So many questions! / Parshat Vayeshev

Question: What did you have for breakfast this morning? Did you choose what you had? If someone else determined the menu, did you decide which items on your plate you would eat, and how much of each you would consume? Are you free to make that choice?

This week’s parashah, Vayeshev, raises the thorny question of free will. The descendants of Abraham—Jacob and his family—are living in the Land. Their families, flocks and herds are thriving. All is well, or at least going well enough, until Joseph’s brothers, overcome with jealousy, in an act of sinat chinam (senseless hatred), sell him to a traveling band of merchants, who take Joseph down into Egypt. We know what will happen there, and not just because we’ve read the book so many times, but because Torah already told us. Even before Abraham and God contract the covenant of circumcision, God promises Abraham, who is still Abram at this point, progeny too numerous to count and the Land of Israel. But then God announces:

Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years; but I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve and in the end they shall go free with great wealth. (Genesis 15:13-14)

Slavery in Egypt was in the cards before Abram became Abraham, before the covenant of circumcision, before Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were born.

Torah is clearly telling us that God has a hand in sending Israel down into slavery as much as bringing them up out of bondage. Joseph confirms this when, after revealing his identity to his brothers and seeing the raw fear of revenge in their eyes, he assures them:

Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. (Genesis 45:4)

God’s hand is not subtle in the accounts of Genesis. The three men who visit Abraham in his tent to announce God’s intention for Sarah to bear a son are termed anashim (“people” - Genesis 17:2), but the story opens, Adonai appeared to [Abraham] by the terebinths of Mamre… (Genesis 18:1). The night before meeting his brother Esau, Jacob wrestles with an ish (“man” - singular of anashim). Jacob names the site of the wrestling match Peniel because “I have seen God face to face” (Genesis 32:31). In Parshat Vayeshev, Joseph encounters an ish (“man”), who appears out of nowhere. Like the three who visited Abraham and the one who wrestled Jacob, this man has no name. Commentaries too numerous to count presume him to be an angel sent to direct Joseph to his brothers, so that the rest of the drama—his brothers’ scheme to sell him and tell their father Joseph was dead, Joseph’s descent into Egypt, his subsequent descent into the dungeon, and his eventual rise to the office of prime minister of Egypt—would play out according to “God’s plan.”

Hashgachah is the notion that God exerts providential control over the events of our lives. It runs throughout Genesis and, indeed, throughout Hebrew Scriptures as a whole. It’s not that the Torah’s writers were disciples of B.F. Skinner, the MIT psychologist famous for Radical Behaviorism. Skinner was a hard determinist; he believed we do not have genuine free will, but only the illusion of free will. In contrast to Torah, Skinner was a devout atheist who believed our “decisions” and behavior are entirely the product of operant conditioning. Torah however, subscribes to what we might call “limited free will”—God pulls big strings and manipulates major events, but people choose their own paths in life within those parameters, and our physical and situational constraints. Most especially, people have moral free will.

Neurobiologists, psychologists, and philosophers have long been locked in fierce debate about free will: does it exist or is it an illusion? The debate rages within each field, and each field has its own questions and modes of exploration. Neurologists want to know if decisions are made at the level of the conscious mind, or prior to that, the result of chemical interactions and synaptic firings that our minds do not control. Psychologists debate causality and determinism, which are not the same. Philosophers jump into the fray debating metaphysical libertarianism and hard determinism. But in the end “free will” and “determinism” are not precisely defined terms, lending even greater complexity to the conversation. All agree that minimally, we humans believe ourselves to have free choice, and whether or not that is an illusion we would do well to recognize the factors that influence our decision-making.

Neurobiologists, psychologists, and philosophers, even those not enthusiastic about the claim for free will, certainly live as though they have it. Or is it that they appear to live as if they had it? Or can’t I help but see it that way? Without free will, we have enormous problems claiming that people bear moral responsibility for their actions. We also run the risk of a crisis of meaning: If I am not in control of my own life, what meaning can it have for me?

Pirke Avot tells us that R. Akiba cryptically taught: “All is foreseen but free will is given.” (Pirke Avot 3:19) How can both of these ideas operate in the same universe?

I want to suggest a way out of this conundrum from the perspective of Process Relational Theology.

From the intellectual and theological vantage point of Process Relational Theology the world is in God, and God is in everything in the world. As the Rabbis express it through midrash: Ha-kadosh barukh hu m’komo shel olam, v’ein olamo m’komo / God is the dwelling place of the world, but the world is not God’s dwelling place (Bereishit Rabbah 68:9, commenting on Psalm 90:1).  God permeates and saturates every part of the natural universe. God is as near and as intimate as our breath, our cells, the genes that animate us, the divine spark in each of us. God includes the sum total of all of our experiences, and the experiences of the entire universe. At the same time, God is also beyond the universe, but from this theological perspective, God is not a being with will and agency, as our ancestors’ imagined God to be. God encompasses the entire universe, experiences all that we experience. God is continuously changing and becoming because the universe is always in flux, always changing—and because we are changing continuously.

How does this understanding of God and the universe help us understand R. Akiba’s claim that, “All is foreseen but free will is given”? God, who encompasses the entire universe, also encompasses every possibility for the future. This does not abridge my ability to make a free decision. We all recognize that physical realities and emotional/social commitments limit our choices—but they do not eclipse them. “All is foreseen” in the sense that the universe includes all possibilities, and “free will is given” in the sense that we do have options and we do make deliberate choices.

