Perspective at a Tough Time

Vayechi וַיְחִי  Sermon 5784 Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona

 

Shabbat Shalom, and an early L’shana Tova, a happy secular New Year—or as Israelis say, Happy Sylvester.  So why, you may ask, do Israelis call the secular New Year’s “Sylvester”?  And, well, who was Sylvester?

 

It’s a little complicated, but essentially, in Israel they name this upcoming holiday, which was more or less established by the Roman Empire for bureaucratic reasons—consulships began January 1—with the name it was later called by Christians in the 4th century in honor of the anti-Semitic pope in place at the time of the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.  In other words, they, and we, are celebrating a festival that honors both a pagan administrative holiday and an Anti-Semitic pope.  Oh, and if Christmas actually commemorates Jesus’ birth then New Year’s, the eighth day after that, would celebrate his bris.  That is how it is celebrated among a variety of Christian denominations still, as his bris, his circumcison and naming day.

 

To say the least, a rather odd occasion for Jewish festivities of any kind.

 

In truth, even in an ordinary year—and this 2024 beginning is far from ordinary for Israel with the Gaza war ongoing—but even in an ordinary year they don't care much about this holiday in Israel, and perhaps neither should we, since we already had our own Jewish New Year back in September at Rosh HaShanah… still, the opportunity to gain some perspective, to look around and see where we are, should never be wasted.

 

Beyond the personal desire to make new year’s resolutions and seek a better year in 2024 it is impossible not to reflect on how we ought to be thinking about things in Gaza right now.  I was asked by my sister Deborah last week exactly when Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel for all of these years and in charge when the disastrous atrocities of October 7th occurred, would have to take responsibility and step down.  The standard Israeli response after October 7th has been that Netanyahu must go—but not now, not while Israel is at war with a genocidal, vicious, antisemitic Palestinian terrorist group armed to the teeth by Iran that has just perpetrated the worst atrocity since the Holocaust.  So, my sister asked: do I think that its finally time for Bibi to go?

 

While polls put Israeli support for Netanyahu now at something like 25%, and there is a nearly universal belief that the horrifying disaster of October 7th and the subsequent war is to a good degree his fault, the standard answer has been that it’s not yet time for him to go.  I agree.  In my view, he must prosecute the war against these Islamist Hamas Palestinian murderers, rapists, torturers, and kidnappers to the fullest extent that Israel can do so.  After they are eradicated and their power destroyed, he should resign, allowing Israel to blame him for the tragic and terrible human destruction that is unavoidable when you are fighting Palestinian terrorists who hide behind children and women, who put their terror tunnels and rocket launchers in schools and hospitals, and who steal life-saving supplies for their own stockpiles.

 

My answer may impress you as cynical.  But if Netanyahu truly cares about Israel more than his own skin, he has a unique opportunity now to destroy Israel’s most proximate and most horrifying enemy, and also take the international heat for doing so.  And then he can accept responsibility for the monumental failure of his policies in Gaza and leave the scene.

 

I also believe that the best way to get him to leave is to guarantee he gets to stay out of prison on those corruption charges, which are, frankly, small potatoes in all of this.  Let him ride off into the sunset already—but only after Hamas is destroyed.

 

And then a new Israeli government, under a new leader, can seek sane partners among the Arabs who will constructively work for a far better future for everyone.  That is optimism in a time of deep darkness; but there will be a brighter day, ultimately, after the destruction of the Islamist terrorists and the fall of this Israeli government.

 

Now, back to Sylvester, or the artificial New Year’s we are about to enjoy.  Again, the opportunity to gain some perspective, to look around and see where we are, is always meaningful.  And the Torah itself helps us this Shabbat.

 

This week’s portion of Vayechi concludes the great book of Genesis, Breisheet.  And while Vayechi is itself interesting, the fact that we are concluding the first book of the Torah just before completing a calendar year is just too tempting a coincidence to miss.  At this new-secular-year time, when we try to figure out just what happened over the past 12 months and what it all means going forward, we have the opportunity to do the same thing for the first of the five books of the Torah.

 

As hard as it is to comprehend just what this shocking year, 2023, especially the last quarter of it, has taught us, concisely summarizing the formative book of all western civilization, Breisheet, seems perhaps harder.  Genesis ranges in its scope from the creation of the world to the development of human beings, from the first natural disaster to the first murder, from the first city to the first war, from God’s initial covenant with Abraham to the tumultuous events that led to the creation of the children of Israel, from wandering nomadism to the entry into settled civilization, from Babylon to Canaan to Egypt.  Its stories and themes of faith and family, conflict and resolution, love and hatred, universal truth and simple beauty resonate today.  The triumphs and failures of the individual human lives portrayed in Genesis remain fresh and fascinating.  You can spend your life reading and exploring these tales and learn new lessons each and every time.   

