For me, one of the saddest parts of Torah is what many other commentators celebrate as a great triumph. It is the way Joseph (Yosef) deals with the great famine by demanding that an entire population in danger of starving turn their land over to Pharaoh, and become sharecroppers. From Genesis 47:13-19, we learn how, during the years of famine, the farmers of Egypt on the edge of starvation year by year buy the grain stored in Pharaoh’s storehouse --first with all their silver, so that all of Egypt’s silver comes under Pharaoh’s control;  then with the seed that they had set aside for the next year’s sowing; then with ownership of the land itself; and finally with their own freedom. The result is described in  Genesis 47:20-26 (Everett Fox transl., The Five Books of Moses (Schocken, 1995.)

 The result is described in  Genesis 47:20-26 (Everett Fox transl., The Five Books of Moses (Schocken, 1995):

 So Yosef acquired all the soil of Egypt for Pharaoh -- for each of the Egyptians sold his field, for the famine was strong upon them- and the land went over to Pharaoh. As for the people, he transferred them into the cities, from one edge of Egypt's border to its other edge.  Only the soil of the priests he did not acquire, for the priests had a prescribed-allocation from Pharaoh, and they ate from their allocation which Pharaoh had given them, therefore they did not sell their soil. Yosef said to the people: Now that I have acquired you and your soil today for Pharaoh, here, you have seed, sow the soil! But it shall be at the ingatherings, that you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, the four other parts being for you as seed for the field and for your eating-needs, for those in your households, and for feeding your little-ones. They said: You have saved our lives! May we find favor in my lord's eyes: we will become servants to Pharaoh. And Yosef made it a prescribed-law until this day, concerning the soil of Egypt: For Pharaoh, every fifth part! Only the soil of the priests, that alone did not go over to Pharaoh.

Joseph could have freely given the stored-up grain to the people, leaving them as independent farmers. But he transferred power to Pharaoh and to himself as viceroy.  Moreover, he forced the people to move from their ancestral homes. Only the priests retained their land  -- their economic power – as well as their religious authority.

Whether or not this is an accurate factual and historical picture of a great change in Egypt’s political economy, it is the story Torah chooses to tell. And that makes it remarkable that it is precisely the opposite of the land-and-people system described in Leviticus 25 as how the Breath of Life wants the People Israel and all its settler-sojourner foreigners to live. For in that picture the people are guaranteed the right to redeem their land even if they become poor and need to become indentured servants. The king is not allowed to pile up silver  or land for himself. The priests do not own land, and so cannot add economic power to religious authority. And even if the people move, they are absolutely entitled to return once a generation to their ancestral homes.

All this is guaranteed in Leviticus by the Seventh Year, Shabbat Shabbaton (Sabbath  to the exponential power of Sabbath), the Shmita  or “Year of Release.”  So this may remind us that Yosef’s whole power trip begins with interpreting Pharaoh’s dream to predict that there will be seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. He goes out of his way to say there is no way out – the future is determined.

What if he had said there would be seven years of plenty – and if Egypt treated the seventh year as a year of sabbatical rest for the land, a year of releasing the land and its people from overwork , there would be no famine? But if they farmed the land without a pause, a rest, a release – then there would be famine. (Compare Leviticus 26 as a description for what would happen if the land were not allowed to rest.) What if he had said the dream was a warning, not a prediction?

(Is the Torah suggesting that bad experience of land policy [as described in Genesis about Egypt]  has formed a much wiser sense of land policy for the Land of Israel [as expressed in Leviticus]? Or is Torah hinting that having shaped the Leviticus /Shmita rhythm out of direct experience as farmers, the writers and chanters of ancient story introduced the precise opposite of Leviticus into their tales about Joseph, to enhance freedom with a tale of enslavement? Or is Torah saying that Joseph’s whole life-path of determinism – there are no choices possible – fits with Subjugation, with Power Over others?]

 Most commentators read the rest of Genesis as a triumph for Joseph and hi family. They live affluently by Pharaoh’s grace, in a territory of their own --  Goshen. At last Joseph’s own life-long dream of and effort to win power over his equals has been rewarded. After all, this was his fourth try: seeking power over his brothers brought him into the pit and sale as a slave into Egypt. Grasping power in Potiphar’s household brought him fury from Potiphar’s wife, whom he had displaced from her role as supervisor, and who maneuvered him into prison. In prison he rises to appointment as a “trusty,” an aide to the warden – but is left a prisoner when he sets himself up as a dream interpreter for other prisoners. Finally, he rises to sit above all Egypt, next to Pharaoh himself.  His life-search finds utter triumph!

