KISLEV TORAH
The parshiot in Kislev take us from Isaac, through Jacob and into Joseph. This isn’t an exact match necessarily because the further we go out from Simchat Torah and starting to read the Torah again with Bereshit, In a beginning, the more likely we are to get a fifth shabbat and a fifth parsha.
These are rich myths, a really substantive part of our inheritance, tales to be told and retold as the weather gets colder and the days get shorter. There’s too much going on for me not to feel like I am leaving out themes such as the agency of women, the shadow side of Jacob’s family, sacred pillars and the role of place names in indigenous imagination. I’m also not discussing the possibility of sacred sexuality and the importance of dreams in the Jewish imagination. Lastly, I don’t offer my interpretation of the story of Esau’s “selling” his birthright to Jacob, an interpretation which is really different than anything else I have ever read.
Here are the four themes
o The birthright of every person to have a unique purpose from Toldot
o Jacob’s ladder dream and spiritual awakening from Vayetze
o Mythopoetic Identity from Vayishlach.
o Psychospiritual development from Vayeshev
Every person has the birthright of a unique purpose for which they are alive at a particular place and in a particular time. Let’s take a look at how this plays out here for Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca, like Sarah before her and Rachel and Hannah afterwards, is barren. Isaac prays to YHVH for her and she becomes pregnant. But it isn’t an easy pregnancy. “The children struggled inside her, and she said, “If it is like this, why do I exist?” (25:22). Now, I would have thought that this is a sentiment she would have expressed before she became pregnant, but I’ve never been pregnant and have no biological children, so what do I know? Ramban, a great Medieval mystical commentator interprets this verse as Rebecca asking why she is in this world. YHVH responds to her question by saying “Two nations are in your womb, and two people will be dispersed from your insides, and one people will be mightier than the other people, and the older the younger will serve.” (25:23)
The usual way to read verse 23 is that YHVH is saying that Esau will serve Jacob, since Jacob is our patriarch but Esau is not. However, Friedman argues the Hebrew is ambiguous. He writes that it could be translated as “the elder will serve the younger” but that it could equally be translated as “the elder, the younger will serve.” Rebecca clearly interprets YHVH’s words to her as saying that her purpose in life is to ensure that Jacob is Isaac’s rightful heir, even though he will be the younger son. Teubal argues, as we discussed in Chayyei Sarah, that this is an example of ultimogeniture, the practice in at least one matrilinear society that the youngest inherits, rather than the oldest. Maybe, but her favoritism of Jacob still seems weird and uncomfortable to me.
Let’s turn to Isaac. Isaac is the patriarch about whom remarkably little is conveyed. We see him in the akedah, of course, but he seems remarkably passive. The JPS commentary rightly says that 26: 1-33 “is the only collection of biblical narratives centrally devoted to [him]. The narrative about him remarkably echoes the Abraham story; there’s a famine, he leaves Canaan and passes off his wife as his sister, only this time to the Philistines instead of the Egyptians. Then he miraculously gets rich, sowing in the land of the Philistines and reaping 100fold (26:12), an ecological impossibility. Then he redigs wells that Abraham had originally dug in what sounds like the area around Be’er Sheva and concludes a pact of peace with the local leader, also named Avimelech.
If I were Isaac, I’d be tempted to ask myself whose life I was leading? That sense of passivity is also strongly reinforced in his interaction with Jacob in Jacob’s attempt to fool him into thinking that he is Esau. Isaac is clearly highly suspicious (27:20-24), even saying to him “Are you really my son Esau?” But he goes along with Rebecca’s and Jacob’s deception, though he knows better. So what is Isaac’s unique purpose? Is it just to be bridge to Jacob? Isaac, to me, feels absent to his own life.
