when Yitro observes Moshe, he is quick to pronounce judgment.  According to Yitro, the situation is not good.  Simple words, in both Hebrew and English. Lo Tov.  Not good.  And Moshe, wise man that he was, knows that he’s got to change his approach to ruling.  So, what about that phrase lo tov? It’s so simple that you might think that it appears repeatedly in the Torah. Yet it does not.  In fact, that phrase appears only one other time in the entire Torah.  You may be able to figure out where is its earlier occurrence.    
Well, the answer is that lo tov appears in Breishit—when God sees that Adam is alone, God declares that that situation is lo tov, not good.  So this is a perfect opportunity for gezera shava.  And then the question becomes: What might these two examples share? What can we learn from bringing them together?
We might notice that, in the first case, God the father is pronouncing judgment; in the second case, Yitro the father-in-law is pronouncing judgment.  But I think we can also go beyond that.  God makes clear that it is not good for a person to be alone.  And he creates Chava, Eve. Here God is making a statement about the value of family, about the value of intimate partnerships, of love.  A partner can provide balance, can help one to shift perspective, can pick you up when you’re down. When Yitro exclaims lo tov, he is declaring that it is not good for rulers to rule alone, for rulers to be alone. That every ruler needs partners, people with whom she or he can share not only the responsibility but also the weight of leadership.  Yitro makes clear that justice cannot be the sole province of one person, even someone as wise as his son-in-law Moshe.
So here in these two lo tovs we see the mirroring of family and community, of the personal and of the political, of the private and the public. It is not good to be alone, not good for a society, a community, and not good for the individual. And we know that, for Judaism, the line between family and community is never absolutely delineated. Never clear-cut. Here gezera shava teaches us that it is not good to be alone, and that we are never alone as long as we have each other.

​This week’s parsha is full of some of the most memorable scenes in the Torah. We know that the Israelites have now escaped from Egypt, and we see the Egyptians who chase after them destroyed in the Yam Suf.  The song we hear celebrates not the death of the Egyptians OR the splitting of the sea, but rather the Israelites’ faith in God AFTER the sea splits.
These miracles are followed by yet another miracle, one that we are quite familiar with:  the miracle of the manna.  The passage that describes this miracle is somewhat ambiguous.  Here’s what it says:

Moses announces the tenth plague to Pharaoh, the slaying of the firstborn sons of Egypt.  God hardens Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh does not respond to his final ultimatum.  Once Pharaoh sees his own family affected, he permits the Israelites to leave the country.  

The way Pharaoh responds to the tenth plague gives us insight into his relationship with the people he rules.  Pharaoh not only enslaved the Israelites, but he also enslaved his own plague-stricken people by his lack of concern for their welfare.  He could not care less about the fact that his own people -- the Egyptians -- were suffering blow after blow.  
Only when the angel of death is at his door is he willing to let the Israelites go; when only the people suffered, Pharaoh was not moved in the least.  God then commands Moses to instruct the Israelites how to prepare the sacrificial meal that is to occur immediately prior to the Exodus. The people are to take a lamb, slaughter it on the 14th day of Nisan, at twilight, mark the doorposts of their houses with its blood, and eat the lamb on the eve of the 15th.  On the same night, God strikes down all the first-born of Egypt.  God further commands the Israelites to observe this festival -- the 15th of Nisan, Passover -- for all time.  
It is well-known that the Hebrew calendar is lunar (more precisely lunar-solar).  The author of the Sefat Emes understands the Hebrew lunar calendar as a metaphor for the miracle of outliving our persecutors.  Whereas others may survive only when the sun shines upon them, the Jews have survived and managed to spread light, as the moon does, even in the darkness.
This portion forms the basis of our Passover Haggadah. A good strategy to spice up your Seder would be to read parts of this Parsha from a Chumash such as Etz Chaim with commentaries. This can be an adjunct to the Haggadah itself. 
Exodus 12:24-27 emphasizes this in the commandment, "You shall observe this as an instruction for all time . . . you shall observe this rite.  And when your children say to you, `What do you mean by this rite (ma ha-avodah hazot lachem)?' you shall say, `It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt .’
The phrase, "What do you mean by this rite?" is placed into the mouth of the wicked child in the Passover Haggadah.  Often, we dismiss this question and view the child's inquiry more as a challenge rather than a request for more understanding.  Yet, embedded in his comment may be a thought worth pondering.  
The word, "avodah," derives from the very same word as "avdoot," slavery.  The child's question is, therefore, "What makes servitude to God any better than servitude to Pharaoh?  I thought the whole point of leaving Egypt was to be free and now it turns out we are "avadim," slaves, again!"  
If we understand the child's question in this way, the "wicked" child is presenting a challenging question.  One way to respond is to suggest that Egyptian bondage was purely utilitarian.  Pharaoh has no interest in the welfare of the slaves.  In contrast, being a servant of God is a means of becoming who we were intended to be at creation; and this requires discipline, which is meant not to crush us (as was Pharaoh's intent) but to focus our energies so that we can become a holy people.

