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January 11, 2015

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Shemot 5775 – Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God

When I was in college, I had an opportunity to attend a talk by the the famous Israeli author and peacenik, Amos Oz.  Something he said has stuck with me.  “I have never once in my life seen a fanatic with a sense of humor, nor have I ever seen a person with a sense of humor become a fanatic, unless he or she has lost that sense of humor.”

The wisdom captured by this insight was on display in France this week.  Islamic terrorists, upset about cartoons that insulted Muhammad attacked the offices of the French weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo, murdering twelve people.

Ironically, it is the fanatic who is the funniest of all, and who most needs to be satirized.  It is the fanatic who most urgently needs to understand the joke, but on whom the punchline is lost.

Charlie Hebdo is a rude, satirical magazine that is an equal-opportunity insulter.  As Jews, we might get offended at how it depicts our coreligionists, but then again, when we consider that  Christians and Muslims receive the same treatment, perhaps there is something going on here other than antisemitism.

As we gather together this morning to pray, to celebrate Shabbat, to be together, and in a little while, to eat, we cannot help but also reflect on the terrible events of this week in France.  First, the murder of twelve souls at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  Then the shooting of a police officer.  And right before Shabbat, the taking hostage and murder of Jewish shoppers in a kosher grocery store.

The sad thing is that we knew this was coming.  The Editor of Charlie Hebdo even had a bodyguard, who was among the victims.  The Muslim terrorists who committed these terrible acts received training by Al-Qaeda in Yemen and were heavily armed.  It seems that there was really no stopping this tragedy from happening.

Consider other recent events around the world, including the beheading of Western journalists in Syria and Iraq, the killing of 132 schoolchildren in Pakistan, the murder of a Canadian soldier in Ottawa, the taking hostage of diners in a cafe in Australia – all were committed by Islamic terrorists in the name of their religion.

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, Taliban, Boko Haram, and the list goes on.  It is impossible to deny that we are facing a global epidemic of Islamic fundamentalists whose interpretation of religion compels them to fight anything to do with the West: democracy, women’s rights, freedom of the press, religious pluralism, the list goes on.

How is it possible that religious people could have such a perverse interpretation of what God wants from humanity?  It is mind-boggling.  Comical even.  ISIS would make a fantastic comic book villain if it was not real.

How does religion become totalitarian?  This phenomenon is so antithetical to how our Jewish tradition would have us see the world.

This morning, we begin reading the Book of Exodus.  Parashat Shemot introduces us to the major characters in this drama: the Israelites, Pharaoh, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and of course, God.

The English title of the book captures what we usually think of as its major theme: Exodus.  In Hebrew, we refer to this event as Yetziat Mitzrayim, the leaving of Egypt.  This is our formative story as a people.  It is a story which is embedded into our consciousness individually and collectively.  We were once slaves.  God saved us with an outstretched arm.  Now we are free, and we are in a covenantal relationship with God that, among other things, requires us to care for the downtrodden.  We know this story well.  We tell it in our daily prayers.  We reexperience it every year during Passover.

It is not only our story.  Martin Luther King, Jr. used the story of the Exodus as a biblical paradigm BFranklinSealin the Civil Rights movement.  Abraham Lincoln turned to the Exodus for inspiration in the fight to end slavery.  Benjamin Franklin wanted the seal of the United States to depict the Israelites safely on the far side of the Sea of Reeds while the Egyptian army drowns in its depths.  The motto surrounding the seal would have read: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

That is the other message of the Book of Exodus.  Pharaoh is a tyrant.  He is a fanatic.  He has no sense of humor.  Just as God brings the Israelites into freedom to convey a universal concern for human freedom, God also set out to overthrow Pharaoh as a sign to the world that despotism is never to be tolerated.

God’s problem with Pharaoh is not that he is an idolater.  In fact, the Torah is ambivalent with regard to other nations’ religious beliefs and practices.  The Jewish people are never commanded to rid the world of idolatry or to force the rest of humanity to worship God.

Pharaoh’s sin is that he, a human, claims to be divine.  And further, he allows for no possibility of anything else.

At the beginning of Exodus, Pharaoh looks at his kingdom, sees the Israelites, and notices that they are different.  He cultivates a sense of fear among the Egyptian people, convincing them that the Israelites pose a threat to Egypt.  The regime of slavery begins, but Pharaoh’s paranoia only gets worse.  Still fearful of a rebellion, he orders the execution of all male Israelite children.

