CHAPTER 1. – BEREISHITH
Just Who Is Eve?
‘Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.’ (Gen. 3:20)
Eve was the mother of all living; what does that even mean? I have discussed elsewhere how the Talmud relates to this verse and any Halacha – Law deriving from it[1], and I have also presented some essentially mystical readings of the Eve narrative. Here, I want to convey the Izbicy attitude to Adam and his wife and what Adam achieved by naming her Eve[2].
Rava used to tell the citizens of Mechuza, ‘Honor your wives in order to grow rich!’[3] When Adam named his wife Mother of All Living, he was honoring her. This only happened once he realized that far from causing him irreparable damage by convincing him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she had done him a huge favor.
Living is the opposite of mere existence, almost in the same way that being alive is the opposite of being dead. By calling Eve the Mother of all Living, Adam affirmed that she is the source of everything good about living this life. To ‘mother living’ is to conceptualize the. Conception - from the verb conceive - requires the existence of a mother. God refers to the Jewish People as His ‘mother[4]’, (see Radical Haazinu) acknowledging the crucial importance of our attitudes in conceiving God and His role. Eve taught Adam everything important about living on Earth; therefore he named her ‘mother’.
Although he was made, formed and fashioned as God’s handiwork and the ultimate masterpiece of divine creativity, Adam had no clue how to live like a mensch - not the foggiest idea. He was all vision and no insight. He could see the way everything, including himself, was connected to its source in God, but could not distinguish between form and function. He could see himself situated in the universe, at one with the universe while separate from the universe, a conscious speaking being, but could not think of ways in which things could be better than they already were. He could imagine serving, maintaining and protecting, but had no idea what improving things could possibly mean. If Adam lived in a house for 930 years it would never once occur to him to shift the sofa a little to the left to make room for the bookcase and allow the salon-door to open more fully, even after watching the door-handle bash a hole in the bookcase wall every time someone came in the room.
Every aspect of Adam’s behavior after eating of the tree, whether his attempts to hide from God’s presence in the garden, his excuses, or his blaming everything on the ‘woman You set me up with; she gave me of the tree and I ate,’ points to a very immature person. Adam may have had Seraphim and Ministering Angels dancing at his wedding, but he still appears to have been completely devoid of the least common sense, gratitude, humility or good judgment.
The Torah tells us that immediately after Adam named her Eve, ‘God made for Adam and for his wife tunics of skin, and clothed them,’ (Gen. 3:21). The Izbicy sees this as the restoration of everything Adam had lost by eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Naming her Eve – ‘mother of all living’ was Adam’s conscious decision to acknowledge how wrong he had been about Life, the Universe and Everything.
It all began when God forbade Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Up to that moment things had being going wonderfully well. Elsewhere[5] I have painted a detailed picture of Adam and his perspective; here I will draw a quick sketch.
Prior to Adam’s sin, he was in a state of constant appreciation of God, in communion with all of God’s creation, in perfect harmony and resonance without any break or slippage. Through his own body Adam was aware of all the splendors of Creation, so that his Chokhma – Wisdom was one with his Mind, meaning that Adam’s mind was completely and totally in appreciation of God’s work. So much so, that Adam did not know that he had knowledge of God, he was unaware of his own awareness, because all of his consciousness and awareness was focused in God and not in himself. (Kol Simcha – Bereishit)
Suddenly God threw in this clanger! ‘I want you eat everything in the garden, but don’t under any circumstances, eat of that tree over there, because when you eat of it you’ll die.’ Like a spanner dropped into a turbine spinning 30,000 rpm, the result was broken teeth, blades and shattered dreams all the way down to a screeching, grinding halt. ‘There must be something seriously defective about me if God forbade me to eat of that tree,’ thought Adam. ‘Oi Gevalt! what’s wrong with me?’
Being really human means becoming aware of the way we fool ourselves. It’s a tough lesson. Adam had named the Serpent - NACHASH precisely because he knew exactly what it was, what it was capable of doing and how to recognize it. And yet, when the moment came to accept the fruit from Eve’s hand or reject it, knowing and having followed her dialogue with the serpent, Adam pretended he had no knowledge that it was the NACHASH speaking to him through her. There was a complete disconnect between what Adam knew and what he did with that knowledge. His denial was total.
He said to Eve, ‘You’re my Rebbe, you know what’s best for me to do.’ This here, according to Izbicy, is the crux of the whole story. For when God forbade Adam to eat of the Tree, he suffered a horrible sense of tragedy. For God had not said ‘If you eat of it’, but, ‘on the day you will eat of it,’ as though God were predicting he would eat and cause a catastrophe.
Adam never knew a moment’s peace until he woke from his slumber to find God had fashioned him a mate, a help-meet, who could fill in those places where his deficiencies left gaps. Now that Eve existed, he would be able to eat of the Tree of Knowledge without harm; this is the Izbicy’s thesis[6].
Adam already knew how cunning and malignant the NACHASH was, no one could possibly know it better. It was the reason God had brought all creatures to Adam for naming, because he ‘knew’ them.
After eating of the Tree, as soon as Adam realized he was naked, he should have simply deduced that he had been tricked. Adam was the smartest man in the world, he should have jumped on the knowledge that he had just been ‘had’.
Realizing you are naked, vulnerable and exposed means seeing how you have been tricked. But that requires you to see beyond or through your own denial, to the truth of a situation. It also means you have learned something powerful which might save your life in future, because the essence of wisdom in this world - practical wisdom, stuff you need in order to survive - is to know that you are biased to believe what you want to believe, and that you are a danger to yourself if you can’t see how you are biased.
Everything depends on you realizing this fact, and compensating for it when making life-dependent decisions. Instantly recognizing when you have been trapped by your own thinking, is the difference between being predator and prey.
What did Adam do instead? He made them belts of fig-leaves.
When confronted by God who asked him ‘Who told you that you are naked? Is it possible that from the Tree of which I commanded you not to eat, you have eaten?’ the proper answer would have been, ‘Yes, I did.’ It would mean Adam had processed what had happened, which is all God wanted him to do in the first place.
There’s nothing inherently either good or evil in the Tree of Knowledge. It’s just another tree. There’s nothing inherently good or evil in growing up from childhood to maturity, it’s just a process. Whether it is good or evil depends on how we process and what we learn from our process.
Adam needed Eve to show him, to teach him how vulnerable he was, without getting him killed in the learning process. Once he realized how cleverly she had taught him his lesson, he named her Eve and his life turned around for the better. That’s the Izbicy thesis.
When God asked Adam, ‘Is it possible that from the Tree of which I commanded you not to eat, you have eaten?’ He was demanding that Adam examine and realize the flaws in his own thinking. For to entertain the belief that God would allow Adam to ruin everything, Adam had to assume that God is malignant, deceptive, tricky and duplicitous.
Instead of Adam having an ‘Aha!-moment’, saying, ‘so that’s what God wanted me to learn,’ Adam had a series of ‘it wasn’t-my-fault-moments’ and compounded one failure with a dozen others.
In order to believe, even for a moment, that God had let him destroy himself by disobeying the prime directive not to eat of the Tree, Adam was entertaining some horrible ideas about God. If there was any sin, says the Izbicy, this was it: Adam’s assumption that God would allow him to ruin or destroy himself[7].
In fact, once Adam realized the truth, it meant that he had not eaten anything forbidden, at all. As the Izbicy says:
In the future, when the sin of Adam and Eve is fixed, the punctuation of the verse will change slightly to read as follows: ‘God commanded Adam, saying, “From every tree of the garden shall you eat, and of the Tree of Knowledge of Good. But Evil, do not eat of it.”’
What this means is that God actually commanded Adam to eat of the Good of the Tree of Knowledge. It was only of the Evil of the tree that God forbade Adam to partake. In the future God will show that this was, in fact, what happened; Adam and Eve only partook of the Good of the Tree. Their sin was an illusion, and happened only in their minds. It was nothing but the husk on the outside of a clove of garlic, no more than that. (Mei Hashiloach Vol. I – Bereishith)
A mistake is not a sin, it’s a valuable learning experience, because no one learns from their successes, everything valuable we learn is learned from our errors. Even the Talmud says, ‘No one ever really gets what the Torah is talking about until they stumble and break it.[8]’
Adam turned the whole episode into a sin by going into heavy denial and then formulating a theory about the world in which he was a victim of God’s strategy, Eve’s duplicity and his own naiveté. He grew increasingly defiant and truculent until God gave him a divorce and drove him out of Eden.
Adam’s problems didn’t go away even after he realized the error of his ways, and it persists in us, his descendents. If only we recognized our mistakes as mistakes, if we said, “Oops, my mistake, I think I know what I did wrong,’ and moved right on, the world would not look the way it does. Instead, we treat our mistakes as sins and look for ways in which to minimize and mitigate them. Rather than becoming learning experiences, we make them into defense-of-the-realm issues, and stand ready to die rather than give an inch.
It leads to a lot of suffering.
Adam had his Rebbe, Eve. Abraham had his Rebbe, Sarah. Isaac had his Rebbe, Rebecca. Abraham grew rich once he honored his wife by calling her his ‘sister’. The same happened to Isaac once he referred to his wife as ‘my sister’. Things were obviously very different in those days when wives were cheap and sisters were treasured. But we can understand it as a metaphor if we remember the verse: ‘Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and to insight, “You are my relative.”’ (Prov. 7:4)
CHAPTER 2. – NOAH
Who Needs An Ark?
‘Make an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and seal it inside and outside with pitch.’ (Gen. 6:14)
The Great Deluge happens to each of us in our lifetime. To some people it seems to be an ongoing crisis, with a lifetime spent living on the edge of rising floodwaters. The Torah is not a history book; it’s happening now and is relevant today, for all of us, and it is from the lessons taught in this Sidra, says the Izbicy, that we can learn how to deal with such trouble when it comes. The ark – in all its dimensions and details - with its three levels is a metaphor.
We all have to deal with moments of generalized chaos and periods when the world seems a perilous and unpredictable place. But what are the guidelines? How does a person make an ark within himself, as a shelter until such dangerous times have passed?
According to the Izbicy[9] Rebbe, we create a safe space within ourselves if we make sure to avoid these three lethal shortcomings: rage, intoxication and judgmental attitudes.
What are the first signs to watch out for, to know when a moment of chaos may be imminent? Well, if you are experiencing pain of any sort whether spiritual, emotional or physical, it’s probably a good time to take stock of your surroundings to see if you’re caught up in such an epoch. It may be time, as the Midrash says, to run for cover to the innermost chambers of Torah[10], and everyone has their own secret Torah chambers, according to the Midrash.
In fact, everyone has their own Torah as is discussed later in this work (see Radical Masey, Radical Vayelech), and often the chaos and danger in our lives comes about through people trying to impress their version of Torah on one another. Later in the Book of Genesis, for example, we read how Joseph’s attempt to impress his own personal Torah onto his brothers almost brought the entire family to ruin and tragedy[11].
The Izbicy reads the three elements in this verse - the ark, its rooms and the coating of pitch - as cryptic pointers for any individual who wants to build a place of refuge in which to take shelter during the flood.
1.) Anger is an important emotion reminding us of our boundaries and alerting us when they have been breached. It is vital to our survival that we have anger to tell us when things are wrong with us or others. But the human body has other mechanisms that can use anger to trigger hormonal and endocrinal changes, releasing chemicals into the bloodstream that shift the body beyond anger to rage. Unless you are a warrior engaged in hand-to-hand combat, or in some other type of fight for your survival, rage lessens your chances of surviving the real dangerous times mentioned above. It inevitably leads to poor decisions and inappropriate interactions with people, both allies and adversaries.
You’ll need some sort of box to contain it, says the Izbicy, and that’s what the ark of Gopher wood Noah is commanded to build, represents. No one is safe until they have developed that internal ark where rage is locked away: a vault impenetrable to seas, wind or lightning. It really has to be puncture-proof, leak-proof, water - and fire-proof.
2.) Fear is the most damaging emotion in our lives, on a day-to-day basis. The very fabric of our lives is shot through with fear, and it dictates most of our moves from the moment we awaken in the morning. Now obviously, fear is a crucial survival tool without which we would walk blindly into danger and remain incapable of learning from mistakes, but it has been allowed to rule our lives unchecked. Put it this way, Fear is the opposite of Faith, and most of us deal with our fear by intoxicating ourselves with behaviors, substances and beliefs that provide us with an illusion of faith. No less than four times, in the Book of Deuteronomy alone, the Torah sternly commands us not to be afraid. How can we be commanded not to feel our natural feelings[12]?
What the Torah recommends we do in order to deal with fears without having to use something to help us pluck up courage, is to compartmentalize. This, says the Izbicy, is the second feature of the ark: compartments. Very often my reaction to the unknown is to project all my fears onto it, regardless of whether doing so is useful or not. I tend to globalize and use universalizing expressions such as, ‘it’s always like this, - everyone does that, - I’m constantly noticing, - they’re permanently so… every time - all the time – forever’, and the list goes on, because I have not learned how to compartmentalize. As a result, my mind is flooded with non-specific danger signals. When the Torah warns us against being afraid, what we are really being warned against is fear of illusory peril. Most of the things we fear don’t even exist, or when they do exist, are still no threat to us. Yet fear is such a pervasive state of mind, it overrides common sense and we are overcome with paralysis and inertia. Being able to put things into their proper place, to compartmentalize and break up our thoughts and fears into their components, is absolutely crucial for us to survive in the real world without having to retreat into inebriation and drunkenness in order to get through life. Whether I depend on pills to calm my nerves or a cigarette before picking up the telephone, if I need something to help me face my everyday fears I am not sober. I’ve allowed fear to dictate the shape of my life, and so I won’t make it through the Flood.
3.) It has been said that nothing cuts us off so completely from the sunlight of the spirit as do resentments. To combat our resentments, the Torah advises us, we have to coat our ark inside and out with pitch. The poison from our past cannot be allowed to leak inward or outward. Grudges are the residue of old rage, but it is not merely old rage we have to cleanse our hearts of; those of us who are prone to resentments have to cleanse ourselves of all anger. We simply cannot afford it, the price is always too high. When those of us with ‘anger issues’ are threatened with a deluge, we need to be able to face the future unencumbered by the past. We have to be able to focus on what’s coming and not be trapped in old feelings and painful memories.
The Izbicy finds it noteworthy that the Torah specifies that the door into the ark should be situated on the side and not at the front of the ark. Because dealing with resentments does not mean I have to deal directly with the person I resent face-to-face, although it does mean not locking the door against them if they try to approach me. Just because I prayed for the person against whom I held resentments, it does not mean they are a nice person! And while I cannot bar the door and prevent them from reaching out in friendship to me, I am not obliged or advised to go and seek them out. A door in the side of my ark suffices for that purpose.
We deal best with our resentments by praying for the welfare of those we resent, individually or severally. When I turn to God and ask Him to give the person I resent everything they wish for, everything they need, everything good and beneficent, I am relieved of the burdensome weight of my own resentment. It means I cleanse myself of anger at them, so that not a trace remains inside me. It’s a process. It may take time, and require repetition, but I am the one who benefits soonest and the most when I do this work. It’s an inside job.
My ark needs a window to let the light shine in. When I’m dealing with the darkness of my anger, resentment and fear, I let the light in when I allow God in. Nothing works without faith in God and Providence. If I cannot access my belief in His wise benevolence, I will not be able to deal humanely with my defects of character. In the end, all I will have done is judge myself harshly, adding fresh anger, fear and resentment at myself on top of all that went before.
In rabbinic parlance the Hebrew word TEVAH (usually translated as ark) also means ‘a word’. All the dimensions of the ark create a Gematria: 300 cubits in length = SHIN, 50 cubits in breadth = NUN and 30 cubits in height = LAMED, spelling the Hebrew word LASHON – Tongue. Everything we have learned this far in Sidra Noah, about creating safety within our soul, is tied to the tongue and our powers of speech. ‘For both death and life are in the power of the tongue.’ (Prov 18:21) Rage, fear and resentment are all basic - even primitive - emotions, but we have to process them intellectually and verbally to create a strong enough framework to prevent them from controlling us and ruining our lives.
My ark may be fifty cubits wide, but I need to bring it a point no wider than one cubit on top, reminding me when I pray, when I turn to God asking Him to pour abundance upon me, that I should not be greedy and beg like a glutton.
Following the narrative of this Sidra we notice a curious thing about Noah. No sooner has the flood and the danger passed, that he gets completely drunk, becoming totally enraged and then adamantly refusing to forgive and forget his resentments. He ends up cursing his grandson, Canaan.
Most commentators see this part of the story reflecting poorly on Noah, perhaps as some sort of post-traumatic reaction to the preceding events, or a general deterioration of his character. Not so the Izbicy. He sees Noah’s actions as completely in character and wholly justified, because Noah had achieved enlightenment; he knew exactly what God wanted from him. He’d built his ark and dwelt in it a whole year; he’d done everything God had commanded, and then some.