This week’s parsha—VA-ERA—narrates the exchange between God and Moshe about Moshe’s eventual leadership of the Jewish people. And we know that Moshe resists his calling—he worries about his speech impediment, he tells God that the Israelites will not listen to him, he mentions his older brother Aaron, and he tries everything in his power to dissuade God from appointing him. One popular explanation for God’s choice of Moshe as a leader is that Moshe is an ANAV.

          I think we probably all know this word—we hear it all the time, especially in the book of Exodus. And just as we frequently call Abraham, Abraham Avinu, so we often note that Moshe is an ANAV.  What does that word mean?  YES—HUMBLE.  In fact, Moshe called himself the most humble person on earth.  Imagine—this person who led the Israelites out of slavery, who received the Ten Commandments and the Torah from God, who is perhaps the greatest prophet of all time, who is the only person who is able to speak DIRECTLY with God—this is not just a humble person, but the most humble person on the planet.  One tractate tells us that “all the other prophets looked at God through a murky glass. But Moshe looked at God through a CLEAR glass.” Isn’t it amazing to think that someone with all of those accomplishments would be able to remain humble? 

I think that most of us—with even ONE of these things on our resumes, would have a tendency to get a swelled head.  But Moshe does not; and he never does.

          We tend to take for granted that the word ANAV translates to HUMBLE.  But not all translations do that. The Christian Bible—the King James Version—translates ANAV as MEEK.  What do you think? 

I may be biased, and I know that the business of translation is tricky.  But I’m with all of you. I think MEEK is not a good translation of ANAV. And I think that Moshe may have been humble, but he was certainly not meek.  Meekness, in my opinion, is very different from humility.  So look at our text.  Moshe kills the task master to save the life of a Jewish slave.  Moshe stands up to God and challenges God’s selection of him as the leader of the Israelites.  Moshe (along with his brother Aaron) confronts Pharaoh with the power of God and his love for the Jewish people.  Moshe may have sinned by striking the rock and by losing his patience with the people, but those sins make clear that he is hardly a meek man.

          But humble is very different.  When Miriam and Aaron challenge Moshe’s authority, he never defends himself; in fact, it takes God to intervene to defend Moshe.  When Korach rebels, we never see Moshe defend his leadership; in every case, he invokes God to make clear that he is only an emissary.  There is even a midrash that when the five daughters of Tzelafchad came to Moshe to ask whether they could inherit, he made the decision to let them inherit their father’s estate because they had no brothers.  But Moshe tells them that it was God who decided the issue; and midrash tells us that Moshe wanted the daughters to feel honored that God—and not humble Moshe--would decide in their favor. So, here again, Moshe willingly deflects attention away from himself.

          There’s a saying that good leaders always take the blame and never take the credit for what happens.  That’s a really hard lesson to learn.  It’s so much easier to pat ourselves on the back when things go well, and to point fingers when things don’t.   Moshe is a good leader because he knows who he is and he doesn’t need accolades or adoration.  So maybe humility and confidence go hand in hand. If you’re truly confident, you can afford to be humble. You know who you are and you don’t let others’ doubts or successes blind you to that awareness.  Let us pray that we might all learn this lesson from Moshe Rabbenu.

​In this week’s parsha, SHMOT, we see the evolution of a leader, of our first rabbi, Moshe.  Remember that Moshe lived the life of a prince, and his life in the Egyptian palace could have remained as comfortable as it was. But an event changes Moshe’s life and his destiny.  And that event occurs even before Moshe’s conversation with God at the burning bush, where God tells him that He has taken pity on the Israelite slaves.  But, even before that, we know that Moshe, in anger, kills an Egyptian, who was beating a Jew.  And the Torah tells us that Moshe looked around, saw no one, and killed the Egyptian.  But there’s an interesting phrase that we read just before he makes the decision to kill the oppressor.  The line is “He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen.”  

