Author: iWe

Yisro comes to the Jewish people, sees that Moshe is spending all day adjudicating cases, and he gives some management advice to establish a court system. And Moshe takes the advice on board.

Some years ago, I heard at a post-wedding party that the lesson we learn from Moshe’s actions is that one should listen to one’s father-in-law. 

Upon consideration, it seems that the opposite is in fact true! The Torah is teaching us a pair of lessons. The first of these lessons is that when the Torah does not tell us how to accomplish an end, we are supposed to be receptive to good ideas. 

But the second lesson speaks specifically to a problem that is quite common in today’s Torah world: we listen to someone because of who they are, instead of because of the value of what they say!

In this case, Moshe is approached by a man who is not Jewish – and is in fact a high priest for a pagan religion. But he is bringing good advice. And that Moshe takes the advice, despite the fact that his father-in-law was the bearer, teaches us that what matters is the quality of the information, not the identity of the person who is offering it.

Immediately after the ten commandments are given, at the tail end of Parshas Yisro, there is a very peculiar little section.

And the people stood far away, and Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.  And the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the people of Israel, You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.  You shall not make with me gods of silver, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold.  (Ex. 20:18-20)

And in this section, Hashem tells us a wealth of information! For example, by telling us that He was talking to us from heaven (and doing it, as He does, always near a thing like a pillar or darkness or the Tabernacle but never from the thing itself), Hashem is telling us that His voice is never emanating from a physical object. And when the Torah pairs this statement with the commandment to never make a physical representation of Hashem, Hashem is telling us that he is not in the physical world! So any representation that is physical is actually a lie. Our G-d is not corporeal. We must never think otherwise.

So where is Hashem? In this world, He exists in Torah and in mankind (since our souls are “on loan” from G-d). 

And where is heaven? We know that G-d speaks to us from heaven. In this section and elsewhere in the Torah, G-d’s voice does not come from within as it does for a prophet or to people when they pray. Instead, it comes from empty space. It could be said to come from non-material space, what Galileo called the “ether” — a matterless web that makes up the universe and could explain how forces like gravity can move objects from a distance. The Torah is fuzzy on the physics, but crystal clear on what it means to us: G-d’s voice emanates from heaven, which is in an untouchable space – either upward in empty space (in the case of Sinai), and it is upward

An altar of earth you shall make to me, and shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings, and your peace offerings, your sheep, and your oxen; in all places where I cause my name to be pronounced I will come to you, and I will bless you.

This is who I am and how you connect with me.

It is a curious fact that until the early Jews left Egypt, nobody became a Jew – either you were born a descendant of Avraham, Ytzchak or Yaakov, or you were simply not Jewish. For all the outreach that Avraham did, he did not make anyone else Jewish. There was no nation of Israel – there was a tribe. 

The very notion of “joining” Israel did not even seem to occur to anyone Avraham or Isaac encountered.  How can someone join a tribe, after all? The answer is that there is a way: one can marry into a tribe, and become an adopted member. And we were introduced to the first person who tried to do this: Shechem, living in the eponymous place, desired Dinah. Shechem took her, and fell madly in love.  He was willing to do anything to marry her – and he almost managed it. The brothers tricked Shechem, and ended up murdering everyone in the town.

But Shechem almost made it! He was the first non-Jew born who wanted to become a member of the tribe, and had he gone about things differently, it is possible that Shechem would have been the first welcomed convert to Judaism.

Shechem has an alter-ego – Yosef. Shechem was the outsider who almost go in, while Yosef was the insider, who was almost kicked out. And the Torah gives us explicit connections between the two: when Yaakov sends Yosef out to find his brothers, he sends Yosef to Shechem. That act changed his life forever (we might go so far as to suggest that Yosef’s exile was almost Shechem’s middah kneged middah to Yaakov for the acts of his sons). 

There is a midrash that Yosef’s wife is the daughter of the relationship between Shechem and Dinah – so Shechem may even have been Yosef’s father-in-law as well as his erstwhile brother-in-law. 

