The brilliant doctor, researcher, and author Oliver Sacks—famous for the book The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat--Sacks once related the story of a gifted musicologist who was struck with a terrible brain infection.  The infection left him with absolutely no short-term memory. He was completely incapable to making connections, and, if you can imagine this—he was stuck in a string of endless PRESENTS.  Every moment was new to him. But there was one thing—one activity—that kept him out of total isolation. Perhaps you can guess what it was. It was MUSIC. He could still sing, play the organ, and even conduct a choir.  Music enabled him to create continuity when nothing else in his life allowed him to do that. 
            Maybe you can relate to that phenomenon.  I know I can.  When I visit people in nursing homes—when I visited my own mother in her nursing home—even when people seem to be without any awareness of their surroundings.  Even when people are completely unable to communicate.  They can still SING. They can still remember music. And it seems to give them some joy. Somehow, they can see and feel the power of music to move beyond the present, to move beyond themselves.
            Think about how important music is to Judaism.  Can you imagine the Kol Nidre prayer without its amazingly evocative melody?  Without that melody, it’s nothing but a very dry piece of legal instructions.  But, with the melody, we feel the real power of those words.  And it’s not just Kol Nidre—it’s every aspect of our religious lives. As Jews, we know exactly where we are in the calendar, because of the melodies.  We could close our eyes, and we’d still know when it’s Shabbas or a weekday.  We’d know when it’s the High Holidays.  We’d know when someone is chanting a Haftorah or laening from the Torah.  We have distinct melodies for the Megillot, and on Tisha Ba’av, we chant Eichah, the book of Lamentations, with its own unique trop.  Who doesn’t feel the centuries of tears Jews have shed when we hear that melody?
            And the Torah itself honors music. In fact, there are ten songs that are part of our scripture, and we will read one tomorrow. 
            This Shabbat is Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of Song. What is the first thing the Israelites do AS A PEOPLE?  They burst into song!  They sing spontaneously, and praise God for the miracle they have just experienced.
            But—if it’s not obvious by now—I think of music itself as a kind of miracle.  When we hear music, or play music, we create connections and memories.  We wake up our souls. I think I love singing barbershop quartet music because, for me, it feels as though I am making a real contribution to the end result. My voice gets lost in the larger sound that is the purpose of barbershop. In doing so, I am supporting the other three singers, and, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t hear each of us. You’d just hear one sound. 
When it works, there’s nothing like it.
            Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—no relation to the Oliver Sacks I mentioned earlier—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls music a “signal of transcendence.”  Faith is not science, he says.  Rather, faith is more like music. In his words, “science analyses, music integrates.”  Think about that distinction: SCIENCE ANALYSES, MUSIC INTEGRATES. So science takes things apart, and music—like faith—brings them together.  And, according to Sacks, just as music connects note to note, so faith connects the different episodes of our lives and finds a way to make meaning out of them.  Here’s a direct quote from Rabbi Sacks: “Faith teaches us to hear the music beneath the noise.”
            And I think we can all agree that there is SO MUCH NOISE out there. Maybe more than ever we need music to make sense of the noise. AND, of course, FAITH.  How inspiring that we have a way—through music and through faith—to feel beyond the noise to find meaning. In a deep sense, what we are doing is creating HARMONY.  Musical harmony and spiritual harmony.  And that’s a real gift from God.

