Parashat Bo: On the Old and the New

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the old and the new in Judaism this week.

In this week’s parsha, you have the first commandment given to the Israelite nation as a whole, hachodesh hazeh lakhem, the commandment to declare the new moon each month. The word for month, chodesh, comes from the word for new, chadash. But what is really new about the moon or about our lives each month? More or less, things in nature and in our lives proceed and cycle along as before, and yet we are commanded once a month to stop and declare them “new,” to see the sliver of the “new” moon as a rebirth.

The parsha also discusses the commandments concerning the Passover sacrifice, and here, too, there is a strange erasure of old and new. in the midst of the commands concerning the first Israelite Passover in Egypt – the paschal lamb and the blood on the doorposts – the Torah stops to talk about future Passovers for generations to come, the 7-day festival, the eating of matzah, the annual Passover sacrifice. It is as if, even before the Israelites in Egypt celebrated that first-ever Passover in Egypt – a new event – the celebration had already taken on the weight of tradition, the weight of something old and venerated, to be passed on forever. What was new had the feeling of something old.

Then there is the strange last line of the prayer (originally a Lamentations verse) we say upon returning the Torah to its ark: chadesh yameinu kikedem. “Renew our days as of old.” New or old? Which is it? The idea here seems to be that the ultimate redemption, which will be a kind of national rebirth or renewal, will look a lot like the old days, making a complete circle between past and future.

I’m not sure how to tie these pieces together. One thing that emerges from all of them is a sense that old and new are subjective matters, not issues of the historical past and future, but a kind of other zone above history, a place in which old and new do not contradict one another, but co-exist. What is old is new, as in the moon, and what is new is old, as in that first Passover. The ultimate goal is to be in the place we pray for when we say, “Renew our days as of old,” a place where old and new meet and feed off one another, where our attachment to tradition is the springboard for our energy and creativity in the world, and where the new projects we engage in have the weighty and sure-footed feel of antiquity behind them.

I think we actually have an instinctive understanding of the deep connection between the new and the old. When we hear an idea that feels right or true to us, we know it is right because it feels both familiar – as if we knew it all along somewhere deep inside us – and yet exciting and new. It thrills us with its brilliance and novelty and at the same time, connects to something deep inside us that is ancient and eternal. The Torah exists in this sphere, this place that is beyond the distinction between the old and the new, and in some way, maybe the Torah’s goal is to help us exist in this sphere as well.

Note: I invite other thoughts on this issue. I realize I have just begun to skim the surface and would appreciate input.

Parashat Va'era: On Miracles

Why so many miracles? Why so many plagues that defy the normal order of the universe?

Training. These plagues were a kind of miracle-seeing training. This is a people whose ultimate job is to see God in the world, to bring out those divine sparks in every part of creation. But here they are, slaves in Egypt -- classically seen as the land of greatest defilement -- on the lowest rung of impurity, far from able to do any such thing. So what God does is make things clear to them. No subtle, disputable miracles here. Those are too hard to see at the beginning. You start by training the eyes, teaching them with large shows of power—bloody seas and frogs on every nose -- to see God in the world. It’s easier to see things writ large.

These are beginner miracles. The parsha starts by pointing out that God appeared differently to the patriarchs, who were more advanced miracle students. To them He was El Shaddai, which, as one midrash reads it, means – the God who said to the world dai, “enough,” the God who put limits on the world, created an order, the rules of nature. The patriarchs experienced God within this ordered framework and were able to see God’s hand without fantastic eye-popping sights like the splitting of the Sea.

The Israelites in Egypt, though, had sunk so low, that they were beginners, in need of the full sound and light show to be sure of God’s presence in the world. For their sake – and for ours – God broke the rules of nature, to show that those very rules – what normally keeps the frogs and lice and wild animals from overgrowing like a cancer – are themselves miracles, daily miracles of perfect order and balance. By breaking the rules, He showed that He also created and controls the rules, the daily working of the universe.

It is such daily miracles that it is our task to learn to celebrate. Those out of bounds miracles were a stepping stone for our people, a way to begin the process of a life devoted to perceiving the divine in the world around us.

Tradition offers us further forms of constant miracle-seeing training, the practice of saying simple daily prayers and blessings, meant to increase one’s awareness of the miraculous nature of every moment -- the daily rising and setting of the sun, the return of life to our slumbering bodies in the morning, the perfect balance of a body which takes in food and lets out waste. As we say in the Amidah prayer, we feel thankful “for Your miracles which are with us every day,” al nisekha shebekhol yom imanu. Every day, every breath is a miracle. It is partly our ancestors’ experience of the unnatural kind of miracle that paved the way for our appreciation of the natural kind.