And of course, Yosef’s bones were the only ones of the brothers to be buried in Israel — in Shechem! There is a strong connection here that cannot be ignored.

I’d suggest that the differences between Yosef and Shechem answer the question of why Shechem was rejected, and why Yosef was ultimately reunited with his family. There was nothing wrong with desiring Dinah – love and desire are perfectly normal, and even beautiful, feelings. The difference is that Shechem did not woo Dinah – he took her first, and loved her later. 

Yosef, in two separate instances, separated himself from Shechem. In the first place, when offered the opportunity to follow his lust, Yosef restrains himself. In the moment of truth, Yosef mastered his flesh, and Shechem did not do so.

The second thing is that Shechem’s act of taking Dinah disqualified him. Yosef, whatever his other faults may have been, never took something that was not his. The Torah tells us that when Yosef married, he did not “take” a wife, as is the common expression  in the Torah. Instead, he was given his wife by Pharoah. 

Yosef, by controlling his desires and respecting other people, ultimately earned his reunification with the family – while Shechem’s acts disqualified him.

The Torah is here to teach us – its primary purpose is not as a history book or a science text. The Torah is to help us understand our own lives, and connecting them with the lives of our ancestors who connected with each other and with G-d.

Yosef is “given” dreams – the retelling of which get him in huge trouble – almost killed, then sold as a slave, thrown into prison where he rots for years. Why is he given the dreams?

In answering this question, I want to set aside the issue of Destiny. Yes, G-d had told Avraham that his descendants would be servants in a foreign land for four hundred years – but there were a great many ways in which that could have come to be. I think it is better to address matters as the players did: as they came up, without the benefit of hindsight.

We know little about Yosef before the dreams. We know that his mother named him so she could have more sons. We know his father loved him unequally, and “made” him the colored coat.  But these are all things that happened “to” him – not things that he chose, or even were innate qualities.

Yosef’s choices, on the other hand, are interesting. He is described as a shepherd amidst his brothers, but a “naar” (“youth”) with the other boys, whom he doublecrosses by telling tales about. And THEN it tells us that his father loved him and gave him a coat – it looks almost like a reward for the loshon hora, the evil talk. Yosef is seemingly taught that telling tales is meritorious.

So here is a thought. I think the first time “naar” is found is Gen. 8:21 “the desires of man’s heart is evil due to his youth.” And later that same verse, G-d says “I will never again continue to destroy,” using the word “Assaf”, which is the root of the same word as “Yosef.” The Torah is connecting the dots for us.

Yosef lives out the earlier verse. When he is a youth, he succumbs to the desires of the young: lording it over his brothers

This occurs, of course, with the very first korban, Noach’s brilliant innovation. G-d is appreciating that man can get it right, even though he does not begin life that way.

So MAYBE G-d gives Yosef the dreams because Yosef represents the archetypal man: yearning toward evil, but not worth destroying the world over. Yosef is chosen BECAUSE he can be a baal teshuva – he starts with the Yetzer Ra, and his name appears in that passuk in Noach. He tells tales. He makes enemies. But like his father, and his father’s father, and the founding passuk, Yosef can make his life a connection – a korban, a coming close to Hashem. In the depths of the prison, Yosef makes the connection, the expression of his faith: “G-d has the interpretations.”  And then, despite the bumps in the road, “Miketz”.

G-d gives Yosef the dreams: it is a way to advance both Yosef and his family (not just toward the destiny foretold in the bris bein habesarim, but also, and probably more importantly, spiritually.) Yosef gets the dreams to teach every boy who makes trouble that it is important to learn from the reactions of others, to learn to anticipate how others will hear what you say. To teach us that we are not merely the “yetzer lev” which is evil – we can grow as Yoef does.

“…evil FROM his youth”, doesn’t have to mean from the time of his youth – it could mean DUE to his youth. Meaning because he must start out immature and grow/fix/establish himself, that pupal stage leaves an effect.