Our biblical ancestors, looking backward, saw a pattern in the events they experienced; they “connected the dots” with a narrative line that featured hashgachah (divine providence) and included a forward-looking trajectory because they found comfort in the idea that there is a powerful God who is in control and who oversees the universe. The man whom Joseph encountered that day is an expression of this. Joseph’s assurance to his brothers that all that had unfolded was God’s pre-ordained plan is also an expression of this. Yet with all that, we shouldn’t lose sight of all the decisions Joseph made freely that propelled him from the dungeon to the throne room. Joseph’s story warns us of a danger hiding behind hashgachah (divine providence)—it’s easy to divest of responsibility and say everything is God’s will. Joseph doesn’t do that and nor should we.

So…what will you choose to have for breakfast tomorrow?

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Family reunion / Vayishlach

Do you think Jacob and Esau had t-shirts printed up to commemorate their family reunion? If they had, what would they say? Would Jacob’s t-shirt say, “Youngest rule; firstborn drool”? Would Esau’s t-shirt say, “Dad liked me best”? Would the Rabbis have made one for Jacob that said, ““I’m the good one”?

The twin brothers’ struggles throughout life center on the very material aspects of Jacob’s inheritance: who will get the extra portion due the firstborn? Who will thereby carry the mantle of the family and the covenant of God? Deceit and guile have been the hallmarks of their relationship; Jacob’s deceit and guile, that is. It is interesting, therefore, that the venue for the reunion is not a country club, lodge, or even a tent, but in the land of Seir in the country of Edom, out in the open, a place we might associate with vulnerability but more importantly honesty. You cannot hide much out in the open.

Jacob leaves Eretz Yisrael with nothing, but he does not return from Haran empty-handed. Jacob did quite well in Haran; he amassed great wealth. Torah has already told us how he played in futures and schemed to breed Laban’s flocks and herds. 

Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, and instructed them as follows: “Thus shall you say, ‘To my lord Esau, thus says your servant Jacob: I stayed with Laban and remained until now. I have acquired cattle, asses, sheep, and male and female slaves; and I send this message to my lord in the hope of gaining your favor.’” (Genesis 32:4-6)

The entrepreneurial spirit seems to be a family trait. Esau, too, is a wealth man:

The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “we came to your brother Esau; he himself is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.” (32:7)

Four hundred retainers? Esau has not only wealth but also great power. He has his own army. Not surprisingly, Esau views Jacob’s attempt to propitiate him with 200 she-goats and 20 he-goats; 200 ewes and 20 rams; 30 milch camels with their colts; 40 cows and 10 bulls; 20 she-asses and 10 he-asses (32:16-16) as a nice gesture, but assures Jacob, “I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours." (32:9) Only after Jacob pressures Esau to accept his gift does Esau relent. Which brother seems to be the one more attached to material wealth?

From Torah’s account, it is difficult to argue that Esau is all about material wealth and Jacob is all about the spirit, but that is precisely what the Rabbis attempt to do. They go to great lengths to paint Esau a crude and boorish man who seeks immediate gratification and is wholly unsuited to carry the covenant forward. In the rabbinic imagination Esau is the symbol, the stand-in for Rome and is said to have all the worst characteristics of the corrupt, pagan empire and its notorious emperors.

The Torah, without benefit of rabbinic commentaries, does not describe Esau in such unflattering terms. He is attentive to his father’s needs, a loyal son who labors to bring food home to the family, who lives simply (a man of the earth), and who is willing to reunite with the brother who tried to cheat him out of everything, and who does not hold a grudge or desire revenge. He is a self-made man. It’s difficult to ignore all this, yet the Rabbis succeed to a large degree. They go so far as to tell us that the twins’ personalities, priorities, and proclivities were determined even prior to birth. While yet in the womb, before even tasting life in this world, Jacob looked forward to olam ha-ba (the world-to-come) and Esau sought nothing more than the material pleasures of life in this world. Seder Eliyahu Zuta tells us,

When Jacob and Esau were in their mother’s womb, Jacob said to Esau, “Esau, my brother our father has two of us, even as there are two worlds before us—this world and the world-to-come. In this world there is eating, drinking, and the give-and-take of business. But with regard to all such activities, the world-to-come is quite different. If it be your wish, you take this world, and I will take the world-to-come.” Thus it came about that Esau took this world as his portion, and Jacob took the world-to-come as his.

It seems important to note here that Jacob presents this world and the world-to-come as an either/or decision and stakes his definitive claim on olam ha-ba, as if only one of them could prize the world-to-come, and seems to talk Esau into accepting this world alone. It is also important to note that Esau never responds. Jacob frames the choice, decides who gets which portion, and locks Esau into a decision he does not really make. Ever the manipulator. This is not, of course, how the Rabbis intend us to read this midrash. They expect us to understand that Jacob is the righteous brother, the tzaddik, from conception. Esau from the get-go is, well, Esau as we have been schooled to think of him: rough, pagan, unsophisticated, undeserving.

As types, this is a useful dichotomy. It helps us broaden our view and reconsider our own priorities. When are we being Jacob? When are we being Esau?

But this dichotomy also becomes embroiled in the Rabbis’ own contradictions that appear to paper over the text of Torah with hypocrisy, and surprisingly this, too, teaches us something precious and valuable. Midrash Eliyahu Zuta continues:

Now when Jacob came back from Laban’s house and Esau saw that Jacob had wives, children, menservants and maidservants, livestock, and silver and gold, he said to him, “Jacob, my brother, did you not say to me that you would take the world-to-come as your portion and that I would take this world as mine? How, then, did you come to all this wealth—wives, children, money, menservants, and maidservants? Why do you, like me, make use of this world?” Jacob replied, “What few possessions I have are what the Holy One has given me for my use in this world as the need arises.” In that instant, weighing the matter in his mind, Esau said to himself: If the Holy One has given him so much of this world, even though it is not his portion, how much more and more will God give him of the world-to-come, which is his portion!” (Seder Eliyahu Zuta 19)

How easy it is for us to maintain a narrative about someone—their moral caliber, their motivations, their actions, their behavior—and then explain even contradictory evidence to fit the narrative. In the imagination of the Rabbis, Jacob chose olam ha-ba over this material world. He protests he has but “few possessions,” which it is God’s will that he own, and which are for “my use in this world as the need arises.” But Jacob is hardly living at subsistence levels. We have seen him conniving to breed Laban’s animals in order to amass great wealth, and in this week’s parashah, we see him using that wealth to manipulate his brother’s feelings toward him. Remember the impressive roster of animals Jacob sends on ahead to conciliate Esau?