Parashat Shemot: On Oppression and Thriving

“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.” So goes the popular saying, which traces back originally to Nietzsche.

Or maybe to the Torah. In reference to the Israelites’ suffering in Egypt, the Torah says, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out.” Suffering made them stronger.

Here we are at the start of the book of Shemot, the beginning of a long period of exile and oppression, an oppression planned by God for the people already at the time of Avraham. Why? Why not just go straight to the giving of the Torah?

According to the Sefat Emet, when God says, “I have taken note of you and what is being done to you [lakhem] in Egypt,” what He means by lakhem, is not “to you” but “for you,” i.e. “for your benefit” [lehana’atkhem]. The process of suffering – while taking its toll on the people in the short run – in the long run had some beneficial outcome, turned them into the kind of nation God had in mind.

New studies show that a moderate amount of adversity actually does make one stronger, makes a person more likely to be happy and satisfied in life, and also more resilient to further difficulties later in life. The key, according to Stephen Joseph, author of What Doesn’t Kill Us, is to be able to create a narrative about one’s negative life experiences in which one is not a victim, nor merely a survivor, but a “thriver,” someone who is able to take adversity and actually use it to his own benefit, as a tool of growth and greater life fulfillment.

The Torah models for us just such a narrative. The people begin as victims in Egypt, but ultimately that experience becomes the basis for a thriving religion. Judaism is a religion built out of the very stuff of this suffering. The ethical commandments related to the treatment of other people are powered by our memory of our own suffering; we must not hurt the stranger or the widow because we “remember that we, too, were strangers in Egypt.” And the religious commandments which structure our relationship to God are also powered by our memory of both the suffering and the salvation, by our sense of gratitude and by a sense of appreciation for the blessedness of everyday life which only one who remembers otherwise can truly fathom. Out of the straits of Egypt emerges a new nation, a new way of being in the world. We become thrivers, able to celebrate life through our national memory of tragedy.

Nor should the experience in Egypt be thought of as a one-time encounter with adversity, says the Netivot Shalom. The Torah is eternal; it speaks to our own daily personal struggles as well, no matter how small. What sense can we make of whatever suffering comes our way? How do we tell the story of our encounters with adversity? Are we victims? Survivors? Or thrivers? Can we learn to tell a narrative like that of Exodus, where we actually use life’s challenges to help us grow?

Parashat Vayehi: On Life and Death

The popular song goes: Am Yisrael Chai, Od Avinu Chai, “The nation of Israel is alive, our father is still alive.” Who is Avinu¸”our father?” In the song, the word probably refers to our Father God. But the word also picks up on a repeated line in the Yosef story: HaOd Avi Chai? “Is my father still alive?” (45:3. See also 43:27). Here the father is Yaakov, and it is Yosef his son asking and asking about whether his father is still alive.

Is Yaakov our father still alive?

Yaakov Avinu lo met. Yaakov our father did not die, is the remarkable statement of the Talmud (Taanit 5b). What? But it says that he died? Well, no. As Rashi points out, the word met, dead, is never actually used with reference to Yaakov. The Torah says simply Vayigva vaye’asef el amav, “He breathed his last and he was gathered to his people,” but there is no mention of the normal concluding term used for Avraham and Yitzhak, vayamot, “And he died.”

Vayehi Yaakov. And Yaakov lived. So begins the parsha which ostensibly tells of Yaakov’s death. According to the Talmud, then, the parsha is aptly named; in some sense Yaakov never died but continued to be Vayehi, to live.

Perhaps Yaakov’s death is like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s feigned death during the siege of Jerusalem in 69 CE. The story is told (BT Gittin 56a) that, in order to get out of Jerusalem and bargain with the Roman general Vespasian to save the rabbinic academy of Yavneh, Rabban Yochanan pretended to be sick and die so that he could get past the guards at the gate in a coffin. His own feigned death symbolized the end of an era of Temple-based religion. Was it a true death for the Jewish people? No. He made sure of this by creating a new life of Torah on the other side, by serving as a bridge figure—like the coffin that crossed the city threshold -- from one era to the next.