Second, Yosef is called a tzaddik for overcoming/conquering/owning his sexual desires. Kabbalistically, it goes deeper than that. It’s perfecting the sefira/middah of Yesod, which is mapped onto the organ of procreation/connection. And the tongue! Yosef starts off with a definite defect in this arena and eventually masters it.

BTW, the zohar and apparently the Torah,too, clearly associate Yosef with the title of Na’ar.

We often think of Yosef as a tribe of leadership, rivaling, or even at times, surpassing Yehudah. After all, Yosef’s dreams describe both political and economic superiority over his brothers. 

But Yosef’s supremacy was fleeting; it did not last beyond Yosef’s own life, and the mantle seemed to naturally revert to Yehudah. While there are many explanations for this, I’d like to offer another. 

In the Jewish world, a true leader is someone who is particular to always serve G-d. His ambitions put the divine goals first, and this leader must be especially careful not to make his own desires supplant those of Hashem.

Yosef, at least not the grown-up version, was not egotistical in this way. From the time of being in Potiphar’s house, Yosef was a dedicated servant. He put Potiphar’s interests first, and then, when serving in prison, Yosef helped the prison run better. And his final posting, as Pharoah’s lieutenant, was the pinnacle of Yosef’s career. Not only did he save Egypt from the famine, but in the process he managed to enslave all the Egyptians to Pharoah!

It is this last that might have eliminated the possibility of Yosef being the future leader of the Jewish people. When selling grain back to the Egyptians Yosef was doing Pharoah a wonderful – and unnecessary – favor. But there is no hint that Yosef sought guidance from his father, or from Hashem directly. Instead, Yosef decided to take the opportunity to enslave an entire nation just because it was the best thing he could do for his terrestrial master. It does not seem to occur to Yosef that mass enslavement is not a Jewish ideal, and that his duties to Hashem required him to act in Hashem’s interests first and foremost.

Unlike the classic hero, Yosef did not suffer from an excess of arrogance or egotism. In the end he was always a lieutenant, not a leader. And if Yosef had a fault, it was that he became so good at serving his terrestrial masters that he neglected to always put G-d first. 

P.S. Menachem Leibtag suggests that Yosef’s actions were rewarded, midoh kneged midoh, by the Egyptians enslaving the Jews in turn – an act for which they were not punished.

There is nothing wrong with being in an unequal relationship. Indeed, I think that every relationship is unequal in at least some respects. But that is OK. It is not a moral failing to be a baby, or a parent, or in a wheelchair.  This is not a bug: it is a feature. This is the way the world is supposed to be. It is not a moral failing to rely on other people, to form and grow networks and relationships. People are supposed to build together, to establish interlocking projects and lives.  

The danger to the system, indeed to the whole world, is when people think that they do not need others, when they can only think about themselves. The Torah calls this stage in life naar, a youthful thoughtlessness. But the Torah goes farther than this. Teenaged self-obsession is not a mere fad to be overlooked. If not corrected, it can become evil, a toxin that corrupts relationships and makes it impossible for people to help each other.

Joseph is described as a naar. Gen. 8:21 “The desires of a man’s heart are evil from his youth (naar).” In his case, it means that Joseph has an almost-shocking cluelessness about how others perceive him. He tells tales about his brothers, seemingly oblivious to how those tales make him look bad. He gives voice, without consideration, to private dreams, but does not realize that he is making enemies. In Egypt, Joseph continues the trend. He makes himself attractive, but does not anticipate that this means Poptiphar’s wife is growing increasingly interested in him. 

Again, his tin ear, his naar behavior, lands him in trouble after Potiphar’s wife, when scorned, ensures that Joseph goes to prison. But does he learn his lesson there? Not at all. Joseph fails to forge a memorable relationship with the Butler, who then forgets the man who interpreted his dream. 

