Lessons Beyond the Classroom

Prior to his death Yaakov blessed his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe. He prefaced that blessing with a peculiar introduction:

וְעַתָּ֡ה שְׁנֵֽי־בָנֶ֩יךָ֩ הַנּֽוֹלָדִ֨ים לְךָ֜ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֗יִם עַד־בֹּאִ֥י אֵלֶ֛יךָ מִצְרַ֖יְמָה לִי־הֵ֑ם אֶפְרַ֨יִם֙ וּמְנַשֶּׁ֔ה כִּרְאוּבֵ֥ן וְשִׁמְע֖וֹן יִֽהְיוּ־לִֽי:

And now, [as for] your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt, until I came to you, to the land of Egypt they are mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine like Reuben and Simeon.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein asks: why does Yaakov say that specifically his grandsons born in Egypt prior to Yaakov’s arrival in Egypt are considered like his sons? We would have though the opposite. Those grandsons that were born once Yaakov arrived in Egypt should be more dear to Yaakov since Yaakov was present for their entire lives, compared to Ephraim and Menashe who were born in Egypt while Yaakov was still in Canaan. Rabbi Feinstein answers that Yaakov is teaching his family- and all of us- that Chinuch, Jewish education, must transcend the walls of a family’s home and the walls of a classroom. The greatest testament to Yaakov’s strong Jewish identity and deep Jewish values are evident when we consider the fact that Yaakov had grandchildren who lived by the values of their grandfather without ever meeting Yaakov during their early formative years. We have the ability through what we do and what we value to make an impression on those with whom we interact, including and especially our children.  Here Rabbi Feinstein is suggesting that when we teach our children through word and deed we can have a positive impact on our grandchildren and future generations, even those whom we don’t meet and those with whom we do not spend much time.

This idea from Rabbi Feinstein reminded me of a story that I vaguely remembered regarding the power of a lesson beyond the classroom and the mitzvah of Hashavat Aveida, returning a lost object. Thanks to Google I was able to find a version of the story, as told/ quoted by Dr. Erica Brown, Vice Provost for Values and Leadership at Yeshiva University and the founding director of YU’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. (Quoted from Weekly Jewish Wisdom, February 11, 2016):

“Many years ago, I was teaching in several gap year programs in Israel and carpooled with another faculty member to one of the programs. Impressed with a student in one of my classes, I asked my colleague if he knew her. He told me she had a fascinating story. She was set on studying in an ashram in India. On the way, she stopped off to see family in Israel. Her relative took her to a class in the Old City of Jerusalem on the topic of hashavat aveida, returning lost objects. The minutiae of Jewish law bored her to tears; she told her relative that this was precisely why she was going to India: to escape the legality of Judaism for the spirituality of an ashram. She studied for months with a guru. One day, she was walking and talking with her teacher, when they saw a lost wallet. He pocketed it and said the Indian equivalent of “finders, keepers, losers, weepers.” Suddenly, she recalled her Shabbat in Jerusalem. But this time, the class did not seem so boring. It seemed honest, authentic and ethical. She left India and went back to Jerusalem, where I had her as a student. And thus, returning lost objects helped her return to the tradition in which she was raised.”

Don't Just Exist- Really Live!

In Parshat Vayigash, Yaakov and Yosef are reunited and Yosef brings his father to meet Pharoh. Their meeting begins with Yaakov blessing Paroh, and then Pharoh asks a question in response:

חוַיֹּאמֶר פַּרְעֹה אֶל יַעֲקֹב כַּמָּה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֶּיךָ

And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "How many are the days of the years of your life?"

I view this question as an equivalent to a “How are you?” The socially correct answer in this situation would be a short factual response- which is what Yaakov initially provides:

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל פַּרְעֹה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי מְגוּרַי שְׁלשִׁים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה

The days of the years of my sojourning are one hundred thirty years.

But then Yaakov goes off the rails and things quickly get uncomfortable, as Yaakov continues:

מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי

The days of the years of my life have been few and miserable

This is a classic case of TMI- too much information. Pharoh was merely trying to make chit chat with his viceroy’s father, and Yaakov has to go ahead and ruin it by making things all serious.

