Torah Thoughts – Vayishlah

Torah Thoughts
Vayishlah  Genesis 37:1 – 40:23
16 Kislev 5769            December 13, 2008

Have you ever been frightened of the repercussions of something you did?  Really, really scared that something you did would lead to total disaster for you; not immediate disaster, but one at a much later time? What was it? What were the potential consequences you were so afraid of?

In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob is scared beyond belief at the prospect of returning home to his parents’ house more than 20 years after he left. He’s scared because last he heard, his father Isaac was dying, his twin Esau was ready to kill him, and just about everyone was angry at him for tricking Isaac into blessing the “wrong” son. He hasn’t written, not a phone call, no e-mail, nothing. If you went back to your mother after all that time not calling, you’d be scared, too!

But Jacob left Canaan and the family with absolutely nothing. He’s coming back in this week’s Torah portion with flocks and herds, money, and most importantly, with family of his own: 2 wives, 2 concubines, 11 sons, Dinah and any other unmentioned daughters.  The consequences of his actions all those years ago could wipe out everything that was important to him now, everyone he loved. If you faced such circumstances, you’d panic too!

So with all this fear, panic and worry on his mind, Jacob sends his family ahead of him, sends all of his possessions ahead of him, and he is left alone, just like when he started. Alone, Jacob wrestles with a man (or a messenger from G!d) until nearly daybreak. Jacob struggles with this stranger, until the stranger wrenches Jacob’s hip almost out of its socket, and Jacob still doesn’t let him go. He holds onto the messenger, who is causing him intense pain, and Jacob demands a blessing from him. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, because he wrestled with a divine being. (Israel means wrestles/struggles with G!d.)

Who is this stranger? Is it an angel? Is it G!d? Is it a devil? One thing is certain: it can’t survive in the day light. All of us struggle with our own demons, many of us at night. Yet even when we are struggling with demons, many of us are like Jacob, we hold right on to the very things with which we are struggling. We hold on to the anger, the fear, the resentments that we know plague us and give us no rest. We hold on to that which we should probably let go.

Maybe the lesson is to find a way to turn the struggle we’re holding into a blessing for us, to find the blessing within the struggle. We need to know that something good will come out of the struggle, just like the blessing Jacob receives. The key to letting go of our fears, to letting go of the struggles, can be found in the blessings hidden within. Jacob’s blessing is in finally coming to a personal relationship with G!d, finally getting to know, experience and relate to his own G!d.

When Jacob set out on his journey, lo those many years ago, he had a dream on the road in which he saw a ladder with angels or messengers going up and down the ladder. In that dream, G!d spoke as “the G!d of Abraham and the G!d of Isaac.” But the text in that story didn’t mention “the G!d of Jacob.” When Jacob woke up from that dream he said, “G!d was in this place and I, I did not know it.”  What does that mean? It could mean he didn’t know G!d was there, or it could mean he didn’t know G!d, not in any meaningful way.

Now, after all these years, when Jacob finally heads home, realizing he has to reconcile with his brother Esau, Jacob has this second strange experience while he is just as alone as he was before. After holding onto the messenger, and demanding the blessing, Jacob  says “I have seen G!d face to face, and my life is preserved.” As a result of this encounter, he now has a relationship with his own G!d. Later, he meets up with and reconciles with his brother. He builds an altar and calls it “El-Elohay Yisrael,” the G!d of Israel. Finally, G!d is not just the G!d of grandfather and father, but also the G!d of Israel, Jacob. The struggle through which he has gone led him to the blessing of finding his connection to G!d, his personal relationship with G!d. He has overcome his fears, wrenched blessings from them, and in the process, he has found G!d, holiness, redemption, hope. Perhaps that relationship with G!d is what led him to be able to face the thing he feared the most.

May it be Your will, Holy One, that as we struggle with and overcome our own fears and demons, we wrestle the blessings out of the struggle. May we follow in Jacob’s example, finding and receiving the blessings brought by the liberation from our own demons, and may we come to see Your Presence, right here with us, as we struggle through the journeys of our lives.