Later, when Joseph talks to Pharoah, he suggest that Pharoah should find a “wise and discerning man” to administer the country in the coming times of feast and famine. This may not even have been cleverness: there is no sign that Joseph had expected that Pharoah would choose him.

The story continues, but Joseph’s naar qualities persist. His brothers arrive. Joseph greets them, they all bow down to him, and then Joseph remembers his dreams – that they would bow down to him. The dream has been fulfilled! So what does Joseph do at this point?

He could have rethought his earlier actions, leading to an apology for his earlier behavior. Whether the brothers were right or wrong for treating him badly, Joseph bore some responsibility for what happened: he told tales and was clearly insufferable.  He could have apologized for it, here or even later. But he does not do so.

Even after he reveals himself, Joseph declines to apologize to his brothers. It seemingly never occurs to him to do so. There is a lack of awareness when it comes to seeing himself in the eyes of others.  Instead, Joseph ascribes everything to G-d, taking responsibility for none of it. He actually falls back on Adam’s defense: “It is not my fault!” Joseph simply refuses to take responsibility for how others perceived him.

It gets worse. Joseph decides that his brothers should be shepherds, presumably because it would allow the Jewish Family to live in relative isolation, to remain distinct from their host nation. But he does not sell it that way to his family: instead, he tells his brothers that they should point out to Pharaoh that they are shepherds, because the Egyptians consider shepherds abominable. Even it though it was true that shepherding was a very low social state, it was hardly necessary for Joseph to point it out. “Hi! Welcome to your new country! Go tell their leader that your profession is shepherding, because the Egyptians really think that shepherding is disgusting!” What a way to make friends.  And the text supports the gratuitous nature of the remark – Pharaoh himself does not insult the profession, but seems to welcome the addition of capable skilled labor to manage his flocks and herds.

So it is not surprising to us that when Yaakov dies, Yosef’s brothers still fear and distrust him. But it is a complete shock to Yosef, who characteristically fails to connect to his brothers by saying, “Am I G-d?!” 

At the same time Yosef extends his obliviousness to the Egyptian people as well. When they go hungry, he allows them to sell everything they own to buy back the grain they had sold the government. At the end, they sell themselves, becoming slaves to Pharaoh. (some suggest that it is for this reason that the Egyptians are never punished for enslaving the Jews – it was merely middah kneged middoh, measure-for-measure turnabout). This was good business, but extremely bad social policy, and pursuing it meant either desiring that people should be enslaved, or being entirely thoughtless about the human consequences of one’s economic decisions.

The Torah teaches us about today’s politics and welfare policy.  In Egypt, Yosef took care of his brothers and all of the family – and yet because he failed to see things  the way others saw them, because he failed to understand their point of view, the welfare did not achieve its ends. On  the contrary: it bred resentment and distrust and fear.

This is the problem with all institutional forms of welfare and charity. Without a human connection, we can never change minds. Giving people “stuff” makes inner city blacks richer, using any material metric we could choose, than almost all of humanity throughout all of measured time. But because it is done by an institution, instead of by people and organizations and communities who take the time to understand, and connect with, and love the recipient, the results invariably backfire. 

Love is the missing ingredient. With it, we can endure almost everything. Without it, “giving” leads to a sense of entitlement, resentment, and empty lives.

There is nothing wrong with being a “taker.” We are all, in some ways, and at some times, takers. Indeed, I have argued that the Jewish version of slavery is nothing more or less than a patron/client relationship for when the client has fallen very far, and needs a mentor. There is nothing to apologize for in this, because it is a world away from the kind of institutional and intergenerational slavery that gave the practice a bad name in the 19^th century. Unequal relationships are just fine – but they require both the giver and the taker to respect the other, to invest in the relationship such that both sides benefit as a result.

I think that while Joseph remains a naar, we are supposed instead to seek a relationship built around marriage. We need that other person, to serve as a feedback mechanism, another person who pushes, supports and opposes and – above all – helps you to see how others perceive you. When we can see things from different perspectives, then the resulting empathy and love make it possible for us to truly help one another.