And the same is true of all of us as a People. For everything we have said this far about avoiding anger, fear and resentments, applies only when we are a danger to ourselves from ourselves as individuals. When we are in pain, as was stated at the outset, when we find ourselves threatened by a deluge of emotions preventing us from living life as we want to, then the command to build an ark is the best advice.
That does not mean anger, rage, fear, drunkenness, judgmental behaviors or resentments have no place or serve no purpose. Everything has its place and purpose, even the most negative actions and feelings.
As a nation, a people and a community, we Jews show few signs of drunkenness, rage or bitter grudge-holding. Israel is not at war with Christianity, Islam, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Iran, the Ukraine or any of our other bestial tormentors. We tend to display sobriety, pacifism, self-criticism, forgiveness and compassion. It is generally the exceptions who prove the rule, the ranting - canting, foaming-at-the-mouth messianic type who stand out for being so unrepresentative of Jews as a whole.
But Noah teaches us clearly that quiet forbearance, while having its place, is not the right attitude to adopt at the end. As the narrative of history plays itself out, the way we watch it doing today in the fulfillment of one ancient prophecy after another, we Jews, a People that dwells alone and insignificant among nations[13], are ready to adopt a different attitude. We have picked ourselves up after two thousand years of trying to survive the Deluge, we have in fact survived it and now we are moving on to the next stage. What was right for us then is not right for us now.
We plant our own vineyards as Noah did. We drink to drunkenness in celebration of our gifts, as Noah did; we take risks, we get into fights, we have a high and raucous celebration happening. And, as Noah did, we will not pass lightly or forgivingly over the sins of those who would take advantage of our vulnerabilities. Canaan beware.
CHAPTER 3. – LECH L’CHA
Who’s Afraid of Love?
Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have lifted up my hand to God, Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a sandal strap, nor anything that is yours.’ (Gen. 14:22-3)
Abraham was afraid to love. He was the very soul of love and kindness, dispensing every sort of consideration and benevolence wherever he travelled or settled, but he was afraid to love.
What was Abraham’s relationship to God? From the first moment Abraham became convinced of God’s existence, he fell deeper and deeper in love. He eliminated every conceivable idea of what or who God might be, not the Sun as either Hepa, Hvar Khshaitra, Semesh or Ra. Not the Moon as either Yarikh, Kaskuh, Baal-Hamon or Sin. Not this and not that. So what was he left with? Nothing, God as no-thing!
To say this was a breakthrough or a revolution, is an understatement. But Abraham discovered he was not the first to think like this; there were others who had gone before him, men and women who knew God as no-thing. Melkizedek King of Salem, whom we encounter in this week’s Sidra was one such believer. But none of them had Abraham’s love or zeal.
Abraham had one goal, to make God famous in the entire world, to spread His glory and to bring everyone to believe and worship the One God. Abraham was convinced that if only God revealed Himself to the world, everyone would fall on his face in awe and adoration.
It was all Abraham ever prayed for: ‘Please, God. I know You can hear my prayers, for how could You not? Please, God, if I find favor with You, use me. If there is any way that I can serve to magnify Your Name in the world, to carry the message that You created us, or to show people how to worship You, just let me know. I’m available to You, God!’
Whenever Abraham met someone new, he could see through them to the Creator, he could sense the divine spark animating everyone and everything. He needed to see it, because Abraham spent his life denying the divinity of everything which was not God. Abraham kept cleaning his heart out, again and again, removing the love of anything which was not God. That’s why he was afraid to love, in case it was not God.
There’s a famous story of the Holy Berditchever, Reb Levi Yitzchok. He asked the Rebbe Reb Boruch if he could visit him for a Shabbes. Knowing how wild and uncontrolled Reb Levi Yitzchok could become when he was impassioned, Reb Boruch made him promise not to get excited at the Shabbes table.
‘Don’t let me speak,’ advised Levi Yitzchok. ‘If I don’t start praying, I won’t forget myself and go mad.’ Everything went smoothly. In Shul during the service, the Berditchever was silent and self-contained. At Kiddush before the Friday night meal, he was quiet and restrained. Everything was going well, up until the moment a servant brought in the fish on a platter, asking each person which he preferred to eat first - sour fish or sweet. So the man came to Reb Levi Yitzchok and asked, ‘Do you like sweet fish?’
Oi! That's all the poor Yiddl had to ask. Reb Levi Yitzchok responded: ‘Do I love fish? I love the Creator! Gevalt! I love God!’
And in his passion, he waved his arms around his head, so the whole tray full of fish was jerked violently up to the ceiling. And the fish began to drop onto the Rebbe Reb Boruch and onto his Tallis (because he was a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, and always wore his Tallis at the table on Friday night).
Everyone around the table, seeing what happened to their Rebbe and his Tallis, was shocked and horrified, but Reb Boruch was unfazed and unmoved. He had foreseen it. And he never, ever washed his Tallis again after that Friday night, because, he said, the stains were very holy - they were love-stains. ‘These stains were made by a Jew who really loves God, who would wash them out?’
The Berditchever had the soul of Rabbi Akiba, who learned the love of God directly from Abraham. Akiba was the ‘soul they made in Haran’ (Gen. 12:5) as is discussed at length elsewhere[14].
The Izbicy says, it was as Abraham was standing in front of Melkizedek that he and R. Akiba got into a Halachic – Legal/Moral argument[15].
Abraham had received news that his nephew, Lot, had been taken captive in a war between Elamite and Sodomite kings. Lot had chosen to go and settle in the city-state of Sodom, which simple fact should tell you all you need to know about him. Abraham doubted whether he should put his own life in danger to go and rescue his nephew. Putting himself in danger could mean the end of his God-Recognition Project. With Abraham dead, who would carry the sacred message of God’s Being to the world?
Abraham did not have to be a great prophet to foresee that nothing good would come from Lot, whose descendents, Ammon and Moab, are referred to in the Talmud as the ‘evil-neighbors of Jerusalem’[16]. Evil neighbors are the sort who watch to see when you leave your house so they can steal into your garden to pick the fruit off your trees and reach in to grab whatever they can through your windows. They are the type who burrow under your fence or throw rocks over it when they see you vulnerable or weak.
Abraham knew that he was about to do something sinful and risky when he set out to rescue his nephew. But it was a ‘Time To Do For God’ (Ps. 119:126), a time to break the law for the sake of heaven[17], because Ammon and Moab would also produce Ruth and Naama, two women carrying the spirit of the Messiah.
A time to do for God is the worst of times, because it requires breaking God’s Law, transgressing the Torah. It is the opposite of a Time of Desire (Ps. 69:14), which expresses man’s complete harmony with his faith[18].
This concept, that there is a time when acting on God’s behalf requires breaking God’s law, is built into the Torah itself. How can a Law contain its own opposite, its own breaking and transgression?
The Laws of Shabbat also contain rules for when the Laws of Shabbat may be set aside: during medical emergencies, for example, and in times of danger and war. But these instances are not a breaking of the Law, for the Law of Shabbat already contains these exceptions within it, built in as special cases.
A time to do for God is a time when a person has to break the law where there is no special dispensation, no relaxation or allowance. It’s a time to literally break the law. Where does such a concept originate?
It originated with Eve, as was discussed previously (see Radical Bereishith), for that was her purpose: to fill in the gaps left by Adam’s deficiencies. For as he realized immediately upon seeing her, now that Eve existed, he would be able to eat of the Tree of Knowledge without harming himself. She would instruct him when it was time; a time to do so for God. Elsewhere I have written at length on this subject, explaining how Eve’s directive contains the instruction to disobey instructions, a clause upon which all future life depends[19].
According to the Izbicy Rebbe, this is what is meant by the word ‘Wife’ in the Torah. Your wife is that part of you which gives you permission and direction about how and when to break the Torah Law. We all have a wife whether we’re married or not, male or female; it’s a concept. Of course, there were individuals for whom the ‘wife’ actually was their wife. Adam’s wife was Eve, Abraham’s wife was Sarah, and both these men had to follow their wife’s direction. Today there are couples whose roles are defined that way, too.
The question is this: when I decide to break Torah Law because I am convinced it is a time to do so for God, how can I protect myself from harming myself at the same time? If I also benefit from the law-breaking in some personal way or take pleasure in it, and it later turns out that what I did was not for God, then any pleasure or benefit would have been ill-gotten. We cannot be sure that what we do is going to be successful. Abraham could not know for sure that if he rescued him, Lot would later father the women who carried the Messianic spirit. All Abraham could be sure of was that if he did rescue Lot, a very bad, unrepentant man would have another opportunity at life in Sodom.
So Abraham stood in front of Melkizedek after rescuing Lot among all the captives together with the King of Sodom and all their combined wealth and spoil. Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have lifted up my hand to God, Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a sandal strap, nor anything that is yours.’
This was Abraham’s insurance policy against harming himself while breaking the Law; not to take the least pleasure or profit from the whole enterprise. It is Abraham’s contention that you can only break the Law for God if you deny yourself any gain or benefit while in the act of doing so. This explains why Abraham did not rescue his brother, Nahor, when Abraham was sentenced by the king of Ur to be thrown into the fiery blast-furnace for refusing to bow to their gods, as described in the Midrash[20].
Abraham broke the Law by allowing himself to be cast into the furnace. He had no right to endanger his own life just to make a public statement about idolatry, yet he decided to do so regardless of the Law, because he was convinced it was a time to do for God. But at such times, according to Abraham, one may not take any benefit, pleasure or profit whatsoever. Saving his brother, Nahor, who was cast into the flames immediately after him, would have constituted an example of just such a benefit. Abraham was bound by his own code of behavior and could not allow himself to take any advantage.
This is yet another example of Abraham being afraid to love. Even the closeness he felt for his own brother had to be girded within the framework of a larger love; that which he felt for God. It all had to fit into the larger picture, lest God be excluded or sidelined or forgotten, however minutely or temporarily.
This, according to the Izbicy, is the esoteric meaning or reading of the Talmudic dictum: ‘Should a wife acquire lost property by finding it in the public domain, it automatically becomes the property of her husband. Rabbi Akiba argues and rules that lost property she acquires by finding it in the public domain, is hers and not her husband’s.’ (Ketubot 66a)
The Izbicy says, the first opinion is that of Abraham. The wife here is a reference to a decision to break the Law, at a time to do for God. Any property acquired by the ‘wife’ in the course of such an event has to go to the ‘husband’ and not to her, for she must not take any benefit or pleasure from the act.
Along comes Rabbi Akiba with a completely different opinion. Akiba is the personification of a pleasure acquired through the act of breaking the Law. It is how he was brought into being, when he arose in God’s thought before Creation, as described in the Talmud[21]. Akiba is God’s guilty pleasure. Akiba’s entire life was the story of a man breaking one Law after another, just for the pleasure of it, because it was a time to do for God. And all Akiba wanted, all he dreamt of, was dying in pain, for God. Akiba is not afraid to love. Even in his earlier incarnations, as Dinah daughter of Jacob, and as Zimri, prince of the Tribe of Simeon, Akiba is not afraid to love and take pleasure while breaking the Law, because it is a time to do for God[22].
Between the two extremes - of Abraham who is afraid to love and R. Akiba who is afraid to hate[23] – stand we, the millions, wondering; what is the right thing to do next?
CHAPTER 4. – VAYERA
Who’s Guarding the Guard?
For I have known him, so he [Abraham] may command his children and his household after him, that they may guard the way of God, to do righteousness and justice; so that God may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him.’ (Gen. 18:19)
Abraham prayed to save the inhabitants of Sodom from their impending doom at the hand of God, as we read:
Abraham stepped forward and said, “Will You really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will You really sweep it away instead of sparing the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people who are in it? You could not possibly do such a thing: to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. You could not possibly do that! Won’t the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
God said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Then Abraham answered, “Since I have ventured to speak to the Lord - even though I am dust and ashes - suppose the fifty righteous lack five. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five? ”
He replied, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”
Then he said, “Let God not be angry, and I will speak further. Suppose thirty are found there? ”
He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
Then he said, “Since I have ventured to speak to God, suppose twenty are found there?”
He replied, “I will not destroy it on account of twenty.”
Then he said, “Let God not be angry, and I will speak one more time. Suppose ten are found there?”
He answered, “I will not destroy it on account of ten.” When God had finished speaking with Abraham, He departed, and Abraham returned to his place. (Ibid. 23-33)
But Abraham’s prayers would appear to have been of no avail, a complete waste of breath. Sodom was destroyed anyway. Although the verse later tells us that ‘When God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and brought Lot out of the middle of the upheaval,’ (Ibid. 19:29) we are not told that Lot was saved because of Abraham’s statement that ‘You could not possibly do such a thing: to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.’ All we are really being told is that Lot was saved in Abraham’s merit.
This question is posed by the Izbicy Rebbe’s teacher, the Rebbe Reb Bunim, who explains the whole episode at the deepest level[24].
As has been stated in the previous week’s Sidra (Radical Lech L’cha), Abraham was not the first monotheist. What distinguished Abraham from those who preceded him was his love and zeal for God. Adam, Enoch, Noah, Shem and others also loved and worshiped God, but not enough to tell God who to be and who not to be.
The silent Amida meditation known as The Eighteen Blessings, begins, ‘Blessed are You, God, God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob…’
These three patriarchs are known as the Merkava – Chariot of God. A chariot is a vehicle by means of which you can arrive where you want to be much faster than you would by would by walking. So God arrives where He wants to be much faster than He would if the three patriarchs had not existed. This is why they are chosen, and why we, their offspring, are also chosen: to bring God to the place He wants to be.
Abraham isn’t arguing that the people of Sodom deserve saving. He isn’t advocating on their behalf, at all. Abraham is simply telling God how he thinks God ought to behave. And that’s why God chose Abraham to start with, because this is his and our purpose as Jews. Our destiny is to shape God’s behavior, to make sure He acts virtuously, according to our definition of virtue. This, says Reb Bunim, is what God means when He says, ‘so he [Abraham] may command his children and his household after him, that they may guard the way of God, to do righteousness and justice.’
God is telling us that Abraham has been chosen, not only because Abraham tells God who to be, but because he will empower his children to ‘guard the way of God, to do…’ Abraham’s children will keep on telling God what to do, forever, until God arrives at His ultimate place or goal. This is what being righteous and doing justice really means: modeling good behavior for God to copy. The Hebrew verb TZAV – Command does not just mean charging someone with a mission, it also means empowering and conferring authority upon them[25].
We have all been charged and commissioned with the authority to ensure that God acts with integrity and justice. Before Abraham’s appearance no one among the believers in God even thought of defining Godly behavior. God is God, they said, and it is not for us to tell Him what to do or be. Abraham says, No! That’s a lazy man’s relationship to God. It’s not enough to say that my father is my father, and my mother my mother. I say that my father is a fatherly man; my mother a motherly woman. God is not merely a God. He is a Godly God.
And what, you may wonder, is Godly behavior?
Well, says Abraham, I will show you by the way I behave. I will model Godly behavior for you in my everyday life, in my every interaction with people and the world I inhabit. It will be plain and obvious. And so God entrusts Himself to us, his righteous ones, to define Him, as is explained throughout this work (see Radical Haazinu).
Later, in Deuteronomy, we see how Moses’ prayers to be allowed into the Promised Land go unanswered - or rather, are declined. God denies Moses entry into the Land and forbids him to pray anymore. In Radical Va’Etchanan we examine this anomaly. Why should God fill someone with the desire to pray, only to deny them any satisfaction?
It was explained that God didn’t really deny Moses entry into the Land, it just didn’t happen the way Moses expected it to. He was absorbed into the fabric of the Jewish Nation; we each have Moses within us, and he will always remain our Teacher. Perhaps Moses’ greatest lesson to us is that no prayer ever goes to waste, even those which appear to have been futile.
Here, in our Sidra, Abraham’s prayers were also not publically heeded. But that was never their purpose. The entire prayer is recorded in all its detail to teach us how to do our chief job: ‘to guard the way of God, to do’.
After Abraham had finished praying and negotiating, the Torah tells us, God departed and Abraham returned to his place. Why does the text need to tell us this, and what does Abraham returning to his place signify?
After God went ahead and destroyed Sodom, it became obvious to Abraham that there weren’t even ten righteous people to be found in the whole region comprising the four kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, or else God would have spared them all as He had promised. Abraham was very pained. ‘Why was I moved to pray on behalf of such a wicked group of people, when among all those many thousands there were not even ten righteous individuals? How could I have any shred or scrap of love in me for people who loathe God so much?’