The Rabbis’ insistence that Jacob is spiritually pure and righteous, and their inability to see that their own words contradict the text is more than midrash. Our brains are constructed to notice and lock onto patterns. In fact, brain scientists tell us that our brains are pattern recognition machines. This capacity is largely what has helped the human species progress as it is has. But there is also a down side to this marvelous and unconscious skill. As neuroscientists who study brain plasticity say, “What fires together wires together.” When we observe certain behaviors or events and associate them with our feelings about someone, future behaviors and events tend to confirm and reinforce those feelings. For the Rabbis, Jacob can be seen only as spiritually pure and righteous, just as Esau can be seen only as crude, materialistic, and lacking in spiritual sensitivity. Accordingly, Jacob’s great wealth not only failed to prove that he, like Esau, had a stake in the material world, but even “proved” to the Rabbis the opposite: Jacob only accepted what God ordained he should have. He didn’t really want it, but what could he do?

If we maintain a narrative fixed in our minds we run two risks: First, narratives usually come with value judgments and presumptions. With a fixed narrative wired securely in our minds, we have a strong tendency to see everything a person says or does through the lens of that narrative. The “good” can do no wrong; the “bad” can do no right. And that leads to the second risk: In the case of someone who has exhibited consistent behavior over a long period, we fail to see when the pattern (the behavior) changes. Inadvertently, the Rabbis warn us of these dangers.

I suppose there is a third danger. We all have narratives about ourselves that include who and what we are, what we are capable of, what our limitations are, and more. How often do we make a decision because “that’s the only option for me”—at least, according to the narrative?

We apply such narratives to ourselves, to others in our lives, and to groups and nations around the world. “You know what they’re like…” “The only thing they care about is…” If someone asked us, “Are you prejudiced?” we would reject the very suggestion, yet carrying such narratives (as we all do) is the basis of prejudice: pre-judging.

But good news! Our brains create the ideas that constitute our minds, and our brains are plastic: they can change. Here Dr. Normal Doidge, the author of The Mind that Changes Itself explains neuroplasticity and its the dramatic implications, and here you can hear Dr. Michael Merzenich’s TED Talk on re-wiring the brain and the implications of that. Applied neuroplasticity? Dr. Richard Davidson describes research on neuroplasticity and meditation here. And this barely scratches the surface. (You might wish to begin with this highly simplified illustration of neurpasticity.)

Our Sages were quite correct: we can do teshuvah, we can reshape our minds, and we can change in very significant ways. Perhaps Jacob’s t-shirt should read, “I’m a work in progress and I’m working on me.” Come to think of it, we could all wear that t-shirt.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Roll away the stone and take a plunge into the well / Parshat Vayeitzei

When was the last time you growled at one of your devices because a webpage was slow to load? Cell phones and texting give us immediate access to people and a corresponding expectation that even if we leave a voice mail or a text message we should receive a response soon. We now have same-day delivery and movies-on-demand. Technology has fostered lateral growth—we have a wider grasp of the material world and far more data at our fingertips—but depth growth cannot be accelerated; it continues to take time and effort.

That message comes through in this week’s parashah, Vayeitzei. How appropriate that it features a well whose precious, live-giving resource lies deep below the surface and is difficult to access. That which is precious and critically necessary for life needs to be carefully protected and preserved. That is why wells in the ancient Near East were often covered with enormous stones. 

On the day following Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a ramp from earth to heaven, Torah provides some “comic relief.” Jacob comes upon a well covered with a stone; Torah makes a point of telling us it is large. We could have surmised as much. Shepherds from Haran have gathered around the well. They tend their three flocks and await the arrival of other shepherds because it will take many hands heaving and pushing in concert to slide the stone aside to water their flocks and herds. But no wait is necessary. Rachel arrives with her father’s flock and the shepherds identify her to Jacob as the daughter of Laban. Cue the romantic music; Jacob is instantaneously smitten. Now cue the hero theme music, because in true super-hero fashion,

Jacob went up and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of his uncle Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and broke into tears. Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father. (Genesis 29:10-12)

 

Jacob rolls the stone away, starts crying, and tells her he is her cousin. (That’s a lot to assimilate on the first date.)

Kabbalists see all of Torah as a mystical allegory pointing to deep truths lying beneath the surface of what is apparent to us—what we would call the physical world as it is. We are inclined to call it “reality.” Not so, they tell us. There is a deeper reality to which Torah provides the keys. You just need to know how to read Torah to unlock its secrets. The S’fat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger) tells us,

This reality—the well in the field—is found in every thing and in every one of Israel. Every thing contains a life-giving point that sustains it. Even that which appears to be as neglected as a field has such a hidden point within it. The human mind is always able to know this intuitively. This is the three flocks of sheep, which stand for wisdom, understanding, and awareness. With wisdom and intellect a person understands this inwardness: within all things dwells “the power of the Creator, within the creation.”