Imagine, if you can, existence in a world before calendars or clocks, a world in which time is marked by the natural world by the sun and the moon. Notice the passage of day and night, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the cyclical nature of the seasons themselves. And notice, too, what is missing: the unit of time we know of as a “week”.

There is nothing intuitive or obvious about a 7 day week – if we were to divide the moon’s 29.5 day cycle into weeks, then a 5 or 6 day week would neatly subdivide into 30 days, much more neatly than does a 7 day week. Indeed, plenty of other “weeks” have been tried in history; Napolean and the early Soviets both tried, and failed, to impose a shift to longer or shorter weeks.

The earliest source known to historians for a regular 7 day week is the Torah, containing the commandment by G-d to the Jewish people. And the first time Hashem mentions Shabbos to mankind is not the creation of the world, but the monn (manna) that the Jews ate in the wilderness!

16:23 …This is what the Lord has said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath to the Lord …. 25 … today is a sabbath to the Lord…  26  Six days you shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

Where does the monn come from? While in English we refer to “Manna from Heaven”, the Hebrew verb used in the Torah to describe the source of the monn is from “oleh”, to rise up. The monn was commanded from heaven, but it seems to have risen out of the earth. And from this we get the concept of Shabbos?!

The connection becomes more clear when we see the next time the earth is linked to Shabbos – in discussing the shemittah (sabbatical) year. The language of the Torah is very similar to that of the monn:

25:2 … then shall the land keep a sabbath to the Lord. 3  Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruit; 4  But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest to the land, a sabbath for the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor prune your vineyard.

I’d like to suggest a possibly radical notion: that the entire purpose of the sabbatical year for the land is in fact the way that we, as a nation, show hakaros hatov (appreciation) for being sustained by the land in the wilderness.  The earth fed us monn, and to keep that memory fresh we not only keep Shabbos itself, but we also give thanks to the earth for feeding us 6 days out of 7, by leaving the land alone every 7th year.

If so, then the monn is even more important than we tend to think. Instead of considering monn as “merely” the miraculous food that sustained it in the nation, we must also see the 40 years in the desert as training for the whole nation in keeping a 7 day week, complete with Shabbos. And we can’t stop there: the basic fabric of Jewish life is inextricably linked to Shabbos, which means that on every one of the 6 days of work, or the 7th day of rest, we are reliving the experience of being in the wilderness, of being connected to Hashem for our sustenance. Time itself is predicated on the monn in the desert!

Is this overstatement?

No! The word for “time” in Hebrew is most commonly given as “zman”. But the word “zman” does not appear in the 5 Books of the Torah at all. The first time “zman” is found is in Koheles, suggesting that it is a manmade word, perhaps invented by Solomon. After our experience in the desert, we felt the need for a word to describe what we had learned, a word that had not been a part of our prior national consciousness.

So what does “zman” mean? Literally, it is a combination of two parts: the letter “zayin”, and the word “monn.” Monn, of course, is manna. The letter zayin can mean a short form of “zeh”, meaning “this”. With this meaning, we see that time can be self-defined as the monn.

Alternatively, we can translate the “zayin” into its numerical value, which is 7 – the number of the week, as well as the sabbatical for the land. All biblical time is then measured in multiples of 7, because that is the unit of time that G-d taught us in the desert.

Either way, we see that the basic unit of time for our lives (7 days), as well as that for the land (7 years), are linked together to the experience we had in G-d’s sukkah in the desert. Though the blessings from G-d in the desert were explicitly supernatural, we see that both “natural” agricultural blessings, as well as the passage of time itself should never be separated from those foundational 40 years: this is the lesson of the monn.

One of the most wonderful and edifying benefits of biblical exegesis is seeing how everything ties together, making the Torah a connecting theory of everything spiritual. And I’d like to take you through one of these journeys, because this stuff is too exciting for me not to share. So if you might have at least a passing interest, please dip a toe in!

