How ironic that after the great journey taken by our
patriarch Yaakov, Jacob, he whose name is changed to Israel, that when he at
last returns home safe and sound after all these years – he who had sworn to
God when he was running away from home that should God protect him and feed him
and clothe him that God would in fact be God for him – that there is no mention
of God when he returns him. In the first
chapter of Parashat Vayeshev (Bereisheet 37). The Parasha begins:
וַיֵּשֶׁב יַעֲקֹב בְּאֶרֶץ מְגוּרֵי אָבִיו בְּאֶרֶץ
כְּנָעַן
Va-yesehev Yaakov
b’eretz megurei aviv b’ereetz C’naan
And Jacob dwelt in the
land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan.
However, God does appear several times when we get to
Chapter 39 when we are already well into the saga of Yosef (Joseph), Yaakov’s
son who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, when we need to be
reassured that Yosef is fine and are told that God is not only with Yosef but
made Yosef “matzliah” (successful or prosperous) as it says:
וַיְהִי יְהוָה אֶת-יוֹסֵף וַיְהִי אִישׁ מַצְלִיח
Vayehi
A-donai et Yosef va-yehi ish matzliah
We are told this both when Yosef arrives at the home of
Potiphar and again when Potiphar has him thrown into prison after Yosef is
falsely accused of trying to seduce Potiphar’s wife.
Surely this is how Yosef survives prison – God is with
him. It is a message repeated in Natan
Sharansky’s autobiography Fear No Evil in which he describes his nine long
years in a Soviet prison before his liberation and aliyah to Israel. During
that time Sharansky kept his spirits raised by reading from the book of Psalms
and clinging to his faith in God. “It was the only Jewish book that I was able
to keep throughout the entire period. I often went on hunger strikes for days
and weeks at a time to maintain the right to have sefer Tehillim,the book of
Psalms with me,” Sharansky has recalled.
But Rabbi Bardley Shavit Artson of the
American Jewish University, who will be spending the Shabbat of December 13-14
with us at Anshe Emet has noted that the sages of Rabbinic tradition taught in Midrash
Beresheet Rabbah, in the name of Rabbi Huna that since God must have been with
Yosef as God is with all of us, the phrase must have meant that, "Yosef
whispered God's name whenever he came in and whenever he went out." In
other words it is not that Yosef received the special attention of God, but
that he, like Scharansky, cultivated his own consciousness of God's presence.
By continually repeating God's name to himself, by regularly invoking God's
love and involvement, Joseph trained himself to perceive the miraculous in the
ordinary, to experience wonder in the mundane.
Rabbi Artson also notes that according
to Rabbi Huna, Yosef whispered God's name. “He kept quiet about his own
religiosity. Not one to preach incessantly to others, Joseph taught the love
and power of God not through words but through deeds. By performing 'mitzvot'
and acts of love, Joseph testified to God's love with his own example.”
May talk about God, but education is
most effective when we can point to role models who walk the talk rather than preach
and teach words that ring hollow.
Perhaps if the text had stated that God was still with Yaakov when he
returned home and then Yaakov would have done right by God and declared that
after all this years God was unconditionally his God. If only he had walked his talk just a bit
better he might have been a bit more “matzliah”.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Matt Futterman
Senior Educator
