D’Var Torah  (Words from the Torah)

D’Var Torah – December

Miketz – Emerging from the waters.

The opening of Parashat Miketz is a gift for me. Not only because like so many of us I can only read these words with Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s, Elvis style Pharoah elevating them with a rich, vivid joy but because these words provide yet another proof text for the passion with which I moved into the current chapter of my Rabbinate. If you had asked me when I was ordained at Leo Baeck College back in 2006 what I would be doing almost 20 years later, “building a mikveh” would be so far down the list of possible answers I would have thought you mad for even suggesting it. I was brought up in a household which represented the epitome of Reform Judaism. With my Dad being Head of the Reform Movement at that time and my mum the head teacher of Akiva School, there were not many other households more committed to Reform Judaism. Mikveh was definitely not a conversation I remember having. It was a ritual regarded as reserved solely for those converting to Judaism and something we had not even needed to reject as progressive Jews because a ritual which was seemingly so antiquated and misogynistic was not even relevant enough to reject. The idea that women would need a ritual connected to menstruation was seemingly absurd and other worldly. Until I learned for myself both on the one hand how devastating each monthly period can be at certain moments in life, and the power of ritual, far beyond the fulfilment of obligation passed down the generations. 18 years in the congregational rabbinate taught me that people face the most devastating adversity in their lives. It is those who seem most able to rebuild their lives despite its new, unexpected turns, who are the ones who had others to mourn with them. To together mourn the image of the life that had been so cruelly changed, to look to the future with a new vision of what it might look like in time, and those who could be in the moment, with structures which held them and bore witness to the experience they were enduring. So how is this relevant to Parashat Miketz? The parasha begins with these words, “After two years’ time Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, when out of the Nile there came up seven cows, handsome and sturdy, and they grazed in the reed grass. But presently, seven other cows came up from the Nile close behind them, ugly and gaunt, and stood beside the cows on the bank of the Nile.” By this time you are singing so I know you know that “the thin cows ate the fat cows” which you thought would do them good…! The commentators ask many questions of this text, scrutinise what it says, including drawing the conclusion in Genesis Rabbah 89:4 that by Pharaoh standing “over the Nile” Pharaoh in some ways saw himself superior to his god by seeing himself as above the Nile, the source of survival for the people, in contrast to the Israelites who saw themselves as subordinate to God. Yet what I see is the prelude to the Exodus, a new chapter for the Israelites emerging from the water. In a number of weeks, and again when we mark the festival of Pesach, we will celebrate the Hebrew slaves emerging from the parted waters of the sea to a new chapter, the beginnings of freedom. When emerging from “Mitzrayim” the “narrow places”, to begin again, many see this moment of Exodus as a rebirth of the Israelites, equating this narrow place to being akin to the birth canal and the new beginning we needed nationally. Yet, this concept, that from the waters we go from one state of being to another, is exactly what is being set up by the cows in Pharoah’s dream. Coming into focus from the water of Nile – first the cows which represent the next chapter of Joseph and the Egyptian’s life experience, the years of plenty, and then again, coming from the waters, the second set of seven cows, heralding another chapter, the famine which will not only be a challenging time for all the peoples of the area but we know will reunite Jacob’s family and open another chapter in their lives and in the story of the Jewish people of the future. This emerging from water taking us from one chapter to another is for me exactly what mikveh can be for people. How we can give ritual, witness, celebrate or hold people while, in their own lives, they recognise the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another. For some people that will be a celebratory marking – like the fat cows teach us – whether that is a wedding, conversion, marking the 9th month of a pregnancy immersing just before becoming a parent, milestone birthdays, retirement or any meaningful moments or successes. Yet for others the mikveh will be used to create rituals around the moments we hadn’t planned for, never wanted in our lives but know we need the support to move into the next chapter however much we’d rather it was different – whether following a miscarriage, a terminal diagnosis, moving a loved one into a care home, the breakdown of a relationship or the loss of a job. We continue to emerge from the water often into the unknown, like the wilderness or these years of plenty and famine which need careful planning and handling but we do so knowing we have the support to navigate the unexpected terrain. When Wellspring opens, our mikveh will be set at the heart of a centre of wellbeing to help and support people to emerge from the water a little more prepared for their next chapter than before they went in. Whether it is the years of plenty you see before you, or whether it is the lean menacing view of the future you are faced with, Judaism is evolving to ritualise and mark these moments. Our rabbis of the past were psychologists holding us through marriage, death and birth, it’s the role of our current clergy, and those in training, to ensure our Judaism holds us just as effectively at the moments which would not have been conceived of 2000 years ago, but today can be responded to in a deeply Jewish way.

