rabbijaffe

The heroes of the Jewish Bible are intriguing. The stories about them often range from the mildly uncomfortable to the downright mind-boggling.

Learning about some of the actions of our forefathers makes one wonder two things:

1. Why do we remember these people as great heroes?

2. If you were to create a religion filled with patriarchs you hope your practitioners will look up to, would you publish all their dirty laundry for eternal scrutiny?

Yehuda is one of those perplexing individuals.

He’s hard to love. He conspired in a plot to kill his brother, Yosef. And when that seemed to no longer be a popular idea, he initiated a new suggestion: Sell Yosef into slavery and trick their father, Yaakov, into thinking Yosef had been devoured by a wild animal.

The others followed his lead. What they did was bad. What he did was atrocious.

Starting off your path to greatness with behavior the worst of us would not engage in is certainly not the reason Yehuda goes down in history as an icon of the Jewish people.

But wait, there’s more!

Shortly after this episode with his brother, the Torah takes a break to tell another horrifically uncomfortable moment in the life of Yehuda.

To make a long story short, Yehuda selfishly (and ignorantly) stalls marrying his third son to a woman named Tamar. She had been married to Yehuda’s first two sons, each of whom died prematurely. Thinking maybe there was a connection between their deaths and marriage to Tamar, Yehuda didn’t want anything to do with her anymore.

But she wanted to be married. She was lonely. She was sad. And as time went by she resorted to subterfuge to basically tricking her father-in-law, Yehuda, into marrying her thinking she was a perfect stranger!

Yehuda unknowingly impregnates his own daughter-in-law, and then calls for her execution, thinking she acted unfaithfully to his son… who she’s not actually living with, exclusively because Yehuda is preventing their union.

And thus Yehuda continues his career doing the unthinkably bad.

What connects both these terrible stories, as well as so many of the horror stories of the actions of our ancestors?

It’s quite simple: Admission of guilt and a willingness to apologize and correct errant ways.

Simple, but so very complex… and extraordinarily rare.

When Yehuda recognizes his mistake with Tamar, he immediately realizes that all the bad that occurred was strictly his own fault. He publicly admits and apologizes for his actions, and proceeds to mend the situation.

And: In this week’s parsha, Parshat Vayigash, Yehuda is confronted with the following situation:

Yosef’s brothers had been sent to Egypt to get food for their household. Little do they know, but the person they’ll need to speak with is their very own brother, Yosef… the one who they sold into slavery many years back.

They completely don’t recognize their long lost brother, and Yosef takes advantage of the situation. He wants to test to see if his brothers are the same heartless ogres who chucked him in a pit way back when, or whether they are changed, better people.

Yosef’s brothers had come to Egypt without their brother Binyamin. Their father didn’t want to send Binyamin because he was Yosef’s only full brother. He couldn’t bare the thought of losing both Yosef and Binyamin. Nevertheless, Yosef demanded that Binyamin be brought as well. Through an elaborate scam Yosef had Binyamin falsely accused of stealing from Pharaoh, and demanded he be placed in prison.

And then it happened.

Yehuda stepped forward. The same Yehuda who felt seething jealousy when his father showed favoritism to Yosef. The same Yehuda who participated in throwing Yosef in a pit. The same Yehuda who suggested selling Yosef into slavery.

That same Yehuda stepped forward, stuck his neck out, and argued on behalf of Binyamin. He even went so far as to offer himself as a prisoner instead!

The same Yehuda who many years earlier showed the highest levels of aggression, anger, and selfishness had now demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that what’s past is past. He is a new person now. He is selfless, more than willing to put others before himself.

This is worthy of praise.

This is worthy of being remembered forever.

No one in the world is born great. Everyone has skeletons in their closets. Everyone’s existence is filled with infinite dirty laundry.

Do we shove it all under the bed?

Or do we deal with it, become amazing people, and move on?

People who do the former are forgotten.

Those who do the latter serve as an example for all us for all time. 