This line tells us that Moshe isn’t simply feeling compassion for someone who is being wrongfully hurt.  It also tells us that Moshe experiences a connection with the victim. He is, the Torah tells us, his KINSMAN.  So we know that Moshe, even with his privileged background, identifies as a Jew.  VaYigdal Moshe VaYaytzay el Echawv VaYahr B’Sivlotawm.  Moses became great when he went out to his brethren and saw their suffering.  More than any other quality, a true leader has to have compassion.  
At the end of today’s parsha, Moshe asks God two questions:  The first question: Oh, Lord, why did you bring harm upon this people?
And the second:  Why did you send me?
כבוַיָּ֧שָׁב משֶׁ֛ה אֶל־יְהֹוָ֖ה וַיֹּאמַ֑ר אֲדֹנָ֗י לָמָ֤ה הֲרֵעֹ֨תָה֙ לָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה לָ֥מָּה זֶּ֖ה שְׁלַחְתָּֽנִי:

I think today we continue to ask that first question—why is there evil in the world? Why do good people suffer?  And, as you’ll soon hear, God does not really provide much of an answer to either of those questions.  But I think in Shmot we have a glimpse of an answer to that second question—Why did you send me?—as we see Moshe Rabbeynu’s compassion for the Israelite slaves, even as they complain to him that his attempts to free them have only made their lives WORSE. We see Moshe identifying with the downtrodden, when it would have been so easy to return to his comfortable life in Pharaoh’s palace. We see Moshe deciding to link his fate with the fate of the Jewish people.  As God tells him, “Just as you believe in Me, so you must believe in them.”
Just as Moshe begins to believe in the Jewish people, so they begin to believe in Moshe and his leadership. This is all because of his great compassion.

We know from our reading of Breishit that God gave Adam dominion over the animals. He is even given the power to name them, a clear sign that he is in control.  But on what is that control based? The Torah is noticeably silent on that question. Why are human beings dominant over the rest of the natural order?


Some people have assumed that the answer is obvious. But it’s not really so clear when we dig a little more deeply. So many theologians, psychologists, and philosophers have tried to answer that question.  For Aristotle, we are the rational animal. For others, we are tool makers. Marx argued that we are the only animals capable of productive labor.  Many have claimed that human beings alone have a soul, and that means we are truly created in the image of God.  Though all of these answers have some merit, I want to suggest a different possibility which emerges from this week’s Parshah.
 
That Parsha, Vayigash, is one of the most beautiful of the Torah.  Its seemingly straightforward narrative belies the many unanswered questions embedded there.  It relates the climax of the story of Joseph and his brothers, a telling that moves from alienation, sibling rivalry and cruelty to care, compassion and reconciliation. 
 
We realize from the Parsha how much Joseph has yearned for a re-connection to his family, despite what his brothers have done to him.  Midrash tells us that Joseph has remained faithful to the mitzvot for more than 22 years, observances that were his alone in Egypt.  Perhaps he weeps for his loss of Jewish community beyond his immediate family.  We also see him weep with Benjamin, his full brother from his beloved mother Rachel,-the only other fully innocent character in this narrative.  He weeps for the mother he has lost and the brother he has found. 
 
We are told that Joseph’s sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear, and so the news reached Pharoah’s palace.  Joseph the Tzaddik is moved to tears by his brother Judah’s pleas for the life of Benjamin and Judah’s offer to take Benjamin’s place in prison to avoid further heartache for their father Jacob. 
 
This story is an incredible story of forgiveness.  Listen to the words of the Torah at the moment when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers:
 
“Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come forward to me.” And when they came forward, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here, it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. It is now two years that there has been famine in the land, and there are still five years to come in which there shall be no yield from tilling.  God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance.  So, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharoah, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt.”
 
In Joseph’s words we seem to have found an answer to the question of why he forgives his brothers. It was God’s plan that depended on their selling him into slavery, a plan that includes his imprisonment and rise into Pharoah’s inner circle.  He forgives them and lets them know that the difference now is not in him but rather in them.  No longer jealous or angry, they feel shame and fear before him.  They finally see their own sins and guilt and as a result of these insights, they are able to pass the tests Joseph had designed for them. 
 