 

 

Vayeshev

This week’s reading is from the Sedra Vayeshev.. I’ll be reading Chapter 39 of Bereshit which tells the story of Joseph’s appointment as Potiphar’s steward and then his imprisonment when Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses him of attacking her. The list of prescribed readings gives the option of the whole chapter or just the first eighteen of the twenty three verses and I’ve opted for the slightly longer version as the shorter one stops us in the middle of the story. I’ll read it in English first.

Last time I read Torah, you may remember that I drew your attention to the fact that one of the words in the reading was very stretched out, and the same will happen today. It is a cantillation note called Shalshelet and is very rare, only occurring four times. I’d never encountered it before last month, and now twice in successive readings! As I said a few weeks ago, Rabbinic tradition holds that it is always used to indicate that the subject of the verb is wrestling with inner demons and hesitating. In this case, the word is Va’yema’en: he refused, so the choice of Shalshelet tells us that although Joseph refuses to be seduced, he does not do so instantly. We have just been told how good-looking and well-built Joseph is and maybe he was flattered or just found his master’s wife’s advances very difficult to resist. Or perhaps he might have wondered whether it would be to his advantage to give in to her desires before recovering himself and rejecting a sin, not only against his master, but against God.

That’s one interpretation. Rabbi Eric Woodward, on myjewishlearning.com offers a more practical explanation. Joseph is a slave and he is being forced to choose between the sin of adultery with his master’s wife and the sin of refusing to do his mistress’s bidding. Either way he is in trouble. Perhaps it crosses his mind that if he gives in to her, she might protect him. However, there is a midrash that says that at the very moment that she grabbed his tunic, he saw a vision of his father and this strengthened his resolve. Rabbi Woodward adds that rather than being reminded of his father’s authority, Joseph gained strength from the thought of his father’s love for him, showing that authority can be exercised through love and compassion rather than surveillance. He suggests that this is how our relationship with God can be – not God as the Great Surveiller but as God who shares a covenant with us and inspires us through a loving relationship.

As a result of his refusal of Potiphar’s wife’s advances, Joseph ends up in prison. But just as God enabled him to prosper in Potiphar’s household by his competence, he wins the favour of the Chief Gaoler and is again given a position of trust. And it’s the wisdom he shows in interpreting the dreams of his fellow prisoners that brings him to Pharaoh’s attention and leads to his release from prison and elevation to great power as Pharaoh’s Chief Minister. So out of misfortune comes redemption. You may remember that later on, when Joseph is reunited with his brothers, he tells them that he bears them no ill will for selling him into slavery, because had they not done so, he would not have been able to rise to power in Egypt and be in a position to assist them when they were fleeing the famine in Canaan. Equally, though he doesn’t say it himself, had he not been framed by Potiphar’s wife, he would not have been imprisoned and thus would not have come to Pharoah’s attention. Joseph seems to attract misfortune, sometimes by his own failings, as with his arrogance towards his brothers, sometimes just by being himself, as with Potiphar’s wife. But somehow his misfortunes lead to him being in the right place at the right time.

There’s a temptation then to say that Joseph prospers because God is always with him, even when things are going wrong for him; everything happens for a purpose. He has to go through hardships in order to learn and mature. But I think this is trite. Yes, Joseph comes to Pharaoh’s attention because the people whose dreams he has interpreted in prison remember him and he is brought before Pharaoh.. But why couldn’t he simply be recommended to Pharaoh by Potiphar suggesting him as an efficient and trustworthy administrator? That would have saved him spending all those years in prison.

Modern scholarship of course sees the Torah as a collection of legends and folk tales rather than a historical account spoken by God and written down by Moses as orthodox Judaism believes. Instead of seeing a divine purpose in every word of the Torah, we can think about why the authors and editors of the text chose stories and told them in a particular way. Perhaps the point of the story of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph is to show us that we should resist temptation. Adam and Eve didn’t resist and suffered lasting punishment; Joseph did resist and despite all the bad things that happened to him, everything worked out very well in the end. Maybe that is a trite conclusion as well, but it’s the best explanation I can think of for the story of Potiphar’s wife.