The Torah, in its wisdom, is articulating the steps of how a totalitarian dictator consolidates power by demonizing foreign elements.  It is setting the stage for God’s overthrow of a tyrant.

When Moses first comes to Pharaoh as God’s Prophet, he does not ask for freedom from slavery.  He asks only for a three day break so that the Israelites can go out into the wilderness and worship God.  Three days.  Pharaoh cannot tolerate even that.

What is he so worried about – three days of lost work?  No.  Pharaoh cannot accept that these lowly people refuse to acknowledge him as divine.  The worship of God is a threat to Pharaoh.  How does he respond – by increasing the workload.

This guy takes himself way too seriously.  Pharaoh has no sense of humor, no capacity to see things from another’s perspective.  He is so stubbornly fanatic that he brings his entire nation down to hell rather than give up an inch.

God has two objectives in Exodus.  One is to free the Israelites.  The other is to demonstrate to Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the other nations of the world, that Pharaoh is Pharaoh and God is God.  God clearly is on the side against totalitarianism.

The Book of Exodus is about the preciousness of freedom and the evils of arrogance.

This is a message that is sorely needed today.

What we are facing today is not a war between Islam and the West.  What we are facing is a totalitarian fundamentalism rooted in the Islamic religion that seeks nothing less than total domination.

To be clear, Islam is not inherently violent.  There are plenty of peaceful, tolerant Muslims.  But let’s not be naive and pretend that the numerous terrorist attacks all over the world committed by Muslims in the name of their faith are not part of a broader trend.

Islamic fundamentalist groups are fighting to create societies that are governed by Sharia courts.  Infidels must convert, die, or in some cases live as second-class citizens.  Moderate Muslims must convert to this extreme brand of Islam.  It is why so much of the killing in recent years has targeted other Muslims.  If this was really about a war between East and West, why is there so much Muslim on Muslim killing?

There may not be anything that we can do to change the minds of those who have already committed to Islamic fanaticism.  Force may indeed be the only way to defend ourselves from people without a sense of humor.  In the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh is not capable of teshuvah.  The only outcome for this tyrant is total defeat.

But a ray of light emerged last week from a more contemporary Egyptian leader.  Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, delivered a speech at Cairo’s al-Azhar University on January 1, which on the Muslim calendar this year coincided with the birthday of Muhammad.  In the audience sat leading Egyptian Muslim clerics, as well as the Minister of Religious Appropriations.  President Al-Sisi made forceful, honest comments about Islam that are the kind of words that could get him killed.  Here is an excerpt from his speech:

It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!

That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.   It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Notice a few things.  Al-Sisi specifies that it is not the Islamic religion itself that is so violent, but it is the way that it has been interpreted over the centuries that has caused so much destruction.

I agree.  Our Jewish texts have some brutal passages that, if taken literally, would make us fanatics as well.  But we have a more than two thousand year old interpretive tradition that has found ways to address those difficult passages.  Al-Sisi is calling for Islam to develop similar interpretive traditions.

Also, he does not claim that “Islam is a religion of peace,” nor does he state that the terrorists are not really Muslims.  Al-Sisi does not blame the West, or point his finger at colonialism.  He takes responsibility as a Muslim.

He calls for a change in the way that Islam is understood and practiced, and he acknowledges that it will not be easy.  Islam has been interpreted in fundamentalist, triumphalist ways for so long that those modes of thinking have become fully embedded.

But it does not have to continue that way.  Islam, he argues, is “in need of a religious revolution” that comes from within.  Who has to lead it?  Al-Sisi places responsibility where it belongs – on the Imams seated before him.  It is they who must take the lead on changing Islamic thinking about its role in the world.

Until that happens on a widespread and sustained global level, I fear, the clash between tyranny and freedom that our world is experiencing will continue, and this week’s events will be repeated somewhere else, sometime soon.

On this Shabbat, our prayers extend to the families and communities who lost loved ones this week.  We pray that more people in the world will embrace the core lessons of Exodus: that freedom is precious, and that tyranny is intolerable.  We pray for all those around the world who risk their lives to protect innocent people from terror.  And we pray for strength and offer solidarity to our Muslim brothers and sisters who are courageously raising their voices and calling for change from within.

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December 28, 2014

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Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Genesis (בראשית)

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Why Doesn’t Christmas Violate the Separation of Church and State? – Vayiggash 5775

I hope everyone had a wonderful time on the national holiday of the Twenty-Fifth of December.  I sure did.  It’s one of my favorite days of the year.  The shul is closed.  The streets are empty.  No responsibilities.  I get to sleep in.  We usually go on a family hike.  This year, it was a beautiful crisp, sunny day.

