Tag: Miketz

Parashat Mikeitz: Joseph Weeps

Image: A man crying. (Daniel Reche / Pixabay)

Parashat Miketz begins and ends with tests.

The first test: Pharaoh summons Joseph from prison to interpret his dreams. In telling Joseph about the dreams he changes tiny details in the dreams to see if Joseph is really the seer that the servants claim. (Midrash Tanchuma, Miketz 3) Joseph passes the test: in his interpretation of the dreams, he smoothly corrects the details without comment. Pharaoh trusts him immediately, declaring that he is full of ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, and appoints him vizier of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself. Thus Joseph passes Pharaoh’s test.

The second test: At the conclusion of the Torah portion, Joseph tests the brothers who sold him into slavery. His brothers arrive and do not recognize him; he has disguised himself in Egyptian finery. (Genesis 42:7) Seeking to see if they have changed, Joseph administers an elaborate test, holding first one brother and then the other hostage.

Joseph’s mistrust runs deep. He is so overcome with emotion that at one point he leaves the room to weep. By the end of Miketz, he is still testing, wondering if these men have changed, if he can trust them enough to reveal himself as their brother.

In the first test, Joseph is supremely capable and at the same time humble. He shows no anxiety. In the second test, his emotions overcome him. What is the difference? In the first case, he has little to lose and everything to gain. In family matters the stakes are much higher. The secular world encourages us to focus on career and accomplishments, but trouble in family relationships reduces even the Vizier of Egypt to tears.

Here in the United States we have all but made a god out of business. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people. Business ethicists tell corporations that their first duty is to stockholders, over all the other stakeholders in a situation. Civic leaders have been given a false choice between “the economy” and “curbing the pandemic” as if money and human beings are an equal exchange.

He turned away from them and wept.

— Genesis 42:24

The second most powerful man in Egypt wept over his estrangement from his family. Nowhere else in the long Joseph story does Joseph weep: not when his brothers dump him into a pit to die, not when he is sold into slavery, not when his employer’s wife framed him for rape and sent him to prison. Only at the sight of these brothers is he moved to tears.

We human beings are social creatures. Relationships are key to our spiritual lives and our physical health. People are more important than business. People are more important than money.

Human life and relationships are priceless. Whenever we talk about the good of the economy over the good of human beings, we flirt with the grave sin of idolatry.

Ask Joseph. He knew.

Divrei Torah on Parashat Miketz

I associate memories with certain Torah portions. I remember Shelach Lecha as the week I  became a Jew, and the week I left home for rabbinical school. I remember Yitro as the first time I first chanted Torah for the congregation. And I remember Miketz because it was the portion I was assigned for my first d’var Torah in rabbinical school.

On the one hand, the stories in Miketz have been favorites of mine ever since I was little: Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams! Joseph becomes the Prime Minister of Egypt! Joseph faces his brothers again! And on the other hand I was going to speak before the whole school, and I wanted to say something profound about the Joseph story. Rabbi Dr. Michael Marmur was assigned to me as a mentor for the first sermon, and I was as intimidated by his reputation as Joseph’s brothers must have been in Pharaoh’s court.

I didn’t say anything profound that week. It was a fine learning experience: Rabbi Marmur taught me how to dig into the text for something coherent to say, and as far as I recall, I performed adequately. I remember, with blushes now, my overblown ambitions for that sermon.

However, I have some wonderful divrei Torah for you from people with more practice at it than I had back in 2002!

Rabbi Ellen M. Umansky — Forgiveness and Reconciliation with the Past

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild — Mikketz: how knowledge and understanding still requires wisdom if we are to avert environmental disaster

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat — Miketz: Letting Yourself Dream

Rabbi John Rosove — Jewish Survival is not a Given

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken z”l — Joseph and Potiphar: The Named, The Neutered, and the Neutralized

8th Night: More Things in Heaven and Earth

Image: Sunrise. Photo by Arek Socha / Pixabay.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

My grandmother had a knack for turning up at hospitals whenever a family member went to the emergency room. She couldn’t really explain it; she’d just get a feeling that she needed to go someplace, and she’d go, and as soon as she walked into the ER waiting room, she’d see the person and know why she was there. I don’t know how she did it, but I know of three different occasions on which it happened.