Not only does Joseph forgive them, he refrains from referring to years of suffering or to what they have done to him.  As we read these passages, we cannot help but be reminded of other stories of jealousy-between Rachel and Leah, between Jacob and Esau.  These stories frame the story of Joseph and his brothers and at last provide us with a sense of peace and reconciliation after the noteworthy silence about these other rivalries.
 
Why forgive?  There are lots of good pragmatic reasons to forgive-to end a feud, for example. To think about how self-poisoning resentment becomes if one doesn’t forgive.  But the primary reason to forgive, it seems to me, is to restore a lost relationship.  Remember that it’s often those closest to us who have hurt us and need forgiveness.  Think about someone you have finally forgiven or want to forgive.  My guess is that it’s not some anonymous stranger who cut you off on the highway.  Those little injuries evaporate quickly.  Wrongs from those closest to us do not.  So, forgiveness matters because the people closest to us-Joseph’s brothers, for example-matter.  Who are we without them?  What does that isolation cost us?
 
In answer to our original question about what might separate us from the animals, perhaps the answer is forgiveness. This may be because forgiveness may run counter to all of our basic instincts for survival. 
 
There are no rules for forgiveness.  Joseph forgives his brothers and goes far beyond forgiveness to restore them to life and health and property and standing.  But he gains even more for himself through his act of forgiveness.  Through his forgiveness he becomes whole again. 
 
So may it be for all of us.  Amen. 

A rabbi whose name I’ve forgotten was taking a walk through the streets of Jerusalem. At one point, he stopped to observe a group of garbage men who were collecting that day’s trash.  They all had a very clear and consistent system:  each truck was staffed by two people—one person would be on the ground, running around picking up the garbage; and the other person would be on top of the truck, taking the garbage and throwing it into the truck.  The rabbi watched for a little while, and he started to feel that the system was unfair:  the person on the ground had to do so much more work than the person on top of the truck.  But, as he was about to comment on it, something changed:  the two people switched positions, and the person who had been on the top went down to street level and started picking up the trash, and the person who had been on the street moved to the top of the truck to toss it. 
It turned out that every half hour the two people switched roles.
I love this story, and not only because it’s yet another reminder of Israeli ingenuity. I also think that it tells us so much about the story of Joseph. Remember that when we left him last week, he is in prison. He has asked the butler to remember him, but the butler, once freed, has completely forgotten Joseph. Joseph is the lowest of the low.  But then, two years later, when Pharaoh dreams, the butler recalls the boy in the prison who could interpret dreams.  And Joseph, in just a few lines of MI KEYTZ, is saved.  Not only saved, but remade:  he is cleaned up, he is given a haircut, new clothes, and a signet ring. He becomes a VICEROY, the second in command in Egypt, after Pharaoh.  If you’ve been to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and seen the Egyptian rooms, you can probably imagine what Joseph looked like—so stylized and ornamented.
So, what does this story tell us? I think it tells us, like the story of the Israeli garbage collectors, that we should always remember that life is full of ups and downs.  We do not always get what we want, and there are times when we get so much more than we expected.  We may be planning our next step in life---a promotion at work, a new job, a home purchase, a retirement—and somehow things don’t work out the way we expected.  Or we may be thinking that life is going to continue as we’d mapped it out—we are NOT expecting change—and somehow, unexpectedly, we are facing a new challenge that we weren’t prepared for.  It’s a cliché, but it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves:  into each life some rain must fall.  Imagine what a movie would be like without ups and downs—just plain boring! 
We can learn a lot about people, we can learn a lot about ourselves, when we look at how and WHETHER we change during these ups and downs that are so typical of a normal life. Do we become haughty when we are at the top of our game? Do we become demoralized when we don’t get what we wanted?  Do we keep our faith when life treats us well, and curse God when we face difficult challenges? I think that Joseph matures, and he never forgets that God is with him, whether he is at the top of the garbage truck or on the street. This is surely a message for all of us, especially as we are about to enter the secular new year. 2021 has been a very tough year for many of us—on both a personal and a global level—but we look for moments of joy and peace even as we recognize that there is so much that we cannot control.
 