​This week, we read Parsha BO, and the content of this Parsha is probably some of the most familiar that we read in the Torah. Here we see the continuation of the plagues, from eight through ten, when Pharaoh finally relents and releases the Israelites.  Not just the “menfolk,” as he once promised, but everyone. Not just all the people, but the people and all their animals. And, finally, not just the people and the animals but also an incredible supply of gold and silver.
I’d focus a little on those well-known plagues.  We recite the list at the Pesach seder, and we probably know them by heart. This is all so familiar, isn’t it?  Maybe even too familiar . . . I’m sure you know that there are even kids’ toys that are supposed to represent each of the ten plagues.  Like anything very familiar, there may be ways that we are missing some questions that don’t occur to us because we take this narrative for granted.
          So let me see if I can raise some questions about this list that might not be so obvious to everyone.
First question:  why are the plagues in the order that they’re in?  In other words, why are frogs TWO and locusts eight?  Why is “Bloody water” the first plague?  Well, the sages tell us that these plagues go from least bad to the worst.  That makes sense, if we think about the last plague, the deaths of the first-born sons.  It’s hard to know what makes locusts almost the worst, except that we know from Eytz Hayyim that a swarm of locusts can contain as many as 50 MILLION insects and that they can consume 100,000 TONS of vegetation.  That had to be far more devastating than some bloody water and some frogs, however tough that must have been.  Rashi tells us that it was one particularly destructive species of locusts that was never seen before in Egypt and will never be seen again. If we imagine an agrarian economy like Egypt’s, that plague could have spelled famine for years to come. 
Second question:  what changes with the eighth plague?  Well, we read that, for the first time, Pharaoh’s courtiers begin to challenge him.  As they say, “How long shall this be a snare to us?  . . . Are you not aware that Egypt is lost?”  Those words pose a real challenge to Pharaoh’s power, and it must have taken courage for these minions to argue against Pharaoh’s might.  We can only imagine how frustrated and terrified they must have been, and how Pharaoh’s stubbornness had to seem completely irrational and likely to doom the country.  Sidebar here: this moment reminds me of Hitler’s completely irrational attempts to destroy all the Jews, even when it was clear that Germany could not win the war. In fact, his hatred of the Jews was so consuming that he took scarce resources that could have gone to the military and used them to try to wipe out the remnants of our people.
Third question:  how is the last plague—the deaths of the firstborns—different from all the other plagues?  I know that the answer might seem obvious: people die in the last plague. But I’m guessing that people died from hail or from diseases carried by vermin or from the swarming locusts or even from falling in the dark.  So that answer doesn’t seem to work. Thoughts? Well, according to some scholars, the last plague was significantly different because it was the ONLY PLAGUE THAT COULD NOT HAVE OCCURRED THROUGH SOME NATURAL MEANS. In other words, perhaps an eclipse caused the darkness. Perhaps the frogs appeared because the Nile overflowed its banks.  But there’s NO explanation for the inexplicable deaths, not only of a large group of people, but a very purposeful group, namely the first-born.  It’s possible that Pharaoh, with all of his sorcerers and magicians on staff, could have believed that any of them could have cast a spell to make the waters bloody; but there was no way any of them could possibly have caused such a divine act of retribution.
Final question:  Why is the darkness the next-to-last plague?  Remember that I mentioned that the plagues get worse as we go from one to ten.  Wouldn’t you think that, after vermin and bloody water and locusts and boils (sh’chin), that a little darkness couldn’t have been so awful?  Couldn’t they have just lit candles?  Couldn’t the Egyptians simply sit tight until the plague ran its course? And this plague, unlike the others, doesn’t seem to cause any tangible harm. 
I think we could think about this in a couple of ways. The first is very practice—without light, everything around us is reduced to an obstacle. Anything, even vast riches, can trip up a person who walks in darkness.  In other words, the very objects that might have helped us to improve our lives become dangerous threats to us. 
        And another reason:  light motivates us to action.  Darkness breeds depression and passivity. Think about how happy we all are to add a minute or two of light to each of these days!  When we are “in the light,” can raise about ourselves and move beyond our own immediate needs. The Egyptians were in a state of total spiritual darkness.  They couldn’t even see their “brother,” meaning that they couldn’t care about anyone but themselves. And even candles couldn’t save them.  The   Israelites didn't suffer from the plague, because their light was provided for by Torah and mitzvot—As Proverbs tells us, "A mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light".  When we have the illumination of the Torah and its mitzvoth, a whole new world comes to light. Obstacles are no longer obstacles; instead, they become God’s creations meant to assist us on our spiritual journey. 
The ninth plague teaches us that it is in our hands to brighten our lives; we have all the tools we need to do so. And when we manage to live in light despite the darkness that surrounds us, we are able to see our brothers and sisters, to rise above our own immediate needs and instincts to become a community, a true people.   

