Torah readings Bereishiyt/Genesis 44:18–47:27. . Haftarah Yechezkayl/Ezekiel 37:15–28.
The story is told of a governor who met a rabbi walking in the street,
"Where are you going?" he asked the rabbi.
"I don't know," the rabbi replied.
Angry with what seemed an evasive answer, the governor threw the rabbi in jail. The next day, the rabbi was brought before him for judgment.
"Why is it, when I asked you yesterday where you were going, you didn't tell me? Were you mocking me?" asked the governor.
"God forbid," replied the rabbi. "Had you asked me where I planned to go, I would have told you. But you asked me where I was going. You wanted a definite answer and only God knows that. You see for yourself that I landed in jail... not where I hoped or intended to go.”
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In parashot Vayeshev, and Miketz and ending in Vayeshev, the ‘Yosef” narrative is pretty much one turning point after another in which everyone starts out in some anticipated direction in life, but by sudden choices necessitated along the way, or under the impact of added conditions, they are each all turned in yet other and other directions, acting mostly upon impulse.
Interestingly, it’s more often the minor figures in the chronicle who speak up to say, “Wait! Aren’t there alternative choices we might make? Aren’t there better actions we might take?” Most often, they are drowned out and go thenceforth unseen, while the more powerful figures, acting with little or no considered thought about the potential impact upon others all around them, simply do as they wish.
And these parashot show it all happening at personal level, at familial level, at community level (of sorts), and at government level.
The only certain power of choice on the part of an individual —a “minor figure” drowned out or heard, seen or unseen— is whether or not to roll up sleeves, summon up elbow-grease, and keep trying to do the best we can with our own hands for our families and neighbors and selves in overwhelming conditions, or to instead abdicate what brain and muscle we possess, and merely lament, accuse, and bellow as the deluge of events carries us wherever floodtides may rush and tumble us all, come what suffering and loss there may.
Many in America, and our neighbors. and throughout the world. can’t help but see ourselves deluged by climate change and by community and governmental econopolitical machinations. There is a parable from the haftarah for this parsha that elucidates a guideline for individual choice — freely translated (and very freely interpreted): God tells Yechezkayl,
16 ...child of earth, take a sapling, and inscribe it: “Judah and all people Judah’s companions”; then take another sapling and inscribe it: “Joseph and all people Joseph’s companions;
17 and join the saplings each to the other together, [even as divided as they may have been] that they become one in thy hands.
18 And when the people speak unto thee, saying: Wilt thou not tell us what thou meanest by these?
19 say into them: Behold:
See how it is that each separate sapling alone may easily wither or be broken; but join saplings to plant together, and they grow into tree and grove upheld by all, nourishing all, shading all from savage heat, sheltering all from storm, their roots holding the earth against flood, and conserving water to meet the thirst of all.
The narrative of Yosef appears to end with reunification of family in safety. But we know that this chronicle foreshadows lessons humankind will be forced to study over and over, seeing yet rejecting repeatedly the full scope of diversity that “together” means.
We will not always agree there is only way to see every issue, only one way to solve it. And we shouldn’t expect to or even imagine such uniformity as worthwhile, because one sapling alone easily breaks. Uniform sameness may constitute force, but not the strength that endures.
Joining instead our differences and diversities, and what we’ve each studied to learn from our struggles and losses —and what it takes to construct what triumphs we can— is how we grow the greatest range of energies, talents, skills, wisdom, muscle, brain and solutions for surmounting the floodtide.
For rescuing one another from destruction.
And in the process, ourselves.
And generations yet to come.
And rising higher.
In joining together wherever we can, even if sometimes we can’t, we still carry creation forward, to higher ground, come flood or fire or holocaust, come despots or plutocrats or tyrants, come temptations to divide us against one another by creed or color or language or livelihood or gender or place or religion or opinion.
Sometimes we —as individuals and in groups— have to contend with rage and divisiveness in ourselves, that set us against one another.
Then the saplings of Yechezkayl remind us that even if it’s difficult, we can each choose to speak together, explore complexities and paradoxes together, elucidate truths, respect one another, nourish and encourage one another, empathize with each other’s pain and history to rise above sorrow and past enmities and present struggles.
...and discover again how generative the sharing of our differences can be — the beauty, wealth of wisdom, courage, sustenance, pleasure and joy that’s potential in us all.
For power together to meet whatever comes next, little as we can be sure just where it’ll take us, it’s in each our own pair of hands to choose how as individual human beings we’ll travel, in order to make a better world every step we can along the way.
Shabat shalom