If you’re living in northeast USA right now your arms are probably as sore as mine are. Hours of shovelling more snow than you’ve ever seen before will do that.You’re also probably sipping hot chocolate and eating hot soup by the gallon.

And while you’re avoiding the roads and staying indoors indefinitely you’ve been contemplating a thing or two. I know I have.

Snow is a really fascinating thing.

You can’t really get rid of it. Your only choice is to simply move it from one place to another place. 

Which leads to a constant personal debate as you attack the snow in front of your home. Where do you want none, and where you not mind having twice as much as there was a moment ago.

And that’s just your home!

The whole matter becomes terribly complicated when you remember that your clean walkway can easily become another person’s impossible to clean walkway.

I saw it all in the past hour.

People who cleaned out their car while simultaneously burying someone else’s just a little deeper. People who received much joy and pleasure walking on the snow covered grass, while knocking a whole bunch on to someone else’s freshly cleaned path.

Why? Because they are the center of the universe. Their personal convenience and enjoyment comes first. Other people’s things are other people’s problems.

Luckily enough for me, I only saw a little of that.

You know what I saw a lot of?

People helping elderly folk shovel the front of their homes.

People who noticed others who were away for the weekend and would be returning to driveways they couldn’t even park in. So they cleaned it up for them.

People helping others push cars over slippery snow piles.

What a fine opportunity the snow presents to help us all figure out which type of person we’re going to be!

Now let’s just hope for a snow day… or two!

The hero of the parsha is once again the mighty Yosef.

Learning sections of the Torah like this are very challenging for me, since I already know the end of the story. Sometimes it’s really hard to imagine what it must have been like to have been Yosef throughout all those so very frightening, traumatic years prior to his success.

How many of us have lost jobs, only to to look and find something far superior to the previous job?

If you were a prophet and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the better job truly was around the corner, then great. Good for you. Joy during in the interim is easy. But keeping your head up high when others have pushed you down to the ground is certainly no easy task. Usually when people tell you “it’s all for the best”, you just want to slug them.

But then it turns out to be true!

When Yosef was younger he seemed to have a knack for having amazingly clear dreams, easy as pie to interpret. Unfortunately for him those dreams were just gasoline for the fire burning in the hearts of all of his brothers.

I imagine at first he would hate his gift. His uncanny ability to interact with dreams went from detrimental to cute parlor trick, but for all intents and purposes remained absolutely useless throughout.

A “gift” indeed!

Useless.

That is, of course, until his masterful dream interpretation landed him a completely unexpected visit to the grand dictator of all of Egypt.

And what blessing could there possibly be in being chucked into a pit by your brothers?

What blessing could there possibly be in being sold into slavery?

What blessing could one ever find in being estranged from a beloved father?

How could you ever possibly find blessing in wrongful imprisonment!?

All seemingly unanswerable questions. Well, until all that pain and torment lands you in charge of an entire nation with the world’s most expansive financial project under your command.

I can’t help but flashing to a harder time in my own life, when I thought everything was over. But in the end, every moment of misery was a fundamental step in arriving at ultimate joy. Everything was and still is a piece of the puzzle.

Yosef’s life was filled with so many blessings, as are all of ours. Some of those blessings are clear as day, while others are hidden in the deepest, darkest pits of misery.

But they’re all blessings! 

Shabbat Shalom!

When contemplating last week’s parsha, Parshat Vayeishev, I’m often personally confronted with a seemingly unanswerable question:

How could Yaakov (Jacob) have favored one son over the other?

Didn’t his lousy parenting essentially serve as the catalyst for all the terrible things that would later happen to his beloved son Yosef (Joseph)?

One might consider me a novice parent, with only two kids, the older one only six years. But I definitely feel like I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. Whether it’s Parenting 101 or Education 101, one of the earliest lessons one will learn is that you cannot favor one child over another.

They’re all precious gems, to be loved and cared for equally.

But Jewish tradition looks at Yaakov as entirely righteous! What righteousness could there possibly be in such an apparently abhorrent attitude?

My answer to this question is really not what one might expect.