Yaakov needed to do the same for his children. Here they were on the cusp of a period of great national suffering in Egypt. Was this a true death? Would Yaakov and his ancestors and traditions die during this period? No. Just as Rabban Yochanan’s death was not real, so Yaakov’s was not. Why? Because the Jewish people are survivors. There can be no death where there is memory, continuity, tradition. The Jewish people survived the destruction of the Temple just as they survived the era of Egyptian enslavement. Why? Because Yaakov avinu lo met. Because there is this memory of an earlier period. There is continuity and connection, even across devastating events in Jewish history. There is often seeming death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s coffin and like the deaths at the close of the book of Genesis. But somehow the spark is kept alive, the memory is preserved.

Why is Yaakov Avinu lo met? Because we remember him. Because we read about him in the Torah. Because we carry him with us across the thresholds of history’s twists and turns, just as his sons carried him across the border between Egypt and the land of Israel. As long as there are Children of Israel , Children of Yaakov, passing on his traditions, then his death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s, is never final, but simply a bridge to a new era.

Parashat Mikets and Chanukah: On Becoming a Vessel

Yosef the dreamer turns into Yosef the dream interpreter in the end of last week’s parsha (interpreting the dreams of the baker and the butler) and the beginning of this week’s parsha (interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams). This change signals an important transformation in Yosef; he has learned not to talk, but to listen, not to focus on himself, but to focus on others.

Through his experiences in the pit and in jail and as a slave, Yosef’s natural haughtiness and self-engrossment were challenged and he went through a process of what the Hasidic masters call hitbatlut, self-negation. This is not self-hatred, which is merely the flip side of self-love, and still entails a kind of egocentrism. No, this is the willing letting go of ego, the process of understanding one’s small place in the universe and the realization of other larger powers. Yosef began by speaking about himself – “I was in the center,” he says of his sheaf of wheat. But in the end, when Pharaoh asks him to interpret his dream, what Yosef says is: Beladay, “Not I!” Elokim ya’aneh et shlom Pharaoh, “God will see to Pharaoh’s welfare.” Not I. Yosef has emptied himself of ego.

In the process, Yosef turns himself into a kli, a vessel of God. He is able to interpret these dreams because he is able to channel God’s wisdom. Pharaoh sees this and says, “Could we find another like him, a man in whom is the spirit of God?” By emptying himself, Yosef makes room for the spirit of God, becomes an open vessel ready to be filled by the divine spirit.

A full container cannot be filled. If one is filled with oneself, there is no room for God. When a destitute woman approaches the prophet Elisha in the book of Kings, he tells her to gather as many empty containers, kelim, as possible (II Kings 4). Only then can a miraculous oil be poured into them. The first step is creating space, turning oneself into a kli, an empty vessel.

The symbol of Chanukah is the menorah. What is the menorah other than a kli, a vessel to hold oil or candles, a vessel to contain the lights that we light. We are like the menorah, says the Sefat Emet, a kli for holding light, divine light. When humans were created, God breathed life into their nostrils. We are containers filled with life and light from above. It is our task to empty ourselves sufficiently to be able to receive this light.

In a famous disagreement about how to light the Chanukah lights, Bet Shammai, unlike Bet Hillel whom we follow, prescribed the lighting of 8 candles on the first night, followed by a decreasing number each night until a single candle was lit on the last night. The Sefat Emet suggests that Bet Shammai understood the need for hitbatlut, self-negation, as part of the spiritual process. There is a need to reduce, to empty oneself further and further. Bet Hillel, who has us gradually increase from one candle to 8, is focused on the filling side, the outpouring of light in greater and greater quantities into our menorahs and us. Shammai understood, on the other hand, that in order to receive such light, we must also practice a kind of self-reduction, gradually emptying ourselves, like Yosef did, of our natural self-engrossments, and turning ourselves into vessels, vessels that are able to hear the dreams of others, vessels that are open to receiving and transmitting the divine light in this world.

Parashat Vayeshev: Hope at the Bottom of the Pit

How quickly and how far does the family of Yaakov descend in this parsha! Hatred festers unchecked among the brothers, and turns to violence against Yosef who is thrown down into a pit and sold “down” to Egypt as a slave. The Torah draws a parallel between this descent of Yosef’s (hurad) and that of Yehudah, who “goes down” (vayered) from his brothers in search of a wife and lands in his own trouble. Indeed, Yosef’s descent leads the whole family to descend; in the short term, it leaves his father in a permanent state of mourning and his brothers with an uneasy sense of guilt, and in the long term, it literally brings the rest of the family to descend to Egypt as well, and eventually, to be enslaved there for hundreds of years.

The midrash characterizes the family’s state of mind this way: “Yosef was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [presumably out of distress over his enslavement]; Reuven was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [either out of remorse for not managing to rescue Yosef or out of remorse for sleeping with his step-mother]; and Yaakov was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [in mourning for Yosef].” What a bunch! All depressed and regretful and suffering.