Those of us schooled in Western, rational, scientific thinking might be inclined to think that this is all a lot of irrational, mystical nonsense. That which is real, science proclaims, can be observed and measured, right? While it is true that scientific research is based largely on observation and measurement of the empirical world, experimentation and reproducible results, not to mention having predictive power, much science has proceeded from ideas concerning that which is neither observable nor measurable at the time the ideas are promulgated, and today involves notions concerning phenomena that are inherently unobservable and immeasurable. In 1930, the great physicist Werner Heisenberg found this untenable. He said, “It seems necessary to demand that no concept enter a theory which has not been experimentally verified at least to the same degree of accuracy as the experiments to be explained by the theory.”[1] But his mentor, Neils Bohr could and did conceive a reality not readily apparent through observation and measurement: “The procedure of measurement has an essential influence on the conditions on which the very definition of the physical quantities in question rests.”[2] In time, Heisenberg came to appreciate that Bohrs had it right, and dropped his positivistic, anti-metaphysical approach to Quantum Mechanics. Erwin Schrodinger also found Bohr’s ideas, about the superposition of two states, difficult to digest. His thought experiment, which famously came to be called Schrodinger’s Cat Paradox, sought to debunk the ideas first proffered by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen concerning measurement and superposition of states. There is a point in time when the cat exists in an indeterminate state: neither dead nor alive (or, if you prefer, both dead and alive). What became clearer and clearer to physicists is that there is far more to the universe than they can observe and measure, because when they do they alter the very reality they seek to observe and measure. Physicists are engaged in metaphysics, and by “metaphysics” I do not mean anything involving the supernatural, but rather the traditional meaning of the term: the explanation of the fundamental nature of being and the world, including cosmology and teleology.  For science, we must always remain open to the notion that our understanding of the world—our apparent reality—is incomplete and future generations may refine, revise, or even build new models of the universe.

In their own way, Kabbalists and mystics have known this for a long time, though the metaphysical reality of which they speak is spiritual and emotional and goes to the very core of how we conceive the universe and experience our lives in it. And because it is metaphysics from the realm of religion, it has implications for how we live our lives. The S’fat Emet continues:

But “the stone was large on the mouth of the well.” When corporeality spreads forth, there is hiding; intellect is not always joined to deed. The answer to this lies in “were gathered there”—all one’s desires and every part of the body and its limbs have to be gathered together as one places oneself in God’s hands before each deed. Then “they would roll the stone.”

…The fact that in Jacob’s case Scripture says va-yageil (Genesis 29:10—Torah has no vowel points; this word can be read either as “he rolled” or “he revealed”) means that he found it from within himself… Therefore, “he revealed it” from within himself.

The notion that a spark of the divine resides in each of us—indeed in everything—is a foundational Kabbalist notion. S’fat Emet reminds us that most of us have not come to know our true selves nor reached our full potential. We rely overmuch on tools of measurement that observe only the surface, not what is beneath. Hence, “When corporeality spreads forth, there is hiding; intellect is not always joined to deed.” When we understand the deeper truths of reality, we can unite every aspect of ourselves into one unified being in service of God—and our deeds will reflect the deeper truths we have learned rather than the shallow notions with which we began.

S’fat Emet is also saying more than this. He is saying that like Quantum physics, the metaphysical reality beneath our corporeal, physical experience is accessible, but first we must roll away the stone which is very “large”—and that takes great effort. We live in a world of immediate gratification and quick fixes. In the environment of expectations that engenders, S’fat Emet’s teaching comes as a sobering reminder: that which is truly worthwhile takes enormous effort. And effort requires time. Moral, intellectual, and spiritual growth and insight are not “on the surface” and simple to master. It takes enormous strength and effort to see the inner truth of what we are and of what we are capable. As S’fat Emet put it: “Within all things dwells ‘the power of the Creator, within the creation.’”

Lower your bucket into the well… slowly. The sparkling clear water you pull up has always been there, waiting for you to slow down and lower your bucket to pull it out.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

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[1] The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, 1930.

[2] “Quantum Mechanics and Physical Reality,” Nature, 136; pp. 1025-1026.

Wells of Wisdom / Toldot

Frank Zappa once said: Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.” I’m not so sure about the implied hierarchy here but I am certain that information, and even knowledge, are not wisdom. My mind reels when I consider how many sources and outlets there are for information, many at my fingertips thanks to a computer. But again, information and knowledge are not the same as wisdom. And alas! We cannot google wisdom and it is wisdom to need to live meaningful and purposeful lives.

Marcel Proust wrote, “We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, and effort which no one can spare us. (In Search of Lost Time Vol. II: Within a Budding Grove, 1919)

Isaac’s life exemplifies this principle. Isaac, who once lay beneath the blade of a knife, has a perspective and experiences most of us lack. He lives a quieter, less dramatic life than either his father or son, but within the quieter parameters, we find he is every bit as active in his search for divine wisdom.

In this week’s parashah, Toldot, there is much talk of wells. I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise given the arid desert in which the narratives take place. Proust’s wilderness? Water that comes from the arid earth is like wisdom, so difficult to acquire; and digging wells reminds us that the search for wisdom—genuine wisdom— is arduous. But it’s worth the effort because wisdom, like water, is life sustaining.

The Sfat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, 1847–1905) comments:

Regarding the wells the patriarchs dug: the word be’er (well) should be read in the context of, “Moses agreed to explain/clarify (bei’eir) this teaching” (Deuteronomy 1:5). In the same way, even before the Torah was received [at Mt. Sinai], the patriarchs explained/”welled” the wisdom of Creation, since everything was created through Torah and for God’s glory. We have to contemplate all of Creation in order to understand the Creator’s purpose. Abraham our Father explained/”welled” how to derive the love of God from all of Creation.

