Some new Jacob

Vayeitzei 5772

Jacob, fresh from his encounter with the Divine, comes across three flocks of sheep in a field by a watering hole.  A “good sized rock lay on the mouth of the well” (Genesis 29:2).  The rock is too big for any one shepherd to move it; the shepherds must work together to move the stone and access the water beneath.  When Jacob arrives, the shepherds are waiting for enough hands to gather so that they can get the job done.

Jacob lays eyes on Rachel, a young shepherdess (and his cousin) with whom he is instantly enamored.  He moves the stone all by himself, allowing the flocks to drink.

Rashi, the medieval commentator, thinks that Jacob is eager to show off his great strength.  Or, perhaps, he was impatient to spend some quality time with the young woman.  In either case, Jacob’s actions, while in service of the community, serve his own interests more.  A more gracious tact would have been to work with the shepherds to roll the stone, as was their custom.  I wonder what happened the next day, and the days after that?  Did Jacob, now resident, join the team, or did he always move the stone by himself?  Did the others come to rely on him?  How did they feel towards him?  What local balance was thrown off by Jacob’s bravado?

Sometimes, in helping others, we are in fact more interested in helping ourselves.  Sometimes, the way we help others creates immediate benefit but long term harm.  The best help is help that is both egoless and that also fosters no dependence.  It’s a delicate, but important balance to strike.

Tol'dot 5772

We met Rebekah at the well last week:  gracious, open, hospitable.  She’s a young woman who takes charge of her destiny, seizing the opportunity to leave her brother’s house and marry Isaac, her cousin in a far-off land.

I love Rebekah.  She’s vibrant, determined, perhaps even feisty.  In Collin Burgheimer’s words, she’s “spunky.”

But this week’s portion, Tol’dot, shows us Rebekah twenty years later, and then several decades older still.  She’s manipulative, controlling, even deceitful.  And I have to wonder:  What changed?  How did that caring young woman become that cold?  Is this an inevitable transformation of age?  Is it a result of the life she led?  Or was the woman she became always within her?

Rebekah’s lived with the pain of childlessness.  She’s lived with the pain of her husband.  She’s lived with pains unseen by the text.  We don’t hear her cry out until the feels the pain of the twins struggling inside her.  Then she asks that existential question:  “Why do I (even) exist?”  (Genesis 25:2)

This is one of adulthood’s essential tasks:  to retain the openness, freshness and suppleness of youth even as we mature.  What can we, as adults, do to fight off the slow creep of time, of resentment, of bitterness, of cold?  How do you keep the flame of your younger self flickering, laughing, growing, learning, dancing?

Chayei Sarah 5772

We meet Rebekah—like so many matriarchs—at the local well.  Young in years, she’s come to draw water for her flock.  When she meets a traveler, she readily agrees to fetch water for him and his many camels as well—in addition to her own animals.  What a lot of work!  What a kind-hearted young woman!

When I think of Rebekah at the well, I think of the nearly one billion people in our world without access to clean water.  I think of the 1.5 million children under 5 who die from diarrhea each year because their water sources are contaminated.  I think of the countless girls who walk miles each day to fetch water for their families rather than go to school.

If you’d like to know more about the world’s water crisis, visit http://water.org/.  You’ll find statistics, (including the numbers cited here), stories, photos and—most importantly—solutions.  We can emulate our mother Rebekah in providing clean water to those in need.

Vayeira 5772

For my birthday, Haim gave my gift away.  Instead of buying me something I didn’t need, he made a loan to Sohir, an Israeli Bedouin woman going into business as a seamstress.  I was one of 100 funders.  In total, we loaned her $2750 for a sewing machine, paint for the shop, materials and supplies.  Sohir works with an Israeli non-profit organization and will repay the loan, with interest, over 26 months.  The loan is organized by Kiva.org, an organization that creates the opportunity for Sohir, and thousands like her around the world, to access capital and create self-sustaining lives for themselves and their families.

What can it matter that one impoverished Bedouin, Guatemalan, Armenian or Tanzanian person finds a dignified way to support his or her family?  After all, the need is overwhelming.

When God sought to destroy the twin cities of S’dom and G’morrah, Abraham argued that individual human lives matter, that God should not “sweep away the innocent along with the wicked”  (Genesis 18:23).  God agreed.

Individual loans may seem pointless--to the lender, at least, if not the borrower.  But when each life, each family is added up, the transformation is extraordinary.  Since 2005, Kiva.org has lent $255 million to over 660,000 borrowers, working with 145 field partners in 61 countries, making housing, agricultural, educational, business and group loans.  Their repayment rate is 98.90%.  That’s nothing short of magnificent.

Each and every human life matters.  “Must not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” Abraham asks (Genesis 18:25).  Must not we, made in God’s image, do the same?  Through Abraham, God says, “all the nations of the world will be blessed!  For I have selected him so that he may teach his children and those who come after him to keep the way of the Eternal, doing what is right and just” (Genesis 18:18-19).  Ken Yihi Ratzon—so may it be.

Lech Lcha 5772

Night in the Sinai:  a sky brimming with stars, positively pulsing with light and energy.  A spectacular sensation of vastness and interconnectedness, of being at once miniscule and at the same time part of the endless Universe.

Not far away but lifetimes before, our patriarch Abraham buried his feet in that sand and looked up at a similar sky.  “Turn your gaze toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them!  And [God] promised him:  So shall your seed be (Genesis 15:5).”  We are the seed of that seed; there was a star for each one of us up in that sky, shining down on him.

So too are we like the specks of dust at his feet.  “I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth.  Only if one can count the dust of the earth will it be possible to count your descendants (Genesis 13:16).”

God shares two visions of the Jewish people:  that we, descendants of Abraham, will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and also as the dust of the earth.  We human beings are grand and, at the same time, nothing.  We partake of infinity but our lives are brief candles.  Somehow, we bridge the gap between the two extremes.

What is it to be human?  To be poised between the speck and the spectacular.  We are dust that dreams of the stars.