Abraham’s public act of circumcision had not merely revealed God in a new light to Abrahams’s friends and family, it also revealed the wickedness of Sodom in a new light. God told Abraham, ‘I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its [Sodom’s] outcry, which has come to Me; if not, I will know.’ (Gen. 18:21) God’s ‘going-down’ is a consequence of the revelation brought about by Abraham’s circumcision, for God has been brought down into the visible world. The Sodomites in the Jordan valley became vibrantly aware of God that day, much as did the Hittites on the Plains of Mamre, when Abraham was visited by three angels.
Now that the truth was obvious, Abraham was heartbroken that he had compromised his own code of conduct by acting in a loving way toward the Sodomites who were a cruel and God-hating people.
Nevertheless, emphasizes the Izbicy, Abraham returns to his place[26], to the same state of mind and attitude he adopted at the outset.
‘I never had any other desire or motive,’ said Abraham to himself, ‘than honoring and loving God. Every word I uttered, every sentiment, was an expression of my worship and regard. If it sounds as though I was advocating on behalf of the world’s most wicked men and women, so be it. I know I only meant God’s honor.’
So Abraham refused to withdraw a single word he had spoken; he would not take back his prayers.
In light of what was said in the previous Sidra (Radical Lech L’cha), that Abraham had eliminated every conceivable idea of what or who God might be, leaving him with was God as no-thing, one wonders what suddenly bothered him about God being unjust? It all becomes even harder to understand if we accept that moral judgments about justice and injustice are human constructs; who did Abraham think he was to plaster his personal standards of justice onto God?
From what we know of Abraham, his faith in God put him far and beyond questioning God’s morals or demanding that God be understandable, as we read in the Midrash on the narrative of the Akeidah - Binding of Isaac:
[The angel] Samael approached Abraham the Patriarch saying, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa! Have you lost your heart? This is the son who was given to you when you were one hundred years old, and you’re going to slaughter him? You do realize, don’t you, that tomorrow God is going to call you to account. He’ll say, ‘Murderer! Guilty! The blood of your own son, you spilled.’ Abraham answered him, ‘Even so.’ (Gen. Rabba 56:4)
Abraham was not bothered by theodicy, that branch of theology concerned with defending the attributes of God against objections resulting from physical and moral evil. Samael could not even tempt Abraham to slow down on his journey to sacrifice Isaac, or get him into a debate on the issues. Abraham was not bothered by the prospect of being told by God, ‘You are a murderer for obeying Me, for killing Isaac.’ Abraham had no opinion on what God ought or ought not do, just as he had no opinion on what God ought or ought not to look like. He was there to serve and be available, nothing else.
In fact it remained for the Ministering Angels to object to the Akeidah - Binding of Isaac, as we read in the Midrash:
When Abraham stretched out his hand to pick up the knife to slaughter his son, the ministering angels began crying, as it is written, ‘Lo, the Erelim cry outside, Angels of Peace do weep bitterly.’ (Isa. 33:7) What does it mean they cry outside? R. Azaria says, Chutza - Outside is actually written Chitza - Bizarre. ‘It is bizarre,’ the angels cried, ‘for [You, God, to command] a man to slaughter his child!’ (Gen. Rabba 56:5)
We, who bear the burden of telling God how to act and who to be, need to remember this. Abraham only told God how to act when talking about others. On his own behalf, he would never have dreamt of challenging God, ‘Won’t the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ That was left to the Ministering Angels who were watching events unfold.
Abraham would only ever speak up if there was nothing in it for him personally, neither gain nor benefit. He would speak up on behalf of Sodomites, but not himself.
This is the lesson we have to take when telling God who to be and how to act: Never, ever to acquiesce to being told that others have to suffer. It is always the right thing to tell God, ‘It does not become You, Lord, when Your children suffer. It makes You look bad.’
Not to be tempted to use this logic when advocating on behalf of myself, I must leave that to the angels to do for me, if they are so inclined.
CHAPTER 5. – CHAYE SARAH
Who’s Afraid of Fear?
Now Isaac had come from coming to Be’er-Lahai-Roi; for he was living in the Negev. (Gen. 24:62)
Abraham may have been afraid to love, but Isaac was afraid of fear.
As has been explained previously, Abraham had become convinced in his youth that idolatry would disappear overnight if everyone in the world became aware of God. Everyone would be worshiping God with all their heart and soul; how could they not! He had prayed, ‘God, please reveal Yourself in the world. If only people knew of Your Being, I promise You they would instantaneously change their behaviors. It’s only because You are so invisible and elusive that they act the way they do. Please, for Your own sake, God, reveal Yourself!’
God agreed to fulfill Abraham’s desires, and so Isaac was born, for Isaac was the revelation of the Shechina – Divine Presence. It’s probably doubtful that this is what Abraham had in mind when he begged God to reveal Himself, but you know God; He does have His little ways!
Whenever there is a revelation of the Divine Presence, it is accompanied by intense fear. Today it is more fashionable to talk about Awe, to avoid suggesting that finding yourself in the presence of the Shechina is to be in a state of terror, fright and sphincter-loosening panic. People prefer assuming that, given the chance, they can be best-friends with God in a comfortable, pleasant and cozy atmosphere, only because they’ve never really thought it through from beginning to end. Perhaps we’d prefer to imagine that being with God is like being with your Daddy, as though God were the closest relative it’s possible to have. And why not: it is surely written, ‘He will raise the horn for His people, then all his saints will sing praise, for the children of Israel, a people who are His family. Hallelujah!’ (Ps. 148:14).
That’s all very nice and gemütlich, but does not reflect the reality. The fact is that when we stood at Sinai and heard the first of the Ten Commandments issuing from the mouth of God, we died right there and then. We had to be revived (using the same process with which we will all be revived at the Resurrection) only to die again the next time God spoke[27]. Not only that, but according to the Talmud, we were so terrified of the Divine Presence that we had to be propped up by millions of angels just so we could remain standing on our feet.
Not because the voice of God was so loud that we were scared to death, nor was it because of the thunder and lightning, the earthquakes or the fire. It was simply because we all became prophets. ‘Moses speaks [the Commandment] and God answers him in the voice.’ (Ex. 19:19) Every time Moses spoke, we all answered, repeating his speech word for word. But the words coming out of our mouths were not our own, they were the identical prophecy Moses was receiving; they were the voice of God. All of a sudden we became aware of God inside us, in our mouths and throats and lungs and all through our bodies. We were infused with the Divine Presence and reacted to the revelation by dying on the spot.
Imagine then, if you can, what it must have felt like to be Isaac, to live your entire life in total awareness of the immanence of God. Isaac could feel, hear and see the Shechina inside himself all the time, that’s what we mean when we say that the birth of Isaac was the revelation of the Divine Presence. When Isaac allowed anyone to see who he really was, to catch a glimpse of the sort of awareness with which he lived all the time, that person became just as frightened. For when Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come closer to me let me touch you, my son[28],’ Jacob wet himself in terror, and his insides turned to melted wax[29].
People seem to agree that Love of God can be understood and communicated in common phrases and jargon[30]. But when it comes to Fear of God, all sort of disagreements arise as to the very basic meaning of this concept. Mediaeval rabbis classified Fear of Retribution and Fear of Highness as two distinct forms of Fear of God[31]. Throughout the Mishna and Talmud Fear of God is referred to as Fear of Heaven.
According to Izbicy, the part of our mind which has Sovereignty - the Self that rules over the rest of the self – that’s the part that experiences the Divine Presence and the Fear which attends it[32]. Quite often a person commits sins just to be rid of the fear and dread. In other words, it is not always by acting out their Fear of God that someone is privileged to experience the immanence of the Shechina. Sometimes the Presence of the Shechina is itself unbearable, and therefore becomes an excuse for trying to avoid and throw off the Fear of God.
A romantic way of explaining Fear of God is to describe it as fear of damaging the great love affair one has with God. If I love, adore and worship God, then I am terrified of doing something which might jeopardize my relationship by alienating or offending Him. Of course, some might argue that this is merely another way of describing Fear of Sin.
The fact remains it’s almost impossible to agree on what Fear of God means, if we have no direct experience of it. And even when we have experienced it directly, it’s still unlikely we will agree. And those of us who cannot say we ever experience the Divine Presence in our body, how can we even grasp the concept? Well, when we are in the presence of someone who does experience the Shechina, we may be able to see through them to the Divine.
People who are real are also transparent to that reality, whatever it may be. When someone really is with God, they become a window through which others may see or experience God. We all become transparent to our beliefs and faiths, and those things which are most powerfully present inside us become visible to those around us, too. The most obvious window into the soul is speech, for the words which come out of our mouths reflect and expose our ideas, which is why Sovereignty within the physical body is often associated with the mouth[33].
Isaac is not only afraid to act lest he do the wrong thing, he is equally afraid not to act. Isaac’s fear does not make him timid, but it does force him to decide to act in the most minimal way. For most of us, once we have decided to act, we do so in the confidence that the decision was probably the right one. Not so for Isaac. Even after making a decision to act, his need to continue evaluating the decision and the course of action never stopped. The judgment also needed judging, and the action also needed weighing.
The only person who really understood Isaac’s fear was his father, Abraham, who also realized that unless he arranged a marriage for him, Isaac would be unable to act on his own behalf in such a complex and risk-laden endeavor.
Abraham became aware of God after searching in the world around him, until God told him, ‘LECH LE’CHA – Go to yourself[34], stop looking outward for clues about Me. Ask yourself instead, “Why am I even searching for God in the first place?” The fact that your thoughts chase Me all the time should be sufficient evidence that I am intervening directly in your life[35].’
Isaac’s awareness was so different, it was focused almost exclusively inwards. Isaac is blind to the world outside and never leaves his mother’s side. The day Isaac dies, his mother dies - or is it the other way around - when Sarah dies, Isaac dies? The text quoted at the outset tells us that Isaac came, but where did he come from? There are various opinions. One says that he came from the Garden of Eden where he went after dying at the Akeida so that he could remain with his mother. But as soon as Sarah dies, her soul is reincarnated in Rebecca who is born that same day. She marries Isaac, so he never has to leave her again[36].
The silent Amida meditation known as The Eighteen Blessings begins, ‘Blessed are You, God, God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob…’ (See Radical Vayera) Because these three patriarchs together comprise a portal through which we can all access God. Abraham represents the latch which opens the door, but which also closes and locks it[37]. Isaac represents the hinge upon which everything pivots and swings, while Jacob represents the door itself.
Elsewhere I have elaborated on Sarah’s significance, not just to the family of Abraham, but to the structure and governance of the world[38].
We cannot understand Isaac’s Fear of God without understanding God’s fear which precedes Creation, and we are not really capable of conceptualizing God’s fear. The Piacezna Rebbe discusses it in his classic, Esh Kodesh:
Before the creation of the world, the Torah said to God, ‘Man, whom You are about to create, is going to sin, and if You do unto him as he deserves, he will not survive.’ God answered the Torah, ‘Is it for nothing that I am called God of mercy, Gracious, Long of patience...[39]?’ (Zohar Vol II. 69b)
It is difficult to understand why the Torah would ask this question in the first instance, when it must surely have been aware that written in the Torah are the words ‘Repent unto God your Lord.’ (Deut. 4:30) The answer is, that it was not just repentance that had to precede the creation of the world, but also the fear of sinning. The Torah itself brought this fear into existence, by voicing its fear that man would sin in the future[40].
All fear is a projection of the future into the present moment. Fear is of the future, of what is to come, of what might happen. But God is not time-bound, so it is inappropriate to attribute Fear to God, hence the Zohar puts words into the mouth of the Torah, so to speak, expressing fear of the future and bringing fear into being.
Imagine yourself experiencing all this truly primordial fear, by being the embodiment of the Future of the Divine. This is what Isaac lived with all the time. This is what it meant to be the revelation of the Shechina.
And suddenly, when he was forty years old, it occurred to Isaac to wonder about marrying. ‘For what will happen to all the promises God made my father if I do not marry? Perhaps I ought to pray about it, to ask God for guidance? Perhaps I ought to pray for a wife, a woman who wants to marry me?’
Isaac has so much fear of being improperly proactive or inactive, he doesn’t even know whether to pray for guidance on the subject of matrimony or whether to pray for the actual wife, or what?
He goes out into the field to meditate for sufficient clarity to know what it is he ought to pray for concerning the subject of his marriage, when Rebecca falls off a camel at his feet. Abraham has already made the arrangements for him. Eliezer has already been to Mesopotamia to do the negotiating for him. Everything has already been prepared for him. Isaac has nothing to do but bring Rebecca into his tent, whereupon she manifests as his long-dead mother, and Isaac is happy ever after again.
King David said: ‘The beginning of wisdom is the Fear of God.’ (Ps. 111:10) Chokhma – Wisdom is the Creatio ex Nihilo – Something from Nothing that Creation represents. Before Chokhma – Wisdom there is nothing but YIRAT HASHEM - God’s Fear, as described in the Zohar above.
The closer one approaches the Shechina, the clearer becomes the perception of this primordial terror. God even refers to Himself as PACHAD YITZCHOK – Isaac’s Terror[41], because Isaac lived in this awareness all his life. To prevent the collapse of his ego, Isaac stays with his mother all his life. His is only a partial birth. Isaac’s true birth only happens at the end of time, when he shows us how to Sanctify the Name of God without dying, as I have discussed at length elsewhere[42].
CHAPTER 6. – TOLDOT
Who’s Afraid of Pleasure?
Isaac loved Esau because the hunt was in his mouth. (Gen. 25:28)
This is the last Sidra in the Torah describing the Birurin – Clarification between Jew and Gentile; between Jacob and Esau. Henceforth the text will busy itself with the Birurin – Clarifications among the various Tribes of the sons of Jacob, and later among individual Israelites. Although the Torah does not document the process beyond the events recorded in this Sidra, the clarification is not complete, and will not be over until God says it’s over, as we read in the Talmud:
Esau the Wicked is going to wrap himself in his Tallis and sit among the Righteous in the Garden of Eden in the Future-to-Come. The Holy, Blessed One will drag him out of there and eject him! (Yer. - Nedarim 3:8)
Why would Esau the Wicked even want to disguise himself as a Tzadik to sit among them? What pleasure would he derive from it, and what could be more hellish for a psychopathic rapist, murderer and hunter of men, than to be stuck for all eternity among holy saints delving into the secrets of Torah?
The very question assumes that Esau is brutal in a primitive sense; a boor and an oaf. But the Rebbe Reb Bunim of P’shischa used to say, ‘Don’t assume Esau looks like a clumsy thug. He dresses in white linen and says Torah at the Third Shabbes Meal[43]. In the future Esau is going to assume his place in Gan Eden, sitting himself down at the top table next to Jacob, and no one will be able to object - until God Himself comes and throws him out. Now if Esau can hide his true nature among the highest angels in the World of Truth, how much more successfully do you think he can hide in this world of illusion and lies[44]?’
I suspect it was about Esau that King David wrote, ‘God says to the wicked, “How dare you quote my decrees and mouth my promises!”’ (Ps. 50:16)
There is a disagreement among the sages, as to whether Isaac saw through Esau to the wicked man beneath his masks and stratagems. Most explain Isaac’s blindness as an inability or unwillingness to look at the truth of Esau’s character defects.
The Izbicy could not disagree more. On this point he is completely at odds with P’shischa thinking. Izbicy believed Isaac knew exactly who Esau was[45].
The Midrash tells us that up to the age of thirteen, both Esau and Jacob attended the same school. After that Jacob continued with his studies, while Esau abandoned his, preferring to go out into the field to hunt instead.
When Esau came home he would ask his father questions like, ‘Is one obliged to tithe salt?’ Isaac always wondered at him, saying, ‘Look at this son of mine; isn’t he particular with the commandments? Where were you today, my son?’
‘I was in the Study-House,’ Esau answered. ‘Did we not learn a law concerning such and such; that such and such is forbidden while such and such are permissible?’ (Tanchuma – Toldot 8)
The obvious question is this: If Esau refused to attend school, how come he was able to keep up with Jacob and maintain the illusion of scholarship sufficiently well to fool his father, who was no dummy? And if he was not studying, how did he know all the minutiae of each Law, the way the above Midrash tells it?
The answer is simple. Esau and Jacob both start out as the offspring of Isaac and Rebecca, endowed with souls from the highest source. When we talk about souls from the highest place, we mean that had you been personally acquainted with Adam and Eve you would have easily been able to identify Jacob and Esau as their great-grandchildren. Both Esau and Jacob came into this world laden with potential and promise, with gifts of prophecy and creativity large enough to carry over into a whole new generational procession – a distinct national identity – a People. Israel and Edom were inherent in Jacob and Esau. Both possessed archetypal souls which included within them the patterns of all their offspring, Ur-Souls and meta-souls.