This passage is easier to understand in the original Hebrew than it is in translation. I hope I can succeed in explaining what the Sfat Emet is teaching us. He connects the word “well” (b’eir) in our parashah with the use of bei’eir, written precisely the same way in un-pointed Hebrew, which means to explicate, elucidate, clarify, or explain. The Sfat Emet thereby imagines the word “well” to be a verb, explaining that what Moses is doing when he teaches Torah to the Israelites is “welling.” Hence Isaac, in his flurry of well-digging, is explaining Torah, as Moses did. But Isaac lived long before matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai), so we might well ask: How could Isaac teach a Torah that hasn’t been given yet? The Sfat Emet offers us a beautiful response to this question: Torah existed before Creation; the Rabbis tell us (Bereishit Rabbah 1:1) it was the blueprint with which God fashioned the world.

The Sfat Emet’s comment is a prescient reminder about torah (I write torah with a lower-case “t” to connote divine wisdom, which is not necessary explicitly articulated in the Five Books of Moses). There is torah all about us: divine wisdom we learn from the world and from within. S’fat Emet reminds us that [capital “T”] Torah, the Five Books of Moses, and many would include the Talmud, or [lower case “t”] torah, divine wisdom from many sources, is available to us if we but dig for it.

We can see the many wells recounted in Parshat Toldot as signposts reminding us of seven sources of divine wisdom.

First, Isaac digs anew the wells of his father Abraham:

So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the wadi of Gerar where he settled. Isaac dug anew the wells that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death, and he gave them the same names that his father had given them. (Genesis 26:17-18)

Isaac re-dug the wells of his father Abraham. The generations before, and the sacred books and traditions they bequeathed us, have both Torah and torah to teach us.

The second, third, and fourth sources of wisdom we learn from the well of fresh spring water that Isaac’s servants find. (Genesis 26:19-21) As water is the metaphor for Torah—mayim chaim/life-giving waters, the well of fresh spring water reminds us that torah wisdom comes, as well, from new interpretations. The herdsmen of Gerar claim that the spring is theirs, as if to say, “This water, this wisdom, is ours.” The third source of wisdom is other traditions and cultures that possess valuable wisdom. Isaac drank their water.  Fourth is the wisdom gleaned from pain and suffering. The wells of Esek and Sitnah reflect the contention and struggles between Isaac and the herdsmen of Gerar. I’ve yet to speak with someone who has gone through a crisis, or experienced trauma, or survived a dangerous situation who has not gleaned wisdom from their experience.

Next Isaac moves on and digs a well he names Rehoboth, saying, “Now at last the Lord has granted us ample space to increase in the land” (Genesis 26:22). Rehoboth means, “wide, open space.” So, too, the world itself is the fifth source of divine wisdom, and it is ours if we dig within and open ourselves to make space to receive it.

Sixth, Torah tells us:

From there [Isaac] went up to Beer-sheba. That night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham.’ So [Isaac] built an altar there and invoked the Lord by name. Isaac pitched his tent there and his servants started digging a well. (Genesis 26:23-25)

A sixth source of wisdom comes to us from our relationship with the One, God who is ultimate, accessible, a well of compassion, justice, love, and wisdom that never dries up—whether we encounter God as being beyond us or within us.

Avimelekh arrives in Beersheba to make a peace treaty with Isaac. The following day Isaac digs two more wells.

Early in the morning, [Isaac and Avimelekh) exchanged oaths. Isaac then bade them farewell, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, and he said to him, “we have found water!” He named it Shiv’ah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheva to this day.[1] (Genesis 26:31-33)

The seventh source of divine wisdom emanates from living in the community of others, both those like us and those different from us. Isaac digs a well in Beersheba, where his parents had lived and where his descendants would live, but also a place where many other peoples would live. Isaac breaks ground for a new community to blossom and thrive. (Genesis 26:32-33)

From how many of these seven sources have you drawn wisdom? Is there one or more that have not been on your screen but perhaps have something to offer you?

Isaac works hard to find wisdom, and even harder to employ it in his life. He is not always successful any more than we are. He lives by the adage:

Don’t wish life were easier; wish you were better.

Don’t wish for fewer challenges; wish for more wisdom.

I imagine that Isaac’s daily prayer might be, “God, grant me strength to wrest wisdom from every corner of life in this universe, and the ability to use that wisdom in all that I do each day!”

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

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[1] This passage depends upon a pun in the Hebrew: Beersheba’s name is derived from a pun. The “Seven Wells” (sheva = seven) are also the “Well of Oath” (sh’vu-ah = oath).

The Little Prince's vision / Chayei Sara

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I was 12 when I first read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince in summer camp. I returned to it in high school when we read it in the original in French class. 

If you have read the book, you undoubtedly recall the drawing of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant, which children easily recognize, but adults—lacking imagination and insight—mistake for a hat.

The Little Prince travels through the universe to allay his loneliness. His first stop is Asteroid 325, home of a king, attired in magnificent royal habiliments, seated on a throne—and entirely alone. The king claims to rule over all the stars and planets, yet there is no one who obeys him because no one is even aware of him. The king’s way of ruling is to promulgate laws that coincide with what people are already doing or wish to do. Seeing that the Little Prince is reading, he imperiously demands:

I order you to keep reading! I order you! You see, you are already reading so my request is reasonable. I order you to keep reading. I do not allow insubordination, but I do not ask unreasonable things of my subjects. I order you to keep reading, but only if you want to. If you are going to stop, I command you to do so, but only if you are going to. I have a magnificent air of authority.