Until we turn the Torah Scroll to the Book of Exodus.

 [Please pause from this reading for a few minutes to think through the “white fire” of the blank spaces between the two books. What is the story written in the "white fire"? What happened between the two books? What does it mean? And then come back.]

As Exodus begins, Joseph’s descendants become slaves, victims of attempted genocide.

Is the Torah trying to tell us an epic story of how Subjugation of the People and the Land recoils upon the heads of Subjugators and must – if we are wise enough to hearken to the Breath of Life --  result in a Great Turning ? Is this story not merely antiquarian history but a great and hidden parable? What is its meaning for today?

Today’s Torah portion includes the famous Godwrestle passage, which give the people Yisrael its name – Godwrestler. In a nutshell, Jacob, with a retinue of wives, children, workers, sheep, and goats is on his way returning home. He hears that his brother Esau, whose birthright and blessing as the first born he has stolen, is on his way to meet him with four hundred men. He sends his entire retinue across a river with gifts for Esau, and he stays alone for a momentous night.

He stays alone, and yet the story says he wrestles with men and with God. In the wrestle he is wounded so that he limps the rest of his life. He demands to know the name of the Being with Whom he wrestles, but the Being turns aside the question and changes his name from Jacob/Heel-Sneak to Godwrestler. The next morning he meets his brother, who embraces and kisses him. They both weep.

The story raises at least two deep questions, and gives several hints toward answers. The first question is: What does it mean to wrestle God, for Jacob and for each of us and for the People Yisrael? (and perhaps for other Peoples?) The second: Why does this Wrestle make it possible for the two brothers to reconcile?

One hint: In Hebrew, his name is Yaakov. The river where he stays “alone” is the Yabok – his own name inside out. And the first word for his wrestling with the Being is yaavayk – again, a wounded version of his own name. So he learns that his own name has many faces he must learn.

Another hint: When Jacob sends gifts to Esau, he says to himself (Gen. 32:21; Everett Fox trans.): “I will wipe the anger from his face, with the gift that goes ahead of my face; afterward, when I see his face, perhaps he will lift up my face!” Four times, the word “face,” in a single verse! And after the Godwrestle, after he has asked the name of his wrestling-partner and been turned aside, after he has named the place where it all happened “God’s Face,” after he and Esau have embraced, he says to his brother, “I have, after all, seen your face, as one sees the face of God.”  (Gen. 33: 10)

So he seems to have discovered at least one of the names and faces of the Being with whom he wrestled. And where he began wanting Esau to see his face, he ends by realizing it is crucial for him to see Esau’s face.

So I ask again: What does it mean to wrestle Giod, and why did it matter? I will tell you my answer, but first – stop reading here, or pause the video – and let your own answer come to you. When you feel ready, come back to me.  Then let us together wrestle God ...

***

A few answers

[Dear folks, I only had time to check with two people to see whether it would be OK to quote their responses to my question: What do they feel is the meaning of “Godwrestling” --  the heart of the Torah portion this Shabbat?   Shalom, AW, editor]

It means to come face-to-face with, and more than that, because face-to-face is not a merger, the faces are still exterior to each 

other. It means acknowledging the pains and injustices of the world and experiencing that they are internal to yourself, both as causer and as 

sufferer. It's a terrible wrestling, and leaves you wounded. You are yourself the hate and the love, and the helplessness to "fix" any of it. 

It all just IS. And you are of it. But in the end you are still walking.

 By Mary Weinstock Gilbert, that Quaker up near Boston whose father grew up 

OK, I'm back again: Jacob said, aloud, with his whole body, heart, mind, soul: “Why is the world this way? I know, my mother taught me, and I know, who I aim to be. Why is the world so built that I needed to lie, to rob, to steal, to make my way there? Is there no other way? There must be other way!”

And his challenging the world as it was, opened up a world as it could be.

Exodus 1:3

Rabbi Arthur Waskow 

This week’s Torah portion, called “Yayetzei, And he [Jacob] went forth” focuses on Jacob’s sojourn in the home of his uncle Laban, his marriages to his cousins Leah and Rachel and their handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah, and the competition between them for his love and for bearing his children.

