Parashat Vayigash: Near and Far in Goshen

James Tissot - Joseph Presents his Brothers to Pharaoh

Vayiggash is perhaps best translated as to "come-closer." The verb is most often used in the Torah to depict a lessening of physical distance between one party and another. But it can have a psychic component as well, signaling imminent rapport and rapprochement, or its opposite - the possibility of failure - and thusly all the heightened tension that comes with drawing too near.

Our Torah portion begins with Judah's plea for Benjamin's freedom. His soliloquy attempts to bridge the vast misunderstanding between the brothers and the powerful viceroy of Egypt. "Now Judah came-closer to him and said..." (Genesis 45.18) We know Judah's words melt the iron mail around Joseph's heart, they pierce his shell of outer indifference till the dam finally cracks and tears flow forth. But what comes afterward? Even after Joseph reveals himself - "I am Joseph, is my father still alive?" - there remains a gulf: "They could not answer him, for they were confounded." Joseph pleads: "Pray come-close to me - Geshu Na." But Joseph still senses hesitation for he launches into a soliloquy of his own. "Do not be pained, do not be angry with yourselves for having sold me here...."

For some hurts, even the most earnest of apologies, even the most wholesome of pardons may not mend a fabric so severely torn. If we recall, for example, Jacob may have reconciled with Esau, but he could never live in harmony with him. 'Jacob bowed seven times until he came-close to Esau.... The maidservants and their children came-close.... Leah and her children came-close. Rachel and Joseph came-close." But once it was over there was separation. Esau and his camp journeyed southeast toward Seir, and Jacob traveled west to Canaan. (Genesis 33) Would the same hold true for Joseph and his brothers? Would they know reconciliation and civility but never anything more?

Perhaps the thought occurred to Joseph. Amidst his speech, he says to his brothers, "Hasten to my father and say to him: Thus says your son, Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down to me...and you shall stay in the region of Goshen, which is near me." (45.10)

The region of Goshen is remarkable on several accounts. On the lower Nile, the northeastern delta provides good pasture for flocks. Moreover, it is geographically closer to Canaan than Upper Egypt, all around, a generally sensible move for a family of shepherds who would continue to think of Canaan as their homeland. But the invitation is also remarkable for what it is not. Quite strikingly, it is not a request that Jacob and his family come reside in Joseph's palace(s), be it in Heliopolis, Ramses, or anywhere else in the center of the country. Goshen was a significant part and parcel of Egypt, but it was also some distance away. "And Joseph made ready his chariot, and he went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen." (46.28-9)This was no quick walk up the street.

Yet perhaps in this there is a lesson. The expression 'to Goshen' in Hebrew is a contraction of Gesha Na - "Pray, come-close." More than anything Joseph wants his family near. "T'is my brothers, I seek," he once remarked to a total stranger. But often, to satisfy a desire for psychological closeness requires a measure of physical or even temporal distance. What Goshen then becomes is a needed stretch in space and time, a middle ground, if you will, not quite the culture of Canaan, and nothing like Egyptian aristocracy. Goshen becomes that place where Jacob and his sons will journey toward and sojourn in, and serves as a mecca where Joseph can make his visits. But in the time between these visits, and in the physical distance between palace and prairie, there remained for Joseph and his brothers a space to contemplate failure, fortune and forgiveness. To come any closer, it would seem, they needed a place both near and far.

Shabbat shalom.

Parashat Vayetze: Victory for the Vulnerable?

Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (on Right) - Dante G. Rossetti

“And Leah’s eyes were tender, but Rachel was fair in form and fair to look at, and Jacob loved Rachel” (Genesis 29:17).

There was something about Leah’s eyes. Some commentators thought them possessed of an elegant beauty, others a misty attractiveness, or most peculiarly, that they were easily given to tears. “She thought her fate was to marry Esau,” Rashi writes. Unmistakably, it was not waiting for her absent suitor, but the choice of suitor, that caused Leah to “weep.”

Sultry or sorrowful, beside a beauty like Rachel, the Torah’s description smacks of unkindness. “Rachel was gorgeous, but her sister Leah had nice eyes,” is hardly an appropriate introduction for a foremother of the Jewish people, or anyone really. Of all the things to say about a person, why even mention this detail?   

