It's been a couple-three months since we began our annual literary trek after moving through the Yomim Noraim (the Days of Awesome Wonder) and the children's story about a man (Yonah) who needed to learn from God that even Auslanders (Ninevites) are people worthy of Divine and human care. Rashi, citing the Great Rabi Yitzchak, wonders why the Torah begins with Creation, why with בראשית … why not with Pesach. Rashi does give an explanation related to our rightful ownership of Torah and, I suppose one might argue, the fact that we’re entitled to the Land of Israel, itself. Perhaps, so. But I'd like to ask another question now that we shall have completed the entire saga of The Birth of a Nation … or an Ethnicity … or whatever binds Torah readers together … and … in any case, this Shabbos we finish our read of Breishis.
Why does the first narrative piece of Shemos have to do with the erasure of the memory of Yoseph in Egypt. Here are the names of the main characters in Egypt, oh, and ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים אשר לא ידע את יוסף … … “A new king arose over Egypt that didn't know Yoseph.” Again, Rashi speaks up about this and argues (in the name of Rav, I think) that it wasn't a real forgetting but a forced one … the king pretended not to know Yoseph! Aha!
… I've long had a different take … indulge me.
So, Back To the Beginning of our story. B'reishis … a collection of begats and stories! Let's briefly review them. Here's Breishis in Briefs:
Genesis in Several Pages
(parts adapted from
Oedipal Paradigms in Collision, Covitz, 1998)
• • •
God creates a world. Two (possibly contradictory) accounts are offered with each apparently culminating in the creation of an original couple, Adam and Chava (Earthman and Desire); they are housed in a lush garden. They fail to abide by God’s one proscription, a dietary one, lose their original innocence, and are punished. They initially have two children, with the one killing the other in a rage of envy. Other children are born and, presumably, through unavoidably incestuous mating, a race proliferates.
Mankind becomes corrupt and God decides to destroy-by-flood all but a boatful of animals, together with one righteous man, Noach, and his family. God’s wrath is quieted and humanity is given a fresh start. Some generations later, the descendants gather and attempt to erect a prideful skyscraper; God scrambles their languages, thus putting a temporary end to their hubris. This leads to a renewed distribution of men over the face of the Earth. So much for the first eleven chapters.
The scenes depicting the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs are cast in the oases of the inhospitable badlands that are the Judaean desert and span some three hundred Biblical years + Time-Served, in Egypt. A variety of family themes appear in stories of the first Patriarch, Avraham. These themes, particularly envy, fear, and barrenness, will be repeated in the life of his preferred son, Yitzchak, and, thereafter, in the life of a privileged grandson, Ya'akov; these themes will resonate in overt acting out among Avraham’s great-grandchildren. Early on, Avraham is afraid of neighboring Chieftains and cannot live with his nephew, Lot, who is often in considerable trouble. Lot becomes entangled in sinning Sodom and is saved by his uncle who argues passionately with God, in a failed attempt, to save the city. During the period following the devastation, Lot is incested unwittingly by his daughters. Thereafter, Avraham claims that the erstwhile barren Sara is his sister (actually, she is asked to bear the burden of pretense) and, pointedly not his wife, in order to protect himself self-preservedly from several desert potentates. He has a child, Yishmael, with his concubine, Hagar, and, somewhat later, Yitzchak is born to Sara. Sara is envious of Hagar and orders Abraham to expel Hagar and Yishmael, pointedly after she sees Yishmael playing (sexually, the Rabbi's say) with Yitzchak; God concurs with Sara and Avraham cooperates in the deed with some reluctance. In the next chapter, God tells Avraham to kill Yitzchak; Avraham scrupulously follows God’s directives, this time with speed, if not alacrity, and perseveres until divine intervention stills his hand.
Yitzchak appears to have never recovered from this ordeal; he is given but several lines of script with a total of seven words until his marriage, from which time on he remains under the betimes manipulative control of his barren wife, Rivka. Apparently in identification with his father, Yitzchak lies to a local chieftain fearfully claiming that his wife is his sister (again, the wife bears the burden). Rivkah gives birth to twin sons, Ya'akov and Esav; they fight and are lost in envy from the womb and through their youth. Envious Ya'akov purloins Esav’s birthright and, later, Rivka hoodwinks Yitzchak into arranging for her favorite son, Ya'akov, to receive his befuddled father’s blessings. Ya'akov runs away fearing for his life.
Ya'akov, indeed, passes much of his life in paranoid-like concerns that Esav will retaliate while Esav (who hasn't stolen anything, himself) appears, after the initial shock passes, curiously nonplused by the matter. Ya'akov has two wives; each chooses a concubine in envious competition for favor and sexual favors (from their husband); this envy is quite openly portrayed as directly related to fecundity. The favored wife, Rachel, is initially barren, like her mother-in-law and her's before her. Thirteen children are born: Leah gives birth to the first four children; Rachel’s handmaiden, Bilha, to the fifth and sixth; Zilpa, Leah’s handmaiden, produces numbers seven and eight; Leah the ninth through the eleventh child; and Rachel, at long-last, mothers the two youngest sons, including Yoseph, the to-be-favorite and twelfth child.
