I’m incredibly excited and grateful to be spending this weekend as Scholar-in-residence at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation teaching and preaching! If you wish to join virtually, you can do that by following the link.
This is the sermon I’ll be delivering tomorrow morning. If you’ll be there in-person or watching online, you may wish to skip this one!
Shabbat shalom.
Let me begin by sharing my gratitude to B’nai Jeshurun, the Sisterhood, and Rabbi Hal for their graciousness and invitation. It has been a gift to spend an hour each Thursday with this community.
It is this community’s commitment to Torah, in learning and in practice, that inspires me. On top of that oskei b’divrei Torah, the engagement with words of Torah, this community also brings it to another level. The money you raise for Torah Fund, for example, helps make it possible for rabbis like me to afford rabbinical school. On behalf of all rabbinical students, or in my case, former rabbinical students, I thank you.
On the final day of 5782, on the 29th of Elul, the end of the last Jewish year, on Erev Rosh Hashanah, something tremendous happened. My wife and I welcomed a daughter into the world.
In those first moments, as my wife cradled our child, I remember thinking to myself, listing all of the new responsibilities I had at that moment. I began to think further and further ahead, asking myself about the future I would be leaving to her.
So often in life, and for good reason, we stay focused on what is right in front of us.
Ignoring the far future for what we have to do today. When we have a lot of work to do or feel overwhelmed, it makes sense to ignore the big picture for the sake of the present.
The risk is never going back to stop and think about the implications of the present.
This is what Joseph experiences at the beginning of Parashat Vayeshev when he tells his family about his dreams. The Torah tells us that he was uniquely beloved by his father, and his brothers hated him for it. He tells them about his dreams, intimating his power and authority over them. He was always reporting negatively about his brothers’ shepherding.
It doesn’t really seem like he is thinking through how his actions have consequences. If you continue mistreating those around you, they might not act kindly.
What might have happened if Joseph recognized how he presented himself to his brothers and chose to act toward them with greater kindness and understanding?
Had he focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, he might have made different choices.
Part of making those good choices is about being able to draw on powerful wisdom, on the stories of those who came before, and from our teachers and parents who guide us.
The Me'or Einayim, Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernoybl in the 18th century, explains the following as a commentary to the verse that reads, “And Israel loved Joseph”:
“It is known that the Torah is eternal in all people and in all times. Despite the fact that it preceded the creation of the world, it is also manifested through stories of a certain time period of the Patriarchs. Nevertheless, it needs to be re-garbed in stories of each time period. That is why it's called "Torah" for it reflects the language of "moreh derekh" a guide for the way. In that case, we need to understand what guiding this pasuk is teaching us.” (Translation by Rabbi
)
The Me’or Einayim’s understanding here is that Torah manifests itself into creation. It is bigger and beyond the limits of reality and expresses itself in the stories for each era. It is a guide for us. He reminds us to look closely at the text and see where it leads us.
After Joseph bothers his brothers to the point that they want to kill him, when he ultimately appears before them, they throw him in an empty pit. What the Torah says about the pit is this: v’habor reik, ein bo mayim, “and the pit was empty, there was no water.”
The commenters jump all over this. They ask, “if it was empty, why did the Torah tell us that there was no water?! That’s redundant!”
In the Talmud, on Bava Kamma 17a, the rabbis explain that water is often understood as a metaphor for studying Torah. With that in mind, how can we better understand this verse?
Reb Chaim of Volozhin, one of the students of the Vilna Gaon, explains that a person without Torah is like the pit, empty inside. They walk as if in darkness. This specific imagery comes from a piece of Talmud from Masechet Sotah, which describes the power of Torah that we’ll be learning this afternoon with its connection to Hanukkah.
In another place in the Talmud, in Avodah Zarah (3b), we’re taught:
“Reish Lakish says: With regard to anyone who occupies themselves with Torah in this world, which is comparable to night, the Holy One, Blessed be God, extends a thread of kindness over them in the World-to-Come, which is comparable to day, as it is stated: “By day, the Lord will command God’s kindness, and in the night God’s song shall be with me.” (Psalms 42:9)”
God’s song is Torah, manifested through creation, and a guide for wisdom.
As I think about the things I wish to relay to my daughter, as she grows, it is my hope that she will study Torah and understand that it is not just a static text, but something that exists in the present, with us.
There is no better example of this than Hanukkah.
In Masechet Shabbat, the rabbis ask, what blessing do we recite for Hanukkah? We recite: [asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah], Who has made us holy through God’s commandments and has commanded us to light the Hanukkah light.
The Gemara then asks: where did God command this?
And here’s the thing, God doesn’t command this even though the blessing says, “God who commanded us.” For other mitzvot, we can point to a verse in the Torah or Tanakh that commands this.
Zakhor v’shamor Shabbat, remember and keep the Sabbath. Al t’vashel gedi b’chalav imo, do not boil a kid in its mother's milk. Ahavta L’re’echa kamocha, love your neighbor as yourself.
Each of these mitzvot is drawn from a verse in the Torah. So where in Torah, or Tanakh, does it talk about Hanukkah? It doesn’t. Hanukkah doesn’t appear anywhere in the official canon of Tanakh.
It does appear in the “Book of Maccabees” likely written in the Second Temple period describing the events that we celebrate on Hanukkah and is considered apocryphal.
So how do the rabbis answer this question, where did God command us to light the Hanukkah candles?
The Talmud answers: Rav Avya said:
[It comes from this verse: “You shall act in accordance with the Torah that is given you [yes, the Torah says the word Torah] and the ruling handed down to you; you must not turn aside from the word they tell you, to the right, nor to the left” (from Deuteronomy 17:11).
What is Rav Avya saying? Rashi explains, “the commandment is not in the Torah but in the rabbi’s words.”
This is a tremendous and powerful statement. At this moment, Rav Avya reveals the awesome power we humans have in our relationship with Torah.
Torah did not just exist when it was written down but is in relationship with us, our ancestors, and our descendants in every generation.
While on Sunday, we’ll learn from the Shulkhan Arukh, there is a compendium of Jewish law known as the Arukh HaShulkhan by Rabbi Yechiel Epstein from the 19th century who writes the following about the disagreements in the Talmud:
“All of the arguments of the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, and the Geonim and Halakhic decisors, for one who understands them correctly - these are all the words of the Living God, and they all have a place in Jewish law. And on the contrary: This is the glory of our holy and pure Torah. The entire Torah is called a "song," and the beauty of a song is when the voices are all different, which is the essence of pleasantness. And the one who wanders the sea of Talmud will see the pleasantness in the differences between the voices.”
The Arukh HaShulkhan reminds us that Torah is something we receive, something handed down, shared, and passed from each of us to one another. And that the beauty, the essential quality of Torah is that each of us has a place in it. Each and everyone one of our voices is an instrument in the orchestra that is Torah.
The rabbis ask how God spends God’s time during the day. The Talmud tells us that God spends the last few hours of each day teaching Torah to children.
This is the lesson I want my daughter to understand.
This is the relationship I wish for her to have. I want her to understand that her experience of Torah is unique and important. That her voice matters. That the future of Judaism, in the period after ours, is in her hands to engage with, to guide, and to inspire.
Shabbat shalom.