Oddly, the least generous translation reads the verse not as a depiction of Leah’s eyes but rather as a description of Leah’s power of sight. “And Leah’s eyes were weak (rachot),” is the literal meaning according to Rabbi Abraham Ibn-Ezra, as in “weak children” (yeladim rachim) or the “weak of heart” (rach leivav). It is not how Leah looked, but how she saw, that preoccupies the Torah. And now the story falls into place.

Jacob, who fooled his “dim-eyed” father Isaac — who in darkness could not discern one brother from the other — is now fooled in turn via the “dim-eyed” sister of Rachel. “In the evening, Lavan took Leah his daughter and brought her to him. … But in the morning, behold, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Lavan: ‘What is this that you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I labored with you? Why have you deceived me?’ ” (Genesis 29:23-25).

Admittedly, there is much tragedy in the story. In his love for Rachel, Jacob labored seven years for her hand, while Lavan, who cared only to exploit Jacob’s love, contrives on their wedding night a scheme to have Jacob work another seven years. For Leah, what may we say? What is it to be loved, finally and only, because your father has schemed his schemes, and your husband believes you to be another? The closer Leah looks at her thieving father, or her beautiful sister, or Rachel’s husband-to-be, the less she wants to see. “And Leah’s eyes were weak.”

Yet there is a remarkable moral in this story. In the usual run of things, the mighty are victors and the weak their victims. But here (for once) the opposite occurs. In the Midrash, Jacob scolds Leah: “‘Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Did I not call Rachel in the night, and you answered me!’ …. Leah said, ‘Even a (bad) barber has his disciples. Did your father not cry out Esau, and you answered him!’ ”

In this, there is a small victory for the vulnerable, and a great lesson for those who take advantage of the weak: If you exploit those who may not be blessed with the best of sight or the best of health, if you abuse those with a less discerning mind or who lack the security of wealth, beware, lest one day, deprived of light, you too receive your due. Isaac’s eyes were dim and those of Leah weak, but “the eyes of the Lord God are upon the Land, always” (Deuteronomy 11:12).

Parashat Hayyei Sarah: When Love Slips Away

“And Sarah died at Kiryath Arba, that is Hebron, in the Land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.”
(Gen. 23.2)

To an attentive reader, it would appear that Sarah has died alone. In fact, the Torah records specifically that Abraham dwelt in a different a city, Beer-Sheba, on the outskirts of a different land, “the Land of the Philistines.” It is here in Beer-Sheba that Isaac was born and raised, it is to here—their family home—that Isaac and Abraham return after the ordeal of the Akedah. So how, just a few verses later, without segue or sequitur, does Sarah come to dwell and, ultimately, die in Hebron? How does she become separated from Abraham, so far away it would seem, that he must journey to her? “And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.”

If physical distance is a metaphor for psychic distance, then at the end, Abraham and Sarah were miles apart. The Hizkuni (13^th century commentator, France) suggests that Abraham originally “sent her away so she would not sense the Akedah.” The brief comment provokes wonder. Does Abraham send Sarah away because he cannot face her, much less the prospect of returning to her without Isaac? Or in a more modern vein, does Sarah leave him, for how can she even look at her husband, this stranger, who would contemplate the murder of her one and only son?   

Either way there is a vast chasm between them. But one wonders if this distance, to some extent, existed all along. Consider Abraham’s public habit of claiming Sarah as a sister instead of a wife. “This is the kindness that you can do for me: in every place to which we come, say of me, you are my brother.” (20:13) If the act of marriage is a public declaration that affirms relationship, what would repeated public denials affirm—if not its absence?

One might add Abraham’s eventual preference for Hagar and Ishmael. After God’s promise to Abraham that Sarah (not Hagar), would would be the mother of his elected heir, Abraham retorts, “Would that Ishmael might live in your favor!” (Gen. 17.18) It is “God who remembers Sarah,” and Abraham who forgets.

Perhaps the best illustration of their emotional estrangement is again depicted in geographic terms. We read last week, at the start of Parashat Vayera, how on a sweltering day, three messengers appear at the entrance of Abraham’s tent. The Torah tells us twice that Abraham seats them and serves them outdoors ‘beneath the shade of a tree.’ But if the sun was so terribly strong, why not forgo the shade of a terebinth and move the repast to the much cooler tent?