Things are not well in this family whose troubles would cross the eyes of the most seasoned of family practitioners working in one of today’s violent inner cities. We see, for instance, the following:
• Ya'akov and Leah’s daughter, Dinah, falls in love with a local. His male clansmen are convinced by Dinah’s brothers to circumcise themselves so that a marriage might receive their blessings. They do so; nonetheless, her full-brothers, Shimeon and Levi, slaughter the entire village while the men are recovering from their surgeries.
• Another of Leah’s sons, Reuven, in the meantime, incests one of his father’s concubines.
• Rachel’s firstborn, Yoseph, is busy gossiping and telling his dreams; he ends up in Egypt after the brothers nearly kill the brother they dub: This Master of Dreams. His dreams suggest an inability to embrace the subjectivity of his brothers nor to be concerned about either his brothers or his father. Ya’akov and Yoseph die in their turns and both want to be returned for burial in Canaan.
חזק חזק ונתחזק
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Some brief thoughts as off-to-Shemos we prepare to go …
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Okey-dokey. If we divide up Breishis, we have roughly 12 chapters to get us to the patriarchs … about the same on Avraham and the last half of this 50 chapter novella involved with Ya'akov and stories of his unruly bunch.
Now, a fair question to ask might be: What's the central ethos of this story in Genesis, in בראשית? Maybe that's fairly discoverable in what musses the Divine dander? And, by the way, not much does. Adam and Chava don't fair so poorly … they were created to be human, I suspect, and are doomed to be so. Kayin and Hevel vie against each other — presumably out of sibling rivalry — and God does curse Kayin for fratricide … but it's more like protecting him. Lot gets in all kinds of tsaros but it's Mrs. Lot who gets salted. …
Ah … But Sara … Sara expresses envy about Hagar and, in contiguous chapters (21-22), God seeks to take them both Yitzchak and Yishmael (and Hagar, too) away from Avraham and Sara. Something like ha'Melech Shlomo and the almost bifurcated baby! … Any case … Yitzchak's a blind wreck and, to repeat, says but those 7 words until he's married (make's Ernest Borgnyne's Marty seem like a bon-vivant). His kids, Ya'akov and Esav are caught up in hegemonic rivalry, with one leaving the family (Esav) and the other going on-the-run (Ya’akov). And Ya'akov's vying tents are a total mess, as suggested in the brief vignette (above)…. wives lost in competitive envy … and not a good marriage counselor in sight. God does get irked at Er (Avraham’s first-metioned Great-Grandson) with no charges filed and at Onan for not taking on the responsibility for carrying on his brother's name by impregnating Tamar. Curious, isn't it, that Onan never really onanized but, instead, refused to impregnate Tamar כי לא לו יהיה הזרע … for not for him would be the progeny. C'mon, Onan, y'can't have fully-consumated sex with your dead brother's wife because it won't be known as yours'. My opinion, Onan? You deserve everything you got … וימיתוהו … and God made him dead (Hebrew is such a great language, playfully moving from nouns to verbs, etc).
Ah! I've gone on too long. My point? Breishis sets the stage for the presentation of a Jewish ethic to come in Books II-V whose foundation is in the embracing of others as folk in their own right. Occasional murder, disrespect, non-consanguineal incest … don’t seem to irk the God of Breishis. But in these later writings, we are charged with not cursing the deaf or tripping up the lame … with providing an economic net for the poor and widowed … being honest in business dealings … … I could go on (check, for instance, essentially the middle paragraph of Torah … Leviticus 19).
The flaws we see in Breishis' characters, in our forebears, I would suggest, are likely offered in the spirit of Baruch Spinoza's claim that "all definition is negation." Breishis tells us about the consequences of the deadly sins (those, curiously, perpetrated by at least one recent politician) … Envy and revenge … preferential treatment … self-importance … cavalier disregard of others … gratuitous enmity (שנאת חינם) … sibling rivalry … and that inability — so obvious in Yoseph's behavior and in his dreams — to privilege the relationships and uniqueness of others, especially those who are close to each of us.
So, indeed, Shemos begins by telling us that the likes of Yoseph (and DJT, for that matter) are eventually forgotten … like a flash in the pan … ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים אשר לא ידע את יוסף and “eventually, a new Order arises and the preferenced ones are forgotten. Eventually they are replaced by leaders who are moved by the suffering of others and who seek to redeem them from their shackles … the likes of Moshe and Aharon, perhaps. While it doesn’t always seem that way, as we see in the Warum Krieg? correspondence between Freud and Einstein: civilization does move — if slowly — in the direction of a pacifistic love.
Alas, Ya'akov's blessings at the end of Va'y'chi sadly continue the saga of preferential treatment … of favoring this child or spouse over another. Sad, it is, that narcissistic folk rarely alter their life trajectories … Back to Freud as he bemoaned this stubbornly inpenetrable adherence to self-interest: the Stone Wall of Narcissism.
“Is there a blessing fit for the czar.” … “May God bless and keep all czars far away from us and our kids and grandkids.”
Amen and so, may it be …
אמן וכן יהי רצון.