​This week, we read of Moshe’s trials and the challenges he faces in trying, with God’s help, to liberate B’Nai Yisrael.  There was the stubbornness of Pharaoh, of course, and his unwillingness to obey his upstart step-son.  But even before dealing with the King, Moshe must convince his own people that there was hope, there was redemption on the very near horizon.  Moshe has grave doubts about whether he can do it. Why?

The Torah tells us that God spoke to Moshe saying that he would bring the people out of Egypt.  The exact wording is: 

 

וְלָֽקַחְתִּ֨י אֶתְכֶ֥ם לִי֙ לְעָ֔ם וְהָיִ֥יתִי לָכֶ֖ם לֵֽאלֹהִ֑ים וִֽידַעְתֶּ֗ם כִּ֣י אֲנִ֤י יְהֹוָה֙ אֱלֹ֣הֵיכֶ֔ם הַמּוֹצִ֣יא אֶתְכֶ֔ם מִתַּ֖חַת סִבְל֥וֹת מִצְרָֽיִם

 

Now, Sivlot is generally translated as “burdens”, but it has another meaning in Hebrew, “patience”, Savlanut. If we use this alternate translation, the verse would read, “I will deliver you from being patient with Egypt.  Last week in SHEMOT B’Nai Yisrael criticized Moshe and Aharon for having agitated Pharaoh by calling for their freedom.  They had become so used to slavery that they were not willing to make any sacrifice for freedom.  Slavery had become an acceptable way of life for them.  This is similar to people who are incarcerated and begin to define their lives as inmates.  They are said to have an institutional mentality.  We even hear of some inmates who get in fights just before they’re going to be released; it’s their way of trying to remain in their familiar prison setting.  The Jews certainly qualified for this sort of “institutionalized” thinking.  And this is not the last time they beg to stay slaves. Because we have seen a few cycles of the Torah, we know that in a few weeks, we will be recounting the people’s reminiscences of their days of servitude, remembering the good old days, when we had fish, squash, melons, leeks, cucumbers, onions and garlic!

Moshe’s first challenge, then, was to overcome the tolerance of enslavement.  We, as Americans raised in a country where liberty is most highly prized, can understand how tragic it is when people who have been deprived of basic human rights do not even perceive a problem. 

Moshe was a leader who went forth to the people, among the people, inspiring them to reject slavery as a way of life.  He first had to have them feel their deprivation before he could, with God’s help, effect a change.  So this tells us that strong leadership really means three things: first, helping people to realize that their lives are not what they should be; second,  showing those same people that they can have a better life and what that might look like; AND, finally, convincing the people that they are strong enough to accomplish that. When the people are especially “stiff-necked,” like b’nai Yisreal, that’s not an easy thing to do! 

