Rabbi Janet Marder

December 25, 2009

Home of Peace

December is a time when families get together. The days are at their shortest and coldest – and we, as if by instinct, gather in the presence of those who are nearest and dearest -- to warm each other up, to share food, to light candles against the darkness, to give gifts that reaffirm our ties to one another.  The calendar cooperates with us, providing holy days and festivals that turn these deep human needs into ritual acts. School and work are set aside during this season, so that we can turn to other things that matter more.

My own family got together this year both for celebration and for remembrance. On the same weekend as our big Chanukah gathering in Los Angeles , we had a smaller gathering at Home of Peace – an old Jewish cemetery in a neighborhood where the Jews of Southern California once lived. Shelly and I and our daughters went to Home of Peace to remember his mother, Frances, who passed away last June, and to dedicate her memorial stone.  Shelly’s sister, Sandy, drove up from Palm Springs with her young daughter, Liora; our nephew, David, drove in from his law office in Century City; his wife, Trisha, came straight from her job in West LA.  We formed a small circle as we gathered around the grave and said the traditional words.

Like all families, ours is a complicated one; and we brought into that circle a lot of history and memory and mixtures of emotion. We took some time to think about Frances and to speak about who she was and what she meant to us.  We acknowledged, in our different ways, that we had lost a woman of valor, and we prayed for the peace of her soul.

We were just one of many family circles coming together during these December weeks – some in celebration, some in sorrow, most exhibiting the full range of human feelings in all their possible permutations. 

As Jews, we are invited to look in on one particular circle every December, when we find ourselves immersed in the story of Joseph.

Long before Jerry Springer brought us troubled families sharing their problems in tawdry detail before a live studio audience, our tradition engaged us every week in a communal conversation about struggling spouses, parents, children and siblings. We have been reading about these family troubles all through the book of Genesis, which we began 11 weeks ago, back on Simchat Torah.

Now, in the darkest days of the year, the Torah gives us Joseph -- the most wrenching family story of all -- to read and contemplate together. Not for its entertainment value, though it certainly has some, but for the wisdom we might gain and bring back to our own lives. 

For all of us, of course, spend these holidays with our families – whether we are physically together or not, whether our relatives are living or not. We are with them; they are with us, embedded in consciousness, memory and heart. We are with our families at this season, facing the many kinds of brokenness that families face  -- brought on by illness or death, by distance, divorce, anger or estrangement. And so the Torah gives us the great story of a broken family and how it comes back together again.

This week’s portion, Vayigash, catapults us into the middle of a dramatic scene. Famine has struck the land of Canaan . Jacob’s sons have come to Egypt in search of food. There they meet a grand and mysterious Egyptian official who quizzes them closely about their father and young brother back in Canaan . Why does he show such a keen interest in these details of their lives? It is, of course, because he is Joseph, their long-lost brother, the boy they cast into a pit and sold to strangers, the boy who has now made good, has risen to power and glory in Egypt and stands over his brothers with their fate in his hands.

For three chapters Joseph hides himself from his brothers, tormenting them and testing them. He orders them to return to Canaan and bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, down to Egypt .  Then he supplies them with food, but hides a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack of grain.  Once the brothers are on their way, Joseph sends officials after them, accusing them of theft. The brothers insist on their innocence; they say that if any one of them is a thief they will all remain in Egypt as slaves.

The sacks of food are searched, the goblet is found in Benjamin’s bag and Joseph orders the other brothers out of Egypt , but commands that Benjamin be left behind. “The man in whose hand the goblet was found shall remain my slave,” he says. “The rest of you go back in peace to your father.”

And now, when the situation is most desperate, our portion begins with these momentous words: “Vayiggash Yehudah elav….Then Judah drew near to him” [Gen.44:18].

Judah, the brother who once sold young Joseph for 20 pieces of silver, now steps forward to argue for the life of young Benjamin. He speaks to the mysterious Egyptian official of the powerful love that unites Jacob and his youngest son. “We have an aged father,” he says, “and he has a young son, a child of his old age. His brother is dead; he alone is left of his mother [Rachel], and his father loves him.” Judah says that Jacob and Benjamin cannot be separated. “The boy cannot leave his father,” he says. “If he were to leave his father, he would die.” And Judah warns that he cannot return to Canaan without bringing Benjamin with him. “If I come home to…my father and the boy is not with us – since the soul of one is bound up with the soul of the other – when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and [we] will send the white head of ….our father in sorrow to the grave.”