Torah Thoughts – Hanukkah

Torah Thoughts
Hanukkah
December 21, 2008      25 Kislev, 5769

This time of year is one of major conflict for me. I don’t like having to defend Jewish tradition. I don’t like having to say that Hanukkah is not a big deal holiday and that we have to resist the temptation of our society’s to turn it into the Jewish American Christmas.  This has always been my least favorite time of the year. I’m on the defensive no matter what I say. If I say it’s ok to celebrate the secular festival of American consumerism, I am putting down Christmas. If I say that it’s not very Jewish to celebrate the season with all the gifts and decorations of Christmas, I’m taking away all the fun of the party.

But I heard a story a while ago that I find really useful for framing my discomfort and the resolution of it. It took a couple of years to come to terms with the story.   Here’s how it goes:

This old guy is about to die.  He is very uncomfortable about his impending death, worried about what will happen to the Jewish people. He goes to his rabbi. He complains bitterly of his worry and his need to hang on to life until or unless he can see that the future of the Jewish people is secure. In his magical wisdom, the rabbi brings him to the eighth year of the second Christian millennium, to the last month, and here he sees the Jewish people making a huge deal out of Hanukkah, an admittedly minor, insignificant holiday. He sees children getting gifts every day, celebrating with great joy this very minor holiday.  He hears incredibly insipid songs dedicated to spinning tops and potato pancakes, can’t figure out their meaning, but at least he recognizes the happiness and warmth of the songs.

Finally, after taking in this spectacle, he says to the rabbi, “If this is how they celebrate such a little holiday like Hanukkah, I can rest assured. Think how they must be observing the important holidays, like Sukkot and Shavuot, or even Shabbat!”

Many other rabbis who tell this story go on to lament what they see as the irony of this story – that we have lost sight of our authentic Jewish holidays and have focused a lot on a minor holiday. I differ with them here, and I base that difference on the very story of Hanukkah. Hanukkah celebrates a military victory that has little or no spiritual or religious value. The historical accounts of Hanukkah do not include the story with the cruse of oil lasting for 8 days. That story was attached to it much later, in Talmudic times, around 400 years after the battle was won but the war was lost. In other words, our ancestors saw miracles in the story in which G!d was not at all Self-evident, attributing the military victory to G!d. They then further added G!d into the Hanukkah story, making it a spiritual event, with the device of the “miracle” of the oil.

G!d doesn’t appear in burning bushes, in splitting seas or earthquakes, thunder or lightning in the Hanukkah story. In fact, G!d isn’t even mentioned much. The Maccabees are praised for their bravery in winning the battle, and there is a sense of awe attached to the legend of the oil, but I don’t remember anyone saying it was G!d’s direct hand that kept the oil burning for the 8 days, just a very strange experience, a miracle.  That G!d doesn’t appear in the story, doesn’t mean that G!d is not there, just that it’s our job to understand that G!d can be in the little things, in the unbelievable victory of the small over the mighty, in legends of rededication that we tell ourselves in order to sense the closeness of G!d in the less than spectacular.   The rabbis turned to the legend of the oil when memory of the military victory was fading, when they were oppressed, lost, down and out, and needed to find G!d, to find miracles, to find holiness in what they had left.

That’s a Hanukkah lesson I am comfortable with: that G!d is present to us, in the miracles of our daily lives, if we see G!d in the smaller, non-spectacular stories of our own lives and our times. Recognizing when we need to turn to G!d, and finding the Holy One right there with us, as we struggle with our own battles and our own losses. Hanukkah is a way of rededicating ourselves to seeing the light of G!d where G!d’s Presence may be most needed, most welcome, most missed. Hanukkah is a reminder that G!d’s light in our own lives is the miracle, and it lasts way more than 8 days!

So, in thinking about it, I’m not all that disturbed by that which other rabbis might find lamentable – that in our society we have elevated a minor holiday into major proportions. It means we’re still a dynamic religion, still growing, developing and changing. It means that the Judaism we celebrate today continues to have creative energy. May we learn, as our ancestors did, to infuse that creative energy with G!d’s Holy Presence, making more obvious to us the miracles of G!d in our own lives each and every day. May the candles we light this Hanukkah remind us that the light from G!d will never diminish, and may we enjoy the glow way after Hanukkah is over.

Happy Hanukkah.