I’m sure that we all have our ideas about who are the heroes of the Torah. And we are about to begin the narrative of one of our greatest heroes—Moshe.  But tonight I want to focus on another hero, someone who is not even named in the parsha.
            We know the story well. The new Pharaoh, who has forgotten Joseph, has decided that the Jews are becoming a threat. So he orders all Jewish male babies killed. The mother of baby Moses can no longer hide him, so, when he is three months old, she puts him into a basket which she then sets on the Nile.  I’m sure that she hoped that some compassionate person would come along and take pity on her son.
            Well, that’s exactly what happens, but I’m sure that Jocheved, mother of Moshe, couldn’t have imagined the actual rescuer of her son:  she is Pharaoh’s daughter.  She saves Moshe from death, and she is the hero of this story. Without her intervention, Moshe might have died and perhaps we would not have been freed from bondage.
            Yet this person is not given a name by the Torah. Now I know that the Torah doesn’t always give women a fair shake, but in this parsha, we have names for the midwives who rebel against pharaoh’s order. We have Moshe’s sister Miriam, who also is a key part of the story. And I’ve already mentioned Jocheved. But we don’t have a name for Pharaoh’s daughter. Who was she?
            According to Chronicles, Pharaoh had a daughter named BITYA.  Some have called her BATYA or BITTHIAH.  Whatever her name, she knew that this was a Hebrew child. And that knowledge does not keep her from rescuing the baby and bringing him home to raise him as her own.  And all that is obviously in defiance of Pharaoh’s direct orders.
            Jonathon Sacks makes a very interesting observation about the importance of Batya. He points out that many of our patriarchs and matriarchs are named by God—for example, Jacob becomes Israel after his encounter with the angel; God renames Avram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah.  And, obviously, God named Adam and Eve.  But it is Pharaoh’s daughter who names Moshe, which is an Egyptian name. God does not change the name, and to this day we identify the savior of our people with a name that was part of the culture that enslaved us.  BUT Sacks hypothesizes that God was so moved by Batya’s rescue that He allowed her name to remain.  He deferred to her decision.  That’s pretty remarkable.
            And there are other testaments to Batya’s righteousness: according to our tradition, she survived the plague of the first-born. In the blockbuster film of 1956 Batya even joins the exodus in leaving Egypt.  And one other:  according to the sages, there were nine people so righteous that they entered heaven directly while they were alive. In other words, they didn’t have to die at all.  Batya was one of them.  (If you’re curious about who were the others, they are:
·         Elijah (Kings II Chapter 2, Verse 11)
·         Serach, the daughter of Asher - one of the sons of Jacob
·         Enoch (Genesis 5:22-24)[15]
·         Jacob
·         Eliezer, the servant of Abraham
·         Hiram, king of Tyre
·         Ebed-Melech, an Ethiopian, AND
·         Jaabez, the son of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi)
These are certainly not big names, but the idea is that they did something so righteous that God favored them with direct entrance to Paradise.  Their physical bodies never died.
          If you’ve been to Yad Vashem in Israel, then you know that there is an area called the Hall of Righteous Gentiles. In a way, Batya/Bitya/Bithiah is the first righteous Gentile.  She risked her own safety and comfort because she took pity not simply on an innocent baby but on an innocent JEWISH baby.  Let us pray that she may serve as an example for all of us.

This week, we read from Parshat Vayiggash which begins with Yehudah’s plea to Yosef, in which Yehudah said, “For you are like Pharoah”. According to Midrash, this was the moment when QUOTE “the kings joined in battle.” Now, of course, we know that Joseph is like a king.  Yehudah himself points that out.  But how could Judah be considered a king?  It’s true that later on, next week in Parshas Vayechi, Yaakov designates Yehudah as the tribe of kingship. And we know that he is famous for his incredible strength; he is Yehudah the lion. But, at this point in time, nothing has really transpired that would make Yehudah into any sort of king. So why would Midrash consider him such?
Perhaps the answer is that the king is ultimately the person who is responsible for the decisions and destiny of his nation. The bottom line is that responsibility resides with the leader of a nation. He must decide when to send the nation into war and when to sue for peace. Kingship equals responsibility. When Yehudah came forth and committed to his father Yaakov, “I will be responsible for Binyamin, from my hand you may seek him...”, he became the king.  He put his life on the line, he personally guaranteed his brother’s safety, and he became a new man.  He went from one of the brothers to the leader. To king.
If we understand this transformation, then we also understand another dramatic scene from earlier in the Torah.  At the end of Parshas Miketz, when it was thought that Binyamin was ‘guilty’ of stealing the silver, Yehudah seems to act like a servant.  He’s meek, and he prostrates himself in front of Yosef, confesses to the brother’s guilt, and offers himself and all his other brothers into slavery. And yet, later, two verses later, Yehudah is almost arrogant when he speaks to Yosef.  What happened?
One rabbi, Rav Yosef Leb Bloch, explains that what happened is that Yehudah remembered his acceptance of responsibility. Once he remembered the commitment of “I will be his guarantor,” he underwent a metamorphosis. He could no longer play the role of the weak, gentle, and servile brother. “The buck stops here. It is my responsibility.” Yehudah experienced a personality change. He was now a different person. “I accepted responsibility and I must do what I must do to live up to that responsibility.”
I would add to Rav Bloch’s interpretation that this is what happens when a person does TESHUVAH.  We know that the brothers, Yehudah in particular, have all sought repentance.  The experience of teshuvah, of genuine repentance, involves an accepting of responsibility. It’s not an ignoring of the past, but it is a rewriting of the past. A rewriting that now includes responsibility for one’s actions. And accepting responsibility changes a person.  In the words of Winston Churchill, “Some people are born great; some people achieve greatness; and some people have greatness thrust upon them.” I’m not sure if anyone is “born great,” but there is no question that Yehudah had greatness thrust upon him. And he rose to that challenge.


