Category: Bereishit

Recall the dramatic story of Joseph revealing himself to his brother’ in Genesis chapter 45 (it was just last week), after he witnessed that their regret at having sold him. When Judah tries to prevent Joseph taking Benjamin from the family, Joseph can no longer be the viceroy Egypt, and he insists on alone-time with his family to identify himself to them.

It would seem after this climatic encounter between Joseph and his brothers that all is forgiven and they are starting fresh.  By acknowledging and invoking God’s hand in the events that brought them to this specific moment in time, it seems that Joseph has forgiven his brothers because it was all meant to be. The story is over and presumably, after Joseph moves his whole family down to Goshen where there is food for their children and pasture for their animals, this story has come to an end.

Yet, the tensions and rivalries between Joseph and his brothers resurface after the death of the father Jacob. Jacob dies at the end of chapter 49 and chapter 50 describes his burial back in Canaan, as requested on his deathbed.

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Literally meaning “not falling together,” an asymptote is the term given for when a curve approaches a line more and more closely but never actually ever touches it. It’s the name given to the phenomenon of striving continuously for something but never being able to attain it fully. It’s when you’re one millimeter away from something and to the eye’s view, it seems like you’re touching something, but you’re tantalizingly not.

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וַיִּגַּשׁ אֵלָיו יְהוּדָה, “And Judah came close to him’”(Gen. 18.4). The scene is one of tenterhooks and apprehension. Judah is about to plead for his brother Benjamin’s security and so dispenses with the interpreter to speak, at his own peril, directly with Joseph, viceroy of Egypt.

This coming close predicates Judah’s success. And yet it is a strange choreographing.

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Snakeskin sloughed off, sewn into shirts,

Salted with the spray of the spreading seas.

Soaked with the stale sweat of a searching son

I am the signature stamp of stealth,

The source of stained secrecy.

The strained suit of a stalker

Spread across soul-clutching fists,

A sibling’s stark sorrow.

What am I?

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You got it already? I knew you would.  It’s the fine-spun tunic endowed to Joseph by his father Jacob as the tangible manifestation of fatherly favoritism.

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There is a joke about a driver who received a frantic call from his wife on his commute home from work. “Dave,” she said, “A reporter on the radio just warned that a car on the very highway you are on is driving full speed in the wrong direction — please, be careful!” “Oh,” Dave answered, “it is much worse than that. It’s not one car, but hundreds of them!”

We all make wrong turns. We all make mistakes. And like Dave, it is almost always easier to react by looking outside our windows and saying it is others who are mistaken, rather than turning the mirror on ourselves. A psychological reading of this week’s parsha provides inspiration for changing course after a mistake by courageously driving introspective change.

In Parshat Vayishlach, as Jacob runs away from his uncle, Laban, he prepares to see his brother Esau for the first time since Jacob deceived their father into giving him Esau’s blessing, more than 20 years prior. Jacob then finds himself alone, at night, wrestling with an angel. At daybreak, the angel wounds Jacob in the leg and prevails upon Jacob to let him go.

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We don’t always know where we will make our biggest impact, how we will be remembered and what our lasting contributions to this world will be. Often they are not what we expect or predict.

In Parshat Vayetzei, Jacob is forced to flee his home and his brother, Esau, who wants to kill him, and find refuge with his uncle, Laban, in Haran. There, he marries Laban’s two daughters, Rachel and Leah, who, together with Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, are known as the four matriarchs.

Of the four, Rachel is the matriarch most often referred to as the “mother” of the Jewish people. In Jeremiah 31:14, we read that Rachel cries for her children who have been exiled from the land, and she cannot be consoled or comforted once they are gone. Rachel will continue to shed tears for them until they return to the Land of Israel and are once again settled comfortably within its borders.

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How do Moses and Isaac connect to academia and barn dancing?

To answer, I’d like to quote my favorite and most oft-cited dvar Torah, which is from this week’s parsha. It starts with a concisely expressed idea by the Hasidic master, Rabbi Mordechai Joseph Leiner of Izhbitz, who writes in vol. 1 of his work Mei Hashiloah:

And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, his eyes were dim so that he could not see (Gen 27:1). The aspect of Isaac our father is the converse of the aspect of Moses our teacher. For Isaac was not permitted to leave the land of Israel, yet the faculty of sight was taken from him; while Moses was not allowed to set foot in Israel, but he was told (Deut 3:27): “And see with your eyes.

I first heard this text taught by poet and teacher Yonadav Kaploun[1] many years ago. As much as the Izhbitzer’s words themselves, it was what Yonadav drew from this brief observation that has stayed with me until now. He explained that the world seems to divide into Isaac types and Moses types. The Isaac types fall under the heading of “being.” They are wholly immersed within whatever experience they are in; they do, they act with tremendous presence. Yet, at the same time, they are oblivious to the larger picture and cannot analyze their actions within a larger frame. In contrast, the Moses types are “seeing” personalities. They are analytical, curious, inquisitive, and discerning. However, along with this they can often be seen standing outside of the experience, observing from a point of distance those who are in it

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