I think there are probably two parts to a response for folks who are absent in their own lives. If you think they aren’t present because they are too busy conforming to expectations, my approach would be to work on exploring their unique purpose in life. Exploring this isn’t just an intellectual exercise but involves accessing your whole self through things like artistic expression, wandering in the more than human world etc. However, it is also possible that they can’t even begin to explore this because they have been too traumatized. I’ve read interpretations of Isaac that argue that he has been traumatized by the akedah. I would suggest that he also has been traumatized somehow beforehand, given his lack of resistance to being bound on an altar.
What is your unique purpose in life? If you can’t readily answer this, keep reading because I discuss this in the next theme. Re Isaac, have you ever felt absent in your life or like you were living someone else’s life? Have you known people who just did not seem present, who kind of seemed to be just existing until they died? Where are you not present in your life?
Jacob flees from his home and one night he dreams of a ladder (sulam) with angels ascending and descending and YHVH was beside him. YHVH reiterates the promise that he made to Abraham and Isaac about making his descendants a great nation. Jacob awakes, in amazement and says “Surely YHVH is present in this place and I did not know it.” (28:16).
I can think of two ways of interpreting this text that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. One way is that Jacob has viewed YHVH as a purely local to Hevron deity, a kind of household or place based deity. The limitations of deities to a given locale is actually a common belief amongst indigenous people. If you are in Pennsylvania, as I am, praying to a God who has influence in California would strike an indigenous person as stupid if not impossible to conceive, because what possible efficacy could a California God have if I need the sun to come out and have it stop raining so I can plant corn in the spring? (something that you don’t do in California)
Another possible interpretation is that Jacob, like a lot of us, had learned the community’s lessons about the sacred as a child growing up, but it had never really penetrated. So he knows who YHVH is, but YHVH really isn’t a particularly important character in his life. Then he has this dream, which might be termed as a spiritual awakening dream and goes something like “holy crap, there really is this God YHVH”
Holy crap, there really is this God YHVH is a really important step in Jacob’s becoming Yisrael, God wrestler, in the next parsha. His bargaining with YHVH indicates a beginning level of spiritual development because he is still thinking in terms of what he can gain from the relationship. For Jacob, at this point, it is absolutely a transactional relationship. “If God will be with me and watch over me in this way that I’m going and give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I come back in peace to my father’s house, then YHVH will become my God and this stone that I set as a pillar will be God’s house, and everything you’ll give me I’ll tithe to you.” (28:20-22) Even though YHVH has shown him the same promise he made to Abraham and Isaac (which presumably was discussed in the family), he still is just not ready to be committed to this vision, not ready yet to claim his place as a patriarch of his people.
Spiritual awakening experiences are really important in the history of religion. In the west, we might think of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, or Moses awakening in the wilderness with the burning bush. In the East we might think of Gautama Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree. Bill Plotkin talks about something he calls ecoawakening, when you have some kind of experience that makes your realize deep in your body that your first commitment is to the more than human world, rather than just towards the human world. I remember vividly my ecoawakening on top of a grain silo in Israel, for example.
To what extent is how you experience the divine influenced by where you are? To what extent are you still bargaining in your belief in the divine? What kind, if any, experiences have you had that might be termed spiritual awakening experiences?
Jacob has his encounter with the “ish” and receives his mythopoetic identity just before he encounters Esau again. He has apparently crossed the ford at Jabbok with his wives, maidservants and children, but seems to cross back to spend the night alone. (32:23-25) (it’s unclear to me if he actually crosses). Why is he committed to spending the night alone? The text does not say. It is easy to speculate that he wanted to talk to the divine as he had earlier in the chapter (32:10-13), but this is just speculation.
It is there, on the original side of the river, where he dreams and wrestles with an “ish.” Ish literally means “man,” but the commentators argue that it is an angel, a reasonable interpretation, given that this being is not simply a human. They wrestle until daybreak when the being apparently needs to leave. Jacob says he will not let him go until he receives a blessing. The being blesses him by giving him the new name Israel, God-wrestler. (32:25-30)
I have argued that Jacob’s dream of angels running up and down a ladder at Bethel was a spiritual awakening. This dream is another step because he is given a special, spiritual name. The vision he has is radically different than, say, the vision Moses has at the burning bush. Moses is given a particular task, but Jacob is given an identity. Israel is what, following Bill Plotkin, I would call a mythopoetic identity.
Mythopoetic identities are who we truly are at the deepest level; an expression in a few words of our true birthright, of the reason we are born into this body at this time. They are not job descriptions and are always ambiguous. They require both interpretation and a commitment to living into them. Some other examples include “Cocoon weaver,” “She who dances the earth and dreams songs to feed the longing,” “Compost bridger of the world.” I think it is also possible to not have a clear name or mythopoetic identity, and still have a clear sense of your true purpose, of why you were born in this time and in this place. If you don’t know your mythopoetic identity or have a clear idea of your true purpose, I’d suggest you do four things:
Take an inventory of what you care most deeply about
Take an inventory of what you are really good at that comes easily to you
Spend a lot of time wandering in the more than human world, praying for a vision of your true purpose
Find someone who has a good sense of why they are here as a mentor.
Plotkin would probably say that what you are really good at comes later when you are working at how to embody and share your true purpose. While I think that is logically true, I think that taking the inventory of what you are really good at can deepen your investigation into what you care most deeply about and why you are here on this planet in this place, at this time.
Do you have a mythopoetic identity? Any idea of your birthright, your true purpose, why you were born into this body at this time? How was this revealed to you?
Our text is frustratingly quiet about the psychospiritual development of Joseph. I’ve discussed the text’s lack of interest in Jacob’s psychospiritual development in my longer commentaries.
Joseph matures from an adolescent braggart who boasts that his brothers and father will bow down to him (as indeed they will) to the more mature young man in prison who attributes his skill in interpreting dreams to the divine. But we aren’t given any indication of how this maturation happened. Being put in the pit in the wilderness is a really tempting piece of text to interpret. The pit carries an obvious association with the underworld and/or mother earth. The wilderness is connected to revelation, as we’ve seen with Jacob, Hagar and will see with Moses and Elijah. But there’s just nothing in the text that lets us say anything. (37:22-28) The prison is also a kind of liminal space, that is a space not of our ordinary world.
Transformation usually happens in liminal space and time (part of the problem with expecting lasting transformation in weekend seminars that take place in hotels). Transformation also often happens on mountaintops or in some kind of depth setting, such as caves, dungeons or pits because these spaces are different than the settled hillsides and valleys in which we live our daily lives. Further, the physical space gives us certain metaphors of transformation. There’s a difference between “plumbing the depths” of something and “getting high.” Bill Plotkin explores this difference in much greater detail in his theory of spiritual development and his medicine wheel. He differentiates between spirit and soul, and spirit is this upward transcendent experience of the sacred, while soul involves an immanent and deep experience of the sacred.
Think of where you are drawn to when you are walking in the woods. Are you drawn upwards? Downwards? Or do you want to hang out in the valleys? Think of your transformational experiences that have stuck. Have they been more upwards, downwards or again in the valleys? What metaphors of transformation speak to you?
QUESTIONS
What is your unique purpose in life? Re Isaac, have you ever felt absent in your life or like you were living someone else’s life? Have you known people who just did not seem present, who kind of seemed to be just existing until they died? Where are you not present in your life?
To what extent is how you experience the divine influenced by where you are? To what extent are you still bargaining in your belief in the divine? What kind, if any, experiences have you had that might be termed spiritual awakening experiences?
Do you have a mythopoetic identity? Any idea of your birthright, your true purpose, why you were born into this body at this time? How was this revealed to you?
Think of where you are drawn to when you are walking in the woods. Are you drawn upwards? Downwards? Or do you want to hang out in the valleys? Think of your transformational experiences that have stuck. Have they been more upwards, downwards or again in the valleys? What metaphors of transformation speak to you?
