Joseph, Monsey and The Jewish Now - Vayigash 5780 / 2020
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Vayigash 5780 / 2020
Joseph, Monsey and The Jewish Now
This week, in Torah, we have the biggest reveal.
(Bigger even than the 15 foot, shell encrusted Menorah and matching giant, shell encrusted dreidel I saw this week in Miami, but I digress)
You see
After Judah and his brothers throw their brother, Joseph into a pit
After they sell him into slavery
And tell their father that he is dead
And keep that secret for the rest of their lives
For decades, up until this moment
The biggest reveal is when
This very brother Joseph, against unthinkable odds
Not only has survived but has somehow become one of the most powerful people in Egypt
So that when the aforementioned brothers need to come and beg for food to survive world wide famine
And when Joseph recognizes them but they do not recognize him
And when one of the older brothers, Judah, not knowing he is addressing his own brother Joseph that he hurt so badly
When Judah pleads and begs for the protection of the littlest brother, and out of love for his father, admitting specifically in this moment to his life’s great mistakes, including hurting Joseph
saying he, Judah cannot, under any circumstances, repeat them
Saying all this to what he thinks is a total stranger
The biggest reveal is when this stranger
Reveals himself to be
None other than Joseph.
It takes chapters and chapters for this revelation to settle
It takes chapters and chapters for the present, that is,
The idea that they are reunited safely and things can be, are different now
To overcome the pull of the past
Especially what was a largely unarticulated, taboo past
A past that included unthinkable pain and destruction, violence of mythic proportion, and erasure.
The rabbis
Never one to skip a good dark mood or subversive read
In midrash / commentary highlight and interject moments when the fear of the brothers
-- Namely, that Joseph will seek revenge --
when that fear arises, comes to the surface.
Even if those of us in this room have never actually thrown a family member into a pit and / or sold a relative into slavery
Not hard to imagine some residual guilt playing out
Not hard to imagine, like the rabbis, that the brothers always sorted of waited for the other show to drop
But I think Joseph, too, is uneasy after the reunion
Right? Because even Joseph was the victim, he was not blameless
Even though he seems to grow as we follow his story
He does not seem what we would call “resolved”
Remember Joseph not only recognizes his brothers way before they recognize him
He creates that elaborate set up where they literally have to choose again -- between themselves and one little brother
And then when all is revealed
Joseph makes this grand speech
Seemingly, in my read, one he has practiced more than a few times
“Don’t worry, or be too hard on yourselves…you thought you meant to harm me but God meant it for good, to save us all from the famine…”
“Go home and get Dad, tell him I sent for him….”
“We will provide for everything you need”
Which is why, after the big reveal and Joseph’s rather sanctimonious speech and while the music is swelling and the caravans are packed
And the brothers are leaving and as he sends them off to get Jacob, their father
It is so excellent and telling that
Joseph says one last thing:
Oh, by the way, “Al tirgezu baderech”
“Don’t, you know, get into any trouble on the way….
Bye!”
Strange verb, that ragaz, doesn’t really have happy connotations
Based on the root in Tanakh could mean something like:
Don’t be quarrelsome on the way, don’t fight
Don’t agitate each other
Don’t stir everything up (Isaiah 28:21, Isaiah 14:9)
Don’t infuriate each other (Ezekiel 16:43)
Don’t be disturbed (I Sam. 28:15)
Don’t provoke (Job 12:6)
In fact, it is a verb often associated with earthquakes, tremors (I Sam. 14:15)
Like an involuntary physical response based in fear (Joel 2:1, Hab. 3:16)
Joseph suggests to his brothers, “Don’t be agitated.”
How can I say it?
It’s not really like Joseph is saying, “Have a good trip.”
Not quite as obvious as, “Try not to throw anyone in a pit on the way home”
But still
“Al tirgezu baderech” / “Don’t agitate each other on the way”
is just passive aggressive enough
The timing just so
It seems to betray that Joseph, for all his fancy speeches,
also may not be fully done with the past
Or, perhaps it is just that
Maybe even in a kind of solidarity of sorts
Joseph knows precisely how hard it is to not let the past dictate the present
And he feels that this holy errand to tell their father that he is still alive
It is too important to be overshadowed by what has happened long ago
Even by something as profound and traumatic as what has happened
Either way the past has a way of staying live, it is close
And as you might imagine
Our rabbis also have a few thoughts on just what Joseph means with this ominous send off:
But before we look
I want to offer that in this moment in our country
After the tragedy in Monsey and the attack on Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg and his family and guests in his own house with the Hanukkah candles still burning
That we Jews, all of us who do Jewish together, we too, in this moment, we have lived through a great deal
As part of the Jewish community in this time
It is not that we are to blame as Joseph’s brothers certainly were
But like Joseph and his brothers, we, too, we understand that the past is very close to us, some of it is also, if not taboo, unresolved
After the shoah and so much else, trying to be a minority here, how could it be?