When the Little Prince asks the king to order the sun to set, the king consults an almanac and says yes, he will do so at 7:40 pm. The king wears the accouterments of a ruler, and speaks grandly, but his authority is meaningless, his power illusory.

The king leapt to mind as I perused this week’s parashah, Chayei Sara, and came upon a rabbinic comment, which I will share just as soon as I explain what the Rabbis are responding to in the Torah text. Preparing to send Eliezer off to Haran to find a wife for Isaac, Abraham adjures him,

“Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac” (Genesis 23:2-4).

We might be curious about the hand-under-the-thigh ritual, but the Rabbis latch onto a far more ordinary, seemingly prosaic, phrase: “the God of heaven and the God of the earth.” The Hebrew here is not the usual Elohei shamayim va’aretz/God of heaven and earth, but rather Elohei shamayim veilohei ha-aretz/God of heaven and God of earth. Rabbi Pinchas explains it this way:

Abraham said, “Before I made God known to God’s creatures, he was the God of heaven; now that I have made him known to his creatures he is the God of the earth.” (Genesis Rabbah 59:8)

Is R. Pinchas saying that God needs Abraham to make God known to people in order for God to rule on earth? Like the king on Asteroid 325, whom no one knows, God cannot influence people until they know God, which is to say, until they are mindful of God, aware that divinity resides in them, fully conscious of their moral capacity, and attuned to their spiritual power. Without these, people simply do what they want to do, or what is instinctual, dutifully obeying the vapid commands of the king on Asteroid 325: they are beholden only to themselves.  We all need to know that, and while we sometimes succeed at reminding ourselves of our divine potential and capacity, often we need another to remind us or tell us. Conversely, we can be that someone who reminds another person.

Abraham’s role is to introduce into the world some radical ideas: People are not just subjects of the King, but children of the King. People are not merely animals that eat, breath, compete and procreate, but human beings endowed with insight, moral discernment, and the capacity for so much good. People are far more than slaves to the Sovereign; they are architects, designers, and builders of civilization and guardians of the planet. Knowing God means recognizing our own moral and divine potential.

Without awareness, we cannot know that. And so the Rabbis also explain a verse from the book of the prophet Isaiah:

“You are My witnesses—declares the Lord—My servant, whom I have chosen, to the end that you may take thought and believe in Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none shall exist” (Isaiah 43:10). R. Shimon bar Yochai explained: “If you are my witnesses then I am the One, the first One, neither shall there be any after Me. But if you are not My witnesses, I am not, as it were, God.” (P’sikta D’Rav Kahana, 12)

Without mindfulness, we cannot fulfill our mandate.

Long ago, I read a moving story recounted by Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn, published in several books, and circulated far and wide through the internet. Perhaps you’ve already heard it. It is told by the father of a learning-disabled boy named Shaya, who longs to play baseball with his peers although he barely knows how to hold a bat. Shaya watches the boys in his class playing and asks to join them. With a shrug, Shaya is given an at-bat in the ninth inning since they are behind by six runs in the eighth. By the time the boy comes to bat, however, the score is even. Shaya swings clumsily and misses the first two pitches, so the pitcher takes a few steps forward and tosses the ball gently. Shaya swings and hits the ball, a slow grounder. The opposing team throws the ball wildly far over the first baseman’s head, allowing Shaya to run to first. Again the ball is thrown too far, and Shaya reaches second base. The children cheer him on. He rounds third and runs to home with the children from both teams cheering him on. Shaya’s home run wins the game.

God says,

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy. (Leviticus 19:2)

Shaya’s classmates understand this verse in its fullest sense. They were God’s witnesses.

Is there someone who reminds you of the divine spark of holiness within you, your value and potential? When was the last time you reminded someone else? The question before us today and every day, especially in all the challenging, stressful, aggravating and infuriating situations we face at work and at home, with friends, family and community, is: Can we see, and do we help others to see, beyond the ordinary, beyond the mundane? Do we see the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant, or does our vision extend no further than a mere hat? Can we see beyond what is, to what might be?

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Housekeeping in a cave. Really? / Vayera

From the Boy Scouts (here and here) to the Catholic Church (here and here) to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community (here and here) to the Evangelical churches (here and here) to the U.S. Army (here), there is an epidemic of child sexual abuse here in America—abuse that is either tacitly accepted, deviously covered up, or both.

After the Flood, God promises never again to destroy the entire world, but S’dom and Gomorrah are not the entire world; they are two cities. S’dom and Gomorrah are incinerated when, in cinematic technicolor drama, fire and brimstone rain down from heaven. Lot and his family escape the city but his sons-in-law refuse to heed his warning and do not leave, and then Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. As a result, Lot and his two daughters are the sole survivors of the catastrophic annihilation. They find their way to a cave, which they make their home and where the daughters engage in incest with their father.

The older [daughter] now said to the younger [sister], “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to consort with us in the way of all the world. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, that we may maintain life through our father.” That night they made their father drink wine, and the older one went in and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. (Genesis 19:31-33)

The following night this scene is repeated with the younger daughter. There are so many troubling questions about this story. Let’s dig in.

First, we find the arayot (sexual prohibitions) enumerated in Leviticus chapter 18. A man may not have sex with his father’s wife, or his sister or half-sister (whether they live in the same household or not), his granddaughter, aunt, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, or a woman and her daughter. Do you notice a glaring omission? Torah does not explicitly forbid a man from having sex with his own biological daughter. How can that be? Many explanations have been offered, ranging from the argument that father-daughter incest is so taboo, it was unnecessary for Torah to list it; to the argument that implicit in the prohibition against having sex with a woman and her daughter is the prohibition against a man having sexing with his own daughter. Concerning the first, if strong taboos need not be covered by Torah’s strictures, why does Torah bother to mention murder and theft, as well as a host of blood taboos that constitute many of the laws of tum’ah and taharah (ritual purity)? Concerning the second, having sex with both a mother and her daughter is termed zimah (depravity), a term not applied to the other arayot in Chapter 18. Torah has in mind not one’s wife and her daughter, but another woman and that woman’s daughter.