The message here is clear. If Yehudah, who was guilty of so much, in thought AND deed, can take responsibility and become a changed man, so can any of us.

In this week’s parsha, we continue the riveting saga of Joseph and his brothers.  We see in today’s Torah portion the quick and almost incredible rise of Joseph from forgotten prisoner to the second in command in all of Egypt.  And he meets his brothers. We are told, in this dramatic passage:  Joseph recognized his brothers but they didn’t recognize him.

How could that be?

Well, obviously, the brothers were not expecting to see Joseph.  They assumed that he was a slave somewhere in Egypt. If you’re not expecting to see someone in a completely different context, it would be easy not to recognize them.  That’s one possible explanation.

There’s also the dramatically different look that Joseph now has. His hair has been cut. He wears robes of fine linen.  He has gold chains around his neck.  On his finger is the royal signet ring.  (He’d fit right in in Florida!)  Joseph even has an Egyptian name:  TSOFENAT PANEAKH.  He’s thoroughly blended into Egyptian life.

These are all good reasons why the brothers wouldn’t recognize Joseph, and yet I think that there might be another reason, one not quite so literal.  

Perhaps the brothers don’t recognize Joseph because he has changed so much, not ONLY on the outside which is obvious but also on the inside, which is not visible. Perhaps the parsha is telling us that Joseph has now become the true tsaddik that he was meant to be.  He has learned from his mistakes, and he has been not only educated by those mistakes but also HUMBLED.  

Where’s the evidence for that?

Well, think about what he tells Pharaoh when Pharaoh asks him about his ability to interpret dreams. Joseph tells him that it is not he, but rather GOD, who interprets those dreams for him. If you recall years back when Joseph tells his brothers of his dreams, he does not give any credit to anyone other than himself. So that’s a big change.

There’s other evidence, too.  Remember that the brothers all bow down to Joseph.  KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HE HAD PREDICTED YEARS AGO THROUGH HIS DREAM. So what COULD HE have said?  What would YOU have said to them at that moment?  I think many of us would have been tempted to say: “SEE!! I told you guys!!  This is just what I said would happen!! HOW COOL!!  In your faces!!”  

But he doesn’t say any of that.  

Why does he refrain? I think Joseph refrains because he does not want to humiliate his brothers. He chooses not to lord his power over them because he himself has been so far down. Because he himself has lived through slavery and prison and the loss of his freedom.  He was his father’s favorite, but where did that get him? He had the beautiful coat, but it was only a magnet for his brothers’ resentment.  He now realizes that what matters is what he has learned, what he has gained on this spiritual journey.

Joseph has grown up.   