A Joyful and Light Chanukah to all!

Genesis, the first of the five books of the Torah, is somewhat like a roller coaster ride.  It is powerful and grand, yet there is also something so personal and intimate about it and the stories that it tells.  What makes it so powerful? Well, one rabbi has a possible answer.  He notes: “I can go through every single parsha in Breishit and show the good guy and the bad guy and set them against each other as moral lessons, of good versus evil.”  There’s a lot of truth there—think about what we’ve read thus far. We have Adam and Eve VERSUS—the snake.  We have Cain versus Abel. We have Avraham VERSUS Pharaoh.  We have Jacob VERSUS Esav.  And we heard last week of Jacob VERSUS Laban.

So far, it’s pretty easy to see the world in very stark, very black and white terms.


But let’s think a bit about this week’s parsha, Vayeyshev.  It’s probably easy to think right off the bat that it’s Joseph VERSUS his brothers. Right? Our children’s stories and the Broadway show might set it up that way, but I think we should work to make this a more complex tale. 

Can we really claim that the brothers of Joseph—the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel—are really evil?  Can we really think that Yehudah—who gives our people its name—is evil? Of course we recognize that they are flawed, but so is Joseph.  These are ALL righteous people.  Not perfect, but righteous.  This is a good lesson for all of us. What the brothers should have realized is that there is room for all of them, that there is room for them to have differences of opinion and to co-exist without rancor.

People are NOT one-dimensional, thank God. And if we keep that in mind, then we will recognize that we can co-exist and that we can perhaps even learn from each other. And strengthen our community in the process. A community built not on sameness of belief but on a commitment to a vision.

I was privileged to see the play Hamilton a few years ago. There’s a great line in it that reminds me so much of this week’s parsha.  At the end of the show, Aaron Burr—spoiler alert:  he kills Hamilton—Aaron Burr sings: “I should’ve known that the world is wide enough for both Hamilton and me.”

Joseph’s brothers should have known that, and they were allowed by God to learn that later in life, when they were finally reconciled with their brother.

May that be so with all of us.

Best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great start to Chanukah!

In Vayishlach, our Parsha this week, we see that Jacob kind of gets what he deserves.  Some might call it karma.  Remember that he has stolen his brother’s birthright. He has tricked his father into giving him the blessing that his father had intended for Esav, the son Isaac prefers.  Even his name tells us that he’s flawed—YAAKOV can mean HEEL but it can also mean CROOKED.  

So, there is no question that Jacob has some growing up to do, even if this is all part of God’s divine plan.  But, as we know, he does get his comeuppance.  He has to flee from his home. He ends up being tricked by Laban and forced to marry the daughter he does not love. He works for more than 14 years to get the woman of his dreams. And he is finally driven to sneak away—once again—under cover of the night with all his property, his children, and his wives.

So maybe that’s karma. Payback for all the deception he used against his brother and his father. But let’s not forget that there’s another part to this powerful narrative. Remember that, before meeting up with his brother Esau, Jacob is left alone by the stream of Jabbok. There he wrestles with a man all night long. When morning comes the man asks to leave, and Jacob tells him, not until you bless me. The man says to Jacob, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human and have prevailed.” The name Israel means “wrestles with God.” Jacob has a new name, and an injury to his sciatic nerve that will cause him to limp for the rest of his life.

Maybe that’s another form of karma.  But what happens when Jacob’s name is NO LONGER JACOB, but Israel? After wrestling with the man—and some say that the “man” was really GOD, or really an angel, or perhaps even Jacob wrestling with HIMSELF—what happens after this dramatic contest is that Jacob now knows that he has not been the kind of person worthy of the covenant God promised him. He has been crooked, and he needs to become a new self. He changes.

Is that KARMA?  Maybe. But I think that, regardless of what you call Jacob’s transformation, this chapter of Breishit teaches us that people can change. WE CAN CHANGE. We tend to focus on that lesson during the High Holidays, but the lesson itself is right here in this week’s reading. Any one of us can wrestle with our demons and come out a better, less crooked person. That struggle is definitely painful, and Israel has the limp to prove it. The limp that reminds him—and us—of how far we have come, but also of where we have been.  The limp that lets us know that change is hard and painful and leaves scars, but it is something that we survive. And, ultimately, it is worth it.