The Hebrew words for Man and for Woman, each comprising three letters, have two letters in common. Those common letters spell the word aish, meaning “fire”. And each of the words for “man” and “woman” has an extra letter, which, combined, spell G-d’s name. The lesson is simple. G-d can exist in the union of man and woman, marrying and enveloping the fire of each. But when G-d is not in the union, there is only dangerous and capricious fire.

This is, of course, part of the language, but not necessarily part of our experiences. The Torah tells us the much more involved and interesting story of this development. Leah names her sons as follows (emphases added):

Reuben: G-d has seen my pain, so my husband will love me.

Simeon: G-d has heard that I am hated.

Levi: My husband will be joined to me, since I have born three sons.

Judah: I praise the Lord.

Issachar: G-d has paid me back, because I gave my handmaid to my husband.

The progressions are fascinating. Leah starts by seeing G-d as an external observer – who first sees, and then hears Leah. Leah then becomes more active in the relationship, praising the Lord. With Issachar, Leah has engaged in a commercial transaction with G-d, exchanging favors, and seeing G-d as a stand-in for her husband: she gave to her husband, and G-d pays her back.

Zevulun is the capper, Leah’s great triumph.

Zevulun: And Leah said: ‘God hath _______ me with a good _____; now will my husband zevul with me, because I have borne him six sons.’ And she called his name Zevulun.

I left the words above blank because it is a repetition of an extraordinary word – a word that is not found in the Torah anyplace else – not in the Five Books, nor (except as names) in any of the rest of the Torah canon. Though she could have merely said “G-d hath ____ me; now will my husband dwell with me.” the text does not say that. Instead there is an extra helping of the word: “with a good _____”: The double use of this mystery word signifies an extra degree of involvement, of connection.

What does it mean? Often translated as “endowment” or “dowry”, it is clearly a gift of some kind. Two of the three letters of the word are in common with two of the three letters in the word that forms Zevulun’s name, and the Jewish translators see a connection – translating the word as “apportion, give, deal, share, and dispense.” Citations. Leah, by declaring the intimate involvement of G-d in her marriage, claims reciprocity – that her husband now needs to be similarly intimately involved with her.

In trying to firm up the meaning of the mystery word, let’s look as well as the verb: what does it mean that Leah’s husband should “zevul” with her? The answer is found elsewhere in the Torah: King Solomon calls the Temple the “House of Zevul” – a house of habitation, or of dwelling. I have built Thee a house of habitation, and a place for Thee to dwell in for ever. (2 Chron. 6:2)

The place where G-d resides among the Jewish people is named after Leah’s sixth son. Why? Because Leah, through declaration, brought G-d completely into her marriage. The combination of man and woman in a marriage is the model for the combination of man and G-d in G-d’s House.

Leah points to this as well when she marks the importance of having six sons. The first instance in the Torah of the number six is the sixth day of creation: the completion of the entire world, with man and G-d coexisting within it. Leah is saying that, by having six sons, she has done something analogous to G-d’s creation of the entire world – something so very good, that when G-d finished it, He saw fit to rest and bless the world. Having six sons means that Leah expects Jacob to similarly rest with her in blessing.

Zevulun, of course, becomes one of the tribes of Israel. And his role reflects his name! Jacob blesses him:

Zevulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea, and [the shore] shall be a shore for ships, and his flank (yerech) shall be upon Sidon.

What is at the great port of Sidon? Trade. Commerce. The fusion of the sea and the sand, the active interchange of goods and people and ideas. Zevulun represents the same combination as is found in marriage: the meeting of, and trading between, different people.

Port cities are, of course, not usually lovely exemplars of humanity. Sailors are synonymous with salty language, and ports have historically been places where every manner of two legged and four-legged rat thrives. Which helps explain why the verse says, “his flank (yerech) shall be upon Sidon”.

This word yerech is a fascinating one. Avraham makes his servant swear by putting his hand “under Avraham’s yerech.” Jacob does the same thing to Yosef. And in the wrestling match with the angel, Jacob’s yerech is changed forever.