Esau’s soul was still connected to the Supernal Wisdom whence the Torah is hewn, for as the Midrash states, Torah is but an unripe version of the Supernal Wisdom[46]. Esau did not have to learn from a teacher in a school, he had all the Supernal Wisdom inside himself, coded into his genes and accessible to him at a moment’s notice. All he had to do was concentrate. Esau was no illiterate peasant.
Every time Isaac looked at Esau and saw something he admired, says the Izbicy, yet another magnificent soul was conceived who later joined the Jewish People, such as the Prophet Obadiah[47], Onkelos the Translator[48] and Rabbi Meir of the Mishna[49],who were all descendants of Esau through Edom[50].
Isaac could see that Esau was (at least potentially) a murderer, a rapist or worse, but it did not deter him from loving Esau or wanting to bless him. Because, said Isaac, God can work things out for the best if He wants to. History is long, and the threads God weaves and winds comprise a fabric of fantastic complexity. What looks one way from this perspective looks entirely reversed from another. God has ways of sorting the deeds of man so that what appeared a crime at the time, later turns out to have been a kindness.
Throughout the Bible we read stories of people who committed grave misdeeds that later turned out to have been the right things to do. As Joseph said to his brothers when they began apologizing for selling him into slavery in Egypt, ‘Now don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.’ (Genesis 45:5)
Elsewhere in this work we examine the Torah Commandment to Jews to commit those same atrocities for which the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan were obliterated. As the Izbicy explains, God’s desire for the Jews is not a rational one, conditioned on their behavior. Even when Jews do the same things that the nations do, God still desires us. Because we are God’s portion and so whatever we do, God agrees and says, ‘I like what you did!’ (See Radical Eikev). Isaac assumed that God would or could do this for Esau, because love is by nature SEGULA – an irrational preference for one over another, a matter of personal taste.
To Isaac it seemed clear that Esau was a vessel with greater capacity than Jacob, and was therefore more deserving of the blessings. Isaac thought this because Esau’s behaviors were so risky, and in risk there hides the potential for gain. Jacob appeared a very timid and risk-averse type of man, and that is not typical of someone of any great capacity for good or ill (See Radical Naso).
So Isaac’s blessing to Esau began with the word ‘And’, indicating that the blessing would have to come around again, and again and again, until Esau was ready for it[51]. That God would have to chase Esau with the blessing, giving it and giving it until Esau was the right person to receive it. And if Esau looked like never being ready, then God would have to rewrite all of history and change its entire narrative - even if that meant having to change the past - in order to make Esau and the blessings fit one another.
By virtue of the blessing God had given Isaac, he had the power to force God to chase the receiver of his blessing until they became ready for it. As we read: ‘That night God appeared to [Isaac] and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”’ (Genesis 26:24)
Abraham had refrained from blessing his son, Isaac, because he knew the power of his own blessings, and was afraid that Esau would in time receive all that power when Isaac bestowed the blessing upon him. So God appeared to Isaac that night giving him the power of blessing which Abraham had withheld, because God had already arranged things to ensure Jacob would be receiving those blessing, because Isaac was blind.
As was said in last week’s Sidra, Isaac experienced the presence of God inside himself, in all the naked terror of Divine Immanence. This is why God says, ‘Do not be afraid, for I am with you.’ The punctuation is entirely optional, and the verse may be read, ‘Do not be afraid that I am with you, i.e. inside you, for I am going to give you all the blessings I gave Abraham, to give you.’
Up to this point in his life Isaac had not experienced one moment free of terror. But once God blessed him with Abraham’s blessings, Isaac’s perspective changed and he became capable of seeing himself in a new light. He is also, for the first time, able to relate to people without referring to his fear, as the text tells us in his next exchange with Abimelech where Isaac is at peace.
God had told Abraham, ‘You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.’ (Genesis 15:15) Abraham never enjoyed peace until he died, while Isaac, who normally had nothing but the terrible awareness of God inside him, was granted peace immediately on receipt of the blessing.
What happened to Isaac that he suddenly experienced serenity? He became the blessing. Up to that point in his life, all Isaac could say for sure was that God exists. He had always known it because he felt it, he saw it and heard it in all its terrifying majesty within his own body, as was discussed in last week’s Sidra. Here, in this Sidra, Isaac is made aware of another experience of God – God the Blessing.
As soon as Isaac begins debating with himself about the advisability of handing all this power to Esau, the enormity of the potential for harm becomes obvious. What if God does not clarify all Esau’s actions positively? What if Esau does not evolve into a benign influence on the world? What if the evil potential in Esau remains evil, or worse, evolves into something truly horrific? Because argue how you will, whether you think the Roman Empire - whose influence on the history of the world we enjoy or suffer to this day – was a step forward, sideways or backwards for humanity, no serious historian has yet dared suggest that Rome was benign!
Isaac thought about giving the blessing to Jacob but rejected the idea, mainly on the grounds that it was unjust. Esau was the older son; he was entitled by law to the firstborn’s portion of the inheritance.
Isaac examined Esau again and discovered such potential for violence that he was shocked and horrified. ‘Yes, but,’ he argued with himself, ‘if I set Esau a violent task, to take his bloody implements and hunt game for me, I can channel all his violence sufficiently for the blessing to work its way with him, allowing God to do His job, to make it all work to the greater glory of God. By giving him the opportunity to fulfill the Commandment to Honor his Father, I can start a chain of events into which God can add the magic ingredients, transforming Esau and his violence into a vessel and tool for the Divine Plan.’
But the Divine Plan was for Isaac to have precisely those Kavvanot – Intentions when he gave all his blessings to Jacob, so that Jacob should receive those very magic ingredients, for he truly was a worthy vessel for the divine.
Isaac was not used to acting without clarity. As we learned in last week’s Sidra, he was even afraid to pray for his needs without first being sure that he should be praying. Here he was in some doubt about turning all that power over to Esau, but when he looked inside himself for direction from the Divine Presence, all he got was more facts. Isaac didn’t need more black and white facts, he desperately needed grey areas.
‘Take me to that place,’ he advised his son, Esau, ‘where I cannot distinguish among the facts. Fill me so full of joy and satisfaction that the blessing bubbles up, not out of my mouth and words where the dread Shechina dwells, but out of my very soul where the Divine Blessing resides.’
And so Isaac instructed him, ‘Make me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat, and that my soul may bless you before I die.’ (Ibid. 27:4)
And so it came to pass, that Jacob received a blessing couched in terms to make the sins of his children disappear. A blessing from whose spinnerets pour the threads which God twists and winds into the yarn from which our Jewish narrative is woven. All our sins are but patterns in the striped fabric of time, woven and rewoven into God’s Tallis; the Tallis God wears at the table when, sitting among the Righteous, Esau is ejected and Isaac shows us what he knows.
CHAPTER 7. – VAYETZE
What Is The Middle Way?
And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to the heavens. (Gen. 28:12)
As has been discussed in the two previous Sidras, Abraham, who personified Love, was afraid to love lest it get in the way of his love for God. Isaac, who was the personification of Fear, was afraid of fear lest it inhibit his fear of God.
Jacob learned the worship of God from both his father and grandfather, intently watching them both throughout his childhood. Abraham died when Jacob was thirteen years old, after which, the Torah tells us, Jacob ‘sat in tents’, which most traditional commentators assume to be a reference to Jacob’s preference for study over an active, outdoor life. Other commentators, however, presume the tents were those commonly used by shepherds, which meant that Jacob was a shepherd of his father’s flocks.
What was Jacob’s unique way of serving God, and how did it compare with that of his ancestors? The Izbicy Rebbe sums it up this way. Abraham and Isaac were both innovative religious geniuses. Each was gifted in a completely different department, as it were, but each took the bit between his teeth and forged ahead, breaking new ground and exploring new avenues in the worship of God.
Abraham, for example, was very gifted in the art of entertaining guests; he was a personable and charming man. He took that gift and developed it into a platform on which to display the oneness and supremacy of God throughout southern Canaan and Philistia. Give Abraham an inch and he pushed his agenda a mile.
Although the first thing Isaac did when he took over from his father was to run to the hardware store to buy huge iron nails with which he fastened shut all the doors his father had opened, Isaac’s platform was just as innovative and successful[52]. He used all the gifts God gave him and developed a style and approach uniquely his own, without any of the ‘niceness’ of his father, Abraham. Isaac’s worship was strict and disciplined to the core, and that’s what he taught his students.
What genius did Jacob develop? Well, he would tell you that he couldn’t invent anything and that he didn’t have the gifts or the talent to innovate. He had to ask for God’s guidance every step of the way. Even when God showed him a direction in which he could progress, he needed to ask for directions again the next time a choice had to be made. Jacob felt very inadequate by comparison to Abraham and Isaac. In describing them, Jacob told Joseph: ‘The God before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac walked.’ (Gen. 48:15) As the Izbicy explains:
What Jacob meant with the phrase ‘God, before whom my fathers walked’, was that once Abraham and Isaac learned God’s will, they were able to extrapolate using their own genius. Even when God only opened them a tiny aperture, they were able to broaden it and expand upon it in order to carry out the will of their Creator. They intuited how to act even when God didn’t enlighten their path or show them explicitly what to do; they had the capacity to walk on their own, ‘in front of God’[53], so to speak.
When describing himself in the same verse, Jacob said, ‘God who has been my shepherd all my life, to this very day,’ because he never considered himself capable of walking on his own, blazing a new trail, either predicting or intuiting the will of God. He always needed fresh instructions. Jacob felt he was no more intelligent than a sheep that needs a shepherd to drive it, to show it how to fill the most basic of its needs.
What Jacob did not realize was that this way of his is the most innovative and brilliant of all. Relating to God as your shepherd is Jacob’s unique contribution to the world of spirituality, worship and art. He invented it!
‘Show me, God. Teach me!’ Jacob begs. ‘Before I do anything, I need You to show me the way. Open my eyes and teach me what to do. Even where You showed me once before, I need it again. I need You to show me what You want me to do right now, as though for the first time.’
What this meant was that Jacob was in a permanently prayerful mode. This is why the first prophecy Jacob receives rewards him, measure-for-measure, as the verse tells us about the ladder: ‘and behold, the angels of God ascend and descend on it. And behold, God stands on it.’ (Gen 28:12-13). Even before God begins talking in Jacob’s dream, the message he receives is clear; God is with him even when he is asleep. The way Jacob relates to God is precisely the way God relates to Jacob. Jacob feels he cannot move an inch or go a second without God guiding him, so God treats him that same way; not moving away one inch nor leaving him alone for an instant[54].
While Abraham contained Isaac, he also contained Ishmael, and while Isaac contained Jacob, he also contained Esau. Jacob, however, contains only the twelve holy Tribes of Israel who contain the souls of all of us, until the end of time. The Prophet Isaiah put it all into words thus: ‘Jacob shall not now be ashamed, nor shall his face now pale; for he sees his children, the work of My hands, inside himself. They sanctify My name. Indeed, they sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, in awe of the God of Israel.’ (Isaiah 29:22-23)
All of us who stand today in awe of God, were present in Jacob during this dream. Something happened at that moment in history; God and Jacob were joined in holiness. God changed His name, as it were, to be called Holy One of Jacob.
What is Holiness, do we even know?
Everyone uses the word Holy as though there were some universal agreement to its meaning, but hardly anyone provides any useful or succinct description. I was brought up to believe that holiness is not explained because it is inextricably linked with sexual modesty, and sexual modesty is one of those shame-based and shaming attitudes that most homes impose unthinkingly. Such concepts may not be discussed, negotiated or explained.
In this set of rules you cannot have holiness without sexual boundaries, yet without understanding what holiness is, you can still practice it and enjoy it simply by having rigid boundaries around sex, such as segregation of sexes, modest clothing, euphemistic speech and carefully guarded rituals around sexual activity. It would not be an exaggeration to state that I was given to understand that the holiness of God, Jews, Israel and the Torah is predicated on these sexual boundaries, or compromised by the lack of them. This construct shaped my version of the Jewish religion, and does so for most Orthodox Jews to this day.
What this one-size-fits-all definition fails to account for, is the inconvenient fact that when holiness first appears in the Torah, it is not linked to sexuality. At the end of the Sixth Day of Creation, we read: ‘God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.’ (Genesis 2:3) Sabbath is the source and headquarters of holiness, and no sexual boundaries are involved in its invocation.
The best explanation I never heard for holiness came from Shlomo, my Rebbe. He said, ‘Holiness is oneness,’ and it was as though an atom bomb went off inside my head. I had to unlearn and then relearn everything I’d known since childhood. If holiness is defined, not by boundaries and separation, but by oneness, it becomes obvious why we perform a Kiddush – Holiness ritual on Friday night and not a Havdala – Separation ritual. Havdala – Separation, sexual boundaries and constraints, are not the source of holiness. Oneness is the source.
It was during this dream of the ladder that God revealed to Jacob how He and Jacob were to become One. ‘I am with you,’ said God to Jacob. ‘You and I are now inextricably linked. My future and yours are intertwined and interdependent; My reputation and yours are inseparably fused together.’
Jacob is holy because he is one with God, and henceforth God is known as the ‘Holy One of Jacob’. All God takes unto Himself from this entire universe is Jacob, as we read ‘His people are a part of God, Jacob the demesne of His inheritance[55].’ (Deuteronomy 32:9)
For I have known the thoughts that I am thinking towards you -- an affirmation of Jehovah; thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give to you posterity and hope.
On this verse where God tells Jacob, ‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you,’ (Gen. 28:15) Rashi comments that Jacob was afraid of Esau and Laban, and that’s why God was reassuring him with the words, ‘I will be with you and watch over you.’
Jacob’s fear wasn’t that either Laban or Esau would hurt or harm him. The later commentators who re-explain and re-interpret this Rashi[56] may all have lived in terror of the gentile, but Jacob did not. Jacob’s fear was that God would identify Himself with Esau or Laban, both of whom were filled with sparks of divine genius and seeds of eternal greatness, he was afraid that they might supplant him. By informing Jacob that he was now God’s sole holy One, God was also telling him not to be afraid that God might ever tie His reputation, His Name or destiny to either Laban or Esau. No matter how long it takes, the Church of Rome and its offshoots will all die ignoble deaths without ever having brought God down to dwell among them. Never has the Shechina – Divine Presence come to rest upon any sanctuary built in honor of Him by Christians. Nor shall it ever do so. That was the first half of God’s promise to Jacob in this verse. Jacob was also afraid of Laban for similar reasons, for just as Esau was capable of hiding his wicked nature beneath a veneer of high culture and piety (see Radical Toldot), so was Laban. In the event, the way things transpired, by the end of this Sidra Jacob had taken every single spark of greatness away from Laban, and nothing remained of him but the shell.
In the second part of the verse, God tells Jacob I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back. ‘Wherever you go’ refers to the direction we each take in life. All of us are inside Jacob at that moment, and God is allying Himself with each of us for all eternity. That is His promise. When, as the Izbicy stated, God showed Jacob how He was with him even in his sleep, even when unconscious, the implications are that God has nowhere else to go or be in this world other than inside us, Jews. When God says He will watch over us it means that He will not allow a single Jew to break, spoil or ruin his Godly soul with sin and evil. God is promising us ‘I will bring you back’ through Teshuva – Returning, no matter how far or in which direction you stray. These are the Birurin – Clarifications every Jew has to endure, through which the motives of his original actions are clarified. Birurin may take thousands of years and many Gilgulim – Reincarnations. Simeon and Dinah married one another, in an act where Simeon’s motives could be challenged and questioned. Simeon chose that path, knowing that what he was doing would require Birurin, saying, ‘I know my motives for marrying my sister are not incestuous. They are not even sexual motives, at all. My reasons for marrying her are the purest love.’ This is what set off the chain of narrative surrounding the Tribe of Simeon and their sexuality. In the end it will be obvious to everyone that the men and women of Simeon are the holiest tribe[57] (See Radical Naso). What happens is that God makes all the Birurin – Clarifications necessary for every single Jew throughout history. It’s almost unimaginable in its scope, how every Jewish soul marshaled inside Jacob - that night when he dreamt of the ladder – became God’s portion, God’s sole inheritance, with the understanding that every Jewish soul was now God’s responsibility to protect and return in pristine condition.
This was to be our Torah for the next two hundred and fifty years, Jacob’s ladder standing on the ground with its top reaching the heavens. Until we received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, this dream was all we had to learn and teach. It was what kept us going throughout the darkest days and nights of the Egyptian Exile. It was our Torah; God revealing Himself to us inside Jacob in ways Abraham and Isaac never imagined. We, who read the Torah from end to end every year, sometimes forget to marvel at the radical newness of Jacob’s vision. God spoke to Adam, to Noah, Abraham and Isaac, He even appeared to Abraham after his circumcision, but nothing like this dream was ever seen until Jacob laid down his head that night. God spoke to you and me that night.
CHAPTER 8. – VAYISHLACH
Who Is God of Israel?
