VaYigash: the Power of Tshuva
A hilula (anniversary
of death) is also a yomtov (holyday).
Our sages say, when we say the teachings of a dead teacher, that teacher’s lips
move in his grave, and he becomes our Rebbe.
On the Yartzeit of the Rebbe of Ishbitz
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The Ishbitzer, through his
work Mei
Hashiloach, has taught me the concept
of the dialectic thought process.
The Ishbitzer made me aware
that I really didn’t believe in one God. He showed me that the idea of
embracing the ‘Tree of Death’ is critical to monotheistic belief. I came to
realize that a dichotomous process really means that you believe in two gods –
a ‘good god’ and an ‘evil god’. To see both good and evil as coming from one
source takes a lot of work. You have to change your thought processes. All my
life I had strived for this, and then the Ishbitzer gave me this gift – a way
of thinking that was totally contrary to the way I had always thought about
things.
In the ‘success model’ in which
I had been brought up, faults were always covered up or rationalized. They were
not seen in and of themselves as valuable.
The realization that
monotheistic belief depended on a different way of thinking was a real
innovation for me. The next step was to learn how
to think in a dialectic process.
In a good relationship, we
are able to see that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actually come from one person. When
people start experiencing each other as bifurcated, they can feel at times that
they are relating to a demon who they hate. In most relationships, synthesizing
love and hate is difficult. Parshat Vayigash gives us a good example of this
process, both in relationship with God and between people. Failure to
synthesize usually shatters the relationship.
In Parshat Vayigash, it is
important to understand that “Judah approached Joseph” (Genesis 44:18). They
approached, but did not meet. Many people believe that in this Parsha Joseph
forgives his brothers, and yet there are Midrashim that teach the opposite. In
the Parsha, Joseph never says “I forgive you”, and the brothers never say “I’m
sorry”. In the Midrash, the brothers believe in the justice of their position
all the way through. They express regret over not responding with more
compassion when Joseph cried out to them from the pit, but they don’t believe
they were wrong in their condemnation of Joseph.
Herein we find the
integrity of the Torah. In Torah, as in life, people change with very small,
incremental steps – one eighth of an inch at a time.
At the very end, in his
blessing of Joseph’s two sons Ephriam and Menashe, Jacob again gives Joseph a
double portion. And Joseph also
promotes jealously to the bitter end. He gives his brothers choice real estate
that he takes away from the Egyptians. And yet, if anyone should understand the
Ishbitzer’s Torah that jealousy leads to murder, it should be Joseph. He should
by now understand this viscerally, and yet he does it one more time – he takes
everyone’s land away, and gives the choice land to his brothers. This is just
the story of the coat of many colours all over again, and again it leads to
murder.
We can, however
differentiate between Joseph’s inability to stop behaving in this way, and his achievement
in not passing this behaviour onto his children. This is his greatness.
Joseph’s hallmark is not that he personally put an end to the favouritism, but
that he did stop it with his children. This was his achievement.
Joseph is the Tzaddik – the righteous one. According to the
Ishbitzer, Joseph is stuck in doing things the right way, so when Jacob crosses
his hands and tries to bless Ephriam (the younger son) before Menasseh (the
firstborn) (Genesis 48: 12-20), he objects.
Joseph is the paradigm of
the Tzaddik, and Judah is the paradigm of the baal tshuva – the penitent. Their relationship involves
a fundamental process that continues all the way until messianic times. The
chemistry between Judah (the ‘fly in the wine’ personality) and Joseph (the
‘stone in the bread’ personality) is complex. In my experience, most ‘fly in
the wine’ personalities can’t stand ‘stone in the bread’ people, and vice
versa. If the Torah sees the messianic process as leading to world peace and
completion (shalom), then we have a lot of work to do before
the two messiahs – Messiah son of Joseph and Messiah son of David (Judah) come
together. There are in the world tzaddik-type
people, and there are also baal tshuva-type
people, and these two groups experience darkness in very different ways.
So how do we bring about
the process of redemption, which involves a meeting of these two? This is one
of the major issues raised in Parshat Vayigash.
Generally, the tzaddik is on the side of Gevurah/Power, and yet the
Ishbitzer in his Torah on the dreams of the wine steward and the baker is
pointing out the power of the baal tshuva
and showing us where it comes from.
Jacob really started living
when he was 130 years old, after he was reunited with Joseph. Ironically, his
life only became meaningful in Egypt, after he had left Eretz Israel. Until the
age of 130 he was buffeted without end, by Laban, by Esau, by his parents, by
his wife, and by his children. Before coming down to Egypt, he had been
depressed for twenty-two years, since losing Joseph. And yet, after coming down
to Egypt, he has the power to live the last seventeen years of his life to the
full, and he had the power to give blessings to his children. Where does this
power come from?
It took 130 years for
Jacob’s tshuva
to really come alive and
take hold. This is an amazing process.
In the standard Western
tradition of story-telling, the Book of Genesis seems to end on a note of positive
completion. The family reunites, and all’s well that ends well. And yet, in the
very next parsha – the opening of the Book of Exodus, we are plunged into an
abyss of pain and suffering.
The secret of the Jewish
people is in the idea of “going down to go up”. By going down into slavery, we
entered into a crucible-like situation in which we gained strength. In our era,
we have seen how Jews came out of the Holocaust with incredible strength and
vigour.
Judah also emerges with
strength and vigour. One would think he would be totally smashed, after selling
Joseph into slavery, and the death of his wife and two sons, and impregnating
his daughter-in-law Tamar. After all this, one could imagine he would be a
total wreck, and yet he comes out with incredible strength.
For the Jewish people,
slavery was the requisite, quid pro quo, of freedom and for receiving the Torah
at Mt. Sinai.
This represents a whole different
approach to the ‘dark side’, and a fundamental tenet of monotheism. It takes a
lot of work to see the world this way, and so there are not many true
monotheists in the world.
Having one God, like having
one spouse, is challenging, because it is often easier to dichotomize and
demonize.
In Parshat Vayigash, Joseph
never really forgives his brothers, and the brothers never really apologize. Nonetheless,
they felt their love was powerful enough to override the hate, and that they
were able to bring the family back together. In that situation, most families
would not have come together. For Jacob’s family, belief in one God gave them
the ability to transcend and go beyond the misdeeds of everyone involved, and
to give birth to the Jewish people, albeit as slaves in Egypt.
For Jacob, ‘life begins at
age 130’. Whereas in Western story-telling tradition, a hero is often ‘over the
hill’ after the age of 30, the Jewish tradition recognizes that it takes a long
time to work through issues and figure things out. This is an amazing quality
of the entire Book of Genesis. If love and intimacy are by products of Tshuva,
it takes a long time to figure them out.
A vital part of the
dialectic process taught by the Ishbitzer is the idea of finding Hashem in a
cloud – we learn through the associational process of ‘gap learning’, where we
as students must fill in the gaps with our own thought patterns. This
associational skill is critical in interpersonal relationships. Seeing how
things connect, and connecting the conscious with the unconscious are important
skills that we need to develop