Torah appears to obviate the accusation that Lot committed forbidden incest in three ways: First, Lot is drunk and unaware. Torah is telling us that Lot is not a conscious partner to the act. One cannot help asking how, if he is not conscious, he manages to be a partner at all and successfully impregnate both daughters. Second, it is not Lot who approaches his daughters, but the daughters who initiate sex with their unsuspecting father. Third, the daughters fear that they, like Noah and his family, are the only people on earth, and they take it upon themselves to repopulate the world in the only way possible (Genesis Rabbah 51:8). We noted that their husbands remained in S’dom and died, and their mother turned into a pillar of salt.

But are they the only living souls? Clearly not, and Torah makes it clear that they know this. Just prior to the daughters’ conversation with one another concerning their father, we are told:

Lot went up from Zoar and settled in the hill country with his daughters, for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar; and he and his two daughters lived in a cave. (Genesis 19:30)

Lot and his daughters pass through the city of Zoar. How can they pass through a city without encountering the people living there? And why should Lot be afraid to live in Zoar? How can the daughters, who were just recently in Zoar, think there were no other people on earth? Rashi says Lot was afraid to settle in Zoar due to its proximity to S’dom, but he does not say that Zoar was decimated in the deluge of fire and brimstone. Somewhat conversely, Midrash Genesis Rabbah 51:6 claims that Zoar, too, was destroyed in the sulfurous rain of fire. If that were the case, how could Lot and his daughters have visited it after the destruction?

I cannot help wondering if an earlier version of the story had Lot taking his daughters through Zoar and far away from any semblance of civilization. A cave. A cave? People lived, if not in houses, at least in tents, not caves. The only cave mentioned in Genesis, which we will come to in chapter 23, is the burial cave in Machpelah. Far from the madding crowd, Lot could do with his daughters what he had readily offered and thought perfectly fine for the Sodomites only the day before.

The story of Lot and his daughters evokes an image of the story of Noah. Immediately following the Flood—a watery deluge of universal proportion, according to the Torah—Noah gets drunk and something enigmatic happens in his tent. As Torah tells the story, Noah’s son Ham “sees” his father naked and trots off to bring his brothers to the peep show. We are to believe that the extent of Ham’s sin was his disrespect toward his father. But Torah provides hints that his encounter with his father was sexual. Torah reports that, Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him (Genesis 9:24). Not seen, but done. And in any case, Leviticus uses the expression le’galot ervah (to uncover nakedness) repeatedly in chapter 18 to connote sexual intercourse; Leviticus  20:17 explicitly says to “see nakedness” when it intends sexual intercourse. Is it possible, then, that the sin of Ham, was incest? Moreover, perhaps the story about Noah, has also reversed the generations: perhaps Noah initiated sex with his son, Ham.

It seems to me that we may have worked-over versions of two deeply troubling stories of incest that occur in the aftermath of destruction raining down from heaven. The original stories may have featured: in the first story, a father initiating a sexual relationship with his son; and in the second story, a father initiating a sexual relationship with his daughters. The versions preserved in Torah neatly invert the stories: Both fathers are sound asleep when the sexual act happens. It is not Noah who initiates sexual contact, but rather Ham. I presume this is in order to protect the image of Noah. After all, Noah is ish tzaddik tamim haya b’dorotav “a righteous man, above reproach in his generation (Genesis 6:9). Lot, even less than Noah, could be thought of as a man who committed incest with his daughters. He is, after all, the nephew of Abraham. Hence, his daughters are said to initiate the incest. While Ham is certainly not a child—he is old enough to be married—Torah does not tell us the age of Lot’s daughters. They could well be 13 or 14 years old. When was the last time you heard of someone raping his or her sleeping parent?

Aside from being either a curious observation of textual transmission and emendation (or, if you prefer, an outrageous suggestion) what can be garnered from reading the text this way? I would hold that it can serve as a sober reminder of the danger of sweeping adult incestuous relationships with children—indeed any and all child sexual abuse—under the carpet by minimizing them, concealing them, denying them, changing the story, and blaming the victim.

The University of New Hampshire boasts a “Crimes Against Children Research Center.”  Studies by Dr. David Finkelhor, director of the Center, provide these chilling statistics:

• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;
• Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident;
• During a one-year period in the U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
• Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
• Children are most vulnerable to child sexual abuse between the ages of 7 and 13.

Understood this way, the story of Lot and his daughters helps shine the spotlight on the primary offenders of child sexual abuse: most sexually abused children know their offender, and often that offender is a relative (such as a father, uncle, or brother), or a coach, scout leader, teacher, or member of the clergy—someone the child should be able to trust to protect him or her.

With this in mind, here are resources for learning to recognize signs that a child has been sexually abused:

• http://www.stopitnow.org/warning_signs_child_behavior
• http://www.nsopw.gov/en/Education/RecognizingSexualAbuse?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7b91QBaOFs

Children are the heritage of Adonai, the fruit of the womb is [God’s] reward. (Psalm 127:3)

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Today's pop quiz / Lech Lecha

Question #1: Who is the first person in the Torah to bless someone? No points if you say God, because I stipulated a person.

Question #2: Is Abraham a prophet, patriarch, leader, nation-builder, or general? 

