Vayeishev 5774

Of all Joseph’s brothers, the most hateful, surely, is Judah.  “How will it profit [us] if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Let us [rather] sell him to the Ishmaelites; then our hand will not be on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh” (Genesis 37:26-27).  Judah has no moral objection to the murder.  Sneeringly, he wants both to profit and also to avoid guilt.  While Reuben plots Joseph’s redemption and the other brothers speak as a malevolent chorus, Judah goads and achieves.

How surprising, then, that it is Judah who, decades hence, effects the reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers.  “For [I] made [my]self responsible [for our brother] to my father, saying ‘if I don’t bring him back to you, I will stand guilty before my father for all time” (Genesis 44:32).  How does Judah evolve from chief villain to chief reconciler?  How does the cruel youth become a compassionate man?

He grows up.  Genesis 38 interrupts the primary narrative of the Joseph saga with the story of Judah’s adult life:  two sons die, and daughter-in-law Tamar shames him into acknowledging the impact his selfishness has on others.  He tastes life’s cruelty.

No one, not a single one of us, skates through life without tasting loss, pain, or heartbreak.  Whether it’s a loved one’s death, our own illnesses and incapacity, broken relationships or shattered dreams, each of us eventually learns that life’s cup is bitter as well as sweet.  We cannot help but drink.

When people who are suffering ask me “why did this happen to me?” the only honest answer I can give is “I don’t know.”  We cannot know the cause of suffering except that it is cannot be divine retribution.  Human beings are not God’s children sent to bed without supper when we misbehave.  We do not suffer because we’ve “been bad.”  We suffer because we are living beings.

Once the shock and insult of suffering have worn off, we can begin to ask the richer questions:  what can I learn from this?  How have I grown?  What meaning can I make from this?  How can I return to the world transformed and improved? 

While we cannot know the cause of suffering, we can control the effect.  We can make meaning of it.  We can emerge from our pain, like Judah, more fully human than before.

Vayetzei -- 5774

Jacob our father is alone in the wilderness and he is offered a choice.

Stopped for the night, the sun suddenly set, he makes his bed and envisions a ladder stretching from the ground to the sky.  Angels flit up and down it.  Surely, Jacob is invited to climb the ladder, to take hold of a rung and soar to the heights – to dance with the angels and achieve the ultimate bird’s eye view: the entire land and his entire life stretched out before him.  Jacob is granted the most awesome, complete vision of all.

He doesn’t climb the ladder.

We cannot know why Jacob doesn’t move from his spot.  Perhaps it’s because the ultimate big picture is beyond our ken.  As human beings, our scope is inherently limited.  The master plan is not for us to know.

People regularly ask me why.  “Why did I get hit by a car?”  “Why did I get sick?”  “I’ve been a good person -- why is God doing this to me?”  (We rarely ask why we got the job of our dreams, why we are healthy, why our lives are bubbling with goodness and blessing.)  The simple, sometimes painful truth is that we cannot know why.  Human beings are finite, and we are denied the bird’s eye view of our lives.  We are confined to living them moment by moment.  Travelers through life as Jacob was, we travel with a compass, but not a map.

In fact, I think there’s rarely a why, only a what – as in, “what will I do with this knowledge?  How am I to live knowing that the world isn’t fair, that pain is very real, that life is brief, that I am not unique?”  This is the true challenge and, simultaneously, opportunity for growth.

The story of Jacob’s ladder has a fascinating twist.  Even though Jacob doesn’t ascend the ladder to heaven, he realizes nonetheless that “God is in this place” (Genesis 28:16).

God, “standing up above it,” is the bird’s eye view (Genesis 28:13).  God is the master plan.  And at the same time, God is right beside us, allowing us glimpse the totality of life through this present moment, and also to know that we are not alone.

God is both places, here and there.