Why?

The word Yerech means “loins.” “And all the souls that came out of the yerech of Jacob were seventy souls.” (Ex 1:5) Yerech, then, is the place that emits seed, the font of biological procreative power.

But in a Jew, that place is circumcised! It is the only physical mark by which a Jew is distinguished from a non-Jew. Why? The circumcision is specifically to harness and focus our biological powers in the service of a relationship with G-d. A Jew’s yerech is a declaration: I am not an animal; my physicality is constrained to be godly. The yerech in itself is not important for what it is – it is important for what it can do – make children, in holiness. In other words, the yerech is the core symbol of a Jews’ holiness!

So when Avraham and Jacob make people swear critical oaths by holding his yerech, it is a symbolic connection to the most primal and basic aspect of a Jew’s connection with G-d – the very same place where a Jewish man intimately connects with his wife!

This is why Zevulun’s yerech is at Sidon. Just as we can take a part of our body that can easily be reduced to the most profane thing man can imagine (just look at how sailor’s descriptors of intimacy form the linguistic backbone of a gutter society) and make it holy, so, too Zevulun was charged with taking the great port of Sidon, and marking it with a Jewish imprimatur. In Judaism, everything can be sanctified – loins and ports alike.

Which helps us understand the other blessing for Zevulun, the one given by Moshe at the end of the Torah:

And of Zevulun he said: Rejoice, Zevulun, in thy going out, and, Issachar, in thy tents.

They shall call peoples unto the mountain; there shall they offer sacrifices of righteousness; for they shall suck the abundance of the seas, and the hidden treasures of the sand. (Deut. 33:18)

Zevulun rejoices in going out – he represents the port, after all, a place of constant comings and goings. This explains the blessing of connecting the seas and the sand – the fruits of the connection between adjacent but separate components – just like man and woman, Jew and non-Jew (at the Temple), as well as man and G-d. The poetry in the verse, seen in this light, comes alive.

And the mountain reference? The temple – Solomon’s home of zevul, of habitation with G-d. Zevulun provides the connectors. So Zevulun, with Sidon on his yerech, sanctifies business and commerce, connecting Israel with the world, bridging from the sea to G-d’s house, the Temple.

All of this helps explain why, after a Genesis text that refers to the descendants of Adam and Noah and Shem and Terach (Gen 5:9, 6:1, 11:10, 11:27 etc.) – and even the descendants of the heaven and earth (Gen. 2:4), the Torah does NOT refer to the descendants of Jacob.

Instead, Jacob’s descendants are described as

All the souls belonging to Jacob that came into Egypt, that came out of his loins (yerech), besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six. (Gen 46:26 and Ex. 1:5)

Unlike everyone who came before him (Avraham had 8 sons, but only Isaac inherited the legacy; Isaac had Jacob and Esau, and only Jacob continued), every single product of Jacob’s loins was sanctified, and was included in the family going forward.

Jacob’s offspring were not merely biological or natural products. They were the result of a sanctification that had heretofore not existed in the world, a family that, after enormous trials and tribulations, still stayed together, each person different from the next, but unified under a common standard.

This is the result, in part, of Leah’s great breakthrough, of the way she invited G-d into her marriage, and credited Him as the third full partner in her marriage to Jacob. By consecrating the physical act in this way, she helped to sanctify the connections of dualities in the world – man and woman, sea and land, man and G-d.

When Jacob’s family entered Egypt, they brought their own source of fecundity with them – their own yerech. This was a symbol of the spiritual and physical potency of the nation, capable of settling in Egypt, and still resisting marrying the natives. The Jewish people brought their own kind of vitality. As Pharaoh dreamed it in a fore-shadowing:

So Pharaoh spoke to Joseph, “In my dream, behold, I was standing on the bank of the Nile; and behold, seven cows, well-favoured and sleek came up out of the Nile, and they grazed in the marsh grass. “Lo, seven other cows came up after them, poor and ill-favored and lean fleshed, such as I had never seen for badness in all the land of Egypt; and the leand and ill-favored cows ate up the first seven fat cows. Yet when they had devoured them, it could not be detected that they had devoured them, for they were just as ill-favored as before.

