Imagine the emotions of Yosef’s brothers at the start of the parsha.
They have been grievously treated by Tzafnas Pa’ene’ach, the Egyptian king’s viceroy, who accused them falsely of being spies, then insisted that they bring their youngest brother Binyamin to him from Cna’an, even after being informed of how their father would be terribly pained to part with the boy. And when they give in and manage to convince Yaakov to let them show Binyamin to the viceroy, and bring him to Egypt, they witness their young brother being accused falsely of stealing the viceroy’s prized divination-goblet.
And when they offer to pay for the non-crime with their own imprisonment, the viceroy insists that only Binyamin be imprisoned and that they go back home, where their father is awaiting the return of all of them – especially Binyamin.
It’s been remarked that there is no word in Hebrew for “fair,” in the sense of an experience being comprehensible as just. There is mishpat, or judgment; and tzedek, which is rightness; and hogen, implying propriety. But even those words are limited to technical human interactions.
“Fair,” in the sense of life making sense, isn’t a Jewish concept. An Israeli expressing exasperation over a happening in his life that seems arbitrary or unjustifiable would thus be limited in expressing himself and say “Zeh lo fair!”
And if ever there were human beings justified in feeling that what has happened to them was unfair, they were Yosef’s brothers.
But they learned soon enough that what they saw as unfairness was simply the result of their being like the proverbial blind men palpating the elephant. They were perceiving only part of a larger picture.
A picture that, in an instant, became clear to them, with the viceroy’s two words: “I am Yosef.”
We are seldom shown, as Yosef’s brothers were, why the things that make us say “no fair!” are in fact, well, fair. But the equivalent of “I am Yosef” throughout our lives exists, even if we cannot recognize it. And in moments of exasperation at life’s unfairness, we should remember that.
Should you ever happen to find yourself in an ornate, high-ceilinged room and a military-uniformed string ensemble is segueing from a flawless rendition of a Bach Concerto to an equally impressive (if considerably less inspiring) version of “I Have a Little Dreidel,” you can only be in one place: the White House Chanukah Party.
I haven’t been to one for many years. No great loss – to either me or the party. But back in the George W. Bush years – Mr. Bush started the tradition – I was invited for some reason to two of the latkehfests.
I greatly appreciated being able to meet and mingle with Jews from other parts of the American Jewish community, an opportunity I don’t have as often as I wish. And it was a privilege for my wife and me to meet, if briefly, President and Mrs. Bush. I chose to use my moment in their company to offer them my birchas hedyot, thereby disappointing my then-13-year-old son, who had wanted me to request an executive order that the school week be reduced to three days.
True to its Jewish nature, the event was awash in food – all of it under strict hashgachah, produced in a kashered White House kitchen. It was hard to not contemplate the crazy swings of Jewish history.
The second year that I received an invitation, 2006, my wife opted to stay home. It was the third day of Chanukah. In my wife’s place, I took a dedicated supporter of the Agudah as my partner.
He asked if he could pose alone with the Bushes rather than have both of us in the photo. No problem, I said. I preferred the one with my wife from the previous year. When Mr. Bush motioned me to join in the photo, I explained my guest’s request and said I was fine being out of the frame. Ignoring protocol, he insisted on having two photos taken, one with my guest alone and another with both of us. I was impressed by his menschlichkeit.
The high point of my White House visit that year, though, had nothing to do with either the Presidential receiving line or the array of kosher victuals. Not even with the mingling with Jews outside my orbit.
No, the highlight of my trip to Washington that year took place before I even entered the White House. I was sitting on a bench outside the East Entrance, enjoying the unseasonably warm December day, watching the line of invitees form as they waited for security personnel to open the gates and begin the process of examining identifications and scanning bags.
Relaxing there in the descending darkness, I was overtaken with melancholy at being away from home for even that one night of Chanukah. I had made the necessary arrangements; the menorah in my home would be lit by my wife or one of our children. Still, I was troubled by being so far from them.