Like in Torah
The past is very close, always with us, and, if we are not careful, it takes the place of the present
See, especially with the heartbreaking and violent attack in Monsey
especially in this latest case –
Against chasidim, we can picture them, the Hanukkah lights, a powerful symbol
Because it was a knife and not a gun (and I am thankful at least there was no gun and so we are not grieving the death of dozens)
But because of these things,
Almost immediately, the attack takes on a mythic quality in our minds, it sounds like something we have heard about from another time, that we know from a story, a fragment of something, a tale from long ago
A man with a knife in the rabbi’s house on Hanukkah
As if the past is coming back
A resurfacing of our mythic past
A mythic anti-Semitism rearing its head
Even if it is not quite real, it has a pull
And we, like Joseph’s brothers, can be in danger of our unconsciously replacing the present with the past
We can be in danger of forgetting the now.
We can de-contextualize
For example, in regards to the recent incidents,
as Donniel Hartman correctly notes – these are not systemic, government sponsored attacks, these are one-offs, perpetrated by often mentally ill, rogue operators that the government (maybe not in all the ways we would like, but still) works to combat. We are not alone as we were in other times in our history, rather we are surrounded by allies. (see Times of Israel Op-Ed from week of 1.3)
But if we are not careful, in our fear
We can forget it is not the past, we can forget we are on a holy mission, like Joseph’s brothers,
We can forget we have work to do in the Jewish now.
And it turns out,
Through the interpretations of the rabbis
Joseph’s strange admonition to his brothers,
“Al tirgezu baderech” / “Don’t get caught up on the way”
May be of help to us in this moment, too.
One interpretation is from Talmud, Ta’anit (10b)
Where the rabbis teach Joseph is really giving his brothers… travel advice,
That is, “Al tirgizu baderech” / “Don’t get caught up on the way” means,
Get to your destination before the sun has set
Don’t travel in the dark.
Don’t be so anxious to move ahead that you endanger yourself.
Some of us are so weary from the current events of our day,
the road seems so steep
It can be easy to think there is nothing in the world but a repetition of the past
It can be easy to fall into despair
To not care if we travel in the night
But, it is important, this Talmud offers that if darkness is coming
Even the darkness as strong as the darkest chapters in our history
We never submit ourselves to that darkness,
Walking in circles, repeating what was
Rather, when it is dark, we stop and find a place to rest
Why? Because we know the way is longer still
And the present is not set, it has not yet been determined, we have to find it
We have to rest because we need to be able to see where we are going
Dafka because where we are going is NOT where we have been
We have to be able to travel by day, to see, precisely because we are in the process of going somewhere new.
Another interpretation is from Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
He teaches that Joseph means,
Not, “Don’t be disturbed ON the way” but “Don’t be disturbed BY the way”
In other words,
Accept the way just as it is
Accept that this is what happened then and that this is what is happening now
And accept that we cannot control where we were, we can only decide where we are now
Because if we fight where we are now
If we pretend to be somewhere else,
Somewhere in the past where all is known
or an imagined future where we can have no real responsibility
We will never be able to take the necessary steps to get where we need to go
Finally, there is one last interpretation
And it is the most obvious, “Al tirgizu baderech”means, “Don’t blame each other for what happened.” (Radak to 45:24)
Ha’emek Davar (to 45:24) teaches that
Joseph uses the word “baderekh” / “on the way” because Joseph is speaking about the way of wisdom
And there is nothing on the way of wisdom, NOTHING that requires the constant agitation, disturbance, shaking, and provocation of reliving what is already done and past. Not even in the case of Joseph’s brothers.
There comes a time to put it down. Not to forget but to know: It is done, it is past.
This is also what I want to say to us:
The Jewish past is not the Jewish now
We must remember this in our personal lives, for the sake of t’shuvah and forgiveness
And we must also remember this in our collective Jewish life:
The Jewish past is not the Jewish now
So that IF anti-semitism dares to come again out of the corners, as it might
Enabled, we must admit, by the torn safety nets in the society we have built and inhabited
When a moment in our time seems like déjà vu, as if the past is rising to grab each of us by the collar
We must remember
We are on our way to somewhere else
We are in the Jewish now
and that Jewish now includes babies and Jews of color and people who are Jew curious and lovers of Jews and Jews of all genders and sexual orientations and the Jews I just saw in Miami with big gold Jewish stars on their bare chests, and the Persian L.A. Jews like from R. Tarlan’s family and the Upper West Side Jews who come like pilgrims to visit R. Jessica and the Jews who love Israel and Jews who are distressed by Israel and Jews who don’t care about Israel and Jews who are religious but don’t believe in God and Jewish spiritual junkies who hate organized religion and Sephardim and observant Jews and tentative Jews and old Jews, poor Jews, rich and tasteful Jews and rich and tacky Jews, intellectual Jews and simple Jews, environmental Jews, activist Jews, corrupt Jews
You get my point
The Jewish now is right here, look around
You know it, you’ve seen it, we and many, many others are building it
And so this shabbat I give you t’fillat ha-derekh / (on your handout sheets)
The prayer for traveling, the prayer for the way
Because the rabbis say we should say that prayer when we understand we are going somewhere, when we are going on our way
So we can ask for protection from robbers and all we can already imagine
And so we can ask for protection from being ambushed, all the things we cannot yet imagine
So that our steps are led to peace, guided in peace
So we can find grace, kindness and compassion in the eyes of our creator and in the eyes of all who see us.
I cannot think of a better time for this prayer, this is our prayer
Because make no mistake:
On this Shabbat in San Francisco, in the year 2020
We are traveling through the Jewish now.