Shemot -- 5776

The opening portion of the Book of Exodus is punctuated by conflict and response.  Moses encounters conflict five times.  As he matures, he responds in increasingly evolved ways.

At first, he hides.  Giving birth under Pharaoh’s genocidal decree, Moses’ mother “hid him for three months” (Exodus 2:2).  Second, he attacks.  “When Moses had grown up,” he witnessed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and “struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Ex. 1:12).  Third, he runs away.  When Pharaoh threatens to kill him, “Moses fled.”  (Ex. 1:15).  Fourth, he demurs.  When God demands he return to Egypt and speak with Pharaoh, he asserts his incapacity, insisting that he is “slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Ex. 4:10).  Eventually, he is able to confront his adversary peacefully, telling Pharaoh to “let My people go” (Ex. 5:1).

Hiding.  Fighting.  Fleeing.  Demurring.  Confronting peacefully.  These are five common ways to respond to conflict.

All of us have done each of these, I’m sure.  All of us have had them done to us.  Can you think of times when you hid, fought, fled, demurred, and confronted peacefully?  Do you understand why you did what you did?  What’s your default response to conflict?

Immature people react to what happens to them.  They are not in control of their responses.  Evolved people are more able to pause, determine the course of action that’s most true to their values and most likely to garner an ideal result.

Then, they move forward.  Success may not be immediate for them, but it is far more likely.

Vayechi -- 5776

Photo:  Wilsen Way.

The Book of Genesis concludes this week, and a family saga draws to a close.  With the death of Joseph, the Hebrew story branches out: from the travails of a single family to the travails of an entire nation.

“Joseph lived 110 years,” we are told in Genesis 50:22.  “Joseph died aged 110 years,” we are told again, four verses later.  Since no new information is revealed in the second line, we may either consider it redundant, or a powerful insight with which the Torah is enticing us by only revealing it partially.  Why say both “Joseph lived…” and “Joseph died…”?

When someone dies, their death overshadows all else.  Whether our loved ones are taken suddenly or after a prolonged illness, and whether their death is a tragedy, a blessing, or something in between, we who are left behind see only loss, the silhouette of a life.  When Jewish mourners pour dirt into the grave and rip the black kriyah ribbon, we ritualize these profound truths.  What’s missing in the world cannot be filled in. The tear in our lives cannot be mended.

We grieve and, in time, our lives find new shape.  We craft a new normal.  We come to remember the person we loved for who they were, and can think of more than the way they died.  Through memory, their life returns to our consciousness.  We fill in the fullness of their being, and we weave old fabric into something new.

Edyth Mencher, rabbi and psychotherapist, once told me that, paradoxically, “we need to remember in order to forget.  We need to forget in order to remember.”  How we live and how we die are not the same.  Our lives are far more than their end.



Vayigash -- 5776

It would be funny if it weren’t heart-breaking.

Judah, the ringleader of Jacob’s villainous sons, recounts his family’s story to the grand Vizier of Egypt.  He bemoans his long-lost brother Joseph who “was torn by a beast!  And I have not seen him since” (Genesis 44:28).  Unbeknownst to him, Judah is in fact speaking to that brother, unrecognizable thanks to his Egyptian finery and the passage of time.  Judah cannot see what’s right before his eyes.

So it is with Jacob, too.  Although “the famine in the land was severe” (Genesis 43:1) and Jacob feared starvation, he instructed his sons to “take some of the choice products of the land in [their] baggage, and carry them down as a gift for the man – some balm and some honey, gum, ladanum, pistachio nuts, and almonds” (34:11).  When they move to Egypt, the Torah recounts, “they took along their livestock and the wealth that they had amassed in the land of Canaan” (Genesis 46:6).  Was Jacob’s clan prosperous or was it starving?  Perhaps they were wealthy but believed themselves poor.

So it is with many of us.  We live in a bountiful world and a nation of opportunity.  But we focus so much on what we don’t have that we can’t see what we do.

This is especially true during the Holiday Season.  These days more than ever, the media pound us into believing we need what they want to sell us.  It’s hard to feel sufficient with so much energy focused on making us feel deficient.

So let us return to the message of Hanukkah, even though the Festival is past.  Recall the small jug of oil that was sufficient to meet all the needs.  Remember the single match that lights candle after candle.  We are enough – no, we are grand – just as we are.

Hanukkah -- 5776

The Hanukkah candles remind us of the Miracle, but they are not to do any other “work.”  We do not read by them, or cook by them, or clean by them.  Instead, we delight in them and enjoy them.

Rabbi Richard Levy, one of my mentors, recommended that we spend the 20 minutes or so of a candle’s life staring into it.  Observe the range of colors.  See how it flickers in the slightest draft.  How extraordinary that a flame is both there and not there!  How the smoke twists!  There is so much to see in a single candle.  When we allow ourselves to stop doing, we cannot help but be drawn to the flame.

The Jewish holidays are outward manifestations of our inner lives.  By this I mean that the actions we take and the symbols we contemplate are prompts to feel and think about our lives.  They are opportunities to enhance our spiritual, emotional, and ethical existences as human beings and as Jews.  The candles of Hanukkah give us the chance to pause and consider what’s holy in our lives.

This week, a member of our community was struck by a truck and killed.  It can all be over in an instant – no more celebration, no more laughter, no more candles.  It can all go dark. 

So this year – no, tonight:  light the Hanukkiah and stare into the candles.  Do not clean.  Do not check messages.  Just look.  Soak the glow into your soul, relishing each drop of melted wax.  As we look closely, we cannot help but ponder our own lives.  We contemplate the passion, the beauty, the fragility and the brevity of life.  And we treasure it, for it is so quickly gone.

Life itself is the miracle.  Out, out, brief candle.

Vayeishev -- 5776

Jacob is tricked by ten of his sons, who present him with their brother’s torn coat as evidence of his demise.  Brother Joseph, you may recall, was sold into slavery by those sons; his precious coat ripped and dipped in goat’s blood to cover up their villainy.  Jacob wails in grief: “My son’s coat!  A wild animal has devoured him!  Joseph has been ripped to shreds!” (Genesis 37:33).  Like Othello before him, Jacob is presented with “ocular proof” which actually proves nothing.  The boy is alive.

All around us, “news” sources present propaganda as truth, shaping opinion in a populace that hasn’t been trained to distinguish fact from opinion, ask probing questions, identify specious reasoning, consider the source, confirm the story, or change its mind.  As a result, we’ve become shallow, uninformed, and susceptible.  Big corporations and politicians count on our gullibility to enact their own agendas.


In my small way, I try push back against this.  In Temple Emanuel’s Confirmation Class (10^th and 11^th Grades), we read primary texts and ask questions.  We define words.  We seek to empathize.  We allow disagreement.   I encourage younger kids to ask smart questions and refine their vocabulary.  I ask them to consider other angles.  All of this should make it harder for someone to pull the wool over their eyes someday.

In our worship and our study, we don’t require agreement but in fact relish a range of interpretation.  There is no required statement of faith, nor abdication of mind. 

Synagogue can be an antidote to the pervasive dumbing down of our culture.