As far as I’m concerned, Yaakov showed no favoritism at all.

He did something very different.

He was trying to raise his son according to his son’s needs.

* * *

Striking the balance of one child’s needs is such an incredibly difficult task, one can even argue it’s borderline impossible at times. But it’s still the ultimate goal of a successful parent.

Before I continue, let me share a story to help illustrate my point: 

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach used to have a talmud (Jewish oral law) class at his yeshiva (school for advanced Jewish studies).

He had a rule for his classes that was set in stone, which he NEVER violated.

The rule: Any student may ask whatever question he wishes. But it needs to be on topic. When we’ve moved on, we’ve moved on. If you ask a question on a topic that we’ve finished, the rabbi would just ignore it and continue.

As an educator I find this policy very reasonable and respectable.

One day a student raised his hand and asked a question. It was from several topics earlier. Students looked around at each other smiling, knowing what was coming…

And were shocked to watch him answer the question at length and in detail.

“Favoritism!” one might shout. “Is the kid’s father a donor!?” Is he the rabbi’s son? What’s going on here!!!?”

They approached the rabbi after class and asked him what happened, and this is what he said:

That boy has not asked a question the entire year. I didn’t want to discourage him. I didn’t want to create a situation where the second question would never come.

Rabbi Auerbach was not showing favoritism, despite how it might have appeared.

He was teaching every student according to his individual needs.

* * * 

Yosef had a need to be a leader, a need to be on top of other people.

If you have similar urges, his entire persona makes sense to you. And if not, he’s perplexing.

Yosef is that guy who when you have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing, he always seems busy trying to run something. He’s that 8th grader who spends a month rigorously campaigning to be president of his middle school student group when half the class really couldn’t care less. He’s that guy who will always climb and climb, unsatisfied with being on the bottom or middle of the totem poll when a top exists.

The proof is in the pudding. Yosef didn’t content himself with being just another prisoner who survives. He was the head prisoner! And he never settled for mediocrity. He pushed and kept his held up high, seeking every opportunity for advancement until he was on top of the world.

Yaakov knew this about his son Yosef. And he tried to foster it at a very young age. Yosef had needs that if ignored by his parents would have been very painful for him.

Unfortunately for Yaakov, he never figured out how to successfully balance raising Yosef according to Yosef’s needs without it hurting the other brothers. Maybe that would have been impossible. We’ll never know.

But understand: Every child is different. Raising each according to his own needs while not interfering with the needs of another is the ultimate goal. Inability to completely fulfill that goal does not render you exempt from the task of providing for each child accordingly.

It just makes life challenging.

I wish heroes in the modern world could be like Yosef (Joseph).Ever since I learned the story of this amazing individual I have admired how he had truly developed himself so well that there existed nothing that could phase him.

Let’s look at the Yosef story as I see it:

Here you have a cocky, young teenager.

His dad seems to like him more than all his other brothers and he keeps having dreams that allude to him someday ruling over his whole family.

And everything he does just makes his brothers jealous, so much so that they begin to despise him.

Their hate is so strong they contemplate killing him to solve the problem.

Oh, but Yosef is lucky.

They change their minds! They decide instead to sell him into slavery, dip his clothing in blood, and tell their father he was devoured by a wild beast.

So Yosef is a despised brother, bound to live out his miserable life as a slave in Egypt, not knowing whether or not his father even knows he’s alive.

Does he despair?

Does he give up hope?

Does he fall into utter depression?

Hardly.

He serves Potiphar with pride, bringing heaps of blessing to the house of this Egyptian family.

And things seem to go relatively well.

That is, of course, until Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses him of doing something and Yosef finds himself locked up in prison.

Just when you think things can’t get worse for Yosef, they most certainly do.

He goes from hated brother to slave to prisoner.

What a life!

So he cries, right?

Most certainly he screams and shouts?

Of course he contemplates suicide?

Not quite.

Instead his amazing, untouched personality once again shines through.

He becomes the head prisoner, beloved by all in his ward.