‘And he [Jacob] erected an altar there, and He called him EL – the God of Israel’. (Gen. 33:20)
The Talmud has a very provocative reading of this verse.
R. Aha also said in the name of R. Elazar: How do we know that the Holy, Blessed One called Jacob ‘God’?
The verse says, ‘and he called him EL – the God of Israel.’ If you tell me it means that Jacob named the altar ‘EL - God of Israel’, then the verse should have stated, ‘And Jacob called it’. It doesn’t say that however, it says ‘he called him’, meaning ‘He called Jacob El’. Now who could have called him so, but the God of Israel? (Megilla 18a)
Two things are happening in this verse. The primary event is that God has begun to identify Himself as God of Israel. This is a change in the narrative of God and the history of the world. The second is that Jacob becomes God. In practice that can only mean one thing: God gives His power to Jacob to overrule Him when he thinks it necessary.
Up to now, as was discussed in the previous week’s Sidra, (Radical Vayetze) Jacob has been the sheep. Now God applies the rule of measure-for-measure and Jacob becomes the shepherd of God.
King David in his final peroration declaims:
And these are the last words of David: - ‘An affirmation of David son of Jesse - And the affirmation of the man raised up - concerning the anointed of the God of Jacob, And the sweet [singer] of the Songs of Israel:
The Spirit of God spoke to me, and His word was on my tongue.
He said - the God of Israel - to me He spoke, the Rock of Israel:
He is ruling over man
Righteous,
He is ruling
The fear of God. (II Samuel 23:1-3)
The last verse is almost incomprehensible syntactically and grammatically, especially the last phrase – ‘he is ruling - the fear of God’. The Talmud reads it thus:
God spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me, ‘I rule man, but who rules Me? - The Tzadik rules Me. I make decrees and he overrules them.’ (Moed Katan 16b)
Beginning here with our opening verse, whenever the Torah refers to God as God of Israel there is a power-exchange happening; God is giving us the power to define Him. According to the Izbicy, the one who most boldly overrules God is the Ba’al Teshuva – Penitent[58], in this case, King David himself.
This explains the connection between the two halves of the verse. Jacob builds an altar to God of Israel, who reciprocates by naming Jacob God. As was said previously, God rewards Jacob measure-for-measure. Since Jacob treats God as his shepherd, God takes responsibility for Jacob as for a sheep. When the sheep strays, gets hurt or lost, it is no one’s fault but the shepherd’s. Since God accepted the role Jacob assigned Him, it became God’s job to make sure no Jew is lost; to ensure that no Jew hurts him/herself in any way, whether spiritually or otherwise. The shepherd is ruled by the flock. Day or night, summer or winter, they dictate whether he rests or toils, whether he worries or exults. If they are sick he does not sleep, when they give birth it is the shepherd who is covered in blood.
This is what God dreamt of before the beginning, this is how it arose in His thought[59] prior to Creation. At the end of the Torah we read, ‘For God’s portion is His people; Jacob the demesne of His inheritance[60],’ (Deut. 32:9) (see Radical Haazinu). In essence, what’s said there in Deuteronomy is being said here in Genesis.
I imagine it’s fairly straightforward being God of the righteous, but I cannot imagine what it must be like being God of the stupid, of the sheeplike, of the willful, stubborn and rebellious, among whom I count myself a prime example.
When God undertook to be God of Israel, He tied Himself to us for all eternity. His fate is bound up with ours. If a single one of us goes missing, He fails as God, as our shepherd and as the guarantor to Jacob of our fate. He has no other Name.
If we fail as Jews, it is because we fail to internalize the implications and the consequences of this relationship and our connection to God. Each one of us is the Ba’al Teshuva – Penitent that David was referring to in his last words.
In last week’s Sidra God said explicitly, ‘Behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will return you again into this land. For I will not leave you, though I have done that which I have spoken of to you.’ (Gen. 28:15) The phrase, ‘return you again’ uses the Hebrew root meaning Teshuva – Penitence. It is God’s self-proclaimed function and responsibility to Jacob to ensure all his offspring become Ba’al Teshuvas with the power to overrule God’s decrees and contradict His words.
We are not taught to feel or appreciate that we have such a powerful role. Traditionally, the role of intervention has been foisted onto the Tzadikim, and is never thought of as function of the common Jew. Throughout the Jewish world, down the ages, Jews in trouble have consulted Tzadikim in times of need, whether it was a need for clarity, for support or for help. To this day it is customary to bring supplicatory prayers to Tzadikim, to ask for their help to intervene with God. Tzadikim are commissioned to beg for mercy and divine compassion on behalf of the sick, the poor and the unhappy, the incarcerated and the endangered. This reversal of roles has had a very unhealthy effect on the history of the Jews, because we were all meant to be interventionists, not only the righteous among us, i.e. the Tzadikim, but most especially those of us who are not Tzadikim, we who may yet become penitents.
This explains why Jacob grew so angry when Rachel came to him to intercede on her behalf, as the Torah tells us:
When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’ Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’ (Gen. 30:1-2)
Those who push the role of the Tzadik in the affairs of mankind, have great difficulty explaining Jacob’s anger at Rachel. She was only doing what we would recommend doing today, taking her troubles to the Tzadik and asking him to intervene for her; what was so wrong with that?
Those who understand the implications of this week’s Sidra - God calling Himself God of Israel, and calling Jacob EL – they do understand what Jacob’s response to Rachel really meant. He was telling her - yelling, actually - that she herself was the one to do the intervention, not him. It was not he, Jacob who stands in place of God, it was Rachel herself. It was for her to tell God who to be and what to do. But Jacob could never really get this message through to Rachel; it was not in her nature. Her sons, Joseph and Benjamin didn’t really get it either. Leah got it, though, and her son, the natural-born leader, Judah, got it best and most of all, as we will read later in the Book of Genesis.
Interestingly enough, Jacob learned it from his mother, Rebecca. She never went to the Tzadik either. Though she lived in the same house as Isaac, when she was desperate and at her wits’ end, the Torah tells us: ‘The children struggled together within her: and she said, “If it is so, why am I thus?” And she went to inquire of God.’ (Gen 25:22) Where did Rebecca go to inquire of God? We are not told where she went, but it was not to Isaac.
If the Tzadikim have one sin, it is the failure to teach all Jews that they themselves are Tzadikim. As the prophet says, ‘Your people are all Tzadikim; they shall inherit the land forever. The branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified,’ (Isa. 60:21).
We have become very timid, but it was not always so. The Talmud is full of stories of Jews who were not timid about telling God what to do and who to be; here is one story to illustrate the point I am making.
Rabbah b. Shila met Elijah the Prophet and asked him, ‘What is the Holy, Blessed One, doing now?’ Elijah answered, ‘He repeats lessons from the Torah academies on Earth, attributing each one to the rabbi who first taught it - except for the teachings of R. Meir; those are taught anonymously.’
When Rabbah asked why this should be so, Elijah told him, ‘Because R. Meir studied Torah at the mouth of Aher[61].’ Rabbah argued, ‘So what! When R. Meir found a pomegranate, he ate the fruit and threw the peel away!’
Elijah told him, ‘God has already begun teaching lessons, saying, “And Meir, my son, says…”’ (Hagiga 15b)
Do you believe for a moment, that God couldn’t figure out on His own that R. Meir ate the fruit and threw away the peel when learning from Aher?
God was waiting for someone like Rabbah b. Shila to tell Him how to act; to tell God, ‘This is how we decided things on Earth. Generally speaking, one may not learn Torah from a heretic, and unless a Torah teacher looks as pure and holy as an angel, one may not learn anything from him. But my friends and I reckon R. Meir is the exception to the rule, he knows how to eat the fruit and discard the Klipah – Husk[62].’
Is that all it took for God to change the way He teaches Torah in Heaven - in the Garden of Eden - one challenge by Rabbah? Yes, that’s all it took. When Rabbah asked Elijah the Prophet, ‘What is God doing right now?’ Elijah might have answered with any of a million things that God does, but he chose to tell Rabbah of this one interesting fact, I assume, because Rabbah was the only one with the presence of mind to challenge God on the subject of R. Meir and his rights.
Twenty times every day, God asks us to challenge Him and the way He does things; inviting us to tell Him our way; how we think things ought to be. And not just on Earth, God also wants to know how we think He ought to run Heaven as well, and not just while we’re alive, but after we die, too.
As every educated Jew knows from the Mishna, after we die we have to give Din V’Cheshbon – Judgment and Account[63]. But what sort of judgment do we have to give, isn’t it we who receive God’s judgment?
In fact, we do not receive a judgment handed down from God on high. Quite the contrary, everything we have done throughout our lives is recorded, and after we die we are shown it all over again. For each sin and transgression God asks, ‘What do you think the judgment ought to be for this sin, this transgression?’
It is we ourselves who do all the judging, it is we who decide our fate[64]. We tell God how to run the next world, too.
We are grown very timid. How has it come about that we who are Jacob and Israel, we whom God calls God, the mighty penitents who tell God how and what to be, have fallen to this level of timidity where we no longer dare to describe our visions of God, to God?
The answer is sad and depressing.
There are three levels of exile. The first level is that of the Jew among gentiles. But even this exile can only come about because of the second level of exile, that of he Jew among his brothers. If Joseph and his brothers had truly been able to overcome their mutual distrust and suspicion after the death of Jacob, we could never have fallen into exile[65]. Had we not become estranged and separated from one another, Pharaoh could never have enslaved or mistreated us. This only happened because of the third level of exile, the deepest layer, that of the individual within himself.
When we are estranged from our true selves, we fall into exile. What that means in practice is that the moment I lose sight of the fact that I am connected to God, starting with that first breath He breathed into Adam my progenitor in the Garden of Eden, and culminating with the Neshama - Soul He created, fashioned and breathed into me and stores inside my body, on a minute by minute basis, I lose sight of my own freedom and chosenness.
Most people think that Yichus - Genealogy is important for purposes of social engineering, but that is ludicrously small-minded. We have to be given Yichus for the Redemption to go ahead. Yichus can mean pedigree, lineage and ancestry, but what it means essentially is Relation. Because without it, we lose touch with our own attribution, we can’t taste the breath of God in our mouths, nor feel the heat of His fingerprints on our person and in our DNA. We don’t feel our relation with God.
We have lost our Yichus[66].
Jacob could feel like God when God called him God, because he had Yichus. He received it with the blessing Isaac gave him. It was the blessing Isaac gave him. Jacob was connected and related to God all the time. The connection never broke for an instant. But Jacob never passed that blessing on to all his children, and so the Yichus was lost. With the loss of Yichus comes the loss of true-Self. He withheld the blessing from his children, Reuben, Simeon and Levi, and so the exile into Egypt happened[67].
Listen carefully to what the Ba’al Shem Tov used to say about himself; ‘If only I could be sure that I am of the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - that I am connected to holiness at my birth-roots - I would walk around with my hat tilted at an angle, the way those who are joyous and carefree do; they who walk with a jaunty step, bold and unafraid of anything[68].’
That’s what happens when we lose our Yichus, we become afraid. Even a Tzadik like the Ba’al Shem Tov has no confidence. If you don’t know who you are, how can you tell God who to be?
So we have become very timid, while God waits only to be told.
CHAPTER 9. – VAYESHEV
Who Is God of Judah?
‘And it came to pass at that time that Judah went down from his brothers, and turned towards a man of Adullam, whose name was Hirah. (Gen. 38:1)
R. Shmuel b. Nachman opened this chapter with the following: It is written, ‘For I have known the thoughts that I am thinking towards you - an affirmation of God; thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give to you posterity and hope.’ (Jer. 29:11)
While the Tribes were busy with the sale of Joseph and Joseph was busy with his sackcloth and fasting, Reuben was busy with his sackcloth and fasting. Jacob was also busy with his sackcloth and fasting, while Judah was busy getting married, and God was busy creating the Light of the Messiah. (Gen. Rabba 85:1)
This week’s Sidra describes Judah’s process of Clarification - Birurin .
Joseph also goes through a major test and comes out with flying colors, but this Sidra is not really about Joseph. The conclusion to Joseph’s narrative is almost foregone. He is a very great man, but his greatness does not give birth to something which lasts forever and ever. An orgasm is very great, but it does not last forever and ever. It cannot do so. But what Judah is processing, will result in something that lasts all eternity, as will be explained.
Even though it is only those Kings of Israel who are descendent of Joseph (through the Tribes of Menasseh and Ephraim) that Scripture calls ‘great’, they are not great forever[69]. It is the kings descended from Judah who prevail in the end, giving birth to the Messiah and our final redemption. So while this is a Sidra packed with narrative details, as the Midrash above points out we must not lose sight of the object, the fast-moving ball, so to speak. The real prize is being cooked up behind the scenes, where God is creating the Light of the Messiah who represents posterity and hope.
It’s an enigmatic Midrash, though. There must be some special significance to God saying, ‘I know my own thoughts,’ but the Midrash does not explain what those thoughts are.
Sackcloth and fasting; what do they represent? Well, traditionally they represent both mourning and penitence, most often both together. When Jews have felt responsible for bringing about some great tragedy, their response has historically been to don sackcloth and fast in prayer and penitence.
After the brother sold Joseph, and brought his bloodied coat back to their father Jacob for him to identify, the entire family fell into a state of despair. Jacob was inconsolable and blamed himself for the tragedy. If only he had not sent Joseph out on his own to search for his brothers…
Reuben blamed himself for the unhappy ending. If only he had not walked away during the proceedings, he might have stopped the sale of Joseph and returned him safely home…
Joseph blamed himself for bringing the calamity down on his own head. If only he had not antagonized his brothers and belittled them, things might not have reached such an explosive dénouement...
And so on. Each family member donned the sackcloth and took up fasting in order to expiate his sin, each according to some internal reading of his own guilt.
According to the Rebbe Reb Bunim of P’Shischa[70], Judah felt the worst of all the brothers. It had been Judah’s role to bring the bloodied garment to their father’s attention. He had acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner throughout the tragic drama. It was all his responsibility. Once he realized how grief-stricken and how damaged Jacob had become, Judah lost all hope of being able to fix things. While everyone else in the family was busy with the traditional guilt-expiation penance ritual of sackcloth and fasting, Judah felt he was beyond such remedies. And this, according to the Midrash, is where events become emotionally, psychologically and spiritually fascinating.
Judah was so broken, says the Rebbe Reb Bunim, that he felt beyond any possibility of redemption. The damage he’d caused and the pain he’d brought to his family were irreparable. There was nothing left for Judah to do but begin life all over again and start from scratch - so he got married. Reb Bunim’s students[71] disagree as to the precise direction of this thought: whether Judah meant to begin life from scratch by fulfilling the first and most basic commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, or whether he meant to let his children fix those bits of loose karma that he himself no longer could. Regardless of the purpose of his marriage, whether to start his own life again from the basic urge to be fruitful and multiply, or to try fixing what he had ruined through having children, Judah’s motive was despair. He just didn’t think sackcloth and fasting were adequate. More needed to happen.
Jacob, Joseph, Reuben and presumably everyone else in the family, dealt with their grief and guilt the traditional way; trying to expiate and seek atonement through rituals and symbols of penitence. Judah felt he needed to go beyond that; there could be no atonement for his guilt. Judah decided to act, to do something, saying to himself, ‘Only God can fix what I have ruined. I need to start something new, begin a project through which God can bring about a healing or fixing. Then perhaps my life will not have been a total waste.’
The chief point was the idea that instead of just sitting in penitential mode, Judah attempted to do, to act, to create a fertile field for the seeds of his contrition to flourish in. This is a radical departure from the tradition; Judah is blazing a new pathway in Teshuva – Penitence.
So he married Bat-Shua. But through the subsequent death of his sons, Er and Onan, God showed Judah that if he really was as ruined and broken as he’d imagined himself, his children would not be any healthier or different; they too would be fatally flawed. It wasn’t until his third son, Shela was born, that Judah realized this mistake[72].
Now enter Tamar, Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law. As I have written about elsewhere[73], Tamar is a unique individual, a woman whose desire for God is so powerful that her Yetzer Hara - Evil Desires have simply made peace with her soul and agreed to assist her in all her endeavors. She pretends to be a prostitute and waits for Judah by the roadside.
R. Yochanan said, ‘Judah wanted to ignore her, but God had prepared the Angel of Lust, who was sent to meet him. ‘Where are you going, Judah?’ the angel asked him, adding, ‘where will kings come from and where will redeemers come from?’ Therefore the verse continues, ‘And he bent towards her on the road.’ It was against his will, without his consent that he was bent to her. (Gen. Rabba 85:8)
[Judah] said, ‘Here now, let me come in to you,’ for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
And she said, ‘What will you give me, that you may come in to me?’
He said, ‘Therefore, I will send you a young goat from the flock.’