Jacob’s family were indeed relatively poor and hungry, and, by Egyptian standards, not pretty. But they brought their own yerech with them, so that when the Jews came into Egypt and ate of the fat of the land, they remained distinct. Possessing their own constrained vitality, the Jewish people do not need to borrow so heavily from their surroundings that they necessarily assimilate. This is part of the legacy of the Jewish people.

Footnotes:

When the nation of Israel sins with the golden calf, Moshe says,

‘Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh (yerech), and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.’

The connection to yerech here means that the punishment cannot be capricious or random: it must be directed from and through the holiness of the Jewish people.

–

As befitting a marriage, there are risks when people turn astray. The word yerech is not very common in the Torah, so it is notable when it is found in the description of the woman who has been suspected of stepping out of her marriage. (Num: 5)

Then the priest shall cause the woman to swear with the oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman–the LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh (yerech) to fall away, and thy belly to swell;

Why does her yerech fall away? Because if she has been unfaithful, then she has defiled her yerech – she loses her relationship to her husband, to G-d, and to holiness. Her yerech is no longer holy, or even hers to keep, and it falls away.

To those who do not pay close attention, the Torah appears to be full of commandments for which there is no explanation or justification. The defense given by True Believers is often along the lines of, “It does not matter why the commandment is there, G-d wants you to do it anyway.” Which is good enough for true believers, but not very satisfying for everyone else.

I take the position that each and every one of these commandments is explained in the Torah itself; that the text not only tells us (in broad strokes) what we should be doing, but also why we should be doing it. For example, we bring elevation-offerings because Noah invented them to show his understanding of man’s mission on this earth; we dwelled in sukkot (booths) and built a house for G-d in the wilderness because Jacob built those booths for his flock and a house for himself when he was in a similar situation, etc.

@Susanquinn and I were struck last week by a strange commandment:

No animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young.

Odd, right? What is the problem with killing two generations of animals on the same day?

The answer is found by looking more carefully at the text. The Hebrew word used for “slaughter” is found first in the Torah when Avraham is about to kill his son, Isaac. “And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.” (Gen 22:10). And the second time is when Joseph’s brothers slaughter an animal to present a bloody coat to Jacob: “Then they took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a kid, and dipped the tunic in the blood.” (Gen. 37:31)

What both of these examples bring is something quite chilling: the death of the child in both cases meant at least the spiritual death of the father. Had Avraham killed Isaac, his son and much-desired legacy, then Avraham would have been through.

And in the case of Jacob, it is even more explicit: Jacob sees the bloody coat, mourns for Joseph, and announces that he, Jacob, is already as good as dead. “I will go down mourning my son to the grave.” (Gen. 37:35) That moment broke Jacob; he ceased being a decisive leader from that point on. The rest of his life, Jacob, a man of action, could only react to what was going on around him. The perceived death of his son was also a death for the father.

Both of these events, had they fully played out, would have been unmitigated tragedies, and I think the Torah is telling us this when we are forbidden to kill two generations on the same day.

There is an important clue that bolsters this argument. The original verse I quoted above is usually translated as “No animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young.” But this is actually a mistranslation. In the Hebrew, it says

“No animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its son.”

This is the kind of clue that the Torah gives us to create the connections, because this is not merely an intergenerational commandment, but specifically links killing an animal to killing a man’s son – hence the link to Avraham/Isaac and Jacob/Joseph, the first two times the same word for “slaughter” are found in the Torah.

So we see this seemingly-random commandment contains within the text itself its own explanation: it is a remembrance of the horrors that come from a man losing his son, a death that kills both father and son in that day.

[another @susanquinn and @iwe production]