He makes the best of a miserable situation. So much so he even seizes an unlikely opportunity to get in good with the king of Egypt.

The plan takes its time, but most certainly works.

Yosef finds himself not only convincingly interpreting the Pharaoh’s dream, but giving advice on how Pharaoh could use that dream to make Egypt the richest and most powerful country in the entire world.

So what does Pharaoh do?

He puts Yosef in charge of the whole thing! He puts him in charge of all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself.

And Yosef, without despair or even mild frustration, goes from being a hated brother, to a slave, to a prisoner… to second-in-command of the most powerful country in the entire world.

He never gave up hope.

He stayed strong throughout and never complained.

If only I could once again have another hero like Yosef.

Maybe somewhere out there in the computer world someone has an answer to a question that’s been burning inside of me lately.

Why in the world is the holiday of Chanukah so popular?

I know why I love the holiday. What I don’t understand is why it seems to be the most popular Jewish holiday among reform, conservative, and assimilated Jews across the good ole USA.

There are two reasons for my confusion.

Hear me out:

1. Many people believe in the written Torah of the Jewish people. The Jewish Bible. The Old Testament. The Tanach. Whatever you want to call it, almost every Jew has a connection to the Jewish scriptures.

The problem: Chanukah isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.

The Chanukah story is featured prominently in the Apocrypha. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume there does not exist even one Jew who can honestly say this sentence, “I observe Chanukah because of what I studied from the Apocrypha.”

Most, however, could honestly say,

“Apocry-what!?”

There is one other location where we do learn all about the holiday of Chanukah.

The Oral Law. The Talmud. The oral tradition of the Jewish people which we were forced to write down after generation after generation of persecution brought fears that our traditions would be lost forever.

The problem: Reform, conservative, and I guess you can even say secular Jews hold at the core of their belief systems a firm rejection of the oral tradition. It’s one of the main things that separate them from the orthodox.

So why in the world would they be celebrating a holiday which is spoken of in a text they reject as valid!?

2. So it must be philosophical, right?

They agree with the message of Chanukah.

This then begs the obvious question: What is the message of Chanukah?

It is undeniable that one of the primary themes of Chanukah is the victory by any means necessary of tradition over assimilation. Standing up for what we believe in despite any tyranny that might interfere with our beliefs and practices.

The Greeks wanted to take away from us the Jewish religion. They wanted us to be Greeks.

Even many of the Jews wanted to toss away their Judaism and become Greeks. They were called Hellenists.

We stood up with all the strength we could muster against the oppressive forces of the Greeks and the Hellenists, against all the powers that were trying to take Judaism away from us.

And we won!!

That victory over both forced and voluntary assimilation became the holiday of Chanukah.

My question: If Chanukah is all about defeating the forces which cause Jews to assimilate, why are the Jews who most vehemently champion modern day assimilation celebrating this holiday at all, let alone with such frequency and alacrity!?

* * *  

I have two possible answers to my question, neither of which fully satisfy me.

If someone could propose a logical alternative, I would be grateful.

Answer #1: Ignorance. That’s ignorance of the history and meaning of Chanukah. They basically just do it because other people do it.

Answer #2: Presents and pretty candles. They do it because, gulp, it’s to them the Jewish Christmas. And just like Christmas has become so severely bastardized by Christians that the holiday has little or no religious significance anymore, so too Jews have taken Chanukah and (with all the irony in the world) secularized the fight against secularization.

I would like to give the benefit of the doubt and say both my answers are wrong.

I would like to, but…   

In this week’s parsha, Parshat Vayishlach, the text seems to take us on a wild, mysterious tangent to a tale of Yaakov wrestling the entire night with an angel. The story ends in the morning when we find Yaakov walking away, victorious yet injured, with a blessing from the angel and a brand new identity. The angel told Yaakov that from this point onward he would have two names: Yaakov and Yisrael.