I’ve always been struck by the stark contrast between, on the one hand, the public pageantry and blinking lights with which most Americans celebrate their winter holiday and, on the other, the quiet, home-bound nature of Chanukah, with its tiny ethereal flames. And here I was, I lamented, about to join in a boisterous, bustling celebration – albeit of Chanukah – while the small points of fire created on my behalf would be flickering some 200 miles away, invisible to me.
My cellphone suddenly clamored for attention. Aroused from my gloomy reverie, I offered it my ear.
It was my wife. She and our children were about to light the menorah and thought I might want to be included, if at a distance, in hearing the brachos and post-lighting songs. A truer thought could not have been had.
And so unfolded the truly transcendent moment of my White House Chanukah, on a bench outside the grand Presidential residence. To any passerby, it would have looked like nothing more than a balding fellow with a graying beard, smiling broadly, eyes closed, animatedly singing into a phone.
The passerby would probably have dismissed me as a disturbed, if unusually well-dressed, individual. How could he have known that I had been, in both the word’s senses, transported?
Democratic Congressmen Hakeem Jeffries and Ritchie Torres are two people worth looking at closely. They give the lie to the contention that the blue sky is falling.
That is the meaning of the word vayima’en, a word used twice in the story of Yosef in this parsha, once to describe a refusal by Yaakov Avinu, the second to describe one by Yosef.
Mourning his missing and presumed killed son for many days, the Torah recounts, Yaakov refused to be comforted (Beraishis 37:35): Vayima’en lihisnachem.
And then, when Yosef, serving as the second-in-command of the house of the Egyptian notable Potifar (ibid, 39:8), is seduced by his master’s wife, he refuses her: Vayima’en, again.
I haven’t been successful in tracking down the source of a suggestion I heard several years ago, but offer it all the same.
It was Yaakov’s refusal to accept that Yosef was no longer alive that enabled Yosef to refuse Mrs. Potifar’s blandishments. The first vayima’en gave power to the second one. It was, in other words, the merit of Yaakov’s love for, and dedication to, his son that empowered that son to overcome a great moral challenge (which he came close to failing, hinted at by the wavering shalsheles with which his vayima’en is chanted).
The lesson being that when we refuse to give up on someone who seems hopelessly “gone” – in whatever way – our very refusal can serve as a spiritual merit for that person, a long-distance and unknown-to-him assistance to him in dealing with adversity.
Fake, fakery, everything’s phony; I sound like a Bible, I do. Yeah, still young, but I’ve lived long enough to smell the smoke and spot the mirrors. Yeah, me, a phony too. Even after all I’ve given, all I’ve been given, all I seem to be, all they think I am, all the hands stretching out, all the love. Smile, wave, turn, smile. Things aren’t what they seem. They’re the opposite, at least sometimes, at least me… Hero, leader, specimen of manhood and health and confidence. Ha. Wave, smile, turn, wave. If they only knew, if they could only see me at three in the morning writhing in pain, crying like a baby for his mother and a breast but me, for the doc and a shot. Mother… mother. And what about my own kids’ mother… What she knows, my quiet, beautiful wife, she knows. What she doesn’t, she doesn’t have to. Geez, she’s lovely… just like the flowers she’s holding… Even after ten years of marriage… Of course she knows. She just accepts things… the life is just worth it to her, even with me… but she deserves better. She’s suffered enough, with father, with Rose. And the baby, years ago. And the baby now. She doesn’t need more pain dumped on her pile. Let her take some pride in her life, her children. In me, even, even if it’s misplaced… A sham, I am. Even my words aren’t mine. They’re mostly Chaiken’s – ha, Teddy hates it when I call him that. He’s great, though, a brainy tongue. My brainy tongue. It’s him talking, though. I’m just the mannequin moving my mouth, smiling. But a mannequin who screams his own screams at night, who has a “condition.” Ha. Funny word. Turn, wave, smile. Condition’s what you do to the air when it’s hot in a room. Yeah. Smile, wave. Man, it’s hot here today. Doesn’t fall ever come to Texas? Sweat doesn’t look good, even on a good looking mannequin. Hope the smile draws their eyes to my teeth, not my forehead. Wave, turn, smile, turn, wave. Dangerous and uncertain world, yeah, but friendly crowd. Guess the sign’s right. Dallas loves me. Ha. It just doesn’t kno—
Regardless of whether or not all or any of the results of the recent elections pleased you, they revealed a supercharged Orthodox Jewish community in New York. Even if some secular media crazily choose to portray Orthodox participation in the democratic system as somehow nefarious, we Orthodox Jews should be proud of our neighborhoods’ impressive voting record.
