Rabbi’s Corner
FROM OUR RABBI ERIC H. HOFFMAN
The great tragedy that occurred last week in Shippan Point, a house fire that claimed the lives of three young children and two of their grandparents, stops us in our tracks. How to comprehend the opaque cloud of catastrophe that has descended upon the bewildered survivors? How to make sense of the losses themselves? What could we say to relatives, friends or neighbors so stricken? What do we think as survivors, in a sense, ourselves: do we ignore this event that has befallen others? do we merely hope that it does not happen to our own family or those whom we know? or do we identify some factor of cause that we resolve to prevent in the future?
According to news reports that circulated over the past week, this fire was attributed to burning embers that were removed from a fireplace but not disposed of safely. If this mistake was the cause of the fire, then perhaps we should draw a lesson from it: the importance of safety. Jewish law respects the importance of safety to the highest degree: risky behavior is discouraged, and the protection of adults and especially children is required. All of these rules originate in Deuteronomy 22:8, “If you build a new house, you shall make a fence for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.” The late Rabbi Louis Jacobs, a leading scholar and writer, explained some of its implications: “Obviously, it would apply today to the need to keep away from children medicines that could cause their harm or the failure to repair faulty electrical appliances. Another instance would be failing to check the brakes of an automobile.” In this spirit, one of my automobile service advisors of years past, in deciding whether or not I needed new tires, said to me, “I saw your children’s car seats, so I decided to replace your tires.”
The strong Jewish position on safety, arguably, has implications for public policy, too. But even if you stop short of endorsing the public protection of private citizens through “coercive legislation,” you will still probably applaud the Torah’s common-sense implication of child-proofing your home, equipping it with valid smoke detection devices, and avoiding the retention of burning embers. Yet, in the face of a tragedy that has happened, would you also not want to impute blame upon someone who was routinely dedicated to her children’s welfare and safety but, like any one of us, not all-knowing and capable of overlooking or simply not seeing some isolated violation? Alongside safety, there is another lesson that we might draw: the potential in each of us to make a mistake. This is probably the greatest normal fear of parents of young children; it is an ongoing, far-reaching responsibility to prevent mistakes from bringing harm to our loved ones of every age.
From the most traditional point of view in Judaism, there are no mistakes. Everything is beshert (Yiddish: “determined by God”). As Rabbi Akiba taught in Pirke Avot (3:15), “Everything is foreseen, yet free-will is given.” This paradox has been discussed and debated for millenia, precisely because it is so basic to Judaism, and it certainly fits the current discussion. Whatever happens, however horrible and unwelcome, is the will of God. Yet we are given the human will and the tools to expend our best reasonable effort to prevent the preventable evil. Careless neglect and, even moreso, active endangerment violate the premise upon which God grants us freedom of will. What is that premise? To imitate God; that is, to emulate God’s qualities of justice and compassion. Paradoxically, God cannot be wholly understood or judged when He who gives life and prescribes innocence takes innocent lives. Mystery though it be, it prevents us from maligning innocent victims and condemning “accidental” omissions.
The survivor of the Shippan fire was unwillingly cast into the position of the Biblical Job, having lost virtually all of his family. Job’s friends, who meant well, defended God by indicting Job. They assumed that there was a reason for Job’s misfortune that could be apprehended by his neighbors. They subscribed to the theory that Job was deserving of his reversal of fortune, that his misfortune was punishment for his crime. Job knew that he was innocent, but he refused, for his part, to condemn God: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him…this also shall be my salvation, that one cannot stand before Him with an easy explanation” (13:15-16).
Adult Education
Our next topic of Adult Education (see above) underlies the decisions we make throughout our lives as parents and the adult children of parents. Some of us, in addition, are in the “sandwich generation,” between the needs, sometimes in conflict, of our aging parents and dependent children. In or out of the sandwich, though, any adult with family responsibilities will benefit from this session, both as beneficiaries and as benefactors in the exchange of advice and experience. I, for my part, will endeavor to present the relevant lessons from our traditional literature.
We thank, in advance, Marie and Phil Rosen, for offering to host this session and would just note, in that regard, that our Torah will be dispensed in an environment that is shared by a dog and a cat.