I like to think of this story as sending a deep and eternal message to the Jewish people. The angel was a challenge sent by God to see how resilient and capable Yaakov truly was. It wasn’t a small challenge by any means. This is why it was so tremendous a struggle that Yaakov needed to battle through the whole night. The trial was in fact so great that he didn’t walk away without a scratch, but rather limped away weakened by his circumstances. Weakened, but a better Yaakov. A new Yaakov. A Yaakov who might not succeed in every challenge, but from this point onward most certainly CAN succeed in every challenge. At those key moments he is no longer Yaakov. He is Yisrael.

We all face difficulties. We all need to make decisions we would rather not. But with all of life’s challenges, the big decisions we all inevitably encounter, walking away unscathed is simply a luxury that almost never exists. We strive. Sometimes we succeed, but the challenges most certainly take their toll. But a success in one of life’s ultimate trials changes you forever. When you can defeat your inner desires and rise above them, with only your pure and perfect values shining forth, you have demonstrated to the world, and more importantly to yourself, that you are a different person. You did it once. You will do it again!

Shabbat Shalom.

At the risk of, God forbid, sounding like I’m condoning murder for even a millisecond, when listening to him talk you cannot help but feel his pain. You find yourself nodding in approval, or at least understanding, of the reasons behind such an incredible rage. And you sincerely wonder whether or not he was actually justified in his actions.

In this week’s parsha we learn about Dinah, the daughter of our patriarch Yaakov, who went out for a walk and was snatched and violated by Shechem. Yaakov and much of his family responded with what I guess one might call “friendly negotiation”. He worked as a diplomat, trying to come up with a peaceful solution for the major inevitable conflict between his own people and that of the people of Shechem. With all due respect, he responds to the situation like a lawyer or a politician.  Who among us could ever imagine the rage that must course through the veins of the family member of someone so grossly mistreated!? 

Shimon and Levi, two of Dinah’s brothers, did not respond like lawyers. They did not respond like politicians. They responded like outraged brothers. The Torah tells us (Breishit 34:25): “And it came to pass… that two of Yaakov’s sons, Shimon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and they came upon the city confidently, and killed every male.”   They besieged the city and murdered everybody!

And what happened? Their father lambasts them on the spot telling them: We are a miniscule family. With actions like this we’ll anger the people around us to the point where they’ll wipe us off the face of the planet! On his deathbed he exclaims (49:7) “Accursed is their rage for it is intense, and their wrath for it is harsh; I will separate them… and I will disperse them in Israel.”

And despite all this, it doesn’t matter how many times I read this parsha, I cannot help but feeling the same thing: I wish deep down that if I had been in Shimon and Levi’s shoes I would have had the strength and courage to respond exactly as they had.

Someone recently told me that Yaakov was trying to keep our people safe. What good would their rage have done if it resulted in the annihilation of the Jewish people?  I can’t help but look back at all the times that the Jews decided to take the moral “high” road, only to be beaten and battered some more by the people we tried to appease. We are a people that give up land and security, and get missiles dumped on us for our trouble.

Could it be that Shimon and Levi were right!?   

In this week’s Torah portion we find ourselves feeling really bad for one of the greatest heroes of Jewish history, Yaakov (Jacob).

We feel bad because we all know the pain and discomfort that accompanies someone taking advantage of you. Yaakov fell in love with Rachel, and Rachel’s father, Lavan, used Yaakov’s overwhelming emotions to manipulate him to do whatever Lavan demanded. The final results were a thankless fourteen years of labor, and an additional unwanted wife.

To accomplish his goals Lavan used the infamous wife swap trick, sending Rachel’s sister Leah to the wedding, covered up so she could pretend she was Rachel.

And in the morning, imagine Yaakov’s surprise!

As I was reading the parsha, feeling sympathy for Yaakov, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the thought:

Hey wait a second! Isn’t that exactly what Yaakov did to his father, Yitzchak (Isaac), in the previous week’s parsha!?!?

A refresher:

Yitzchak was dying. He was going to bless the son he felt should carry on the family traditions.

Yitzchak chose Aisav (Esau). But Yitzchak’s wife, Rivka (Rebecca), knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was making the wrong decision, and was willing to do whatever it took so her husband would bless Yaakov instead.