Growing up, I was always pretty sensitive this time of year.  When I was in first grade attending public school in Atlanta, our music teacher had us singing gospel songs that were certainly of a religious nature.  I told my parents, and my dad was on the phone with the principal that night.  The next day in music class, the gospel songs were gone, and a token Chanukah song had been added to our repertoire.  So yes, I was the Jewish kid who destroyed Christmas.

I think this was a pretty common experience for Jewish kids growing up in a largely Christian society.

We are fortunate to live in a time when there is a great deal more sensitivity to these kinds of issues, and in a part of the country that is especially diverse.

But the dominance of Christmas is still inescapable.  How is it possible that in a country like the United States, which prides itself on having a separation between church and state, one of our national holidays can be Christmas?

Let’s take a look at the First Amendment.  It begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The separation of church and state is understood to have two clauses.  The first is the anti-establishment clause, which is summarized quite well by Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority in the 1947 decision in Everson v. Board of Education.

The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another … in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State’ … That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

Simply put, the government cannot establish or favor any particular religion, or even religion in general.

The other aspect of the First Amendment is known as the free exercise clause.  The government is not allowed to curtail the beliefs of any individual or group, nor can it restrict a person’s religious actions unless those actions are “subversive of good order.”

How is it possible that Christmas could be a federal holiday?  Is not this a violation of the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment?

Probably not.  But maybe.

When did Christmas become a national holiday?

In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill passed by Congress creating the first federal holidays in the United States.  Most of the states had already established state holidays, but this was a first for the national government.  Initially, it only applied to employees of the federal government in Washington, D. C.  Several years later, it was expanded to include all federal employees.  There were five days.  The bill’s title was:

An Act making the first Day of January, the twenty-fifth Day of December, the fourth Day of July, and Thanksgiving Day, Holidays, within the District of Columbia.

It went like this:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the following days, to wit: The first day of January, commonly called New Year’s day, the fourth day of July, the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas Day, and any day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States as a day of public fast or thanksgiving, shall be holidays within the District of Columbia…

Notice a couple of things.  First, the title of the bill does not mention the word “Christmas.”  It says “the twenty-fifth day of December.”  The bill itself also uses that expression, adding, almost as a sidebar, that the day is “commonly called Christmas Day.”

In 1870, just five years after the end of the Civil War, there were still deep divisions between the North and the South.  Northerners tended to get really excited about Thanksgiving, while Southerners made a big deal about Christmas.  One impetus behind the federal holidays bill was to create national unity.

As you can imagine, there have been cases brought to the courts, usually regarding Christmas displays on public property.  The courts have basically drawn a line between what they see as secular symbols and what they define as religious symbols.  For example, a nativity scene in which an angel is holding a banner with “Glory to God in the Highest” written in Latin was seen as religious.  Images like Santa Claus, reindeer, a Christmas tree, or a menorah, for that matter, are typically seen as secular.  In a court case involving Jersey City’s public holiday display, the presence of symbols from different traditions like a Christmas tree, Kwanza symbols, a Menorah, Frosty the Snowman, and a sign expressing the city’s intention to “celebrate the diverse cultural and ethnic heritages of its people” was accepted by the 3rd Circuit in 1999.  As long as minority traditions are also included with the majority, the courts tend to permit it.

As a people, we have had to deal with being a minority in the midst of a dominant culture for most of our existence.

In this morning’s Torah portion, Vayiggash, Joseph is finally reunited with his family.  He invites them to join him in Egypt, where they will thrive under his protection and favored status, but it is clear from the beginning that they do not in.  Joseph instructs his brothers to tell Pharaoh that they are breeders of livestock, because that is a profession which is abhorrent to Egyptians.  By telling this to Pharaoh, Joseph’s family receives rights to settle in the fertile land of Goshen, and to receive a special commission to care for the royal flocks.

On their way down, God appears to Jacob with a message of assurance:  “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation.  I Myself will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will also bring you back…”  The commentator Ha-emek Davar explains that God is reassuring Jacob that his descendants will not forget who they are.  They will maintain their distinctiveness first as a family, and eventually as a nation.

Initially at least, we see tolerance on the part of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.  They permit this tribe, with its strange customs, to live in Egyptian society, and to maintain their cultural and religious practices.  In next week’s Torah portion, when Jacob dies, the Egyptian dignitaries participate with Joseph and his brothers in the mourning rituals as they bring their father’s body back to the ancestral burial site in the Land of Canaan.

