For Chanukah: A Little Bit of Light Goes a Long Way

Sometimes it feels like there is more evil in the world than good. At this time of year, there is certainly more dark than light. And some days the problems and the tasks – our own and the world’s – seem like they are more immense and numerous than our energy to deal with them.

Chanukah teaches that a little light can go a long way to dispel a world of darkness. Rabim beyad me’atim. The many [were given over] into the hand of the few. Maybe it’s true that there are more hours of darkness than light this time of year and maybe it’s true that there were more Greeks than Jews. But the few – the good, the light – nonetheless win.

Sometimes all it does take is a little bit of oil, a little bit of light, and the immense sense of darkness inside is gone. A small gesture of kindness, one tiny moment of connection with someone, a glimpse of a child’s joyful play – these little things can change our perspective so completely that the very same life which a moment ago felt impossible, now somehow seems manageable; bathed in light, our hope is reborn.

Maybe that is what it means to have faith, to believe that in spite of the odds, the many will be defeated and the light will always return. To have faith is to take steps to dispel the darkness even when it seems like all is lost, that there really isn’t enough oil to make it through all those days, to take those little steps anyway in the faith that one small jug of oil can dispel a whole world of darkness.

Parashat Vayishlah: Our Enemies are our Angels

God takes different forms on this earth. When Avraham interacts with God’s messengers in the world, they are visitors, wandering strangers who are in need of hospitality. The face of God in the world for Avraham is the face of hospitality, of hesed, of people in need of help.

For Yaakov, on the other hand, God’s face is the face of his enemy, his brother Esav, with whom he has struggled all his life. Yaakov struggles with an angel on the night before he meets Esav, and the next day, when he meets Esav, Yaakov says: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10). Avraham sees God in the face of his guests, while Yaakov sees God in the face of those he struggles and fights with.

We have different opportunities for seeing God every day. Is God in the face of the person on the street corner looking for some help? Can we also see God in our competitors, in those with whom we have trouble, who irritate us, those with whom we struggle and have conflict? Yaakov could not have finished growing up without this confrontation with Esav. Those we fight with help us in some way; they, too – no, they, especially – are angels sent from God to help refine us, to teach us where we are wrong, where we have work to do. Our enemies are our angels.

We have a tendency to think that God resides only in the pretty places in life, in the flowers and the trees and in the moments of peace and love. But Yaakov, the scrappy third in line, is a struggler, and for him, God appears also in the struggles and the fights, also in the face of the brother who swore to kill him.

Parashat Vayetze: On Restlessness and Yaakov's Dream

We are restless. Whatever we are doing is not enough. Where we are is not good enough. We think we should also be somewhere else, doing something more.

I think that Yaakov’s ladder dream is an answer to this restlessness. He, too, had a restless spirit, a need to grab and try to be where he was not even invited to be, and now he is running, fleeing from an angry brother.

The dream has these angels moving up and down the ladder. They aren’t getting anywhere. They are just going up and down in place. They are like our breath, in and out, in and out, no matter where we are.

The root yatzav, which means “stand” in a very solid, stable way is used here a few times. The ladder is mutzav and God is nitzav and then later, Yaakov builds a matzevah (statue) Even as he starts on his journey, he is learning something about standing and staying put.

What he learns is that “Behold God is in this place and I was not aware of it.” What he learns is that God is right here. You don’t have to run around all the time, running after your brother or running after the next professional or personal opportunity. God is right here, where you are. In fact, the only way to reach God is to stop for a moment and be present here. All that running is just running away.

And if you do stop and stand as still as a matzevah, a statue, and notice the angels of breath that connect you to heaven at each moment, in and out, in and out, the miracle of being alive, if you do stop, then what you realize is not just that God is in this place, but that actually everything -- all of time and all of space – are also in this place. Right here and right now contains inside it all of the world.

There is a beautiful midrash that God folded up all of the land of Israel underneath Yaakov’s still, sleeping body. The whole land is literally right here. We don’t need to go anywhere; just stop and notice and be present; the whole world is contained in any place that we are truly present . All of space is contained – vertically, the angels go up and down, and horizontally, God promises Yaakov the east, the west, the south and the north.