When Yitzchak sent Aisav out to hunt him something to eat, Rivka made a feast with some of their farm animals, and dressed up Yaakov to look and feel like the rough and hairy Aisav. Did I mention that Yitzchak’s eyes were starting to fail him?

The trick worked like a charm, with Yitzchak not discovering the mistake until Aisav returned expecting his blessing.

So, once again: Yaakov was deceived by Lavan. But Yaakov many years earlier, and in uncannily similar fashion, had duped his own father.

Which leads to the ultimate questions: Why do we feel bad for Yaakov when he gets tricked, but we don’t feel similar emotions when Yitzchak is tricked? Why in history does Yaakov get treated as a near flawless hero, while Lavan is badmouthed as being an awful, heartless villain?

The simple answers include motivation (a), historical and textual vindication (b), and surrounding information (c).

a) Yaakov and Rivka’s motivations were clearly to serve the world in the best way possible. Lavan’s motivations were deceptive and self-serving.

b) The results of Yaakov’s tricks were the “right person” being chosen for the job. Lavan simply hurt someone unnecessarily.

c) We have no indication here or anywhere else that Yaakov has ever done anything to harm another. On the other hand, Lavan’s story is filled with selfishness, greed, and aggression.   

But then we need to wonder:

If this is all true, then why did Yaakov suffer so much?

I think the answer lies in everything we’ve said so far.

It’s true that Yaakov’s actions were done with the purest of motivations by an incredible individual, and the results were exactly what the world needed…

But he tricked his father!

Yaakov took advantage of the most important person in his life, using his father’s age and physical disadvantages to manipulate the situation. This cannot be overlooked, and punishment was inevitable.

God’s wrath happens to people in a manner which we call “mida keneged mida” (measure for measure). The punishment has a connection to the action which earned the punishment. Yaakov tricked his father using a false identity, and later was punished through suffering at the hands of a ruse using a false identity. 

A trick for trick.

* * *

Happy Shabbat and Thanksgiving Shalom!

From the earliest moments of Jewish history, God has chosen a select few times to miraculously reveal Himself.

First he helped the millions of Jews escape from slavery in Egypt, replete with incredible miracles, such as the ten plagues and the splitting of the sea.

He followed us in the desert, repeatedly suspending the natural laws so that we could have enough to eat and drink, and so we could defend ourselves against our numerous far better equipped enemies.

But it seems like He’s been missing for a while.

If he’s a part of our daily lives, it’s been in subtle ways. Our lives might be loaded with daily miracles, but they are not obvious. We have to have enough insight to notice them.

That is, of course, until last Thursday…

That’s right. God’s back. In full effect. Why He chose me, do not know.

Here’s my story:

It’s 8:45 on Thursday night.

My wife decided to bake a cake for our Friday night dinner. It was supposed to take a half hour to bake, but she wasn’t feeling very well and wanted to go to sleep very early.

She came downstairs and asked me if I could take the cake out of the oven at 9:15.

I agreed…

But I’m a guy.

We make mistakes.

In fact, that’s the expectation.

So here I am, sitting at my computer. And I look at the time.

Ten o’clock.

“Ten o’clock!!!” I shout as I run up the stairs.

As I (in slow motion, of course) am running I have a mental picture of black smoke billowing out of my oven. I picture my wife standing over me with a hatchet repeatedly screaming, “9:15! What didn’t you understand? Do I have to do everything myself!?!”

And as I approached the oven with my life flashing before my eyes, I noticed that things didn’t seem all that bad. I cautiously removed the cake. It seemed maybe a little crispy, but not so blatant as to be completely obvious.

So I decided to do what any good husband would do.

I covered it and kept my mouth shut.

I figured I would just wait and see what would happen.

So, when did I speak up?

On Friday night when my wife uttered these words:

“I think this is the best cake I ever made!”

Me: “It’s funny that you should say that…” 

Why did I merit such an incredible miracle, such a suspension of the everyday laws of nature?

I guess I will never know.