Then Judah offers a personal plea: “[I] have pledged myself for the boy to my father, saying, ‘if I do not bring him back to you, I shall stand guilty before my father forever.’ Therefore, please let [me] remain as a slave to you instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can …I bear to see the misery that would strike my father?”

Joseph, hearing these words, can control himself no longer. He orders all his attendants out of the room, leaving only his brothers. He weeps uncontrollably, and then he throws off the mask and reveals his true self. “I am Joseph: is my father still alive?”

What has happened here? Why is Joseph overcome by the words of Judah ? Just a few verses ago all the brothers offered to be his slaves, but Joseph listened unmoved, without shedding a tear. Now he is awash in feeling. He says to his brothers, “Draw closer to me!” He kisses them, he weeps in their arms, he tells them the whole story and pours out his forgiveness.

The key to this portion, perhaps, is its opening word: “Vayiggash – he drew near.” Commentators have always understood this to mean that Judah drew near to Joseph so that he could speak with passion and save Benjamin’s life. “Vayiggash -- he approached” can be understood in three different ways. It can mean coming forward to present a case for judgment; it can mean coming forward to engage in battle; it can mean coming forward to engage in prayer. Judah was prepared for all of these – he stepped up to present his argument, to fight for his brother, to plead for his life.

But there is another way to understand this story, and this provocative word. Dr. Yisrael Susskind, a psychologist and Torah scholar, teaches that “Vayiggash – he came near” can also mean that Judah came near to his father, Jacob. Not physically – his father was far away in Canaan , after all. We are talking here about the crossing of emotional distance. Judah drew near to the heart of his father. 

His words show that he had come to understand this father of his – Jacob, who grew up in a troubled household, never properly loved by his own father, Isaac. Jacob, indulged by his strong-willed mother, in love with Rachel, another strong woman, who is everything to him.  Jacob, who loses his beloved wife in childbirth when she is still young and beautiful and cannot stop grieving for her. Jacob, who transfers all his love and anxiety to Rachel’s sons, loving them too much, clinging too closely, holding on too fiercely.  Jacob, who is old and white-haired now, but still deeply, inexplicably attached to Joseph and Benjamin above all his other sons, so that his very life is bound up with theirs.

Judah understands this now. He understands this father of his.  He understands the way he is, and how he got to be that way. Judah understands and accepts, and he goes beyond that into an emotion that is deeper still. Judah cannot bear to contemplate his father’s grief. He cannot endure the thought of causing him anguish. He sees his father clearly in all his human frailty and he loves him.

Judah ’s words unlock the tears that have been imprisoned within Joseph for decades. He begins to cry with his brothers, and all the painful knots inside them are dissolved: the anger and the hatred and the jealousy and the desire to punish one another. They draw close to one another; the path is open for reconciliation.

How does this broken family come back together again? The answer is very simple, though it is far from easy. Love overcomes resentment. Love that is mature and generous of spirit, love that does not idealize but accepts imperfections, love that encompasses understanding and compassion and forgiveness, that releases old grudges and hurts.

Resentment: a feeling of deep and bitter anger, of lingering ill-will. It comes from the French “resentir – to feel strongly.” The very meaning of the word suggests how tenacious it is, how seductive it is to hang onto our grievances and nurse our wounds. Each time we re-visit our resentment we reinforce our sense of being wronged; we re-confirm our image of ourselves as righteous victims. This is all very normal. There is only one problem. You cannot keep a family together if you cling too tightly to resentment. Resentment must make way if families are to be healed.

 It is very hard to do what Judah does – to love a father even when your father cannot reciprocate in the way you yearn to be loved. It is hard to see your parents’ limitations and still find something in them that is worthy of love.  It is hard for Joseph to embrace his brothers and let go of what they did to him long ago.

It takes strength to draw close, to give love so unselfishly to another, but many of us do it every day. Parents continue to love their teenagers and adult children even when they get back mostly moodiness and rage. Husbands and wives care for their spouses even when they are sick and no longer able to be true and loving partners. And sons and daughters struggle to find ways of loving mothers or fathers who have disappointed them.