In such a moment of presence is also contained all of time. To be present in the present strangely also means to become part of an eternal time that includes the past and the future as well. Yaakov stopped in this place and felt God’s presence and so entered into God’s time, across time. God says to him – I am the God of your ancestors – the past – and your descendants will be numerous and inherit this land – the future. Standing still in the present means entering a time that is beyond time and connects you to all of space and to all of history.

Yaakov is understood to be the original inheritor of Shabbat and I think it is related to this dream, to this sense of perfect stillness that contains all. On Shabbat we inhabit a time and a place that are somehow beyond time and place, because we are connected to “The Place,” hamokom, God.

We get glimpses of this feeling – of a stillness that opens up into everything, where we can feel all of time and space collapsing and uniting and it is perfectly clear to us that it is all intimately interwoven into oneness. We probably do still need to run around most of the time. I assume the restlessness, too, has some purpose in goading us to action. But it is nonetheless helpful to remind ourselves as we set out on our journeys, like Yaakov, that if we are really present right here and right now, the whole world is here and we need run nowhere else to seek it.

Parashat Toldot: What Would You Do To Get a Blessing?

Sometimes I think that the Torah, in these early stories, presents us not with an ideal to follow, but more of a mirror to see more clearly our daily insanity.

I think that is the case with the fight over the blessings in this week’s parsha. The phrase that comes to mind here is the modern Israeli phrase, ad kedei kakh? “To that extent?” Really? Is being the first born so important that we would fight in the womb over it, holding on to the ankle of our brother? Is it so important that we would dress or dress our child up in his sibling’s clothing in an elaborate scheme to fool the father? Really?

To what end all this manipulating? What is it that they -- and we -- are out there fighting for all the time anyway? What is it we are climbing over each other to get? A blessing? Is that how one receives blessings? By fighting tooth and nail and furry skin over it? What are we in this rat race in the first place for? And is it getting us there? Or is it rather, as Yaakov suspects, bringing a curse down on us instead of a blessing, all this heel-chasing?

These parshiyyot do present a few glimpses of real blessing, and they do not come as a result of these schemes but from quiet moments of peace with God.

One occurs when Yitzhak, after being involved in his own contentious fights over the ownership of a well [itself a symbol of blessing], finally sees that “God has made things expansive for us,” naming this new well Rehovot, “Expansiveness.” This feeling of expansiveness -- that there is plenty of water for all to share – is the opposite mode of the heel-chasing fight over the blessing in the rest of the parsha. And it leads to a real sense of blessing and peace – following this event, God appears to Yitzhak and blesses him that He, God will be with him and always bless him, and then Avimelekh appears again to make a treaty and they all break a meal bshalom, in peace.

True blessing does not come from the fight.

For Yaakov, true blessing comes to him in the beginning of next week’s parsha. Running away from home with nothing but the clothes on his back, he lies down with a rock for a pillow and finally does get a real blessing, not from his father, but from God Himself, who stands over him with His ladder of angels and promises him to be with him and protect him on his way.

We chase blessing constantly through all kinds of manipulations. We worry that we will not get what we need unless we hold on tight to the ankle in front of us and sometimes we even betray our own true identity in search of this ostensible external blessing. This parsha makes me wonder whether such seeking is helpful or whether perhaps true blessing comes from those moments of internal peace, when we are calm enough and expansive enough to feel God's presence and simply know that we are always blessed.

Parashat Chaye Sarah: On Doing Favors

To do another person a favor is a more weighty act than we usually think. There is a Hasidic notion that sometimes a soul comes down to earth for 70 or 80 years with the sole purpose of doing a specific favor for one particular person. What an awesome thing is that favor! But as we don’t know which one we were sent here to do, we have to treat them all with the same sanctity.

“I will give you to drink, and I will also give water to your camels.” So says Rivka to Avraham’s servant in this week’s parsha. Perhaps it was to do this one act that she was sent down to earth.

It is a simple act, this giving of water, but it has a huge impact, unlocking blessings from bracelets to marriage and children to the continuation of our people. Such is the weight of a favor sometimes.