She said, ‘Will you give a pledge until you send it?’
He said, ‘What pledge shall I give you?’
And she said, ‘Your seal and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.’ So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and departed, and removed her veil and put on her widow’s garments.’ (Gen. 38:16-19)
Judah lay with Tamar because he was overwhelmed with lust and could not find the strength or self-control to walk away. He cannot be blamed, if blame is appropriate in this case, because God intervened, forcing Judah to spend his lust on a woman he mistakes for a prostitute.
It is at this juncture in the narrative, says the Rebbe Reb Bunim, that the Birurin – Clarifications occur. Everything that has happened in Judah’s life since the sale of Joseph up until this moment, has been orchestrated by God, down to this fateful sexual encounter with Tamar by the roadside. Now that it is over and his lust has passed, Judah is going to go through that final test, which will determine whether the Light of the Messiah will be allowed to come into this world. And it is Judah who is going to make that decision. The Messiah has already been conceived and burgeons in Tamar’s womb, created in a moment of utter unconsciousness, as Judah was submitting to his instincts.
This is why Joseph could not bring down the Messianic spark, because he was incapable of letting his instincts (especially his sexual instincts) take control over his body. Joseph’s destiny depends on him maintaining control at all times, it’s the source of his power and greatness. (The kabbalistic Sephirah identified with Joesph is Yesod – Fundament, and is synonymous with self-control.) But no matter how holy and great Joseph’s sexual self-restraint is, God cannot use it or him to bring the Messiah into this world. Something that will last for eternity must be God’s own handiwork. So Judah in his oblivious insensibility, in his mindless sexual coupling with Tamar, makes room for God to do His work. (see Radical Ki Tetze)
Now, the moment has passed, the deed is done, and Judah examines the wreckage of his life. He has given this prostitute, whose name he has not even thought to ask, every piece of his personal ID: his seal and its cords, as well as the staff he usually carries. All are now pledged to her, until he can pay the price of using her body - one goat. If word gets out what he has done, the situation could turn into a major embarrassment and blow up in his face. The mere fact that he has given her not one, but three forms of identification in lieu of the price of a small animal, was sufficient to cast serious doubts on Judah’s judgment[74]. What sort of aspiring leader makes such a blunder? When you write a check and someone demands ID, would you give them, your social security card, your passport and your banking information as well as your phone number? If the world were to find out what a dupe Judah was, that he’d allowed his lust for a woman by the roadside to blind him into parting with three valuable pledges in return for …! And what if Jacob caught word of the scandal, what would it do to him?
There was a moment, says Reb Bunim, when Judah was feeling so empty and so bereft, so completely shamed and reduced by what he’d just done, that he could well have justified taking the pledges away from the prostitute by force. There was no one there to stop him. He knew in his heart that he intended to pay her price in full. He knew he had the means and the opportunity to take care of the debt. It was not going to be a problem. He could have justified and rationalized grabbing back the pledges, telling himself it would be best for everyone concerned, and that no one would blame him for doing so. He could have talked himself into believing it would be a kindness, an act of peace and harmony, to prevent any potential scandal, embarrassment or catastrophe.
That was one moment when the future of the world hung in the balance. This was to be the first exercise of free-will and decision making in Judah’s entire narrative since the sale of Joseph. The universe held its breath.
But Judah had given his word. He’d handed his pledge to the prostitute. It never even occurred to him to go back on his word, to try renegotiating or using his power to change the terms of their contract. He walked away from her without doing the slightest thing to dishonor their agreement.
Think about what would have happened had he taken back the pledge. Three months later, Tamar and the twins she carried in her womb would have been put to death when word spread that she had fornicated and gotten pregnant. The Light of the Messaih would have been extinguished and King David would never have been born. The consequences are too horrible to contemplate.
Judah’s test, his Birurin, passed unremarked amidst all the public drama. It came so quietly and unnoticed, that not even Judah himself realized it was happening. It happened so swiftly and has been overlooked so long, it exemplifies the Mishna: ‘Be as scrupulous with a light Commandment as with a weighty one, for you never know the reward of the Commandments.’ (Avot 2:1)
As the Midrash quoted at the outset states, only God knows what He’s thinking. Only He knows the true measure of human thoughts; which to discard and which to treasure. Who could have imagined that with all that grieving sackcloth and holy fasting going on, it was Judah who was making himself available to carry out the will of God?
The whole story can be summed up in one phrase, ‘You never know, you just never know.’
CHAPTER 10. – MIKETZ
Who Is God of Egypt?
‘And it came to pass at the end of two full years that Pharaoh dreamed: and behold, he was standing on the River Nile.’ (Gen. 41:1)
Pharaoh asked, ‘Who exists for whom? Do I exist for my god, or does my god exist for me? His dream told him, ‘Your god exists for you.’
The wicked are the reason for their gods’ existence. That’s why the verse tells us that when Pharaoh dreamed, he was standing on the river. With the righteous, it is the opposite: they exist for their gods. That’s why the verse tells us that when Jacob dreamt, there was a ladder… and God was standing on him. (Yalkut Gen. 41:147)
Another Midrash asks why the Torah makes such a fuss about Pharaoh’s dreaming; don’t all human beings dream? ‘A king’s dreams,’ the Midrash answers, ‘belong to the whole world[75].’ The Jewish sages understood that Pharaoh represented more than just himself, and that his dreams were not merely his own thought processes – a king represents the collective.
In his dream, Pharaoh was standing on the River Nile, the chief idol and object of worship of the Egyptians. That statement makes sense on its own. Why do the sages juxtapose Jacob’s dream with Pharaoh’s? What do they really mean when they pose the question, ‘who exists for whom’? Why ask about the relationship of the wicked and their idols, they’re not real deities, rivers are rivers, they’re false gods, they’re not God?
This is where it gets a little complicated, explains the Izbicy[76]. Every nation has a lord, an angel or avatar representing it in Heaven. As is explained at the end of Deuteronomy in Sidra Haazinu, God makes Himself vulnerable to every idol and fetish, challenging them all to overpower Him with the faith of their believers, while God quietly bets all His chips on us, Jews.
The lord, angel or avatar of each nation is empowered by something divine. Every angel is created by a Commandment. Each angel represents a divine desire, an instruction or word, and personifies a spark of Torah, a precept or prohibition, it is a messenger for that particular word of God. That’s all an angel is; God’s desire for something to happen – a messenger to make it happen.
The avatar of each nation is a single Idea from the Mind of God put into words, a particular and singular thought which has evolved to become the driving motive behind the collective unconscious of a nation to this day.
Each angel or avatar seeks to empower, instruct and charge the nation to which it is attached with the divine mission it represents, but that is no easy task. If only it could convey the Word, if only it could inspire the nation to fulfill that holy word, God would invest Himself with that nation. That’s the challenge God gave the angels, the gods. ‘Bring your nation to believe, and I will don their faith.’ So the angel tries as hard as it can to convey itself and its message, for the angel is the message. But there is a failure to communicate. While the angel never forgets its charge, the nation never quite remembers it (see Radical Ki Tetze). Christians fastened to their angel, the one calling itself messenger of the God who is Love. It had but one divine charge, a short sentence in the Torah, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself![77]’ Suffice it to say that all the horrors the Church brought upon the world were only a consequence of its loving desire to help a soul achieve Salvation. Its mission was, is and will always remain but to Love. It is difficult to pinpoint at what precise juncture in time or history Christianity and Loathing became synonyms; it was early, though, and evolves steadily to this day. There is a failure to communicate, and the Word becomes its opposite.
The angel of Egypt has but one message. ‘“Is not My word like a fire?” says God[78].’ But the harder the angel struggles to carry this message, the more devoutly the Egyptians worship the River Nile, and the Word becomes its opposite: fire turns to water[79].
Pharaoh struggled to understand his relationship to God. Everyone in the world who worships, thinks they are in relationship with God even when they are bowing, praying or sacrificing to a god, an idol or fetish. This has been true since the beginning of time, everyone who worships wonders, ‘What am I to my gods, and how do my gods see me?’ Pharaoh was no exception.
Pharaoh knew he was a very lucky man, for once you are crowned King of Egypt you’re pretty much at the top of the food-chain and your life may be considered a success by any standards. Whatever Pharaoh decided to make happen happened, virtually anything he demanded he received. Looking around him he saw all the Egyptian economic indicators humming along nicely. Diplomatic relations with neighboring countries were mostly peaceful and lucrative. The politics of court were generally predictable, and his magicians and soothsayers forecast more of the same. Pharaoh wondered, ‘Am I making all the right decisions because the gods are guiding my thoughts and footsteps, and that’s why I’m so successful? Or are the decisions I am making all of my own free will and volition, compelling the gods of Egypt to support me, to make things turn out well so that they look competent and worthy? Have the gods of Egypt put me on the throne because I’m the best man to bring my people to worship and glorify them, or do they see themselves constrained to make my desires come true, as they would for anyone sitting on this throne?’
The answer came in a dream: Pharaoh saw himself standing on his river. The message was clear; his gods had to support him, they could do no other; ‘Pharaoh, you’re in charge!’
At the end of the Egyptian Exile, when the Israelites were singing the Song of the Sea after Pharaoh and all his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, we find the song speaks of ‘Horse and rider drowning in the sea.’ (Ex. 15:1) When things were going well, Pharaoh rode his gods to success. But when things went downhill it became apparent that Pharaoh was the horse and his gods, who were only riding him in the prospect of getting where they wanted to be, couldn’t really help. When Pharaoh drowned all his gods went under with him, for he was carrying them, they depended on him and existed for him. All their hopes were tied up in his success, when he failed, they failed. That’s why they were bound to do their utmost to help him succeed in his endeavors, in whatever he set his mind to do.
Not so Israel, for Israel is the Merkava - Chariot of the Shechina – Divine Presence and there is only one driver of the chariot, God. In spite of what has been said previously about the power of the Tzadik - Righteous to make decrees that God has to fulfill, (see Radical Vayetze) and not just the Righteous, but also the Ba’al Teshuva – Penitent, there we were talking about individuals. Here we are talking collectively about all of Israel as one body, as the vehicle for the divine; here we are the driven, the guided and the mastered. Israel as a singular nation, are one people under God, not free to act at will. Our autonomy is an illusion. God is moving in a certain direction, heading for a destination known unto Him, and we are the vehicle carrying Him there, for we are the Merkava.
As was discussed earlier, each angel of the Seventy Nations carries one Word or phrase of Torah, one Divine Commandment, or one Sacred Idea which animates it and charges it with passion and power. The angel is always trying to communicate this Word to its nation, to empower them to shape God with it, through acts of faith and worship. But the nation always forgets their angel’s purpose and mission, confusing and reversing the Word until the message of Love comes to mean torturing children to death. Beauty and Truth become the objectification of youthful bodies and the sexualization of children. Passion becomes murder, and Joy becomes mocking laughter and spiteful derision.
The lords, angels and avatars of the gentile nations challenged God, asking, ‘So what’s the Commandment or sacred Word that You and your Jews are charged with?’ God answered, ‘It’s a short and simple one, just like all yours. I am charged with communicating this Commandment to my human people: “Remember the Sabbath day to make it holy.” (Ex. 20:8) No more and no less.’
That we continue to observe Shabbes, more or less as we have done for three and a half thousand years, explains almost everything you need to know about the survival of the Jews, and just as importantly, about the survival of God. If you have read and understood this far, I pray you will find in this idea a key to open many doors into your own Jewishness, Godliness and connection to the Torah. Because the truth stares us in the face, we often miss seeing it.
Pharaoh sees in Joseph not the dreamer, but the ‘Master of Dreams’ of whom his brothers were afraid[80]. They all knew the secret of dreams: that the interpretations are the real meaning, and that all interpretations are equally true. What comes to pass is what you believe the true interpretation to be. Dreams are not over when you wake up, and dreams are not just stories that happen in your sleep.
Most people only attempt to interpret their lives when things go wrong. ‘Perhaps I am being shown this thing because I need to learn that lesson from it?’
It is a mistake to think of life that way; permitting good things to flash by us without paying attention, while allowing only pain and suffering to pull us up and force us to examine our lives. Pharaoh’s dream is about food, specifically the ingredients of LECHEM – Bread, because bread is a metaphor for all nourishment. Pharaoh dreamt of seven fat cows and seven fat ears of corn, it was a common Pharaonic dream, Pharaohs dream it all the time. It needs interpreting because all our pleasures need interpreting. LECHEM – Bread is a metaphor for all pleasures. The Hebrew word LECHEM comprises the identical three letters of the word CHALOM – Dream.
What does it mean to interpret bread, or to interpret a pleasure? Bread is not just made of milled, fermented and baked wheat berries that grew from the ground. Bread thrums with the word of God. The pleasure of bread is the life-force which you can taste in your mouth. That taste is nothing but the words coming from the mouth of God, as it is written, ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God does man live.’ (Deut. 8:3) If you eat and enjoy the taste of food without realizing that you are tasting God, then you are eating the way a beast eats. If you eat and sense the life-force in every bite, the word of God in each mouthful of taste, then the life-force itself becomes more than merely mundane. Pleasure becomes transcendental and the food becomes metaphysical.
Bread lso needs an interpretation, as do all the pleasures, especially sexual pleasure for which the Torah uses bread as a metaphor[81]. To interpret means to uncover the Word of God hidden inside a thing, the grain of truth and prophecy within a dream or the thrilling whispered message in the crunching grinding of molars.
The Rebbe Reb Bunim of P’Shischa used to laugh at those who praise the Tzadikim, saying that the Righteous don’t take any pleasure from their food. ‘It’s a lie!’ he used to say. ‘It is only they, the truly righteous, who know the true taste of food. And furthermore, of all the trials a Tzadik has to endure, it is this one – tasting God in every pleasure – that is the most painful of all.[82]’
Tasting God in every pleasure is the ultimate challenge, and the only way we have to interpret life. This is not some sort of mystical pathway trodden only by initiates into the secrets of the Torah. King David invited us all to partake: ‘Taste and see that God is good!’ (Ps. 24:9)
CHAPTER 11. – VAYIGASH
Who Is God of Joseph?
‘Judah approached him… “How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.” Then Joseph could no longer control himself…’ (Gen. 45:34-46:1)
In Izbicy it was taught that sexual pollution in dreams and the spilling of involuntary seed comes about when people look into Torah that does not fit them or belong to them[83].
There are two ways in which a Torah can be said to ‘not belong’ to me, either because it is so high and therefore God is so undressed and exposed in it that I have no right to be looking into such a holy place, or else this Torah is simply so alien to me and my soul that I have no business becoming acquainted with it.
An example of the first sort of Torah is discussed in Sidra Nitzavim, where Sitrei Torah – Hidden Torahs are mentioned. They are named Hidden Torahs because God is, so to speak, naked inside them. They are Torah in which God is so immanent that even words are not sufficient to carry the message. God Himself is the teaching.
An example of the second sort of Torah can be found in the Laws concerning the Red Heifer (see Radical Chukath), which has the effect of ‘cleansing the soiled, while soiling the clean.’ There we read that if you don’t need to be reminded of the fact that death is an illusion, that you are untouched by evil and that your every act is divinely inspired, then learning these things can soil you.
Joseph has one character defect; he likes giving advice and telling people how to live. Generally speaking, this is not such a bad trait for a Tzadik – Saint to have, for there are sufficient numbers of people in the world who will beat a path to his door, seeking advice. But there is always the possibility that he will teach someone Torah that does not belong to them - and this is precisely what did happen.
‘Cursed is he who misleads a blind person on the road,’ (Deut. 27:18). This malediction was directed at the Tribe of Joseph[84]. When the Torah curses someone who misleads the blind, it is talking about someone who gives bad advice[85], and there is no other advice but Torah[86].
As I have discussed elsewhere at length[87], the divine charge driving Joseph makes him go straight to the point of law relevant to every act, without deviation. That’s why, when the Torah warns the Jewish people not to stray from the path of the Torah, it uses the warning: ‘Seek God and live, lest the House of Joseph sweep like fire[88],’ (Amos 5:6) because Joseph tends to awaken the spirit of judgment and call down a verdict from heaven. So we are warned not to provoke the judgmental spirit in our brother Joseph.
Every Jew is connected to God and the Torah, but everyone has his or her own unique connection which manifests in the spark of divinity flowing through a particular Mitzva – Commandment or teaching. Each person has to find the Mitzvah or Torah through which divinity flows directly to him as an individual. It will not be the same as anyone else’s, because God animates each of us separately and differently. The Breath of God is in each of us uniquely.
