Scrollers Preview - Parashat Shemot, 2016!!

It feels like very good timing to begin the book of Exodus this Shabbat, as we enter a new year. The secular New Year, like Chanukah and Christmas, is about finding light at the darkest time of year – hence New Year’s fireworks, sparkly festive clothes and bubbly champagne.

As we open the book of Exodus, we find our people at its darkest hour, in exile, forced to serve Pharaoh in Egypt. But throughout the parasha, there is light. There is light in the midwives’ brave act, defying Pharaoh by not killing the Hebrew baby boys; in Moses’ mother’s decision to put her baby in a basket by the Nile, and in Pharaoh’s daughter’s act to save him. A small flame lights up a bush without consuming it. And God finally hears the groans of the Israelites and remembers the covenant.

These hopeful glimmers herald the beginning of a new kind of story – where brothers don’t kill or banish each other, but where Aaron speaks for Moses, who is slow of tongue. This new kind of story brings with it a new name for God: “Ehyeh.” Ultimately, the Exodus story will be the one that defines us most powerfully, as a people who know the heart of a slave, of a stranger. Our suffering will have been given purpose – to bring light to other peoples’ darkness.

So, as we begin this new book, I want to ask the question – is a story of suffering necessary in developing a sense of values, ethics and purpose in the world? Is it possible to become a people committed to justice and compassion without this story?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Vayigash 2015

In this week’s Torah portion , the drama between Joseph and his brothers reaches its climax, with Joseph revealing himself to his brothers after Judah begs to serve Joseph as a slave in order to send Benjamin back to his father. After Joseph makes himself known to his brothers, he gives theological meaning to the events that have led up to this moment. He explains his brother’s sale of him to Egypt saying, in 45:8, “So, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

The commentator Abravanel asks:

How does Joseph come to say: “So it was not you who sent me here but God”? Surely they deliberately and knowingly sold him to harm him. The fact that by a fluke the sale turned out well, did not mitigate their offence. A person is not judged by the accidental results of his deeds but by his intent. The accidental results are irrelevant to the moral dimension.

We will read some other commentaries, from Maimonides and Rashi, and see if we can come to our own understanding here of the play between free will and God’s Providence.

I look forward to sharing this next parasha in the Joseph novella with you!

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Vayeshev 2015

The Joseph cycle  - the only novella in the Torah - begins this week. Unlike the patriarchal stories that precede it, the Joseph story doesn't begin with his conception or birth. The spotlight shines on him, starting at age 17. There are other differences too.

While this extended story echoes many of the themes of the stories that preceded it – sibling rivalry, deception, exile, now these themes are brought to an intensity we haven’t seen before. Here we do not only have a pair of rival brothers here, vying for a blessing and a birthright. In this set of stories, we have a whole band of brothers who sell Joseph into slavery as an alternative to their initial impulse – to kill him in cold blood. The deception this time isn’t about who gets to receive a blessing. This time, the brothers trick their father into believing that Joseph has been torn apart by a wild beast. The protagonist in this story does not only leave home to sojourn with relatives out of fear of his brother. This time, Joseph is sold into captivity down to Egypt, the most foreign of foreign lands.  Whereas in previous stories, love has been prominent, here, hate takes center stage.

Another difference from the stories that have preceded this is the role of God. Here God recedes from a "character" directly acting and speaking into more of a power operating in the background. Instead of God coming to Joseph in a dream to make a covenantal promise, Joseph has a series of dreams that contain a message about his destiny. Instead of God making a pact with Joseph, as God does with Jacob, we learn that "God was with Joseph" in Egypt and that God blesses him with success in the house of Potiphar, and again when he is imprisoned. God doesn't speak to Joseph, as far as we know, but God is the power to whom Joseph attributes his ability to interpret dreams.

 

We also are not only following the story of just one future patriarch in this parasha. Joseph is clearly at the center of the story. But this cycle is not only about Joseph - we see the political identities of the 12 tribes starting to take form as well, as we get snippets of narrative about Reuben and Judah as well. In fact, a a whole chapter is devoted to Judah, who develops from a person whose idea it is to sell his own brother into slavery, to a man whose own sons are dying and who is deceived by his daughter-in-law Tamar, to a man who by the end of the cycle ultimately takes responsibility for his own brother and father.

 

These differences all seem to point us in the direction of the next book, Exodus. We begin to zoom the camera out from individual stories of a family to the view of a nation in relationship with God. This novella provides an important and dramatic bridge from the mom and pop and God stories of the first part of Genesis to the sweeping story of peoplehood that is to come.

Shabbat Shalom!