FROM THE TORAH
VAYIGASH: The Eleventh Sedra of the Torah
Genesis 44:18-47:27
Last week we left Joseph, food czar of Egypt, holding his brother Benjamin as a slave on the pretext that Benjamin had stolen Joseph’s silver divining goblet. (Actually the goblet had been planted in Benjamin’s sack at Joseph’s instigation.) Joseph instructed their half-brothers to return to Jacob their father in Canaan without the youngest son, whom Jacob adored. Jacob had feared a misfortune like this and had agreed to release Benjamin for the trip from Canaan down to Egypt only because Joseph, whom they knew as a high Egyptian official second only to Pharaoh, had made Benjamin’s trip to Egypt a prerequisite of their receiving food from him in the future.
JOSEPH REVEALS HIS IDENTITY
44:18-45:15
At that point their half-brother Judah drew near (Vayigash) to Joseph and appealed for his mercy upon their distraught father. Joseph could no longer restrain himself and revealed his true identity to the brothers: “I am Joseph your brother; it is me whom you sold into Egypt” but “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” Why? “To sustain you for a momentous deliverance.” Joseph dispatched them to Canaan to apprise Jacob of Joseph’s survival and station and to transfer their entire family from Canaan to Goshen in the land of Egypt.
JOSEPH DISPATCHES HIS BROTHERS TO BRING JACOB
45:-16-24
Reports of the emotion of their reunion reached as far as Pharaoh in his palace. He enthusiastically endorsed Joseph’s plan for his family. With Pharaoh’s support, Joseph provided wagons for the transport of the small children and the wives. He provided gifts of clothing to his brothers but especially generous gifts for Benjamin and their father. He urged against recrimination among the brothers.
JACOB RECEIVES NEWS OF JOSEPH AND LEAVES CANAAN
45:25-46:28
When the brothers reached Canaan and recounted for their father Joseph’s existence and true station, Jacob at first could not believe what he heard but, upon considering their words and seeing the gifts, Israel exclaimed, “How great! My son Joseph still lives! I shall go and see him before I die.” On his way to Egypt, he stopped at Beersheba and sacrificed to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to him in night visions and assured him of divine accompaniment to Egypt but not burial there following his demise. Jacob was accompanied to Egypt by all of his children and grandchildren. The names of the children of Israel are fully disclosed, and they are numbered as seventy.
FAMILY REUNION AND MEETING WITH PHARAOH
46:29-47:12
When the family reached Goshen with all of their livestock and wealth, Joseph came to meet them. He prepared them for their forthcoming meeting with Pharaoh, prompting them to describe themselves as cattlemen so that they could live separate in Goshen from the rest of Egypt since shepherds were abhorrent to Egyptians. At the ultimate interview with Pharaoh, the king offered to entrust his own cattle into the keeping of exceptionally capable children of Israel.
When Joseph presented his father to Pharaoh, Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh asked Jacob his age, to which Jacob responded with his numerical age of 130 years and added, “Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life,” fewer than the lifespans of his forefathers. Joseph sustained his father and his father’s family with food in the best part of the land, in the region of Rameses.
THE EGYPTIANS BECOME SERFS TO PHARAOH WHILE THE ISRAELITES PROSPER
47:13-27
In the meantime, the predicament of Pharaoh’s subjects worsened because of the famine. Joseph collected the Egyptians’ money in exchange for the food which had been stored up and deposited the money in Pharaoh’s treasury. When the Egyptians’ money was exhausted, they paid Joseph for the food with their livestock. When their supply of livestock was exhausted, they paid for the food with their land and with their bodies so that they became serfs of Pharaoh, receiving from him seed to prevent the land from becoming desolate. However, Pharaoh did not buy the lands of the priests, who received a stipend from Pharaoh. The people were resettled by Joseph into the cities. Those who worked the land paid one-fifth of the produce to Pharaoh and kept the other four-fifths for food and for seed. This practice became an established rule for the future.
The Egyptians were grateful to Joseph for their survival and accepted their serfdom to Pharaoh. Israel, settled in Goshen, acquired land and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.