​Part of the Parsha of this week is Vayayshev is an interruption of the Joseph narrative.  That section tells the story of Judah and Tamar. Judah, the most formidable of Jacob’s sons, is convinced that Tamar has betrayed him and his third son, to whom she is betrothed.  When he sees that she is pregnant, he does not realize that the child she is carrying is actually his.  So he accuses her of immorality and sits as a judge in the trial. As she is brought in to face the court, she sends him the security he had left with her when he himself had consorted with her. When he sees the damning evidence, he immediately sees that she is the one in the right. He declares, She is more righteous than I.
This is the same Judah who was willing to sell his brother Joseph into slavery.  The same Judah who will later be willing to give himself up into slavery to save his youngest brother Benjamin.  This brief interlude suggests to us that Judah is changing, that he is beginning to show compassion for others and to take responsibility for his actions.
But the real hero of this story is Tamar. Though she is virtually silent throughout the narrative, we know that she was willing to go to her death rather than to publicly humiliate her father-in-law.  I would like to think that she accepted his apology and that she held no grudge against Judah for the accusation that he made.  She chooses NOT to shame him, even when she could have.  Our sages draw from this the life lesson, that it is better to go into a fiery furnace than to shame a person publicly. 
Here’s a simple, concrete analogy: Think about how we cover the challah on Shabbas.  Some say that we do so in order that the challah not be shamed while we pass over it to bless the wine.   We show our respect for the bread that sustains us. But that respect should not stop at the Shabbas table. I bet that we all know people who are zealous about covering the challah but have no compunction when it comes to shaming or embarrassing other people.  This is what happens if we remember the halakha—the rule—but forget the moral principle behind it. If we show that kind of consideration for an inanimate object—BREAD—how much more obligated must we be to other people.  Never put anyone to shame. Seek NOT to embarrass another person. This is what Tamar taught Judah and what we should all strive to practice in our daily lives.
 
 

            Let me ask you a question:  do Jews believe in KARMA?  I assume that everyone knows what karma is; I suppose another way of putting it is “what goes around comes around.”   Is that idea part of Judaism?  I may do a little sermon about the concept some day, but, for now, I just want to explore the idea in relation to this week’s parsha, Vayishlach.
            I ask about karma because in Vayishlach we see that Jacob kind of gets what he deserves.  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.

Rabbi David Grossman
Rabbi Joshua Grossman

There is a marked contrast set up by two similar events in the book of Braishis. We read

this week in Vayeitzei about Jacob having a dream that is really a vision from God. He
sees a ladder stretching, Midrash tells us, from his home in Beersheva to the place he was
sleeping, Mount Moriah, site of the Akeida and future home to the Holy Temples in
Jerusalem. There are angels ascending and descending from the ladder, proving, the
Rabbi’s tell us, that Jacob was being guarded by heavenly creatures during his travels.
The sages tell us that because the first angels are going up the ladder, they must have
been with Jacob all along. The ones coming down are arriving to take up the guard duty
that is being passed to them from the first set of angels. And, one might ask, what about
the time that Jacob was unguarded, the time in between the two sets of angels? At that
time, our commentaries state, Jacob was being guarded by God Himself. The message
from God then is given to Jacob. It is a reiteration of the covenant given to his father and
grandfather; God will be blessing the fledging Jewish nation and will give to them the
land upon which Jacob is sleeping. God will be with him wherever he goes.
This metaphor of Divine protection seems so comforting to me. From Jacob’s dream,
perhaps we can all conclude that we are under the shelter of God’s wings.
Another story of a dream is related later on, in Parshat Miketz. Pharaoh is sleeping and
has a vision from God. The dream is about seven lean cows and fat cows, a warning to
the king about impending doom to his country. Of course, as we know, it would take
Joseph to interpret the puzzling metaphor.
Besides the obvious differences in tone of each dream, there is another telling difference
between the two narratives. When Pharoah awakened from his sleep, the Torah relates
that he went back to sleep. What a departure from Jacob’s reaction to his dream! The
Torah tells us in Vayeitzei that when he awakens, he is immediately aware of the
Presence of God and dedicates himself to Divine service. Quite different than turning
over and going back to sleep.
The Baal Shem Tov, the first Chassidic master, quoted the Talmud that each day a
Heavenly voice emanates from the mountain of Sinai urging people to make teshuvah, to
return to the mitzvot. “Of what use is this voice,” asked the Baal Shem Tov, “since no
one has ever attested to hearing it?”
He then explained that although this voice is physically inaudible to the human ear, it is
heard by the neshamah, the soul. The moments that we are moved to do teshuvah are due
to the neshamah perceiving the voice from Sinai.
As we see from the two reactions to a call from God, there can be two results. We can
ignore the call and go back to the hibernation of ingrained habits, or we can emulate
Jacob and rouse ourselves to an awakened state and take constructive action.
The Divine voice calls to us. Let us heed the call.


Rabbi David Grossman
Rabbi Joshua Grossman