Genesis

When the Sisters Struggle God, Why is This Torah Little Noticed?

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!

Torah of the Not-First-Born

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.

Torah of the Not-First-Born

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.

Rainbow Haftarah with Trop by Hazzan Jack Kessler

For the story of the channeling of the “Rainbow Haftarah” see https://theshalomcenter.org/node/298

 

For the English text by Rabbi  Arthur Waskow and its translation into Hebrew by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, see https://theshalomcenter.org/node/487


For the Haftarah in the original English set to Haftarah trop by Hazzan Jack Kessler, click on the attached file above.

Our “Sodomite-in-Chief’” lives in the White House

How can I use this label of contempt, “Sodomite,” against the President?

Here’s how:

The Bible tells the story of the city of Sodom, destroyed by a Flood of Fire for its sins. (Gen. 18-19) 

What was the sin of Sodom? Almost all Jewish commentary on the story makes clear that the sin of Sodom was not rampant homosexuality (as much of Christian tradition suggests) but rampant rage and violence toward foreigners, immigrants, and the poor.

That line of thought began with the Prophet Ezekiel (16:49-50) who said: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”  This understanding has continued in rabbinic thought for two thousand years, till our own day.

There is another strand in the story: what might be called the sin of Lot. He was Abraham’s nephew, an immigrant to Sodom who like his uncle held as a high value the welcoming of foreigners as guests.

 Faced with a mob of Sodomites enraged that Lot had made his home a nest of immigrants and refugees, Lot offered his own daughters to be raped by the mob, in order to calm their rage against his foreign guests.

At first and second and third reading of Lot’s offer to let the mob rape his daughters if they will leave his foreign guests unharmed. we are horrified. Horrified that in order to protect the foreigners he is willing to sacrifice and destroy his own family.

This is exactly Sodom turned upside down. The citizens of Sodom who surrounded Lot’s house and threatened to rape or kill him and his guests are so obsessed with protecting their own city, their own jobs, their own culture that they are willing to wreak havoc upon foreigners.

Lot,  on the other hand, is so obsessed with protecting his guests that he is willing to wreak havoc on his own family.

Neither of these is a just or sacred solution to the tensions that often erupt between some "natives" and some "immigrants."

According to the story, once it becomes clear that not even ten just and decent people live in this hate-filled town, the Divine Breath of Life, the Wind of Change,  becomes a Burning Hyper-Hurricane -- so incensed at Sodom’s hatred of outsiders that the city is destroyed.

 

 

Lot survives, but his lot is not so pleasant. His wife dies as collateral damage in the disaster. The daughters whom he had offered up as mere objects think that all the other men in the world have died in the Flood of Fire. So they turn Lot into an object – just as he had treated them --  by getting him drunk to make him father their children.  Another kind of rape!

In the midst of this ugly story, does the Torah have any suggestion as to what a decent outcome might have been?

It does, in the bargaining between God and Abraham over whether Sodom should be destroyed in the first place.

In the underlying argument over whether to protect one's own city and own family at the cost of shattering the lives of immigrants and outsiders, or to protect the outsiders at the cost of shattering one’s own city, one's own family – – the famous tension between "particularism" and "universalism" – – Abraham’s challenge to God hints at a resolution.

And this is exactly what the Torah says God has in mInd. For God begins the process by letting Abraham in on the secret plan to punish the crimes of Sodom -- wiping out the city.

Why has God singled out Abraham? According to the Torah, precisely because God sees Abraham as both the progenitor of a sacred people and the bearer of blessings to all peoples.

And Abraham responds! --  by validating God’s Calling on him to become a blessing to all the families, peoples, cultures of the world. Abraham tries to protect and defend even this nasty foreign city. "What about the decent, innocent folk who live in Sodom?  Should the innocent be punished with the guilty? Is that what justice means? Shall not the Judge of all the world do justice?"

The Abraham who is to be the progenitor of a “particular” community -- Yisrael, the "Godwrestling" folk, the Jewish people.  – is the same Abraham who tries to protect a foreign city from God’s wrath.  

"Israel" is the Name of a People Also

Today  is "Yom Ha'Atzma'ut": Accurately & Profoundly Translated, A Day to Stand on Our Own Feet, Affirm Our Own Essence

"Yom Ha'Atzma’ut” is usually translated as "Israeli Independence Day." But the word “Atzma’ut” has as its root Etzem = “bone, skeleton, internal essential structure.”  So it would be more accurate – and raise more profound questions -- to call it "Day for Standing on One's Own Feet, Day of Affirming One's Own Essence."

Have we actually gotten to stand on our own feet?  Who is the “we”? A nation-state? A transnational people? What is our “essence”?

These are profound spiritual questions. I would like to look at this day from the standpoint of Torah and the Holy One Who is the Breath of Life  -- not from the conventional categories of political analysis.

I. "Yisra'el" Means "Godwrestler"

Not only is the word “Atzma’ut” deeper than its usual translation – so is the name “Yisra’el.” First of all, there is an "Israel" broader than the State. "Israel" is the name of a People also. And the name itself bears a meaning , a commitment, a covenant.

VISION SHMITA 2022: 7 Thoughts & 7 Proposals toward Healing Earth

Montefiore Windmill outside the Old City of Jerusalem

[This  is a paper I gave for a gathering of about 36 eco-Jewish activists from the USA, Europe, and Israel. The meeting focused on planning toward the next Sabbatical/ Shmita Year seven years from now, when the Earth is entitled to a time of restfulness from human exploitation. The meeting, sponsored by Siach, Hazon, and the Heschel Institute, was held in Jerusalem  from November 3-5, 2015, in the Mishkenot Sha-ananim cultural center, in the shadow of the Windmill that Moses Montefiore paid for in 1857, to provide energy for the first modern settlement of Jews outside the Old City of Jerusalem. [For me, this Windmill as an energy source spoke as a reality and symbol of past Jewish creativity. It points toward the future of Jewish and multireligious creativity in working with the Ruach Ha'Olam -- the Breath, Wind, Spirit of the world -- to support the emplacement of many myriads of wind turbines to heal our planet fom the climate crisis of global scorching. To see the attached graphic of those turbines suffused by the Rainbow, click on the title of gthos article.  The Raiinbow is our symbol of determination that the Earth will not be consumed by a Flood of Fire,  will not be scorched by the burning of fossil fuels. The paper notes seven assertions about the present -- we  hold these truths to be affirmed by powerful evidence  -- and seven proposals for action to move us closer to a Sabbatical/ Shmita that can actually heal the Earth.--  AW] Seven Thoughts: Where We Are Now

1. The climate crisis is the greatest danger to face the human species since our emergence, and the greatest danger to the whole present web of life on the planet. 

2. Because Torah is rooted in an indigenous people of shepherds and farmers in close and sacred relationship with the Earth, the Jewish peopl has an extraordinary treasury of wisdom and tools to deal with that danger (e.g., Earth-related  festivals;

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