Shortly before election day, someone immersed in studying Torah and earning a living told me that he doesn’t follow political matters and, assuming (rightly or not) that I was better informed about such things, asked me for whom I thought he should vote. My response took him aback. “It makes no difference,” I said. “Just vote.”
That’s because, no matter how we might like to imagine things, no single vote, nor hundred votes, nor thousand votes, usually makes a difference in the outcome of a congressional or gubernatorial election. But what always makes a difference is the post-election map informing elected officials which neighborhoods care enough to turn out en masse. And when it comes to that map, every vote makes a difference.
And that’s what should be foremost in our minds during the months before every election, when campaign engines noisily rev up and ads and endorsements dominate the airwaves, print media, robocalls, pashkevilim and car-mounted loudspeakers.
Because, while there may well be reasons to back this or that candidate, or to support or oppose this or that proposal, there is – or should be – no place in our lives for the political tribal war mentality that has intensified immeasurably in politics over the past seven years.
Demonization of parties and individuals may excite a certain type of citizen (like the kind who enjoys watching boxers open cuts in their opponents’ faces or render them unconscious). But insulting those with whom we may disagree is not something that responsible Jews do.
Campaigns these days resemble ancient Roman gladiatorial contests, where citizens cheer their chosen heroes and signal for hungry lions to deal with those they disfavor. But that’s not what politics should be to a believing Jew. To us, an election is a means of civilly advancing our interests and what we believe is best for the city, state or country in which we live. For those in need of violent release, there’s Canadian hockey.
Getting overheated over politics is incongruous with Torah values, simple menschlichkeit and reason.
While our hishtadlus is necessary, in the end, we must remember that lev melech bi’yad Hashem, “the heart of the king is in Hashem’s hand” (Mishlei 21:1). What is decisive is the Bashefer, not the ballot box, the Creator, not the casting. Our power lies in choosing how to live, not how to vote.
To be sure, there might theoretically be a candidate for some office who is truly deserving of vilification – say, a Nazi human trafficker with a penchant for cannibalism. But they are, I think, rare.
When it comes, though, to candidates whose positions one simply feels are wrongheaded or detrimental to our community or to society as a whole, expressions of opposition are rightly made with reason and calm, not fire and fury.
An object lesson, I personally think, lies in the public disparagement some rained down upon Kathy Hochul.
Whether or not one thinks she was the better candidate, the Governor has shown good will to her Orthodox Jewish constituents – in her budget’s substantial increases in allocations for nonpublic schools, security grants for Jewish institutions and funding for hate crime prevention; and in her veto of a bill that would have allowed the Town of Blooming Grove to effectively discriminate against religious Jews.
And yet, because she didn’t endorse what we feel she should have with regard to yeshiva education, some went into full-scale attack mode.
Now that Ms. Hochul has been elected governor, how might that harsh and uncalled-for crassness sit with her?
I don’t expect Ms. Hochul, a seasoned politician with a thick skin, to turn on the community because of the thoughtless words of a few. I think she truly respects the Orthodox community. But can we at least recognize that joining the “attack mode” of contemporary American politics can backfire?
The word “vayehi,” famously, introduces something negative or unfortunate. Why, then, asks the Mei Marom (the polymath Meshullam Gross), does it introduce the pasuk stating that Avraham “owned sheep, cattle and donkeys” (Beraishis 12:16) – the fact that our forefather had achieved great wealth?