Noticing something amiss, one guests inquires, ‘“Where is Sarah your wife?” Pointedly, the Hebrew word used for “where” –ayyeh— is the same interrogative used to question Adam in the Garden: Where are you? (ayeka); And the same used to question Cain: Where (ayyeh) is Abel your brother? This in not an innocuous, ‘Is your wife home?’ Instead it is a question for Abraham’s soul, ‘Where is Sarah in your life? Why is she not aside you? How long must she remain behind you, hidden from kings and messengers and, above all, hidden from you. “And Sarah was listening at the tent flap, which was behind him.” (Gen. 18.10)

This week we read the Torah Portion of Hayyei Sarah, literally translated, “The Lives of Sarah.” Naturally, Abraham must mourn the life that was lived, but there is too a mourning for a life that was not; a life with Sarah in one city and Abraham in another. Sarah could have died with a husband by her side, instead she died alone.    

Bereishit: Pieces of Meaning

Adam awoke on his back; his flesh, the tone and hue of the naked earth, his eyes though, they were filled to the brim with the blue of heaven. "And the Lord God fashioned this Man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." Head up, a newborn, fathoming the unfathomable, a waking dreamer. Is it any wonder that Eve chose to reach forth her hand and seize the Tree of Knowledge?

***
Said Adam: 'I am naked. The four-legged ones, have fur and hide. They rest in the sun, tremble in the breeze, seek shelter in the night. But we are naked. We have not fur or hide.'

Said Adam: 'Woman, what is good and bad? What is death? Why is this fruit different from all other fruits? Do you suppose Knowledge tastes like a lemon or a grape? Death must be where berries go after we eat them.'

Said Eve: 'Look at that four-legged creature with scales! Where is its fur or hide? Why Adam, It touched The Tree! It snatched a fruit! Adam, it--
Let me try first!'

***
They knew they were naked, then, they burnt in the sun and shivered at night. They knew fig-leaf coverings were good, they knew to wither and tremble was pain. They knew worry. They knew fear. They feared the Lord. 'What shall God think of man-made fur and hide? What shall God think of our disobedience?'  They hid from the voice that is in every wind and every windless day. They hid from the soundless sound and the furious sound that pursues Man as Ahab once pursued his whale, to the ends of earth and back, to the ends of time. Had they known of Jonah, they would have still tried. Is there a woman or man who has never hid from "the voice of the Lord God walking the garden in the evening breeze?"

***
We think of good and bad as virtue and vice, good deeds and misdeeds, kindness and injury, charity and harm. The serpent, which slivers unnoticed, that crouches at every door, which searches always to bring the mighty low and the low lower, which seeks always to sink its jaws into every heart, yes the serpent is temptation, it is our inclination to sin. But Good and Bad are more than moral terms (not merely good and evil), they are joy and sorrow, they are sacrifice and triumph, they are pleasure and pain, suffering and salvation. The consequences of eating the forbidden tree were powerfully physical because good and bad are not solely categories of the conscience. To reap in joy, one must sow in tears. The raising of children is hardship, but on account of the pain, we laugh and love them all the more. Marriage is no paradise, for any union to grow there must be some diminishment of the self. We are beholden to our love for the other, as Eve was to Adam, as every man must, who leaves home to cleave to his wife. What would love be without our ever knowing its absence? How would we come to love the few short days we walk this small rock if never once we felt that gaping chasm of mourning? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Knowledge of Joy and Sorrow. Treasure the good fruit...may it always outweigh the bad.

***
Exile was never meant as a punishment, it was a precaution. "Now that the Man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever." We were not thrown out because we ate of one fruit, we were thrown out lest we be tempted to eat another. Eternal life, and its pursuit, was deemed more deadly than knowledge and her many fruits.
For to seek eternal youth is to tar the Tree of Knowledge with pitch and feather, to paper over evil and disappointment, to dismiss all that is painful and vanish every negative thing in a dissipating cloud of oblivion.
Life eternal is escapism. It is pure fantasy that our days will never come to an end, that there can be profit without labor, that satisfaction can be seized without sacrifice. It is an illusion of enduring power that all the love in the world can be had, that childhood beauty can be retained, that innocence can be clung to forever. "Let his days be a hundred and twenty years," says Scripture. The striving for the Tree of Life is vanity and empty wind.

Man is born face to the sky. His potential is near limitless. Reach for the fruit of one tree, beware the fruit of the other.