Everyone has Fear of God in their soul, we are born with it. But very often, the Fear of God is erased or occluded by extraneous and unrelated fears which have been introduced into a person through receiving bad advice. When someone teaches you Torah that does not belong to you, or shows you how to observe a Commandment in a way that does not connect you to your soul, the element of God inside that Mitzva is distorted. We pray in the daily service that ‘God put into our hearts His love and His fear, and that He open our hearts with His Torah.[89]’ We don’t pray that God give us a generic love, fear or Torah, but rather His love, fear and Torah. By that we mean, ‘Please, God, put into my heart those elements of love and fear which are uniquely mine. Teach me Torah that belongs to me, so that I will be connected to myself and to You through it.’
Joseph is holy and his Torah is very holy, but the dark side of Joseph and his Torah is that it awakens compulsive behaviors in those for whom his Torah is alien and unnatural. When Joseph tried to teach his brothers how to live properly, most particularly when he sought to ‘enlighten’ Judah and Simeon - who seemed to him in most need of Torah - he awoke some very dark and dangerous energies. Joseph’s Torah is toxic when fed to anyone like Judah or Simeon.
Many people in the world today are beset with compulsive behaviors and self-destructive habits, fed and fueled by shame and rage. Among practicing Jews in particular, there seems to be a modern epidemic of addictive and compulsive disorders, yet few have identified an underlying cause for this disease.
Experience has shown me that Torah observance and a stricter adherence to the Law are not a cure for compulsivity. To the contrary, instead of providing a cure for addictions they often exacerbate a situation. How can there be a religious situation, a difficulty or a spiritual predicament for which the Torah is not the answer? How dare one even suggest that there exist such a thing as a problem for which Torah is not the solution?
But the truth remains true; Torah and Judaism are no cure for addiction, and they contain no solution for it. Because compulsivity and addiction are caused by an individual’s distorted relationship with God, and cannot be healed until a healthy relationship has been established. Unfortunately this process may require discarding all the Torah and Mitzvas previously learned and practiced. Once all toxic Torahs and allergenic Mitzvas have been unlearned and their critical connections permanently disabled, it is possible to reestablish one’s loving relationship with God, and a pathway back to Judaism may open up, as well. God is the key and the factor in all of this. As was stated earlier, every Mitzva and every word of Torah have God animating their core, or else they are just silly rituals and sillier words. Once Torah and Mitzvas have become toxic, God cannot be found inside them, He isn’t there. And this was the problem when Joseph tried to foist his wisdom and advice onto those to whom it did not belong.
It was a very hard lesson for Joseph to learn, and it took him twelve years in a prison cell before he could absorb and internalize it. It wasn’t until he appreciated the messages hidden in the dreams of Pharaoh’s butler and baker that Joseph began to see what mistakes he’d made.
Back when they all lived in Canaan Joseph could not understand why Judah was the unchallenged leader among the brothers, and not him. ‘How can Judah’s path of worship be the chosen way, when our father, Jacob and I are far more particular and careful about our behaviors? Why does everything Judah touches turn to gold, while I struggle so hard to do the right thing?’
Joseph needed to learn some serious lessons about what sort of Torah fits what sort of personality. From the characters he met in prison and the dreams he interpreted for them, Joseph realized that he had to change the way he related to Judah, and not to judge him so quickly. As the Izbicy explains:
Through the medium of the two dreams, that of the baker and the butler, God showed Joseph his mistake. He quickly realized that it is only fair that the butler not be punished when a fly was found in the king’s goblet. Who can guard against a fly dropping into wine of its own accord? A fly is a living thing with a life and volition of its own, no one can ever take insurance against an insect flying into a goblet. And who knows, perhaps the fly only landed the moment after the butler put the goblet into Pharaoh’s hand?
Not so the chief baker. If Pharaoh bit into a piece of bread and discovered there was a stone baked into it, the baker had no one to blame but himself. Stones are not living things with lives and volition of their own; they don’t just make their way into the flour. The baker should have been more careful to sieve it thoroughly.
God showed Joseph how he parallels the chief baker. For God gave Joseph the strength to overcome any and all temptations, therefore if there was any sin, it was he himself who was to blame and no one else[90].
Judah, on the other hand is the Court Jester, it was always his job to slip and tumble on every real or virtual banana-peel. And this sort of behavior will mean that from time to time, Judah has to act against the law because ‘It is a time to do for God[91]’ (Ps. 119:126) (see Radical Lech L’Cha). This played itself out in the Story of Judah and Tamar, as described in Sidra Vayeshev.
And this is why before his death Moses blessed the Tribe of Joseph with ‘the good-will of He who dwells in the thorn bush[92].’ The blessing meant, ‘May God teach you the characteristic of forbearance, as He taught me at the thorn bush[93].’
Joseph had learned these hard and bitter lessons long before his brothers came down to Egypt to purchase provisions to tide their families over the famine. He thinks he has nothing left to learn. He waits only to see the unfolding of the dreams of his youth and the fulfillment of his prophecies, to see his brothers bowing down to him. The drama unfolds as the Torah narrative describes it. Jospeh accuses them of being spies. They deny it. He demands they bring their younger brother Benjamin down to verify their story. They bring Benjamin down to Egypt, whereupon Joseph conspires to have his youngest brother arrested as a thief.
Joseph tells his brothers they are free to go home to their father in Canaan, and that only Benjamin will stay with him as his slave.
Scarcely anywhere in literature, sacred or profane, do we encounter a predicament so fraught with panic, consternation and dread, as here among Joseph’s brothers. It is clear to them that nothing short of the complete destruction of the world and its recreation starting with another Six Days of Creation, will suffice to reproduce the sacred family which they and their plots, stratagems, deceit and spite have ruined.
Joseph has no idea what to do or how to act. He is not equipped to cope with the drama unfolding in front of him. All his internal guides tell him to obey the law, apply the law and use the law, for without the law there is anarchy. On the other hand, he has learned that the law is not equal for everyone, that sometimes ‘It is a time to do for God.’
But the time for Joseph to reveal himself to his brothers has come and gone a hundred times, and he cannot bring himself to relent. He cannot let go, he cannot open up and he cannot see how to end the torture. At this point Joseph is the orgasm which has been delayed so long it can longer be reached.
Now comes Judah and teaches Joseph the biggest lesson of all.
On the face of it, Judah does not appear to have anything new to say. He’s doing nothing but rehashing the same old narrative without adding anything fresh. But for Joseph, Judah’s recitation comes as a shock and a surprise, something he’s never heard before. As was said at the outset, the spilling of involuntary seed comes about when people look into Torah that does not fit them or belong to them, either because it is so high that God is exposed in it, or because it is simply too alien for the listener to hear. Here in Judah’s speech Joseph encounters both versions. Judah’s words blindingly expose God in ways that Joseph could not have imagined, and suddenly a truth is revealed that almost shatters Joseph’s understanding of the Life the Universe and Everything.
This is what happens. Judah comes to the realization that he is completely undone, and that Joseph must surely be dead. The deeper the confusion the brothers are experiencing and the more impenetrable and dire their situation, the more obvious it seems to them that Joseph has entirely disappeared. Soon after Joseph kidnapping twenty-two years previously, they realized that without Joseph’s presence in their lives, their worship God was almost completely neutered and sterile. Not one of the brothers had been able to access his spiritual center or learn anything holy without Joseph in the house. They had lost all desire and craving for Kirvat Elohi”m - Intimacy with God, because none of us can have it without Joseph’s presence in us; it’s as simple and awful as that.
When Judah sold Joseph into Egypt, he had originally calculated that Joseph would go through a leavening or purifying process, and that’s why he advised his brothers to sell him as a slave in the first place. His plan was to leave it to God to teach Joseph a lesson from which he would emerge a better man, tempered and weathered, able to live amicably without feelings of superiority or the need to be combative with his brothers. But if Joseph had failed to meet his challenges and had succumbed to temptation in Egypt, if he had been assimilated into the local culture or had adapted to its customs in order to survive, all was lost and everything was ruined. For while the brothers had hated Joseph when he lived with them, it became obvious to them as soon as he was gone that he was absolutely crucial to the success of the family.
All these years, Judah had clung to the hope that God would make everything turn out for the best. That Joseph was struggling but making it through in Egypt, that both Judah, and Joseph would be vindicated in the end.
As the famine spread into Canaan, the brothers came down into Egypt to buy food and fodder. The Egyptian lord accused them of being spies, and later demanded they bring their younger brother down with them as proof of their innocence. When they reached home they discovered all the money they had spent on food hidden in the sacks of grain. They were terrified and then gratified and then horrified by the treatment meted out to them by the Egyptian lord. He confused them, one moment with his kindness, the next with his cruel indifference. They could not be sure he was wicked and abusive; perhaps he was justified by his own rights. They did not know who to blame for the set-up, who it was that kept interfering with their sacks of food and grain, first hiding their money in it and then hiding Joseph’s ritual goblet in Benjamin’s sack?
It was that very confusion which convinced Judah of Joseph’s death, for it was only Joseph’s presence in the world which made everything else make sense. It was partly the reason they had hated him so much; Joseph could only see what was in front of his eyes, in black and white. ‘Yes, but,’ was not in Joseph’s phrase-book, it was not an option you could use in an argument with him. Joseph didn’t deal in excuses or justifications, for him things were crystal clear.
His brothers had thought it was an affectation or mannerism, they hadn’t realized that Joseph was the only power keeping the world in tune until he was gone, and suddenly everything was muddy and impenetrable. Jacob went without any prophecy for twenty-two years. It was as though God had withdrawn totally. The brothers experienced the loss of their divine connection, each in his own way.
Judah could only explain all this confusion with the death of Joseph. But if Joseph was truly dead or disappeared for good, then Judah’s original plan was a complete failure; in which case his recent promise to deliver Benjamin safely back to Jacob was the very worst gamble of his lifetime. His whole life was coming unraveled, and everything Judah believed about himself had to have been be a fiction, all his self-confidence must have been deluded from the start!
Then something tectonic shifts inside Judah, something primal unfolds and changes from despair to prayer, to a shout, to a challenge, to a scream of defiance - echoes of which still resound inside our subconscious to this very day. Judah finds some central point within his heart where the fires of resistance still burn, if not brightly, at least fitfully, an ember or spark of unquenchable defiance remains alive.
“If You truly are in charge of the world,’ says Judah to God, ‘then this is all Your doing. From beginning to end, You had to have been involved, intimately, down to the smallest detail. Even in the midst of the worst sin I ever committed, You were there; for how could You have been absent when the whole world and everyone in it are Your creation, and You are God?’
Judah is done trying to fix anything or make things work out. He is out of his depth, drowning in the mess he has wrought. All Judah is conscious of is a cry in his heart. He knows for sure, certain and positive that it is God crying in his heart. That it is his own divine spark which is so wretched. And this is the Torah of Judah, the unique Word of God animating him, the revelation of the Shechina – Dwelling Presence. This is Judah’s deepest genius, that he can hear God crying inside his own heart. He hears the loneliness of the Shechina, the awful pangs of Her separation, Her desperate desire and Her constantly welling Love.
Judah trusts himself when his brothers have all succumbed to the profoundest and heaviest certainty of failure. Judah knows that if there is still a cry in his heart then the cry itself is a gift from God. And if God has gifted him with the power to cry, then surely this whole drama has been scripted by God from start to finish. If that’s so, then why isn’t God doing more to save them all from disaster?
First, watching and listening to Judah, Joseph comes face-to-face with God in his brother’s words, an undressed, unclothed divinity such as Joseph has never encountered previously, and the light triggers him, because this is Torah that does not belong to him. Second, Joseph realizes that all endings are an illusion, that Judah was always untouched by evil and that his every act is divinely inspired and that nothing was ever ruined. Suddenly, the rule of ‘cleansing the soiled, while soiling the clean,’ hits Joseph, full force. As was said earlier, both revelations are triggers of pollution in dreams and the spilling of involuntary seed, and this is what happens to Joseph, as the Torah tells us: Then Joseph could no longer control himself…’ He couldn’t hold back a moment longer, all the energy pent up inside him is released in a veritable orgasm of abundance and luxurious superfluity[94].
When salvation comes, when God opens our eyes and we wake as though from a nightmare, it becomes perfectly obvious that we had never been in any danger. And what is true for the brothers in the Joseph narrative, is true for the individual. When God opens our eyes we will realize that we have never been in any spiritual jeopardy, and we have never sinned. It was all a bad dream, an illusion. We open our eyes to see that it is not merely the wicked who have disappeared, but that evil itself was an illusion - it never happened.
CHAPTER 12. – VAYECHI
Who Are the Twelve Tribes?
‘Then Jacob called for his sons and said: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come. Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel.” (Gen 49:1-2)
We are all Jacob’s children; we are all descended from the Twelve Tribes. Their strengths are our strengths, their weaknesses also ours. Nothing in the Torah is mere historical fact; everything is relevant to each of us, every day of our lives. The Twelve Tribes are our archetypes and we contain all of their characteristics. We carry permutations of their genes and iterations of their genius. They have evolved into us; we are Israel.
“Reuben, my firstborn are you, my might and the beginning of my strength; excelling in dignity, and excelling in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have excellence; because you went up to your father's bed, you defiled it: he went up to my couch.” (Gen. 49:3-4)
Jacob starts out with very high praise, but ends by rebuking Reuben. Jacob’s words may be read as a hint to Reuben’s true character; Reuben starts out with very high intentions, lofty goals and noble designs. In fact, so grand and exalted are Reuben’s ambitions, they are virtually guaranteed to be disappointed and thwarted. No one can live up to such high expectations[95].
If Jacob’s intention was merely to rebuke Reuben, he need not have begun by acknowledging him as ‘my firstborn, my might and beginning of my strength, excelling [etc.]’ He could have begun by calling him unstable.
Reuben develops a history of disappointing himself, setting up a cycle of frustration and recrimination. His goals are so noble and out of reach, the standards he sets for himself so impractical that he blames himself for not achieving perfection and begins to repent for sins he never even commits[96]. Reuben represents that part of us which does not complete projects without input and help from others, which tend to stall when left to our own devices
On the other hand, Reuben’s nobility is such that he steps forward when there is need for gallantry. He is first to volunteer for any fighting when war is necessary[97]. Reuben shows all the qualities of leadership, but lacks the ability to follow through, even with the best of intentions; he is held back by his ambitions, and the impracticability of his designs. He cannot act the politician, because: ‘Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best[98],’ and settling for ‘next-best’ is not in Reuben’s nature.
Reuben’s mannerisms and traits most closely mimic Jacob’s, which is why the Torah warns him: ‘Cursed is he who lies with his father’s wife.’ (Deut. 27:23)
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“Simeon and Levi are brothers - their swords are weapons of violence. O my soul, come not into their mystery. Let my honor not be included in their assembly. For in their anger they slew a man, in their self-will they eradicated a prince. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will disperse them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” (Gen. 49:5-7)
Throughout this work I have discussed the character and personality of Simeon and Levi at length (see Radical Numbers - Naso, Korah & Pinchas), where the profound differences in their approach to life are treated. Earlier in the Book of Genesis (Chapter 34) we read about Shechem holding Dinah captive in his home. When Simeon and Levi broke in to free her, they killed Shechem and all the men in the city who’d been recovering from their mass circumcision. The Midrash tells us that Dinah refused to leave unless one of her brothers agreed to marry her. ‘I would be alone,’ she said. ‘No one will want me after being with Shechem.’
Levi demurred because he had qualms and scruples about marrying his sister. Committing incest with her would force him to go through a massive process of Birurin – Clarification, until it could be established beyond doubt that his motives were pure from the outset. Levi doesn’t voluntarily put himself into situations that are going to need post-facto clarification. He’d prefer to avoid grey areas altogether. Levi’s descendents will not require refining or assaying in some fiery crucible (as is required of other Jewish leaders) before becoming worthy of leadership. So his daughter, Jocheved, can give birth to Miriam, Aaron and Moses, no proving or testing required.
The Tribe of Levi are prepared at any moment to abandon every mundane pleasure because of some small doubt as to its propriety. They want a life of clarity with no grey areas, with everything divided into dark and light, where the Light reflects the Will of God, i.e. the good, while the Dark is always the bad and the forbidden.