SOME THOUGHTS
Vayigash, the first word of our sedra, means “drew near”: “Judah drew near to him (Joseph) and said….” The sedra opens with a pivotal speech by the prominent brother, spoken humbly but forthrightly by a suppliant before the second most powerful authority in Egypt. Judah summarizes candidly Joseph’s inquiry about the brothers’ family members, specifically Jacob and Benjamin, who did not originally appear before Joseph in their quest for relief. He characterizes their current predicament as a product of Joseph’s examination and subsequent demand that Benjamin be brought down to Egypt. He importunes the viceroy with the anticipated tragedy that would ensue were they to return to their father without the only surviving son of Rachel, recognizing that his older brother had disappeared and was presumed dead. “His soul is bound up with his soul” (44:30), says Judah; if Jacob perceives Benjamin to be missing, as was Joseph, it would spell his death. Not blaming the viceroy, he says, “Your servants will have brought down the hoary head of our father in sorrow to the grave.” (44:31). Judah accepts responsibility upon himself and his brothers, recognizing their envy and kidnapping of Joseph as the the cause of events that have befallen them. Judah confesses their sin indirectly by accepting responsibility for the consequences. He, further, engages in the act of teshuvah (repentance) by offering himself as prisoner in place of his half-brother Benjamin. Judah unwittingly convinces thereby his undisclosed half-brother of his empathy with the feelings of their father Jacob and, therewith, of Joseph’s.
Even if we are convinced that Joseph was planning to reveal his identity to his brothers at some point of his own choosing, we are moved to believe that this speech of Judah impelled Joseph to so act immediately: “And Joseph could not restrain himself in the presence of all who stood before him…” (45:1). It was the turning point between alienation and acceptance, between a fractured family life and reconciliation. The brothers were beginning on the path of living with a superior brother. Joseph had realized his dreams: his family, like the sun, moon and stars, was bowing before him. Judah was becoming worthy of his descendant tribe’s sovereign preeminence (King David would come from the tribe of Judah) by recognizing that the dominance of a brother in one field does not preclude the dominance of someone else in another. Judah’s humility alongside his assertiveness were the seeds of his greatness and the source of family unity in Egypt.
Judah “drew near” to his brother, although at the time he did not know that he was his brother. What he “knew” is that this man was a powerful Egyptian, and nonetheless Judah was prepared to step beyond his political, social and economic bounds to defend his family. There are still times in our lives when we are required to step beyond our bounds to protect our families or even just to secure a future for ourselves. Most of us first confront such a challenge when we leave the family environment for college. Some of us have to do battle with economic, social, political or military forces that threaten our family’s or our country’s integrity (a career reversal, a divorce, a premature death, a recession, a war) or a medical burden. Shall we take a page from Joseph’s experience and declare, “It was not you who sent me here, but God” (45:8)? Shall we not blame that which is close at hand, obvious, but see it instead as part of God’s plan? Life lived as a series of accidents cannot be very satisfying. Judah drew near to the powerful man obviously not to blame him to his face, to attribute his family’s losses to factors beyond their control. Rather, his drawing near was to confess his role in the debacle and it led to the understanding that the lives of each of us are part of God’s plan.
SHABBAT SHALOM!
Rabbi Eric H. Hoffman
Rabbi’s Contact Information:
Telephone: (203) 358-0869
Facsimile: (203) 353-9359
E-mail: RavEliahu@optonline.net
Learn More About Membership
Upcoming Events & News
Shabbat services Canceled Today 1/21/12
Next Shabbat Service
Saturday, February 11, 2012, 10:15am
Community Service
- Prepare and serve dinner at Pacific House (Shelter for the Homeless) in Stamford – Sunday, January 29.
- Next date for making sandwiches for Covenant House- Wednesday, Feb. 29.
For more info contact Ele Lowenthal at elowen9934@aol.com.
Help End Local Hunger – Become a “Food Rescuer!”
Community Plates, a local non-profit dedicated to alleviating hunger in communities all across America, has a huge opportunity – if it can increase its volunteer base. You can help. If you have a set of wheels (SUV’s work best) and an hour a week, you can help transform the face of hunger.
If you can help, please contact Kevin Mullins. He’ll be in touch and send you the info you need, including location, instructions and contact information.