In this dark and chilly season, the Torah gives us a story to strengthen us in our encounters with our own imperfect families. It gives the tale of Joseph, who grows out of teenage self-centeredness into a strong and decent man. It gives us the tale of Judah, who grows out of youthful resentment and finds within himself the capacity to forgive. And in a little-noticed corner of the portion, it gives us the story of Jacob, a man harmed by his father’s inability to love, who at last finds a way to make peace with him.

As he begins the long, exhausting journey to Egypt to be reunited with Joseph, the aged Jacob stops in Beersheva, where his father had once built an altar. There, says the Torah, Jacob offered on that very altar “shelamim – peace-offerings” to “the God of his father, Isaac.”

The Midrash asks why, out of nowhere, we are hearing about Isaac. And one sage answers that it is because Isaac suffered so deeply during his life. After his own father bound him as an offering on Mt. Moriah , “we look upon [Isaac] as though his ashes were heaped in a pile upon the altar” [Gen.Rabba 84:5]. 

At that moment Jacob came to understand how his own father had been damaged by this trauma. He came to appreciate that, despite his failings, Isaac had taught him his heritage and brought him closer to God. So Jacob offered “shelamim” – peace-offerings, which can also be translated as “offerings of wholeness, reconciliation offerings.” For the first time, says Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Jacob felt a sense of peace and wholeness within his family.  Father and sons now come together, a band of brothers sets bitterness aside, and the story comes to its end with tears and celebration.

It is only a temporary happiness, of course. There is no “happily ever after” in the Torah, just as there is none in the real world. Real families are always having to make the journey between resentment and reconciliation over and over again. What keeps us going, I suppose, is the power of love.

This month the New York Times invited readers to submit photos that symbolized what family meant to them. One of them, submitted by a man named Ken Paprocki, showed a handsome, blond Midwestern family – mother, father and five children – standing together on a sunny day. Here is what the caption said:

“This photo was taken in Pawnee Park , Columbus , Nebraska in July 1986. I was leaving in a week for Italy where I’d spend my junior year of college abroad…. It would be the first time I’d be away from my family for so long, so my Mom wanted to have a professional portrait taken before I left the country. This would be the only portrait our family ever took. I was 22 and ready as hell to enjoy my life. I had let my hair grow out for the first time (you can see a wisp of my ponytail in the back) and bleached it blond. I was into fashion – well, if you can call thrift store acquisitions and bargain sales fashion – and had made a pact with myself to never again wear blue jeans. [My sister] Jan was 20 and starting work in a hair salon. Rich was a newly-minted high school graduate at 18 and on his way to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln .

“Greg was an awkward 14-year-old who liked to draw. And sweet little Jill was an 11-year-old who, because of kidney problems, had started to put on weight when all through her childhood she was a miniature stick version of Twiggy. Mom, aged 43, worked 12-hours shifts six days a week at a slave-labor factory known as Dales where she earned a pittance in wages. She wanted to save enough money so she and Jan could come visit me and go to Rome to see the Vatican and maybe the Pope.

“Dad, 46, worked at Behlen’s, the main factory in Columbus , and at the local armory as a custodian. He was quietly drunk most of the time, but for this picture he stayed sober. In eight years he would be dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In 16 years Mom would die, an ashen shadow of the vibrant person she once was, after being eaten alive by cancer for two years.

“When I look at this picture I see a time when the only worry I had in my life was if my hair was cool enough. My family had problems, and was unconventional by many standards, but the strong love that always surrounded us made me feel safe and protected. I took that love for granted back then because I didn’t know any different, but now I realize I was infinitely blessed. Life goes so fast that I guess you only do see those things when you get old[er], but how wonderful it would be to recognize them when you’re young.”

I looked at the photo in the Times – everyone so handsome and blond, the day so sunny and bright. And I remembered that, despite appearances, all families have problems, but even families with problems can be blessed by love.

I remembered that when I stood with my own family in a circle at the Home of Peace, and we read aloud together the words that my mother-in-law chose for her memorial stone: “My most valuable treasure is my family, which links me to the past and the future.”

These are the last chilly days of December. Time to appreciate the treasure that matters more than anything else. Time for families to draw closer in love.