Levi would remove all pleasure, taste and joy from the act of sinning, or from any mundane act. He maintains absolute distinction between good and bad, by distinguishing between the beautiful and the ugly so that there remain no connection or confusion between what has grace and what has ugliness. Levi represents that part of us which would rather see the world frozen to death, than continue having to deal with the confusing, deceiving and impermanent flux of things. We want verities and immovable anchors to build our lives on, but God’s world is in flux, things evolve and change, nothing is cast in stone. All things have the potential to become something greater and better, everything can become less and worse. The desire to have everything solid and unambiguous is the reason we made and worshiped the Golden Calf. We wanted Levis’ sort of clarity, cast in metal, fixed and immutable. And this is why Levi was the only tribe which did not worship the calf, for them to have done so would have been irredeemable and unfixable, it goes to the heart of who they are. We, on the other hand, pretended to want what the Golden Calf had to offer, but what we really wanted was the licentious sexuality of its worship… And that is why God warns Levi: ‘Cursed be the man that makes a graven or molten image, an abomination to God, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ (Deut. 27:15)
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When Simeon hears his sister Dinah crying, fearing that she will remain unloved, he says, ‘What! Should I accuse myself of incestuous inclinations, God forbid? Of course I’ll marry you.’ He gives himself the benefit of the doubt and assumes his motives are clear and pure. Thus he triggers the Tribe of Simeon’s historical narrative around matters of sexuality. Simeon gambles, and it still remains to be seen what will become of Simeon’s gamble - will he win in the end? If his gamble pays off, then Simeon will achieve a much higher level than Levi the non-gambler. The reason being, unless you are prepared to risk something precious upon the result of a venture with an uncertain outcome, you can’t win any spiritual dividends. You cannot amass any profit or advantage if you keep your capital and your spiritual kernel intact. Without first being planted somewhere and left to rot or germinate, it won’t grow and fruit - nothing does.
Being committed to God does not always mean looking to protect your place in the World-to-Come. There’s more to being Jewish than taking care of the distant future, no matter how important one’s eventual place in the Garden of Eden. If my relationship with God is fixated on ensuring myself a good and comfortable place in the World-to-Come, it is not God I hold in greatest esteem - it’s me. And because Moses could see the ripples in time and space caused by Simeon’s challenge, he avoided cautioning Simeon or suggesting anything about him needed fixing. None of the curses in Deuteronomy Cap. 27 refer or apply to Simeon. After all, Simeon may not have a dark side.
Elsewhere I have examined these prophecies of Jacob, in particular his reference to the ‘SOD - Mysteries’ alluded to here in these sharp words to Simeon and Levi, and I have demonstrated how they hint at the story of Rabbi Akiba[99] and the Ten Martyrs.
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“Judah, you! It is you your brothers will praise; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons will bow down to you. You are a lion's cub, Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness - who dares to rouse him?” (Ibid. 8-10)
As soon as Jacob began talking about Judah, his mood lifted and suddenly he was allowed to see how all his children were perfect just the way they were. Instead of going back to correct himself and change his words to Reuben, Simeon and Levi, he allowed himself to go with the flow, and only made corrections at the very end of all the blessings.
Jacob opened with the phrase, “Judah, you! It is you…”, and no sooner had he said those words when it struck him how like God Judah is!
When some earthly king of flesh and blood, or any powerful potentate grows angry with you, your best strategy is to stay out of sight, to find refuge somewhere as far away from danger as possible. With God, the opposite is true. If God is angry, your best strategy is to try and get as close as possible. When we are in trouble, we say to God, ‘You are my hiding place!’ (Ps. 32:7) Not that God is a hiding place, but that saying ‘You’ is the refuge. Why is the word ‘You’ a hiding place?
When I relate to God as ‘You’, when I see myself nestling beneath the wings of the divine, which is to say, when I feel sufficiently connected to God to address Him as ‘You’, it becomes clear that I have never sinned. How could I have sinned when I was always beneath God’s wings?
Now this might seem like a very big Chutzpa, denying your sins by claiming always to have been connected to God; nevertheless it is true. When you feel you have nowhere to run away to, when there is no refuge from your past anywhere in this world, it is proper to turn to God and shout, ‘God! Help me, please,’ and God helps by raising the narrative to a new, higher level where the sin never happened[100].
Judah himself raises everyone’s narrative to the level where nothing bad ever happened, as was discussed in Sidra Vayigash, and in this he mimics God.
The Tribe of Judah don’t pay much attention to what is wise, understandable or sensible; they seem to be operating on another level, making decisions based on other criteria. This is because Judah is entirely ready to surrender to God, to be vanquished and seduced at the level of, ‘More precious than wisdom and honor, a little folly’ (Eccl. 10:1), provided the folly is required by the Will of God.
At times, being ready to surrender to the Will of God makes Judah forget entirely what is wise or sensible. He pays no attention to common standards of behavior.
Chokhma – Wisdom and Binah – Understanding are sometimes called Father and Mother. Father, because Wisdom creates something from nothing, and Mother because Understanding incubates knowledge and synthesizes something new from it. That’s why the verse warns Judah: ‘Cursed is he who dishonors his father and mother.’ (Deut. 27:16)
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“Zebulun will live by the seashore and become a haven for ships; his border will extend toward Sidon.” (Ibid. 13)
Zebulun has no fear of the unknown, in fact, he goes looking for it. His life is spent trading for goods on the high-seas. Zebulun represents that part of us which finds God equally present in all things, not because of any essential quality in the goods he trades for, but because of God openly apparent inside himself. Whereas some of his brothers can find and point to the divine hidden in the mundane (Naphtali), while others can grab what divinity is lost among the gentiles and drag it back for his brother Jews to devour (Benjamin), Zebulun does not distinguish among divine and mundane, sacred or profane. Zebulun is always so intimately connected to God he sees God in everything he does, and so the unknown holds few fears.
Now, because we become more and more wedded to the very things we fear most, eternally married to our phobias and anxieties, Fear is often compared metaphorically to a spouse or Wife. Therefore, Mother-In-Law represents that which stands above and beyond Fear. An example of behavior which is beyond fear can be found in the conduct of the prophet Jonah b. Amitai. Comparing Jonah’s behavior on the ship during the tempest, with that of the sailors who were terrified of drowning, we can only understand his fearlessness when we realize that he is of the Tribe of Zebulun[101]. Zebulun has so much faith and trust in God, he never allows any fear to prevent him from going ahead with his plans, and pays no attention to the voice of caution, therefore the verse cautions him, ‘Cursed is he who lies with his mother-in-law.’ (Deut. 27:23)
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“Issachar is a large-boned ass, crouching down between the hurdles.” (Ibid. 14)
Issachar probably has the highest IQ among all his brothers. Throughout the Temple era, Heads of the Sanhedrin, in charge of computing the annual calendar (fixing dates for festivals and the New Moon) were almost invariably of the Tribe of Issachar. Issachar is not merely a mathematician/astronomer, he also has an uncanny ability to experience time as a series of changing moods and conditions. He knows what the time ‘means’ at any given moment, what it calls for, and how to take best advantage of it. Issachar is that part of us which is most intuitive, the sensitive who is aware of the changing moment and the flow of time.
Issachar’s genius was L’Chadesh Cho’dashim – which is usually translated as a reference the Rosh Chodesh - New Moon ceremonies requiring an announcement by the Head of the Sanhedrin, each month. But the phrase L’Chadesh Cho’dashim can also be translated ‘to renew the newness’. Issachar is never satisfied with old trodden ways of worship, old forms and old Torah. He wants newness, fresh and undiscovered novelty. The problem with Issachar’s way is that it can make everyone else’s way look bad. While an entire Jewish community may settle down to practice Judaism in a certain form, e.g. using a prayer-book with a particular liturgy, Issachar may quickly show it to be out of tune with the changing world. Issachar with his capacity for innovation and adaptation shows us our obsolescence all too clearly. When something stands to be discovered, Issachar has already discovered it. So the Torah warns him not to trespass upon his neighbors and not to absorb what really belongs to them: ‘Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary mark.’ (Deut. 27:17)
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“Dan will provide justice for his people as one of the tribes of Israel.” (Ibid. 16)
The Tribe of Dan has extraordinary confidence in the justice of their cause. Dan is perpetually ready to stand and be judged, never for a moment doubting the outcome of any finding or ruling. Dan always feels he has Right on his side. The Talmud notes that one who says, ‘Judge me, litigate me,’ most probably comes from the Tribe of Dan[102].
This archetype produces a savior of the Jewish People, like Samson who ruled all of Israel, and was of the Tribe of Dan. Samson is a mythic, almost messianic figure, whose weaknesses are writ so large and bold, they seem to call into question the wisdom of God’s choice. Why should the savior of the Jews be a man who cannot control himself around a gentile woman? And why is he powerless without his hair, which in itself is a symbol of rage?
Dan represents that part of us which has the purest motives. We begin a project with the best of intentions, and proceed under the assumption that our good intentions are sufficient to warrant the successful outcome of all our endeavors. Dan’s secret ingredient, so to speak, is Integrity. He has so much truthfulness, decency and morality, his actions are charged with so much honor and propriety it is simply inconceivable to him that God will not make it all work out in the end, for the best.
There is a dark side to Dan’s probity, though. It makes him somewhat less than forgiving of the foibles and shortcomings of others. When Dan does someone a favor, but the recipient of the favor then does something wrong or commits a sin on the strength of the favor Dan did him, Dan is likely to be enraged. He may even denounce the recipient in his heart, because Dan does not suffer iniquity. That’s why the Torah warns him: ‘Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret,’ (Deut. 27:24)
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“Gad, a troop shall troop upon him; but he shall troop upon their heel.” (Ibid. 19)
Gad represents smallness. The Hebrew word GAD translates either as coriander or mustard, whose seeds are the epitome of smallness and are often used metaphorically to depict microcosmic life. Besides a tendency to small-mindedness, the Tribe of Gad is also masochistic, desiring and requiring constant pain in order to feel alive. Gad represents that part of us that has difficulty feeling joy and wholeness when by ourselves, and may feel challenged when it comes to making friends, or in joining in and being an active member of a society or group. That’s why Jacob blesses Gad with convergence and community. Jacob’s blessing is so powerful that when it is necessary to gather the Jewish People, it is the Tribe of Gad who step forward and display their talent at bringing us all together, uniting the nation.
It should be borne in mind that Elijah the Prophet is a member of the Tribe of Gad[103], Elijah who is the harbinger and herald of the Messiah. And because Gad loves pain and can be reconciled to living in a situation that would break anyone else’s health and spirit, the Torah warns him, metaphorically: ‘Cursed is he who lies with any animal,’ (Deut. 27:21)
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“Asher's food will be rich; he will provide delicacies fit for a king.” (Gen. 49:20)
Asher is an example of what happens when you have it good; when you don’t have to worry about finding enough money to keep yourself properly fed or clothed. You don’t have to scrabble to cover the mortgage or health-care, because you enjoy a surplus. The Tribe of Asher is plagued by a sense of guilt when it compares itself to other tribes. ‘I have it so good, why am I not better than I am? I have so much leisure time, such freedom from want, why am I not even more dedicated and worshipful than my brothers? Why does my connection to God pale in comparison to theirs?’
Asher is that part of us which considers us ugly and unattractive. Asher is rich and never feels the need to pray to God from a place of spiritual or physical desperation. But what happens spiritually to someone who never feels desperate, how does such a soul evolve? Well, it creates the basis for a different sort of relationship with God. If you have never experienced want or deprivation in your life and have never needed to approach God to beg for anything, then you can relate as a lover to a lover, rather than as a supplicant asking for alms or even a child applying to a parent for its needs. This is more like the love between brother and sister, it makes very few demands. But this kind of love doesn’t have to take risks, and therefore is not real intimacy. One cannot develop a relationship with God this way; a person cannot acquire spiritual enlightenment without taking spiritual risks, without exploring and making mistakes. And because all this abundance and surplus could bring Asher to a carelessness born of a false familiarity with God, the Torah warns him: ‘Cursed is he who lies with his sister.’ (Deut. 27:22)
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“Naphtali is a hind let loose: he gives goodly words.” (Gen. 49:21)
Naphtali has a special ability to show us the divine in the mundane. He finds God in the most earthly places and situations. This is the meaning of Jacob’s blessing, to ‘give goodly words’. It is in the nature of the hind to look backwards as it runs, so as not to lose sight of its beloved mate. This is why in mediaeval art, the deer is depicted bounding forward while it gazes backwards. Most of us tend to lose sight of God once our gaze fixes on the mundane, and we lose our ability to look through things to the divine and the Word of God animating them. Naphtali is our guide in this.
There is a dark side, though, to searching out God in every mundane event. Sometimes things happen to other people that we cannot explain according to the laws of reward and punishment as we understand them. Sometimes we are simply astonished at the good fortune others enjoy, and our amazement or indignation can set up ripples and waves which interfere with the flow of abundance. Throughout rabbinic literature we find this concept connected to the taking of bribes. If someone has a court case pending and manages to slip a bribe into the judge’s pocket, even if it is the pocket of a coat the judge doesn’t usually wear, the bribe will affect his judgment, through the waves and ripples that move outward in the spiritual world. The judge will no longer be able remain completely impartial.
By delving too closely into the workings of God in the temporal world, Naphtali may interfere with flow of Divine Benevolence, therefore the Torah warns him: ‘Cursed is he who takes a bribe to slay an innocent soul.’ (Deut. 27:25)
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“Joseph is a fruitful son, a fruitful vine by a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.” (Gen. 49:22)
Joseph is beautiful. When Asher feels ugly by comparison to his brothers, it’s really Joseph he’s comparing himself to unfavorably. And we may all have felt that way about ourselves after contemplating the trials and ordeals through which Joseph, our brother, passed so spotlessly. Joseph made service and worship seem effortless and natural; we could neither compete nor compare.
Joseph is a paradox. He is the most obviously Jewish of us all, he’s the Tzadik, and yet he fits into the world at large, moving among gentiles with such a natural and unforced grace, the world might almost have been tailored to fit him. While we struggle to pass as citizens of the world, Joseph bestrides it like a colossus. In a single day he moves from prison to throne in one titanic leap, without missing a step or a beat. Jews enjoy Salvation by small increments, in tiny fits and starts, by negotiation and confrontation; through plagues and miracles, blood and fire[104], not so Joseph; in the morning he’s an indefinitely imprisoned Hebrew slave, chained in a filthy pit with criminals and corrupt guards, by nightfall he’s Pharaoh’s best friend and advisor, driving around in a gilded carriage. Even his Salvation has a goyishe gestalt; it’s something that might happen to a Vespasian or a Napoleon, not a Joseph or a Yossel.
Joseph is that part of us which is in love with God. When we avoid sin it is not out of fear, not even fear of damaging the relationship, let alone fear of punishment or retribution. We avoid sin because of the love we feel for God.
As was said in the previous Sidra (Radical Vayigash), Joseph has a tendency to give advice, not all of which is timely or apt. Which is why the Torah warns him: ‘Cursed is he who misleads a blind person on the road.’ (Deut. 27:18)
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“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.” (Gen. 49:27)
Benjamin is called the devourer. He has the ability to assimilate and absorb goodness and holy sparks from among the gentile nations, to introduce them into Israel so that they can be used by the Jewish People in the service of God. Benjamin is that part of us all, which interacts with the world. The observer who stands guard on the edges of consciousness filtering out what is spiritually toxic, and allowing entry to what is healthy. He is the part of us which can see past glamour, to the quality hidden below surface appearances. Benjamin has the power to absorb and assimilate even those desires and cravings which are in exile among the gentiles and appear to be unholy and decadent; he can introduce them into Israel (see Radical Ki-Tetze).
However, because he always wants to do things for the benefit of his brothers as well as for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, he may sometimes give us more than we can hold, and feed us more than we can swallow. Our ‘mouths’ are not all as big as his, and we don’t all have his talent for absorption and assimilation. That’s why the Torah warns Benjamin: ‘Cursed is he who perverts the judgment of the stranger, the orphan or the widow,’ (Deut. 27:19)
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‘All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father spoke to them; and he blessed them: every one according to the blessing with which he blessed them.’ (Gen. 49:28)
The verse does not say that Jacob blessed each of his sons ‘according to the blessing with which he blessed him,’ rather it says, ‘the blessing with which he blessed them.’ In the final act of blessing, Jacob included all his sons, even Reuben, Simeon and Levi in each of the blessings.
The true test of a healthy individual is the ability to swap and change roles according to the needs of the moment, not being stuck in a single rigid role, forced to deal with life using only a tiny fraction of one’s potential. The Twelve Tribes represent the twelve planes of the dodecahedron, which is a way of representing the globe using twelve flat sides. Thus the tribes comprise a seamless whole in which we can all find ourselves, and each touches upon the other.
You might ask, if Jacob blessed all his children with all the blessings, why differentiate between them so strongly? If we all contain all the virtues and weaknesses hinted at in Jacob’s blessings, why did each blessing have to go to a different address?
The answer is (as was mentioned in the previous Sidra), that not everyone needs all forms of Torah and all modes of worship. Not everything sacred suits everyone. Some of us are allergic to certain Torah. Each of us has a particular genius, a spark of the divine, a face of God which is unique to us. Each of the Twelve Tribes expresses a certain aspect of God most blatantly. But that does not mean exclusively or solely.
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Completed by the Grace of God
The Eve of Rosh Hashana 5775 - September 2014
Safed, Israel
In Memoriam - my dear friend and colleague,
R. Gedaliah Moshe, Halevi, Gelman
May He Rest In Peace