So one lesson we can learn from this exchange in our Parsha is: let’s make sure our words are meaningful. Let’s consider a greeting other than “How are you?” and save that question for people and situations when we are really interested in the answer.

 

I want to turn to Yaakov’s response: It’s pretty shocking. Yaakov kvetches that his days have been “few” and miserable. Both claims can be challenged. The Ramban notes that by this time, a long life span was down to 70-80 years. So 130 years is nothing to complain about!

Second, things may not have always worked out in the easy most straightforward way for Yaakov. But for the most part- in the end things work out for him. Yaakov must flee from Eisav- but ultimately reconciles with him. Yaakov is persecuted by his father in law, but ultimately is able to leave as a rich man.  Sure, Yaakov had tzuris. But we would not expect our Patriarch to describe his life as “miserable.”

 

The Malbim (19^th century Russian commentator) encourages us to look at the text carefully:

When he first answers the question, Yaakov states that his “Yemei Shnei Megurai” is 130 years. However Yaakov uses a slightly different language “Yemei Shnai Chayei” – when referring to his life as short and miserable.

 

Explains the Malbim: The term “Shnay Megurei” refers to the years that Yaakov had lived on this planet: which solicits a factual answer: 130 years. What was few and miserable for Yaakov was his “Shnay Chayei”- the time Yaakov felt he was able to really live. To engage in meaningful activities. To help others, to learn Torah, to connect with family and with Hashem.

Yaakov’s response to Pharoh challenges us to consider what ways we are really living during the years that God gives us in this life. And how we can increase our Shnot Chayim during our sojourn on this planet.

 

As Abraham Lincoln put it: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” Let’s do our best to live life to the fullest, as taught to us by our Torah and by our tradition.

No Time to Slack Off

In Parshat Miketz we read about the rise of Yosef into the second most powerful man in Egypt. The Torah tells us that Yosef got married and had children (41:50): “And to Joseph were born two sons before the year of the famine set in, whom Asenath the daughter of Poti phera, the governor of On, bore to him.”

The Talmud (Taanit 11) notes that Yosef’s sons were born before the onset of the famine in Egypt and learns from here that a person is not allowed to have children during a famine. This is codified in Shulchan Aruch (YD 240:12). Tosfot in Taanit asks how it can be forbidden to have children during a famine, if we have a tradition that Yocheved, Moshe’s mother, was born to Levi as Yaakov and his family arrived in Egypt- during the second year of the famine! Tosfot suggests that not having children during a famine is actually a “Midat Chasidut”, a pious yet voluntary practice. The Ohr HaChayim finds it problematic to suggest that Levi did not observe this pious practice in light of the pasuk in V’Zot Habracha:  וּלְלֵוִ֣י אָמַ֔ר תֻּמֶּ֥יךָ וְאוּרֶ֖יךָ לְאִ֣ישׁ חֲסִידֶ֑ךָ “And of Levi he said: "Your Tummim and Urim belong to Your pious man”. The Ohr HAchayim therefore explains that the restriction only applies to those who have already fulfilled the mitzvah to “Be fruitful and multiply”. The consensus is that this mitzvah is fulfilled by having (minimally) one son and one daughter. Since Levi had not yet had a daughter he was not bound by this restriction. According to the Ohr Hachayim Yosef was also not obligated to observe this restriction because he had not yet fulfilled the mitzvah of Pru Urevu, but he did so for some other reason that was not relevant to Levi.

Rabbi Yochanan Zweig suggests a different reason for the difference in practice between Yosef and Levi. Refraining from having more children is an expression of empathy with the plight of those who are suffering from hunger. Rabbi Zweig suggests that this restriction only applies to those who have enough to eat, but must abide by this restriction as a way to feel the pain of others. However those who are actually impacted by the famine share in the actual pain of those who are hungry. They do not need to adopt practices to show solidarity and empathy with those who are suffering- because they themselves are suffering too. If they have the perspective that God is the ultimate provider of sustenance, whether it’s a lot or a little; and children are a blessing, no matter the circumstances- then they would not be bound by the Talmud’s restriction and they would be allowed to have children during a famine. Levi was impacted by the famine in Egypt, so he was not bound by the Tamud’s restriction. Yosef had access to as much food as he and his family needed; he was therefore subject to the Talmud’s restriction meant to demonstrate empathy.