In good Talmudic fashion, I’ll address the second question first. The answer is: yes. In parshat Lech Lecha, Torah recounts internecine warfare in the land of Canaan during Abraham’s lifetime. Tribal kings battle one another, joining forces with other kings, subduing tribes, rebelling against those who dominate them, seizing the spoils of war, taking hostages, regrouping, realigning, and fighting again. Abraham manages to stay out of the on-going wars until a fugitive from a war involving Sodom and Gomorrah informs him that his nephew, Lot, has been taken hostage. Torah reports:

When Avram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he mustered his retainers, born into his household, numbering three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. At night, he and his servants deployed against them and defeated them; and he pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. He brought back all the possessions; he also brought back his kinsman Lot and his possessions, and the women and the rest of the people. (Genesis 14:14-16)

Abraham, God’s prophet, the patriarch and progenitor of the nation of Israel, is also a general. The model of Abraham living relatively isolated from other peoples, and responding only when one of his own is threatened, is familiar to us all. It is how Jews lived throughout much (but not all of) history until the modern age. Modernity, with its newfound freedoms and opportunities brought Jews both literally and figuratively out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of society. Yet our identity continued to be largely ethnic: our values, priorities, customs, culinary tastes, socializing patterns, and even humor were decidedly “Jewish.” And while it may not be possible to objectively nail down those with any measure of specificity—and in reality there was always great diversity among the Jewish communities around the world—the important thing is that we perceived there to be Jewish customs, Jewish food, Jewish humor, and comfort in socializing with other Jews.

I recall, as a teenager, the struggle to secure freedom for Jews in the former Soviet Union. We organized marches and protests, wrote letters, wore buttons, t-shirts, and bracelets engraved with the names of Refuseniks, and made phone calls to the Soviet Union. We didn’t know any of these people personally, but that didn’t matter. I recall a summer camp friend whose family attended a Presbyterian church asking me why we went to so much effort for people we didn’t know. The only response I could muster was, “Because they are family.” That made no sense to her.

I recall in 1977 the quiet movement to collect funds—we weren’t sure initially for what purpose—that turned out to be to support Operation Moses, which airlifted 7,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, extracting them from the jaws of Ethiopia’s oppressive Marxist regime. Two years earlier, the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Goren, had written, “You are our brothers, you are our blood and our flesh.” To say “you are our blood and our flesh” is to say “you are family.” Here is a community of Jews isolated from the rest of world Jewry for virtually all of their existence, observing pre-Talmudic Judaism, yet they are us.

Shaul Magid has recently published a new book titled, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society. He argues that the two primary pillars of Jewish American identity, the Holocaust and the State of Israel, will not hold a roof over the heads of the next generation. We live in a postethnic world, which David Hollinger defines this way:

A postethnic perspective favors voluntary over involuntary affiliations, balances an appreciation for communities of descent with a determination to make room for new communities, and promotes solidarities of wide scope that incorporate people with different ethnic and racial backgrounds. A postethnic perspective resists the grounding of knowledge and moral values in blood and history, but works within the last generation's recognition that many of the ideas and values once taken to be universal are specific to certain cultures. (Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, p. 3)

As a result of cultural shifts in America and high rates of intermarriage, traditional notions of peoplehood are collapsing. In fact, traditional notions of halakhah, monotheism, and chosenness are giving way to alternative understandings of observance, theology, and our relationship to the non-Jewish world. The old edifice is crumbling; it can no longer support Jewish survival. A new structure, an alternative mode of being, and identifying as, Jewish is needed.

This brings us back to Quiz Question #1: Who was the first person in the Torah to bless someone? If you said King Melchizedek of Shalem you are correct. Torah tells us:

King Melchizedek of Shalem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High. He blessed him saying, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your foes into your hand.” (Genesis 14:18-20)

Our sense of connection with the non-Jewish world has ancient roots. Abraham eats the bread and drinks the wine that Melchizedek brings out and offers ritualistically—in a ritual that could not possibly be considered in any way “Jewish” but which forged a strong bond between them. Many generations later, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, hearing about Israel’s escape from the clutches of Pharaoh, brings Moses’ wife and children to him in the Wilderness. Torah recounts:

Jethro rejoiced over all the kindness that the Lord had shown Israel when He delivered them from the Egyptians. “Blessed be the Lord,” Jethro said, “who delivered you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh, and who delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, yes, by the result of their very schemes against [the people].” And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to partake of the meal before God with Moses’ father-in-law. (Exodus 18:9-12)

 

Jethro and Abraham. Engraving by Gerard Jollain from 1670 La Saincte Bible.

Time and the contingencies of history served to shape us into an insular people whose survival depended upon seeing ourselves as set apart from the rest of the world. There were Jews and there were non-Jews, sometimes even defining ourselves by who we are not, what we don’t do, what we don’t eat, where we don’t live.

One more question on today’s pop quiz. Question #3: Who is the prophet who said, “The Times They Are a-Changin’”?

Bob Dylan warned an entire nation to embrace change rather than fear it. The proposition of shedding the pillars and attributes of Jewish identity is daunting and even threatening. We can no longer count on the old standbys (bris, bar mitzvah, weddings, and funerals, not to mention anti-Semitism) to keep people “in the fold.” We now need to stretch ourselves and meet the religious and spiritual needs of people who have other choices. Change is frightening, but also opens us to a world of exciting possibilities. Happily, ours is a rich tradition and civilization with much to offer, and a long, proud history of interpretation and re-interpretation in every generation to make Judaism ever fresh, responsive, and meaningful. Rather than entering the future wringing our hands and fearing the worst, let us look forward to new insights, meaningful practice, and an authentic sense of community based not only on who are ancestors were, but on who we are.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman