TEVET TORAH
TEVET TORAH
The Torah readings of Tevet take us through the end of the Joseph story and into the beginnings of the Moses story. Joseph and Moses are obviously two of the most impactful revered ancestors in our tradition. These are highly significant readings, worthy of great study and reflections.
I am highlighting four themes, one from each parsha. For more discussion, see my commentaries on the website.
· The distinction between myth and historical narrative from Mikeitz
· Joseph and psychospiritual adulthood from Vayigash
· The contrast between Jacob and Joseph as they age and die from Vayechi
· Moses’ attempt to avoid the task given to him by YHVH and his spiritual journey from Shemot
One of the most fascinating characteristics of the Hebrew Bible is that it presents myths as if they were history. What do I mean by this? Myths, in my use of the term following Mircea Eliade, a preeminent scholar of the history of religions, are stories about Gods, heroes or revered ancestors. These stories are beyond our human ability to replicate even while we seek to emulate the God, heroes or revered ancestors and thus draw closer to the sacred.
History, on the other hand, is an attempt to recount stories in factual ways to inform us about what happened. Writing history, contrary to our popular image, isn’t simply a recital of facts. Every historian chooses what s/he will include and exclude and tells their stories based on who they are and their own purposes in being an historian. Yet there has been general agreement that you can’t simply ignore inconvenient facts and pretend that they don’t exist (though this agreement is breaking down as we see in our politics). If you are writing about the American Civil War, even if you think Robert E. Lee is the greatest general ever to walk the face of the earth, you still discuss his decision to send Picket’s brigade straight up an open hill into the face of a well prepared, numerically stronger and dug in Union army that led to the destruction of Picket’s force.
But the writer of myth could ignore this inconvenient fact because his/her purpose is not to describe what happened using some kind of general consensus about what is a fact and what is not. No, the mythologist writes, or almost always speaks, to describe how the presence of the sacred unfolds in our profane world and how we imperfect humans might more closely align ourselves with the sacred.
Eliade writes somewhere that myth is truer than history. I take this to mean that myth speaks to us more deeply than history. It connects us to the realm of the sacred or to spirit in a way that mere history can never do. Evaluating a myth by asking how historically accurate it is e.g. was the world really created in six days, is completely missing the point and asking the wrong question. The right question is whether the myth draws us closer to the sacred.
The story we have of Joseph so far looks like history but is actually myth. That is, it looks like we are supposed to take it literally, but we are not.
Why do I think it is myth and not history? Because the story makes no historical sense, though it does make mythological sense. I find it impossible to believe that none of the Pharoah’s religious specialists at court could interpret what seem to me to be two obvious dreams. Not only could they not interpret the dreams, they couldn’t even connect the two dreams to each other. That beggars the imagination. Then there is Joseph’s rapid rise to prominence. What are the chances that this total outsider with no power base at all could instantaneously rise to the second most powerful position in the most powerful empire of its time?
Third, his plan to build up reserves against the coming famine is accepted without any grumbling. Raise your hand if you know about a society that in a time of material plenty tightens its belt and stashes away the surplus because of an unseen potential problem. I don’t know of any, and neither do you.
Further, contrast the way the Joseph story is told with the way the stories of the Judges, Prophets and Kings of Israel are told in Joshua, Judges, Samuel I and II and Kings I and II. Those books are histories, properly speaking, even if they contain things that we think are miracles such as the sun not setting for Joshua or Elijah’s activities against the priests of Baal. The arc of these stories as a whole is perfectly plausible and full of prosaic successes and failures. Not so Joseph.
Why is this important? How does it change our reading of Joseph if we think it is myth and not history? It changes the questions we ask of the text. Here’s an example.
Let’s take Joseph’s interpretation of the Pharoah’s dreams. Instead of asking, for instance, how come none of Pharoah’s magicians could interpret the dreams or if the building of central granaries was a land grab for the throne, we would ask how we can be a channel for the divine to interpret dreams. For that is what Joseph claims he is. This is a much, much, richer question. When the wine steward and the baker complain they have no one to interpret their dreams, Joseph says “Surely God can interpret!” (40:8). When he is brought before the Pharoah having been introduced as the person who interpreted the dreams of the wine steward and the baker, Pharoah says to him “Now I have heard it said of you that for you to hear a dream is to tell it’s meaning.” Joseph replies “Not I! God will see to Pharoah’s welfare.” (41:15-16)
What are the stories or the symbols that link you to the sacred? What’s the connection between the stories or symbols that link you to the sacred and your view of how you can be a channel for the divine?
What is a psychospiritual adult? Following Plotkin, being a psycho spiritual adult has nothing to do with earning a living, having a family, living on your own, attaining a certain age, having a driver’s license etc. Rather a psychospiritual adult is someone who has discovered who they truly are, their unique purpose on the earth, and is executing a delivery system for their target community that is an embodiment of who they are. A psycho spiritual adult can articulate why they are on earth at this particular moment in this particular place and can demonstrate that they are manifesting this answer in a way that makes a difference.
I’ve talked before about how you know your unique purpose by looking at the intersection of what you excel at and what you care deeply about. I want to explore this further.
I absolutely believe that we can be really good at more than one thing and we can care deeply about more than one thing. I am really good with numbers, long term planning and synthesizing information into a coherent whole. I care deeply about my family, the way land is grazed, being a member of the Jewish people and personal spiritual development. Only some of those are wrapped up together in my true purpose.
Joseph, for instance, wins his renown by interpreting dreams, but for him that’s not why he is on earth at this particular place and time. How do we know this? Because his delivery system has nothing to do with dreams. Joseph is Zaphenath-paneah, the creator of life who creates life for his people by saving them from famine. He may be great at interpreting dreams, but I would argue that this isn’t a burning passion for him and actually isn’t why he was born where he was and when he was. He obviously cares deeply about his family and yet chooses not to live with them. Joseph settles his father and brothers in Goshen, provides them with bread (the literal bread winner of the family) (47:11-12) and stays in the capital overseeing the famine distribution of grain and the eventual land grab for the Pharoah (47:13-26)
My questions here are meant to deepen your engagement with your gifts and your true purpose. I tend to think that sometimes it is really important to recognize what isn’t part of your true purpose, what roads you shouldn’t take or are less important to you.
What things are you really good at that you don’t care too much about? That you do care about? What things do you care deeply about that you may not be particularly good at or are not connected to your true purpose?
Developmentally, one rather large part of growing old is coming to terms with one’s impending death. We all make choices throughout life. Some work and some fail. Some make a huge difference and some have far lesser impact. One big difference between being younger and getting older is that when we are in our 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, it is common enough to think that if something didn’t work, you could take another crack at it. That is certainly how I thought. But when there are more yesterdays than tomorrows, as Bill Clinton once said, it is time to turn towards acceptance and making peace with what worked and didn’t work in one’s life. Jacob hasn’t done that at all judging from the curses he heaps upon his children on his deathbed.
Joseph, on the other hand, seems more content and his death far less eventful. His brothers are obviously fearful after Jacob’s death, so they make up this terrible story that Jacob said on his deathbed that Joseph should forgive them for all the ways they wronged him back in Canaan. Then they offer to be his slaves! (50:15-18) This is all true, even though, as we discussed in the last parsha, Vayigash, he has already forgiven them. Joseph simply reiterates that it is all for the good and that he will take care of them. “Have no fear. Am I a substitute for God? Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.” (50:19-20)
If we also look at Joseph’s relationship with Jacob, it feels mutual and content. Jacob bows to him (47:31) after Joseph swears to him that he will take him up and bury him at Machpelah with his ancestors. And Joseph bows to Jacob when he introduces his children (48:12). Joseph is the one who takes over and handles the burial details when Jacob dies, as if he is the eldest, instead of the 11nth son. He arranges for the embalmment and then the internment in Machpelah with Jacob’s parents and grandparents. Joseph seems to feel secure in his role both in an Egyptian context and in a Hebrew one. His last wish is that his bones are returned to Canaan when the Hebrews return to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A full life.
Joseph, who is not the patriarch in Jewish imagination that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are, sure seems like the one who became an elder.
If you are 60 or older, take a really serious look at starting to get complete. Start with an inventory of regrets and things that feel unfinished. Talk about it, write about it, pray about it. My favorite place for this is my hitobdedut practice where I sit alone in the woods and talk about things that I am incomplete about, letting myself realize that they are in the past. If there is clean up action, take it. If not, let it go. Reb Zalman wrote a very good book on this From Aging to Saging. Ron Pevny also wrote a wonderful book called Conscious Living, Conscious Aging. He was a guide with Animas Valley, the group founded by Bill Plotkin, so has an orientation towards the more than human world.
If you are younger, you probably have more time, but there’s no time like now to get complete with what chews at you from your life. Please also understand that death is both something literal and is also a metaphor for parts of your life that are past or that you have outgrown.
What is incomplete in your life that are you still carrying around from the past? What in your life needs to die? What has died that you regret?
Moses is desperate to avoid the calling given to him by YHVH. Let’s look at this in the context of his spiritual journey, using Plotkin’s framework as laid out in Journey to Soul Initiation.
Young adolescents, metaphorically and/or literally, leave home seeking to find themselves. They are either called in pursuit of something (think the quest for the Holy Grail or Abraham to the Holy land that the divine will show him) or are abducted, meaning some kind of forced departure—think Persephone being abducted by Hades, Jacob forced to flee after stealing the birthright or Joseph sold into slavery and taken down to Egypt. Moses is metaphorically abducted and he is running away from Egypt, not towards Midian in particular. He does not make Midian his home, naming his first son Gershom, “for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.” (2:22). Even though he is married and has a son, he is still in the adolescent wandering phase.
Then he encounters the divine at the burning bush when he is pasturing the sheep near the sacred mountain Horeb. He does not receive a name the way Jacob does after wrestling with the angel or Joseph receives from the Pharoah. This is not a revelation of his mythopoetic identity, Rather, this is still part of his journey of discovery of who he is. And he’s assigned a task, an impossible task like the tasks Hercules was assigned—only this is to be YHVH’s spokesperson in the freeing of his people. This spiritual task situates him squarely as an adolescent still seeking to find himself.
Slight detour for two points about Moses’ experience at the bush. The first is that this is one of the three places where a hero says “hineni,” here I am”, as I’ve discussed previously with Jacob. Hineni is an incredibly powerful statement. Second, God tells him to take off his shoes from his feet because the ground he is standing on is holy ground. My teacher R. Zelig Golden teaches us that “take off your shoes” could also be translated as put aside your habits. Now maybe the holy ground is always sacred ground because it is a place of power, or maybe we have the power to transform an ordinary place into a sacred place by taking off the habits that interfere with us experiencing the sacred. Wandering as an adolescent forces us to shake off our habits.
Moses, to put it mildly, is highly resistant to doing this task that the divine has assigned him (3:11-4:17). He offers excuse after excuse about why he can’t do it. YHVH patiently answers the objections. Who am I to do it, Moses asks, I don’t even know your name. YHVH answers “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” I am who I am (which is, fascinatingly, more like a mythopoetic identity than any kind of proper name). What if they say, Moses continues, that YHVH did not really appear to you, you’re making it all up? YHVH tells Moses to respond by putting on a magic demonstration. Throw your staff which I will magically turn into a snake or put your hand on your chest, have it turn scaly white, put it on your chest again and have it come back clean, take some water from the Nile and have it turn into blood). But YHVH, pleads Moses, I am not a man of words. YHVH says I am the one who gives people speech. Finally, and most plainly, “Please YHVH, make someone else your agent.” (4:13) But YHVH says enough already, your brother Aaron will speak for you, but get going.
Running from what we’ve been called to do—that’s really typical. It’s even typical in our Bible. Jeremiah also protested “Ah, YHVH God, I don’t how to speak, for I am still a boy. And YHVH said to me, Do not say “I am still a boy” But go wherever I send you.” (Jeremiah 1:6-7). Above all, recall the story of Jonah who did everything he could to (literally) flee his calling. Beware of those who embrace their calling too readily.
How have you tried in your life to avoid doing what you’ve been called to do? Can I recount the ways in my life? The things I am best at in life, are not the things I do. I was a great philosophy student. That’s not what I’ve done. I have this deep connection with cows. I live in suburbia.
How have you tried in your life to avoid doing what you’ve been called to do? Are there habits you need to take off in order to make the place where you stand into holy ground? Are you still wandering, or have you settled down? In what sense have you settled down?
QUESTIONS
What are the stories or the symbols that link you to the sacred? What’s the connection between the stories or symbols that link you to the sacred and your view of how you can be a channel for the divine?
What things are you really good at that you don’t care too much about? That you do care about? What things do you care deeply about that you may not be particularly good at or are not connected to your true purpose?
What is incomplete in your life that are you still carrying around from the past? What in your life needs to die? What has died that you regret?
How have you tried in your life to avoid doing what you’ve been called to do? Are there habits you need to take off in order to make the place where you stand into holy ground? Are you still wandering, or have you settled down? In what sense have you settled down?
Joseph and his brothers