Adath Jeshurun

from Can­tor Lipp

“Time is sequen­tial — a thread span­ning the dis­tance between birth and death. Events, how­ever, are more like a Per­sian car­pet. Thou­sands of richly col­ored threads woven into intri­cate pat­terns and images. Any attempt to place events into purely chrono­log­i­cal order would be like pulling threads loose and lay­ing them end to end. It might be sim­pler but you would lose the design.”

When I expec­tantly opened Mosab Has­san Yousef’s “Son of Hamas” this was not the first thing I expected to read. Aside from giv­ing me a frame­work for under­stand­ing this week’s Torah por­tion, Mosab pro­vided me with many sur­prises, not the least of which were the fact that I didn’t hate his father as much as I expected nor was I as com­fort­able with Israeli prac­tice as I hoped. But more impor­tantly, I was sur­prised, and I don’t think this is a spoiler alert, that his story, with the excep­tion of the first chap­ter, was largely chrono­log­i­cal. I had expected to read the nar­ra­tive equiv­a­lent of a Per­sian carpet.

His con­cep­tual open­ing reminded me of a rab­binic con­cept: Ein Muk­dam o m’uchar baTorah, mean­ing There is no early or late in the Torah. Like Mosab’s tract, the Torah is largely chrono­log­i­cal. If this is so, why does Mosab and, for our pur­poses more impor­tantly, the rab­bis insist on this concept?

I believe there are at least three rea­sons for this, two of which I will share now and one later.

First, the rab­bis never wanted the Torah to be impris­oned in mere chronol­ogy. They were cer­tain that some events occurred in an order other than that pre­sented. For instance, they believed that Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, advised his exhausted son-in-law to del­e­gate most of his judi­cial duties AFTER the rev­e­la­tion at Sinai and not before as implied by the order of the narrative.

Sec­ondly, the rab­bis under­stood that each story in the Torah was related by sim­i­lar words and con­cepts to other events in the Bible that deep­ened its sig­nif­i­cance, mak­ing it as beau­ti­fully designed as a Per­sian carpet.

There are many such con­nec­tions between this parasha and ear­lier events we have read this year of Abra­ham, Isaac and Jacob as well as allu­sions to later sto­ries, includ­ing the book of Ruth. Each of these allu­sions make clearer the pat­tern and deepen the sig­nif­i­cance of the actions reported.

Last week, Rabbi Slos­berg spoke about such a con­nec­tion when Jacob was leav­ing for Egypt. On the way, by Beer Sheva, he prays and offers sac­ri­fices to the God of his father Isaac. This is a pretty unusual state­ment — we don’t nor­mally hear ‘God of Isaac’ all by itself. But the lan­guage of the event alludes strongly to one of the most dra­matic events in the early patri­ar­chal text: the bind­ing of Isaac.

In a night vision, rem­i­nis­cent of the last time he left Canaan, escap­ing his brother’s wrath, God assures Jacob that leav­ing for Egypt with his fam­ily is not some­thing to fear. Both his remains and his descen­dants will even­tu­ally return. The depth of Jacob’s con­cern for the future of the peo­ple that will be called by his new name, Israel, is empha­sized through the lan­guage God uses in this noc­tur­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion: God calls, “Jacob, Jacob” and Jacob answers, “Here I am” “Hineni”. This is a clear allu­sion to God call­ing Abra­ham to sac­ri­fice Isaac and later, using his name twice, call­ing off the slaughter.

The par­al­lel con­cern between the Bind­ing of Isaac and Jacob’s sojourn to Egypt is God’s demand for patri­ar­chal loy­alty to coun­ter­in­tu­itive com­mands that are ulti­mately proven to be part of the grand design. Just as the death of Isaac would have been the end of the cho­sen peo­ple, so too Jacob fears that leav­ing Canaan will be the end of its con­nec­tion to the promised land. In both sto­ries, God assures the rel­e­vant patri­arch that the divine promise still holds.

At the begin­ning of our parasha, Jacob calls on Joseph to swear to him, while hold­ing his thigh, that he will be part of God’s plan to return his corpse back to Mach­pela where his par­ents, grand­par­ents and wife Leah already lie. This story brings back two pat­terns of the weave.

The hold­ing of the thigh recalls the promise made by Abraham’s ser­vant that he would return to Canaan with an appro­pri­ate wife for Isaac. Again, the future of the peo­ple depended on it. In addi­tion to the phys­i­cal ges­ture of oath tak­ing, Jacob’s demand that Joseph explic­itly ‘swear’ is a direct ref­er­ence to the lentil stew with which Jacob forced his brother Esau to barter the birthright, the right of primogeniture.

The allu­sion to Esau leads us into the next scene, where Jacob goes out of his way to con­tinue the patri­ar­chal pat­tern of younger-brother-preferential-treatment. We might have thought that Jacob had learned the dis­as­trous results of show­ing favoritismto his younger son. We would be wrong.

Jacob tells Joseph to bring Ephraim and Menashe to him for a pri­vate bless­ing with grandpa. Like his father Isaac, Jacob is not see­ing well, but he under­stands full well what he is doing with a hint that per­haps his father wasn’t so blind either when he blessed Jacob and Esau. Jacob raises Ephraim and Menashe, his two grand­chil­dren through Joseph, to the tribal sta­tus of his own chil­dren. He shows his pref­er­ence for the younger over the older in at least four ways.

1. We know that Jacob has many grand­chil­dren at this time. These are the only two he raises to tribal sta­tus; we have for­got­ten most of the names from their gen­er­a­tion. Ephraim and Menasha are remem­bered to this day.