Rivka encapsulates the favor-giving attitude. She is unstingy with her time. Can you imagine the scenario? She, a young maiden, serving a wealthy master’s servant and helping him not just with one camel – and they drink a lot – but with all 10. If it were me, I would be tempted to say, or at least think – why can’t you do it yourself (or at least help me do it)? You look strong enough. Or – I have my own animals to worry about, too. But we get no such sign of skepticism or stinginess from Rivka. She gives freely and enthusiastically of her energy, which is, after all, often our most precious commodity. Like the water coming out of her pitcher, she fairly overflows with generosity and good heart.

Here is gemilut hasadim, the doing of kind deeds, at its best. Note the repeated use of the word hesed in this parsha and also, a bit more subtly, the word gamal, “camel” (thank you to my son Medad for this idea).

The ultimate doer of hesed, as Avraham’s servant repeatedly reminds us, is God. Do we deserve all the good we get daily? Do we really deserve these beautiful children, all this plentiful food and the stunning world He created for us? Of course not. It is all hesed, free giving done, like Rivka, without calculation. When we feel the full extent of that blessing and that overflowing generosity, when we can really see that cornucopia, we can also, like Rivka, give to others in that same unstinting way.

It is sometimes difficult to know what action to take in this confused world. Maybe it will help to remind ourselves that the whole point may be quite simple --- the whole point may be to do one person a particular favor and to do it in Rivka’s generous way.

Parashat Chaye Sarah: On Avraham's Servant and Service of God

Everyone knows that Avraham’s servant’s name is Eliezer. The Torah tells us about him and names him earlier in the Avraham saga. Why, in this week’s parsha, do we hear of him solely as eved Avraham, “the servant of Avraham”?

Perhaps part of Eliezer’s function in this parsha is to teach us about service. We are commanded to be avdei Hashem, “servants of God.” How does one do this? Take a page from Avraham’s servant’s book.

He is single-minded in his pursuit of the task his master has assigned him. He is in such a rush he seems to have arrived at the spot even without travelling. Rashi says he had kefitzat haderekh, “jumping of the road,” – his journey took less time than Waze predicted.

And all of this servant’s many speeches are all for one purpose – to achieve his mission of getting a proper wife for his master’s son. And so, again, to match his enthusiasm there is a quickening of time and in the middle of making a deal with God, there she appears, the right woman, the very first he sees.

When he gets to the house, he is offered food but no, Avraham’s servant must first perform his task. There is nothing else on his mind but to fulfill his master’s mission – get the girl home. Again, after they agree, there is the possibility of delay – the family suggests staying around for a year or so, as was traditional – but Eliezer insists and she agrees and off they go.

Zerizut, “alacrity,” and total focus on the mission at hand are the hallmarks of this servant and so should they be our hallmarks as servants of God. Our tasks may be less clearly defined, but if we keep in the forefront of our minds at all times that we are servants of God, put here to perform some helpful function, that our primary desire is simply to be of service, if we keep this in mind and do not stray, then we, too, will have kefitzat haderekh, “jumping of the road”, God’s aid in achieving our goals.

Parashat Vayera: On Strangers and Angels

Sometimes the people we think of as strangers turn out to be angels in disguise. Avraham saw three people in the distance. He did not know they were angels; he thought they were just weary travelers in need of hospitality. They turned out to be angels sent by God to bless him and Sarah with a child.

Maybe strangers are sent to us as a test -- a test our openness and generosity and faith in the bounty of God’s gifts to us. If we treat them like Avraham treated them, with an open tent, a warm meal and a welcoming heart, then they become blessing angels, sent to bring us blessing and fruitfulness. But if, on the other hand, we treat them like the people of Sodom treated strangers – we take advantage of their vulnerability to harm them – then they become divine agents not of blessing, but of destruction.

I am reminded of all those childhood stories about the ugly hag who stops the child on his journey, asking for a little bread or some assistance. The old hag turns out to have magical abilities and she then curses or blesses the child depending on the child’s reaction.

Perhaps we too are tested in this way, and when we give to those who are strange and unknown to us then we discover that they are angels who carry blessings, and when we don’t, we find that they are criminals sent to hurt us.

Many are the strangers in our lives – those from other countries or cultures, those with different political views, even those closest to us have aspects of the stranger in them. If we can somehow keep our tent open and invite them in, we will turn those strangers into angels of divine blessing; they will teach us something we need to learn and we will grow and be fruitful.