 

First, there are the great theological messages of Genesis: there is only one God; we are engaged in a covenantal relationship with that God; each of us has the ability, and sometimes the obligation, to argue and wrestle with God over the right course in life; there is a greater plan than we can fathom at work, yet we have the free will to choose a good and moral course in life. All of this is central to everything that Judaism ultimately becomes. 

 

But even beyond the great religious mission of Breisheet, there is the wonderfully human dimension of this book.  The characters we meet, from fallible Adam and Eve to stolid Noah to the complex and exceedingly human patriarchs and matriarchs all the way to the remarkable figure of Joseph, remind us that the greatest of our ancestors, so many generations ago, were essentially just like us.  They show courage and cowardice, are honest and manipulative, fail and succeed.  After all that happens in this rich narrative, we find that in so many ways we are just like them, and can learn from their accomplishments, and learn more from their many mistakes.

 

Each year teaches us lessons, both positive and negative.  The Torah, and its Book of Genesis, is unique in the way this single text teaches us new lessons continually.

 

This week’s portion of Vayechi is somewhat anticlimactic.  The 12 Israelite brothers, the true B’nai Yisrael, have all been reunited, our great ancestor Jacob finally passes from the scene, as Niles has told us, and the whole family journeys to Canaan to bury Jacob with his ancestors in the cave of Machpeilah in Hevron.  It is at this time that we are given the opportunity to try to glimpse the future.  And a wonderful Midrash gives us insight into the best way to do just that. 

 

The Midrash Tanchuma recounts that when Joseph is returning from his father’s burial in the Cave of Machpelah, he passes the very pit into which his brothers had cast him, and he looks into it.  What might Joseph have been thinking as he peered into that dark crater?  How did he remember that moment in his life? What future could he imagine with his brothers, those who had threatened to kill him?

 

The Midrash answers, “Joseph stood up and prayed, ‘Blessed is God Who performed a miracle for me in this place!’”  Gazing into a barren pit, the place of his greatest danger and fear, Joseph looks back and sees the wonder, mystery, and graciousness present in his life.  In personal terms, such belief and understanding are what we might describe as a consciousness of God, and the goodness of God.

 

But his brothers fear that as he stands there staring into the very place of his original captivity, he is dwelling on the evil they perpetrated against him; and now that Jacob is dead, Joseph will finally take revenge. So, they send him a message—which they fabricate—with Jacob’s concubine Bilhah, saying Jacob had urged Joseph not to take revenge.  

 

Joseph weeps, continues the Midrash, because his brothers have so little trust in his affection. When they appear, bowing abjectly, he speaks to them gently and puts their fears at rest. “Ten stars,” he tells them, “Could do nothing against one star, how much less could one star do against ten? How could I lay a hand on those whom both God and my father have blessed?”

 

Rabbi Ron Shulman comments on this moment and ponders the different perspectives with which we see our lives. He says, “Some people look at life and see only the facts. Others are able to look at life and see the meaning…”

 

Joseph sees so much farther than his brothers.  He sees that internal hostility, divisiveness, negativity, and fraternal rivalry are not the way to act.  His brothers see only danger and potential revenge, and are willing to lie and mislead in order to save their own skins from imagined evil.

 

But Joseph, in these final chapters of Genesis, uses this moment of perspective, this opportunity to assess and understand the past and look to the future in order to bring healing and reassurance. 

 

It is a great lesson for us.  May we, too, learn to capitalize on this secular new year’s gift of perspective, conveyed artificially or otherwise, to see how to heal the wounds in our own society, and to move from division to unity.

 

I don’t know how long it will take to heal the terrible wounds of October 7th, or to build a new leadership among the Palestinians who will actually work for the betterment of their own people.  I only know that this will ultimately take place, and that in the long run, in the future that true visionaries like Joseph can see, it must occur.  We can gaze into a pit and see darkness and loss; or we can remember not only the pain, but the opportunities that may arise out of it in the end. 

 

May you all be blessed with a happy secular New Year.  But more importantly, may we all be blessed with the ability to continually turn to this great text of Torah, and find inspiration in its depth, beauty, and brilliance, and to use this unique gift to bring healing, hope and health to our troubled world.

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