Laban tricks Jacob by giving him Leah as his first wife when he had promised him Rachel, the younger sister – and when Jacob complains, he answers: “ Such is not done in our place, giving away the younger before the firstborn”  -- directly challenging Jacob for stealing his older brother’s birthright.

Leah had many children and Rachel none. So Rachel, perhaps recalling the story of Jacob’s grandmother Sarah and her handmaid Hagar, said to Jacob,

“Here is my slave-girl Bilhah; come in to her, so that she may give birth upon my knees, so that I too may be built-up-with-sons through her.” (Everett Fox transl, The Five Books of Moses (Schocken, 1995).

Through Bilhah she had two sons. The first she said was a proof of justice and she named the boy Dan, Justice. Though we do not know what sex with Jacob was like, we know that as a slave-girl she had no choice. Is this a hint that justice must be born from the suffering of slaves, as happened later in Egypt from the suffering of an enslaved people and may be able to happen in our own country now only through the suffering of a people long enslaved?

Of the second son she said, “A struggle of God have I struggled with my sister; yes, I have prevailed! So she called his name: Naftali/My Struggle.”

This line (Gen. 30: 8) is a pre-echo of a story we will read next week, far more famous, in which Jacob in the midst of a struggle with his brother Esau wrestles with God’s Own Self, “prevails,” and finds his own name changed to Yisrael, Godwrestler. The presence of the pre-echo is no accident. What is Torah trying to teach us?

First, that two women can also have a “struggle of God,” not only two men. Perhaps that is precisely why there is little effort to connect it with the later story. There are two levels of dismissal of the story. One is old-fashioned: grave and pompous men dismiss it because, after all, it is merely a women's story. The second is by more clever, more modern men and women: See, biblical women are so disempowered that the only power they have is to struggle over children. Dismissal in the mask of feminism. But think! The woman in this story says it is a God-struggle to struggle over children! Is she right? Children are the future! 

The verse is a Banner, waving, waving, “Pay attention!” And perhaps we really should pay attention to the teaching that a struggle over children, a struggle over the future, is a Godstruggle. Indeed, the struggle between Leah’s children and Rachel’s turns out to be momentous for the future, cast as the struggle between Joseph (a true child of Rachel) and his half-brothers.

For our own generation, what could be more a God-struggle than the future of our children as Earth reels in pain, croaking, “I can’t breathe”? As we know now, we are pouring so much CO2 into the planet that all its trees and grasses cannot breathe it in and transmute it to oxygen. So it suffocates and scorches us: our Earth can’t breathe, God’s Name can’t breathe, our grandchildren won’t be able to breathe.

As the very last words of the very last of the classical Prophets say, “I [YHWH, the InterBreath of Life] will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest I come not as the Breath of Life, not even as the Wind of Change, but as the Hurricane of Disaster to smite Earth with utter destruction!” (Malachi 3: 23-24).

O You Who still Breathe life, give us the love to struggle with You as Rachel did for the sake of our children!

We begin this week’s Torah portion, “Toldot, Begettings,” at Genesis 25: 19 with the begetting of twins to Rivka [Rebekah], Isaac’s wife.

Says Torah [using mostly Everett Fox’s translation, in my view the best into English: “The Five Books of Moses,” published by Schocken],

The children almost crushed one another inside her, so she said:

“If this be so,

for what is this I?”

And she went to inquire of YHWH [Yahhhh]

[The Breath of Life, Interbreathing Spirit of the world].

YHWH [Yahhhh] said to her:

“Two nations are in your body,

Two tribes from your belly shall be divided;

Tribe shall be mightier than tribe,

Elder shall be servant to younger!”

I think Father Isaac loved Esau the athletic archer because he was like Isaac's older half-brother Ishmael, who had been stolen from him, sent into the wilderness; Rivka loved Jacob because she had heard the Voice proclaim that he, the younger twin, would be victorious over the elder. Here for the third time we see God favoring the younger son: Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau. It happens again: Joseph and Benjamin over their elder half-brothers, Ephraim over Manasseh. They are all reversals of the official legal framework in which the older brother is supposed to inherit more property, more blessing.