The obvious answer, says Rav Gross, is that, to Avraham, wealth was a burden that could only negatively affect his service to Hashem. In fact, shortly thereafter, the pasuk describes how Avraham was “very laden” with livestock, silver and gold” (ibid 13:2). The word translated “laden” – caveid – literally means “heavy” and implies a burden.
And so, Rav Gross continues, that may explain why Avraham is described in several places (including in our parsha (ibid 12:9) as traveling southward.
Because, as Rabi Yitzchak (Bava Basra, 25b) says, one who wants to become wealthy should be yatzpin, face north, when he prays; but one who wants to become wise should be yadrim, face south.
Avraham wasn’t a seeker of wealth. On the contrary, he saw it as a burden. He pined for wisdom.
Can one have both? Certainly, and Avraham did.
But, as is clear from Rabi Yitzchak’s contention, one can only pursue one or the other; striving for both is futile. After all, it’s impossible to face both north and south simultaneously.
The closest word for “hero” in Hebrew is gibor, often translated as “a strong man.” And its true definition is provided in the fourth chapter of Pirkei Avos: “Who is a gibor? He who conquers his natural inclination, as it is said: ‘Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his spirit than a conqueror of a city’ (Mishlei 16:32).”
True strength in Judaism is evident not in action but in restraint, not in outrage but in calm.
In parshas Noach, we meet a very different kind of gibor, a gibor tzayid, a “strongman hunter” (Beraishis 10:9). His name is Nimrod, his goal was power and, as Rashi notes, based on the Targum Yerushalmi and midrashim, what he hunted was human followers, attracting them with braggadocio and bluster.
Nimrod was the first “hero” to harness power in order to, in Rav Shamson Raphael Hirsch’s words, “trap men for [his] own egoistic purposes.” He sought to “subjugate the less strong and clear-sighted, to keep them under his yoke until he would need them…”
As such, Nimrod exemplifies, continues Rav Hirsch, “the evil of tyranny which [has] continued so perniciously through the history of nations.”
And which remains as true today as ever.
And Nimrod was a gibor tzayid lif’nei Hashem, a strongman hunter before Hashem. Explains Rav Hirsch: “[Nimrod] misuse[d] the name of God, cloak[ed] his domination under the show of its being pleasing to God… to demand[ing] recognition of his power in the name of God.”
Indeed, today, too, we daily witness the scowls of scoundrels and liars bent on amassing personal power invoking divine “values” as a means of attracting religious followers who mindlessly regard the speechifying would-be dictators as “heroes.”
May we be spared such gibborei tzayid. And merit to see – and be – true gibborim, those described in Avos.
Imagine a man who has spent years waiting for his daughter, his only child, to get married, and then, as he surveys the lavish wedding hall on the day of her wedding, is arrested by police and dragged off to jail. What anguish he would feel.
It would be but the faintest shadow of the agony Moshe must have felt when he was shown the land promised to Klal Yisrael, the land to which he led the people for 40 years, and was told by Hashem that he will not enter it, that he is about to die.
And so, when the Midrash, quoted by Rashi, says (in response to the question of how Moshe could record the fact that he died) that Moshe wrote the words bidema, “in tears,” the simple meaning is that he wrote of his death while still alive. (Torah, being beyond time, allowed for that fact). And that his tears were over his having been deprived of entering Eretz Yisrael.
He cried. Like all us humans, imbued with emotions, do. And the “sin” that prevented him from entering the land, his frustrated hitting of a rock instead of speaking to it, also reflected an all-too-human emotion. Moshe was unique among human beings, to be sure. He was anav mikol adam, more humble than any other person. But a person, all the same; he was a mortal human being.
My rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, would often note that other religions’ heroes are described as faultless superhumans. Not so the personages who are extolled by the Torah, even Moshe Rabbeinu, who was, although closer to perfection than anyone, still human. He erred. He cried.
And that uniqueness of the Torah, Rav Weinberg would stress, is a reflection of the fact that, unlike the “holy books” of various religions, it alone is Hashem’s word, not the product of a fabulist human writer.