But the midrash does not end there. It turns to God: “And the Holy One blessed be He was occupied with creating the light of the Messianic King.” The light of the Messianic King?! The midrash is referring to the messianic line of King David, which is traced back to Peretz, one of the twins born in this parsha to Tamar and Yehudah.

Amidst all this descent and sackcloth, the seed of the future Messiah is born! The Yehudah/Tamar story takes place right in the middle of the Yosef story. On one side of it, Yosef is thrown into the pit by his brothers, and on its other side, Yosef is thrown into another pit, the pit of jail, by Potiphar. If we imagine the parsha as one large pit, then the middle, the very bottom, is the story of Yehudah and Tamar. It is out of the very bottom of that pit of misery and descent that a tiny light of future hope emerges.

The Slonmier Rebbe, in his work, Netivot Shalom, speaks about this phenomemon as the kusta deheyuta, the “tiny speck of life” contained in a seed when it is about to sprout and blossom. A seed must first rot and almost completely disintegrate into the earth before it can sprout, says the Netivot Shalom. Out of almost complete absence comes this tiny spark of future life.

Chanukah’s lights, lit in the darkest part of the year, contain a similar message. Out of the blackest of nights will come light, out of the hardest of times will come life, the tiny inkling of change and hope for the future. Like Yaakov’s family, we all go through periods of intense darkness in our lives, periods where it seems that there is no bottom to the pit of despair, that the pain will simply go on forever. The seed of the Messiah, born in the pit of Yaakov’s family’s darkest moments, is a reminder not to give up hope, that it is in fact from within this darkness that seeds of future life are sprouted.

Parashat Vayishlach: What I Like About Yaakov

Avraham is someone I could never be. He is a great model of faith, but his example is difficult to emulate. He is never scared or doubtful. He never cries or cries out. He is stoic, disciplined and obedient. That’s why I’m glad we have Yaakov as an ancestor as well.

Yaakov is emotional. He cries when he meets Rachel. The commentaries try to explain why, but the Torah gives no reason, and perhaps there was no specific rational one. Isn’t that the way it is sometimes, all the emotion of days on end welling up and coming out unexpectedly? He cries again, later, inconsolably, when he thinks that Yosef has died.

He cries, and he also experiences great fear. First, after his ladder dream, he awakes and has a great fear. And second, in the beginning of this week’s parsha, when he hears that his brother – who wanted to kill Yaakov when they last met – is approaching him with 400 men, the Torah again tells us – Vayira Yaakov me’od vayetzer lo -- Yaakov was greatly frightened and distressed. He has intense emotions. The Torah says vayetzer lo, literally, “It was narrow for him.” He is in straits, suffering deeply.

The commentaries wonder about this expression of fear. Why was he fearful when God had promised him protection? Didn’t he trust in God’s promise? They explain away his fear in various ways – he was worried maybe he’d sinned and so the promise didn’t apply anymore – but it seems to me that the Torah is telling us that our ancestor, Yaakov, at least occasionally, had doubts. He was not an Avraham, stalwart and unwavering in his faith. There were moments when he was not sure.

And out of this doubt, out of this confusion and deep distress and struggle and fear, out of all those very human emotions, arose a new kind of religious outlook. For Yaakov is the first of the patriarchs whose passionate prayer we hear. “O God of my father Abraham . . . O Lord, who said to me . . . deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother . . .” (32:10ff).

Avraham never asked God for anything, except to save others, in Sodom, and there he did it methodically, rationally, politely. Yitzhak entreated God over Rivkah’s barrenness, but there is no description of the emotion that went with it, nor do we hear the words. But Yaakov, Yaakov is bursting with emotion, so that when he prays, it is a shavat ani¸ “cry of the afflicted.” He opens his soul and pours it out to God.

That is Yaakov’s way, not a clear, calm one like Avraham’s, but a struggling, searching one full of turmoil and emotional upheaval. Yaakov receives a name change and a body change (the wrenching of his hip by the angel) in this parsha just as Avraham received a name change and a body change (circumcision) years earlier. But if Avraham’s mark was a symbol of covenant and obedience, Yaakov’s is a symbol of struggle and strife. Even with God, he is locked in struggle.

They each have their place. We can hope at times to experience a little bit of the peace of Avraham’s faith, but we shouldn’t stop ourselves from pursuing the Yaakov route as well, the turmoil, the brokenness, the doubt, the struggle, and the cry, because this, too, or perhaps, this, especially, is a route to the divine.