Post by Jen on Jan 3, 2009 3:52:27 GMT -5
So, I know I haven't been keeping up with these very well... and I'm not going to do anything as ridiculous as say I've made a New Year's resolution to do better. I'm a busy person. My first free night in a while just happens to coincide with the first weekend of the New Year. Pure coincidence, though I do intend to be more active on the site.
That said, this week's Torah portion is Vayigash, in which Jacob's sons are reunited after having sold Joseph into slavery years prior. It is an interesting meeting, in which Joseph's brothers do not recognize him as they are coming to ask for food. He attempts to make them leave behind their brother Benjamin as a slave while they go to retrieve the rest of their family. Judah, however, pleads for Benjamin's release... apparently proving to Joseph that the brothers have changed and causing him to reveal himself.
In the end, the entire family comes to Egypt and Jacob is reunited with his beloved son Joseph after 22 years. The Pharoah gives the land of Goshen to Jacob's family to settle (this is some seventy people, being Jacob's children with their wives and children, etc). And so, the Egyptian exile of the children of Israel is begun.
Now, anyone can draw from this portion the typical lesson of brotherly love and forgiveness and how important it is to make right the wrong's in one's life. But, I'm never much satisfied with anything quite so simple. Instead, I would like to look at the question of what we consider blessing and what we consider curse in our lives. As someone often plagued with doubt, I tend to read the Bible from a very objective historical perspective, often seeing large parts as metaphor rather than as literal fact. For example, I tend to see the creation story as a way of establishing God's ownership of the world and divine might, rather than as a literal account of how the actual act of creation took place.
So, what I would like to see in this story instead is the lesson of how difficult it is for human beings to know what our blessings and curses truly are. I suppose this is my attempt after struggling with doubt to put trust back into God by acknowledging that it can often be difficult--if not impossible--to truly understand the workings of history and the universe from a limited human perspective.
For example, when Joseph found himself in a pit in the desert and practically abandoned by his brothers, some part of him must surely have at least contemplated the idea that the occurrence was a curse. However, had he not ended up in that pit, and later in Egypt, it is likely Jacob's entire family would have been unable to find food during the famine and would have starved in Canaan. And, when Jacob's family found unexpected plenty and comfort in Egypt, certainly they never could have expected that their blessing would lead to centuries of Egyptian slavery. But then, without centuries of being enslaved, what would have spurred the Israelites to leave Egypt? And without having left Egypt, perhaps they never would have received Torah.
For once, I am not providing an intellectual breakdown of the history or the language of the Torah, instead I am closing with a question. How do we determine what is blessing and what is curse? And faced with the prospect that we cannot truly see which is which, we seem to be left with the answer that all we can truly do is trust God. But then, blind trust has never been a favorite pastime of mine. It is all too easy to see God where God is not, and thus place one's trust in the wrong place. Throughout history, people have claimed to do the will of God in the perpetration of evil. In my mind, too many people claim to know God's will when I just do not believe that it is within human capacity to truly grasp God's grand design. And so, we are left with questions of how to conduct our lives... most believe the Bible is the blueprint of rules for governing human morality. However, there are so many laws governing things like slavery... or even things which seem outlandish, such as a prohibition of mixing different kinds of fibers in one fabric. And so, given that even this basic doctrine must somehow itself be interpreted, how are we to truly know what is right?
So then, how do you judge what is blessing and what is curse? How do you set your moral compass to know what is right and what is wrong? I personally tend to find myself weighing on the side of my heart, and hoping that that is where God resides. And so, perhaps the meaning behind this Torah portion is that we should, from time to time, look within ourselves for God. If God speaks to our hearts, that makes the Torah, and the entire Bible, a living document.... a dynamic doctrine which finds meaning in every person's life and which, instead of preaching intolerant absolutism, instead simply asks that we find a way to love and to trust that that love will guide us to God's will, and hopefully to a better world.
That said, this week's Torah portion is Vayigash, in which Jacob's sons are reunited after having sold Joseph into slavery years prior. It is an interesting meeting, in which Joseph's brothers do not recognize him as they are coming to ask for food. He attempts to make them leave behind their brother Benjamin as a slave while they go to retrieve the rest of their family. Judah, however, pleads for Benjamin's release... apparently proving to Joseph that the brothers have changed and causing him to reveal himself.
In the end, the entire family comes to Egypt and Jacob is reunited with his beloved son Joseph after 22 years. The Pharoah gives the land of Goshen to Jacob's family to settle (this is some seventy people, being Jacob's children with their wives and children, etc). And so, the Egyptian exile of the children of Israel is begun.
Now, anyone can draw from this portion the typical lesson of brotherly love and forgiveness and how important it is to make right the wrong's in one's life. But, I'm never much satisfied with anything quite so simple. Instead, I would like to look at the question of what we consider blessing and what we consider curse in our lives. As someone often plagued with doubt, I tend to read the Bible from a very objective historical perspective, often seeing large parts as metaphor rather than as literal fact. For example, I tend to see the creation story as a way of establishing God's ownership of the world and divine might, rather than as a literal account of how the actual act of creation took place.
So, what I would like to see in this story instead is the lesson of how difficult it is for human beings to know what our blessings and curses truly are. I suppose this is my attempt after struggling with doubt to put trust back into God by acknowledging that it can often be difficult--if not impossible--to truly understand the workings of history and the universe from a limited human perspective.
For example, when Joseph found himself in a pit in the desert and practically abandoned by his brothers, some part of him must surely have at least contemplated the idea that the occurrence was a curse. However, had he not ended up in that pit, and later in Egypt, it is likely Jacob's entire family would have been unable to find food during the famine and would have starved in Canaan. And, when Jacob's family found unexpected plenty and comfort in Egypt, certainly they never could have expected that their blessing would lead to centuries of Egyptian slavery. But then, without centuries of being enslaved, what would have spurred the Israelites to leave Egypt? And without having left Egypt, perhaps they never would have received Torah.
For once, I am not providing an intellectual breakdown of the history or the language of the Torah, instead I am closing with a question. How do we determine what is blessing and what is curse? And faced with the prospect that we cannot truly see which is which, we seem to be left with the answer that all we can truly do is trust God. But then, blind trust has never been a favorite pastime of mine. It is all too easy to see God where God is not, and thus place one's trust in the wrong place. Throughout history, people have claimed to do the will of God in the perpetration of evil. In my mind, too many people claim to know God's will when I just do not believe that it is within human capacity to truly grasp God's grand design. And so, we are left with questions of how to conduct our lives... most believe the Bible is the blueprint of rules for governing human morality. However, there are so many laws governing things like slavery... or even things which seem outlandish, such as a prohibition of mixing different kinds of fibers in one fabric. And so, given that even this basic doctrine must somehow itself be interpreted, how are we to truly know what is right?
So then, how do you judge what is blessing and what is curse? How do you set your moral compass to know what is right and what is wrong? I personally tend to find myself weighing on the side of my heart, and hoping that that is where God resides. And so, perhaps the meaning behind this Torah portion is that we should, from time to time, look within ourselves for God. If God speaks to our hearts, that makes the Torah, and the entire Bible, a living document.... a dynamic doctrine which finds meaning in every person's life and which, instead of preaching intolerant absolutism, instead simply asks that we find a way to love and to trust that that love will guide us to God's will, and hopefully to a better world.