The first conflict between these pairs ends in murder when the elder refuses to back off, and Cain the killer suffers not death but a kind of continuing trauma of the oppressor –- the mark that makes him alien wherever he travels.  All the rest of these conflicts end in some sort of reconciliation, with the elder accepting the leadership of the younger. The repetitions in Genesis presage the moment in Exodus when God proclaims the People Israel first-born, when clearly Egypt is older, stronger, richer. And yet this disempowered people wins its freedom. And the Bible celebrates the day when in the long run Egypt too will win its freedom, and even Imperial Nineveh.

To me this seems an early set of mythic pointers toward a rough sort of social justice.  What does it mean in the relations between the seemingly powerful and the disempowered today -- Euros and Indigenes, Anglos and Latinx, Whites and Blacks, Men and Women, Humanity and Earth? Would the stories suggest it is time not for self-destruction or humiliation but humility, acceptance of Truth and Reconciliation?

P.S. My newest book is Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion. Gloria Steinem, Ruth Messinger, Rev. William Barber; Rabbis Art Green, Jonah Pesner, and Jill Hammer; Bill McKibben, Marge Piercy, and Jim Wallis have all read and praised it. Join them! Order it from The Shalom Center for your own reading or from Orbis Books for a congregational conversation. See --- https://theshalomcenter.org/content/ordering-dancing-gods-earthquake-rabbi-arthur  This book is the harvest of my whole life-experience – and like a harvest, intended not only to draw on the past but to feed the future.

Yesterday, Shabbat, turned out to be a day of celebration: the election  of a new President of the United States! My city, Philadelphia, was at the heart of the “dancing in  God’s earthquake.”  Literally dancing. 

And then came the ceremony of Havdalah, distinguishing between Shabbat and the work week.  The ceremony calls the rest of the week, in Hebrew, “chol.” Many translate that as “mundane.” But my teacher Rabbi Max Ticktin, of blessed memory, taught that “chol” came from the same root as “chalil” or “chilul,” hollow like a flute waiting to be filled. Shabbat is given as holy; the rest of the week is up to us to fill with holiness or not. There is much we must yet do, to fulfill our sacred vision of a full democracy: 

 There are three immediate tasks that I think that our community needs to address. 

 One – that I devoutly hope we will not need to muster, but we might – is to mount a vigorous, utterly nonviolent campaign protecting democracy, in case the present lame-duck President tries to shatter it. As of this morning, November 8, that seems unlikely – but not yet impossible. 

 The second -- is to make it possible for President-Elect Biden to govern with a Congress able to respond to serious proposals to meet the deep crises facing America and Earth: 

 There are at least four: public health in a worsening pandemic; massive disemployment; broad awareness of embedded racism (including White House contempt and hatred for immigrants and refugees); and the climate crisis of wildfires and floods.

Whether President Biden can meet the need to address these four immediate crises may depend on whether half the Senate behaves as it did facing President Obama, determined to destroy every one of his initiatives, no matter how shaped to benefit the nation.  

 OR --

it may depend on the results of two run-off elections for the US Senate in Georgia. If the two Democrats both win, the Senate would be tied 50-50 and Vice-President Kamala Harris would shortly vote to organize it with Democrats in the majority.  That might not make possible major steps like admitting the District of Columbia to statehood, but it would make it possible for President Biden to name his own Cabinet without being denied major nominations by a Republican Senate (as some Senators have already threatened).

One of those Georgia elections is between Jon Ossoff. a young Jewish journalist, a moderate liberal who was interviewed three years ago by a leading reporter of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and an incumbent Senator, David Perdue, whose record is reported by Wikipedia. (If Ossoff’s name seems odd, it is a variant of “Yosef,” or “Joseph.”)

The other run-off is being contested by Rev. Raphael Warnock, for 15 years pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which had been the church of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Kelly Loeffler,  a very rich appointee to fill the seat of a resigned senator who has put up 20 million dollars of her own money to pay for her campaign to fill the rest of the Senate seat.  

We will supply more detailed information about all four of these candidates. 

The third task that we face is deeper and harder. About 48% of the America people voted for a president who many of the other 52% think was a neo-fascist. That does not make 48% of the people racists, fascists, pro-billionaire,  pro-wildfire, pro-virus. It does bespeak a call, an outcry,  from the depths of pain of almost all the people – a call to speak and to listen to each other. We will soon write more about how to do that.

 Shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste! --  Arthur