Unfortunately, this tolerance does not last, and a new Pharaoh arises who does not know Joseph, and who does not share his predecessor’s generosity and open-mindedness.  So we understand well how important it is to protect the religious freedoms of others.

I have always felt that, as a Jew, I had a greater awareness of the experiences of minorities than those who were in the dominant culture.  Being a minority prepares us to better respect religious diversity.

But what if Jews were in the majority?  How would we deal with issues of religious freedom then?

In 1948, Israel was established as the nation state of the Jewish people.  The Declaration of Independence, issued shortly after the United Nations Partition Plan passed, “declare[d] the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Yisrael, to be known as the State of Israel.”

It went on to declare certain freedoms which should sound familiar to us:  “…it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”

So how can Israel, on the one hand, be “the Jewish State” while also ensuring equality and freedom for all, irrespective of religion?

To be fair, many, if not most of the world’s democracies have official state religions, or offer certain favorable status to one particular religion while still protecting religious freedom.  It is the United States which is unusual in not favoring any particular religion.

In building a new nation in 1948, Israel’s founders had some important decisions to make.  Most of them were fiercely secular Jews, yet they looked to Jewish history, traditions, and customs to determine some of the core aspects of the State.

One basic question they had to address was: when is the weekend?

In the U.S., the weekend was originally just Sunday.  The two day weekend developed over the course of the twentieth century.  Would Israel follow the example of the rest of the Western world and go with Sunday, or would it copy its Muslim neighbors and choose Friday?

Of course, you know the answer.  Shabbat has been the weekend of the Jewish people for thousands of years, not just in religious terms, but in national terms.

What about holidays?

Again, Israel’s founders looked to Jewish tradition and established the Yamim Tovim, the holidays on which work is religiously forbidden, as national holidays.

In the Ordinances of Law and Government, Section 18a, subsection 1, paragraph a, it states:

Shabbat and the Jewish holidays—the two days of Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, the first day of Succot and Shmini Atzeret, the first and seventh days of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot—are the fixed days of rest for the State of Israel.

What about non-Jews?  Israel’s founders were emphatic about ensuring equality and the right to freely practice religion.  This brings us to paragraph b.

For those who are not Jewish there is reserved the right to observe their days of rest in accordance with their Sabbath and holidays. These holidays will be set in accordance with each community by the government and published in the public records.

To summarize, the law states the following in subsection 2:

The laws of work hours and rest of 1951, which apply to weekly periods of rest, will apply:

a. To Jews—on their holidays

b. To non-Jews—on the Jewish holidays or on the holidays of their community, whatever is acceptable to them.

In other words, if you are Christian, you can take your weekend on Sunday, and celebrate all the Christian holidays when they occur.  If you are Muslim, you can take your weekend on Friday, and celebrate all the Muslim holidays when they occur.  And those are not considered to be vacation days, but rather national holidays.

While it can get kind of complicated in the workplace, and I imagine that it is a nightmare for Human Resources departments, this is practiced and taken very seriously in Israel to this day.  Every religion gets its own weekends and national holidays.

We had a taste of something like this when we lived in New York.  Ostensibly to keep the streets clean in the five boroughs, but really to discourage car ownership, the city imposes alternate side of the street parking rules.  Pretty much every day of the work week, car owners have to get in their cars and move them to the opposite side of the street to make room for the street cleaners.  Failure to do so results in a fairly hefty ticket.

But what if you are an observant Jew (and there are a few of those in New York) and it is Rosh Hashanah, when it is forbidden to drive a car?  To deal with that situation, there are holiday suspensions of the alternate side parking restrictions.

“Wait,” you say.  Isn’t that a violation of the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment?

Not if you make the holiday suspensions available to everyone.  Here are just a few examples of holidays on which alternate side parking restrictions are suspended:  Yom Kippur, both days of Shavuot, Purim (driving is technically allowed, but you can probably guess why the city doesn’t want Jews getting in their cars on Purim), Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Ash Wednesday, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Diwali, and the newest entry in the list, the Asian Lunar New Year.

So I guess having a national holiday on the 25th of December does not bother me as much as it once did.  I can accept that for many Americans, as well as the U.S. courts, it is seen as a secular holiday.

So to all of us, Happy National Holiday of the 1st of January, coming up in just a few days.

 

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December 21, 2014

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Black Lives Matter Because All Lives Matter – Miketz 5775

Recent months have seen the tragic killings by police of young African-American men: Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in Staten Island.  The decision by Grand Juries to not indict the police officers in these cases has sparked a massive public response in our country.  The expression “Black lives matter,” which first came to represent this movement after Trayvon Martin’s killer was acquitted, has been reawakened.