2. Jacob raises Joseph, by default, to the level of first born. The def­i­n­i­tion of pri­mo­gen­i­ture is the receipt of a dou­ble por­tion by the first born. By giv­ing two sons of Joseph the sta­tus of full sons, he gives Joseph that dou­ble portion.

3. The qual­i­ta­tive effect of the above is exac­er­bated by the fact that Jacob doesn’t say I’ll make them like ‘any two’ broth­ers, Naf­tali and Asher, Issachar and Dan, Gad and Zevu­lun. No, he says, like ‘Reuven and Simon’ the first two of his sons, one of whom should have received the gift of pri­mo­gen­i­ture that is being offered to Joseph through his children.

4. Jacob inten­tion­ally switches his right hand over his left to give the younger grand­son Ephraim a slightly greater force of his spir­i­tual power. When Joseph tries to cor­rect him, assum­ing that Jacob must be con­fused, Jacob states explic­itly that he intends for Ephraim to be pre­ferred. Menashe will also have a tribe and sta­tus, but Ephrayim will be the greater of the two.

But let’s not be so hard on Jacob. I think we can say, in his defense, that he only ever intended to marry Rachel and she bore him only two chil­dren. For him, this may have sim­ply been a way of rewrit­ing his­tory to suit his orig­i­nal intent.
So it’s only fair to note the man­ner in which he mit­i­gates the seem­ing unfairness:

1. He does it in pri­vate — not in the faces of the other broth­ers. Will they fig­ure it out? Cer­tainly, but com­pare this to the very pub­lic way in which he pre­ferred Joseph to his broth­ers: the spe­cial coat, the fact that Joseph didn’t have to go shep­herd­ing with them in far­away places (what else was he doing at home when Jacob told him to go find his broth­ers in Shchem?).

2. Unlike the bless­ing he receives by deceiv­ing his father, Jacob doesn’t express his pref­er­ence in poetry. In the ancient world, the curse or bless­ing of an impor­tant per­son, like a patri­arch, was con­sid­ered to have more than mere psy­cho­log­i­cal or sub­jec­tive power. It had objec­tive power. The bless­ing he received from Isaac was sep­a­rate from the one that was given to Esau. They were hier­ar­chi­cal bless­ings that included a win­ner and a loser. The fact that Menashe is receiv­ing a less potent bless­ing is only evi­dent in prose and in the posi­tion of Jacob’s hand – the bless­ing itself is offered to them simul­ta­ne­ously and it is not, in and of itself, hierarchical.

3. The word sikel is used for ‘cross­ing’ his arms; a term that has the same root as seichel or mind. It’s an unusual term not nor­mally asso­ci­ated with hands. There are some com­men­ta­tors who sug­gest that Jacob’s hands acted as if they had minds of their own such that Menashe would think this was some­thing beyond grandpa’s con­trol — less­en­ing his embarrassment.

4. Most impor­tantly, after deliv­er­ing the bless­ing, Jacob declares rule that ALL boys who descend from him should receive the bless­ing, “May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.” Boys are tra­di­tion­ally so blessed to this day.

But what does that mean — May God make you like Ephrayim and Menashe? Does it mean that all of us should be heads of our own tribes of Israel? That all of us should be given a larger share of our grand­par­ents’ inheritance?

No, I don’t think so.

Think about it: Why do grand­par­ents and grand­kids get along so well? They have a com­mon enemy!

The par­ent child rela­tion­ship is fraught with all sorts of unavoid­able con­flicts. It’s the parent’s job to raise a child to be inde­pen­dent. It’s the very suc­cess of that task that man­i­fests itself in hurt feel­ings. After all, if kids are going to become inde­pen­dent, they are going to need to sep­a­rate, to say I’m not merely a part of your suc­cess but my own per­son. As proud as a par­ent may be, there will always be a loss, a long­ing for those days of throw­ing the child up and down in the air, of uncon­di­tional obe­di­ence and respect.

Grand­par­ents, under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, can leave the mat­u­ra­tion respon­si­bil­ity to the par­ents. If they’re lucky, they don’t even have to change dia­pers. They can just play with the kids and spoil them rot­ten. That’s their job.

When we say to our sons, May you be like Ephrayim and Menashe, we are say­ing we want them to expe­ri­ence the uncon­di­tional love of grand­par­ents as well as the approval of the the par­ents. Every child prays for the approval of their par­ents even as they break free to cre­ate their own lives. The prayer that Jacob gives us is sym­bolic of achiev­ing that impos­si­ble bal­ance of approval, respect and love.

But let’s not leave out the daughters!

This line alludes to a later Bib­li­cal text from the book of Ruth. When she is declared before the peo­ple as the wife of Boaz, the peo­ple respond that God should make her like Rachel and Leah. Here it’s not a grand­fa­ther issue. Here, Ruth, the Moabite who becomes part of the Jew­ish peo­ple, is ele­vated even as a con­vert to the sta­tus of the sis­ter matri­archs — both the one who was loved more and the one who had more kids and thus gar­nered more respect from her social context.

I would not leave out Sarah and Rebecca from the bless­ing of girls as we tra­di­tion­ally prac­tice. Still, I think there is a par­tic­u­larly poignant mes­sage to be gar­nered from the fact that every girl should be loved for what she is (as was Rachel) as well as for what she achieves (and in our con­text it’s cer­tainly more than hav­ing children).

And this brings me to the third point of the rab­binic con­cept with which we started: There is no early or late in the Torah. The sto­ries of the Torah have a time­less appli­ca­tion in the his­tory of our peo­ple and of humankind. There has never been a gen­er­a­tion dur­ing which chil­dren have not desired to be loved uncon­di­tion­ally as by grand­par­ents, approved of by their par­ents and loved for what they are as well as for what they achieve.

May God make us all like Ephrayim and Menashe, like Rachel and Leah.