A Failure of Imagination: Parashat Shelach Lecha

The imagination is a stretch of highway that bends through the universe. Its lanes unmarked, its exits limitless, yet it is, nevertheless, the shortest road to anywhere. Many years have passed since I last visited the Land of Israel. Yet if I set my mind to it, I can walk its beaches, its banks, its valleys and its vineyards. I can stare at hills that flow with unearthly grace. Hills of tall trees and shade, hills blanketed with knee-length grass interwoven with wildflowers of luminous color: blossoms of canary yellow, orange hues like autumn leaves. Upon a gray misty slope overlooking the Jordan Valley, fresh grass is dotted with purple stars that surpass any painter’s mixture of burgundy and blue. Below, in twisting valleys, course wadis of white milk and rivers of red wine. Atop cities, limestone towers turn golden at sunrise. And what desert may be compared to the Judean Desert, where mountains glow like honey in the light?

Such is the Land of Israel, a land of unending grace; a land of livestock, a land of farming, a land where every family is iridescent, and a land where every fig tree offers shade. But what if there was another land, also promised, perhaps in the north, perhaps to the east, or somewhere over an ocean, in a place far away? Can we imagine such a thing? Such is the question posed by the returning spies in this week’s Torah portion.

Our story begins with 12 men who set out to survey the future settlement of the Jewish people. Their mission is simple: “Go and observe, return and report.” Although these scouts, these spies, go andobserve, and though they return bearing an example of the land’s riches of fruit and vine, what theyreport is anything but good. For somewhere along their journey, perhaps in the gray shadows of twilight or a heavy afternoon haze, 10 of these men experience a frightening vision. To paraphrase Dante, their imaginations tangled them in knots. They saw that those things were “not towers, but giants, sunk into the basin there behind the banks” (“Inferno,” Canto XXXI).

Back in the camp, their dread of the Canaanites pours out: “We were as grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:33). Panic ensues, and without so much as shift of the feet, the rest of Israel entered the Promised Land, envisioning the people there, not small or vulnerable, but as dinosaurs — savage, murderous beasts.

“That night the people broke into cries and wept.” And on the morrow, the Lord decreed swift punishment for all. Many ask why a pessimistic military report should have caused the spies to be struck by plague as well as the demise of an entire generation of Israelites in the wilderness. How difficult would it have been to validate fear, to find another Land?

The Midrash suggests that it was not the sin, but its psychology that was their true failing. It asks, “How could the spies know that they appeared as grasshoppers to others? Perhaps in the eyes of the Canaanites, the Israelites appeared as angels, and the Canaanites felt like grasshoppers underfoot?” If one thinks oneself an ant, then every ant seems a giant. Lacking conviction, it would hardly matter which country they scouted.

Rabbi Yitzchak Arama offers another explanation. “It was not so much the land that they were rejecting, but God Himself.” These “heads” of Israel (Roshei Benei Yisrael) were meant “to go up to the Land.” But instead they descend from heady leaders to petrified footmen. The Hebrew for “spies” ismeraglim, derived from regel, meaning “foot.” The narrative ends with the people demanding that they return to Egypt, a country steeped in oppression, violence and a religious devotion to death. For Arama, “Coveting Egypt was tantamount to idolatry.” Their failure was a lack of faith in God, and a wanton disregard of God’s faith in them.

In my shul Shabbat morning, I often get asked why we do not regularly recite the Prayer for the State of Israel. I answer simply. Praying for Israel is so intrinsic to Jewish prayer, that if we enter a synagogue and recite a Psalm or the Amidah without a thought to Israel, it is as if we have not prayed at all. Pleading for Israel’s welfare is not merely an expression of concern for fellow kin, it is a declaration of faith in God and a declaration of faith in God’s destiny for his people. If in our mind’s eye, we cannot imagine the Land as ours, if we cannot see its pristine hills and lush valleys, we may as well return to Egypt. Anything less is a failure of faith and imagination. Children slay giants every day; they know them to be big, but they also know them to be stupid. As Herzl put it, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

(Contents published in Jewish Journal of Los Angeles)

Parashat Shemini: Kosher Without Sacrifice

'A Farmyard Scene'  (Link)

From the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles:

The most elaborate, comprehensive and effective system for the prevention of animal cruelty was not invented by the FDA or even PETA; it was devised by the Book of Leviticus. This may seem a strange idea. Without question, it swims rather roughly against that trusty river of intuition. Pigeon slaughter is rarely good for pigeons. Bull offerings are not something cows easily stomach. As far as “becoming a sacrificial lamb,” I have it on good authority that this is not what most sheep dream about when they are kids. 