My wife’s parents both died on Dec 25. Bill died of pancreatic cancer. When Eva Mae died, many years later, she was deep into Alzheimer’s and no longer knew anyone who visited her. However, she died on exactly the same day on the calendar that Bill did.

June Carter Cash died on May 15. Her beloved, Johnny Cash, followed her on September 12. In life they could not bear to be separated for long, so no one was surprised when he passed so soon after her.

Skeptics will tell you that my grandmother was a nut. (In truth, I don’t know how many times she went to ER’s on a false hunch.) They will tell you that Eva Mae’s death on Bill’s yahrzeit was a coincidence. And they will tell you that Johnny Cash was very old and sick even before June passed.

But I firmly believe that we human beings are connected to one another in ways that we do not fully understand. I see this message throughout Torah. In fact, it is a central message of Torah: everything we do has consequences for other human beings, much of which comes about precisely because we are so connected to one another. Some of those consequences are easy to see (Joseph annoys his brothers, so they strike back at him in anger in Parashat Vayeshev) and some are more subtle (Joseph’s brothers want him to suffer, and he does, but in Egypt he can rise to power and live to save their lives and uncounted others in the famine in Parashat Miketz. The bond between Aaron and Moses is strong, despite lives that are different in almost every way, and they share a destiny in the foundation of the Jewish nation.

A lot of people are worried about the political changes about to take place in the United States, and the political currents at work in much of the world. I won’t lie: I’m worried too. It seems that many kinds of hate are on the rise, and that our human connections are threatened by selfish and sinister motives.

We learned a lot in the 20th century about what hatred and fear can do to human beings. The French Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, suffered much in the worst of it, and he made it his life’s work to analyze what happened. His philosophy describes the encounter of the Self and the Other, the mystery of the Other, and the way in which the existence of the Other interrupts our individual Self-ishness. The Other disturbs our comfortable Self, demanding response, demanding response. It makes a call to us: a call for love.

I believe that our human nature drives us to connection with other human beings. It has dangers (remember Joseph!) but it carries immense promise. There are those who are driven by fear to objectify other people; they respond to the strangeness of others with brutality. The antidote to that fear is to respond to stranger-ness with love.  That is why our Torah teaches:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Adonai your God. – Leviticus 19:33-34

I invite you to join me in celebrating this New Year of 2017, this last night of Chanukah, with a commitment to love above all else. Without love we risk descending into the fear and alienation that goes nowhere good. But with love, with a commitment to the mitzvah of loving those who are different from ourselves, everything is possible.

Shabbat Shalom! – Miketz

I associate various Torah portions with memories. I remember Shelach Lecha as the week I  became a Jew, and the week I left home for rabbinical school. I remember Yitro as the first time I first chanted Torah for the congregation. And I remember Miketz because it was the portion I was assigned for my first d’var Torah in rabbinical school.

On the one hand, the stories in Miketz have been favorites of mine ever since I was little: Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams! Joseph becomes the Prime Minister of Egypt! Joseph faces his brothers again! And on the other hand I was going to speak before the whole school, and I wanted to say something profound about the Joseph story. Rabbi Dr. Michael Marmur was assigned to me as a mentor for the first sermon, and I was as intimidated by his reputation as Joseph’s brothers must have been in Pharaoh’s court.

I didn’t say anything profound that week. It was a fine learning experience: Rabbi Marmur taught me how to dig into the text for something coherent to say, and I said something reasonably coherent. I remember, with blushes now, my overblown ambitions for that sermon.

However, I have some wonderful divrei Torah for you from people with more practice at it than I had back in 2002!

The Torah’s Secret History of Conversion by Rabbi Marc Katz

The Strange Case of the Disappearing Women by Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild

Confronting Their Past by Rabbi Stephen Fuchs

Light One Candle by Rabbi Dan Fink

The Shamash is the Tall One in the Middle by Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser

A Dutch Proverb by Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Miketz with Rabbi Ellie by Rabbi Eleanor Steinman (VIDEO)