As we pass the two month mark for the war in Gaza, we must not lose sight of our obligation to empathize with Israel and her citizens, to keep them at the forefront of our minds and to fight the urge and the natural proclivity to return to normal life. The situation in Israel is just as abnormal and serious today as it was on October 7 and 8. In the immediate aftermath of Simchat Torah, many of us were paralyzed. Then we became mobilized. I fear that we are now becoming fatigued, losing our momentum, and unsure of how much longer we can “keep this up”. We need to find new outlets, and strengthen old ones, to show our empathy, solidarity and support until Israel is victorious and the threats to our homeland have been eliminated.

The Struggle Over Ideas- Then and Now

Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Chashmonaim over the Greeks. While the Jews won that battle, the war between these two cultures and worldviews continues to this very day. Much has been written about the clash of ideology separating Jerusalem from Athens. Nineteenth-century German poet-philosopher Heinrich Heine suggested that for the Greeks beauty was truth whereas for the Hebrews truth was beauty, and late-20th-century philosopher William Barrett maintained that while the Greeks idealized philosophic speculation and theoretical meditation, the Hebrews emphasized moral and ethical conduct in daily human behavior as being the highest good.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin suggested another significant distinction between the Greek and Hebrew cultures, one which reverberates to this very day. The answer to the Greek Riddle of the Sphinx “Who walks on four in the morning, on two in the afternoon and on three in the evening?” is Man, who crawls about as a baby, stands upright as an adult and has need of a cane in old age. C.M. Bowra, the great interpreter of the wisdom of Hellas, suggests that indeed Man is the answer, not only to the Riddle of the Sphinx but to every question worth asking. Pythagoras taught that “Man is the measure of all things”; for the famed sculptor Praxiteles, the human form was the most perfect of all forms (and therefore for the ancient Greeks circumcision was a heinous crime because it maimed the perfect human body); and the chorus of Sophocles’ Antigone iterates and reiterates, “Many are the awesome-awful (Hebrew nora, nora’ot) phenomena, but none more awesome-awful than man.”

Hence the gods on Mount Olympus were formed in the image of man, endowed with human and mostly physical characteristics: Zeus was the most powerful, unpitying and terrible; Aphrodite was the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure; Hermes was the god of speed. The gods were created in the image of humans, warring and jealous human-like beings, idealizing their most physical and even animalistic traits.

Judaism, explains Rabbi Riskin, is the very antithesis of this. Human beings are created in the image of God, duty bound to walk in God’s ways and to emulate His Divine characteristics of love, compassion, patience, loving-kindness and truth. “Just as the Holy One Blessed be He is called compassionate, so must you be compassionate, just as He grants His grace freely, so must you grant grace freely....”

This distinction between Athens and Jerusalem is important for all Jews to remember as we navigate a society still enamored by many of the ideas that originated in Greek philosophy. But understanding this distinction is especially important for students on secular college campuses. College is an exciting time to learn and explore new ideas. Many of these ideas are directly from, or derivatives of, Greek ideas. And as the Talmud teaches us “Yesh Chochma BaGoyim”, we should not be so quick to dismiss ideas that are attributable to the Greeks. At the same time we must study and expand our minds from a Jewish perspective. We are first and foremost proud, educated, sophisticated Jews. The current climate on college campuses is one that is concerning to anyone who rejects the idea that all of life must be viewed through the prism of postmodernism, subjective morality, and Marxist class struggle. We celebrate Chanukah and appreciate why the Maccabee victory over the Greeks was so important then- and why we must continue to fight that fight today in ways that continue to shape our Jewish identity and serve as a light and enlightenment for the world.