To an untrained imagination, a “bustling Tabernacle” is a strange cross between an abattoir and a synagogue. A PETA activist might describe its practices as “murder in the name of God, differing from the Crusades only by the choice of its victims.” Well, my friends, I believe this is wrong on many counts. 

There is a peculiar phrase that accompanies nearly every mention of sheep, goat and cattle offerings throughout the Bible. In the Torah, where no word is out-of-place and no letter believed superfluous, repetition is a cause of interest, and should never be dismissed as careless writing. The word I refer to is “tamim,” and it means “whole, complete, unharmed, pure, without blemish.” At the start of Leviticus, we read: “A person who brings an elevation offering ... shall bring an offering withoutblemish [tamim]” (Leviticus 1:2-3). Concerning peace offerings, they, too, are brought “without blemish” (Leviticus 3:1). Similarly, the paschal lamb had to be tamim, just as the red heifer (parahaduma temima) had to perfect in every way. To bring a blemished animal to the Lord was sinful, and Leviticus states this repeatedly. 

What this meant for any animal potentially destined for the altar is that it could not be harmed, injured or mistreated. Remarkably, if we compare the rules of blemishes to the sort of miseries and maladies routinely inflicted upon factory-farmed animals, something astonishing comes to light. Factory-farmed meat, served in our homes, would never be offered in the House of the Lord. 

Animals that are surgically mutilated or castrated, a regular practice among meat growers wanting more malleable livestock, would be grounds alone for disqualification (Kiddushin 25b). Animals pinioned in cages of their own muck could be disqualified on account of their disgusting odor (Temurah 28b). Most birds and cattle pumped with near lethal amounts of antibiotics to prevent their succumbing to illness would be disqualified for their being sickly (ibid). 

One often reads of meat growers stimulating rapid growth through steroids, genetic chicanery, artificial lighting, hormone-enhanced feed, all in an attempt to get meat faster to market. Such practices would be eliminated by the routine biblical requirement that offerings of sheep, goats or calves be minimally 1 or 2 years old (Leviticus 9:3; Rosh Hashana 10a). A 3-month-old calf the size of an elephant would be barred from the Temple gates.

This week’s Torah Portion, Shemini, shifts away — from sacrifices to general food prohibitions: kashrut. Numerous beasts are prohibited from the hog to the hare, to kites, crocodiles and chameleons. The many (often confounding) dietary laws are often believed to be beyond the pale of rationale explanation, yet that has not stopped commentators from trying to explain them. Historically, there are two well-known schools of thought. One is based on ethics. Laws such as, “Do not stew a kid in its mother’s milk,” and “shooing away the mother-bird,” teach us to be merciful. If we eschew animal cruelty, all the more so, we should eschew cruelty to our fellow human beings (R. Bachaya ben Asher; Ibn-Ezra). Another approach explains kosher laws as a means to teach people “temperance and self-control” (Philo, Maimonides).

In the sacrificial system, each view is valid. To raise an animal fit for sacrifice required both constant discipline and tenderness toward the animal in one’s keep. Farmers sacrificed time and resources to raise fowl, herd and flock. In approaching the altar, both animal and owner had to be tamim.

Today, we live without the Temple, and therefore without the mitigating requirement that meat not only be fit for eating but fit for sacrifice. It happens that in our day, thank God, modern Jewry has ready access to kosher products. Meat, rinsed and salted, is easily obtained. In Los Angeles, with little ado, we order cooked lamb, chicken, beef, bison in restaurants and supermarkets. Yet with so much available, lessons of temperance and ethics fall away. 

“Kosher” means “fit” or “proper,” but how “fit” is an animal when the finest moment of its life was the day its life of misery was ended in a slaughterhouse? Moreover, how tamim are we who celebrate our faith, and sanctify the Lord, by consuming endless plates of chicken and beef in our homes? With several meanings in mind, one might ask: “Can there be kosher without sacrifice?”

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman is a Modern Orthodox rabbi who teaches at Ziegler Rabbinic School, The Academy of Jewish Religion, and runs an independent Modern Orthodox minyan in Beverlywood. He writes about the weekly parasha on his blog, rabbihausman.com.