More recent shootings by police of African Americans Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, twelve year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and John Crawford III in Dayton have further exacerbated civil unrest around the country.

Discussions taking place in many communities about whether police officers should be required to wear body cameras reveals the degree of distrust that exists in our society.  How sad that many feel the need to constantly watch those who are entrusted to keep us safe.  How frustrating it must be for police officers, who dedicate their lives to protecting people and put themselves in harm’s way every day.

This is not a problem with the police.  This is a pervasive issue across all levels of society that happened to have been sparked by the recent shootings and Grand Jury decisions.  Nobody wants to not trust the police.  What will it take to achieve reconciliation?  This is what the Black Lives Matter movement is addressing.

This is a difficult topic for me to discuss in the format of a sermon for a few reasons:

1.  I am not African American

2.  I am not a police officer.

3.  People in this room have vastly different opinions about this topic.

But it is undeniable that we have an issue in our country and our society.  That thousands upon thousands of people of all races and backgrounds have been taking to the streets for months is a pretty good indication of that.

As a Rabbi and as the spiritual leader of this community, I struggle deeply with how to address a topic like racial inequality.  I have my personal feelings, but those are just one man’s opinions.

My job is not to tell you things that you already know or take positions that you agree with.  My job is also not to tell you that you are wrong.

I am not here to make statements that you could read in an Op/Ed column in the newspaper.

I am a Rabbi, and my job is to teach Torah.  And hopefully, to teach Torah in a way that challenges all of us to look at ourselves, our experiences, and our values from a new perspective, regardless of where we happen to stand on the religious, political, or socioeconomic spectrum.

As you can imagine, this is a fine line to skirt, but I deeply appreciate those who offer their  gentle critiques when I teach something with which they disagree.  I learn from being challenged and I welcome it.

It is significant that the protests and anger have not been only by the black community.  We have seen protesters from people of all racial backgrounds, including some who work in law enforcement, expressing their outrage at what they see as entrenched racism in American society.

Many people in the Jewish community have been heavily involved in this movement, marching in protests, signing on to statements of solidarity, and being arrested.  There has also been a push to incorporate the message of Black Lives Matter into Chanukah observances, and thousands of Jews have responded, including special readings and activities in their nightly Menorah lightings.

We cannot deny that a large portion of the American Jewish community is deeply concerned about issues involving systemic racial inequality in our society and the distrust that exists between police and civilians.

What is motivating Jews to protest?  What in our Jewish tradition has compelled so many of our brothers and sisters to get involved in this cause, and to do so explicitly as Jews?

The Torah’s expression of the golden rule appears in Leviticus, chapter 19.  V’ahavta L’re-acha kamocha.  Ani Adonai.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the Lord.”  (Lev. 19:18)  What does the Torah mean by “neighbor” in this verse?  Is it a universal statement of how we ought to treat every human being, or is it a particular statement, to be understood as only how we treat our fellow Jews.  I suspect that, despite how it is often used in contemporary times, the Torah’s original intention was the latter.  It is about how we treat people who are part of our own community.

But this reading does not undermine the universal message, because it does not end there.  Just sixteen verses later, in the same chapter, we read “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens…”  And then the Torah uses familiar language:  V’ahavta lo kamocha.  “You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt…”  And then it ends exactly the same, invoking God’s name to underscore the point:  Ani Adonai.  “I the Lord am your God.”  (Lev. 19:34)

These two verses need to be read together.  Not only does the Torah challenge us to treat people from our own communities as we would have ourselves be treated, it tells us that we have have to do the same thing for the stranger.

Then, a few chapters later, the Israelites who are on their way to the Promised Land where they are going to build a society, are warned that all residents must be treated equally under the law.  “One law shall there be for you, for stranger and citizen alike shall it be, for I the Lord am your God.”  (Lev. 24:22)

There are some core Jewish values here.  We are asked to treat members of our communities, and people outside of our communities as we would want to be treated.  All residents of a land must be treated equally under law.  These are Jewish values.

There is one more Jewish value that was mentioned.  The Torah commands us, over and over again, that we must care for the least powerful members of our society because we know what it was like to be in their position.  The memory of having been slaves in Egypt obligates us to not stand idly by while others are suffering among us.

Thankfully, the vast majority of Jews in the world today, with the notable exception of many living in Europe, have basically reached a point of full acceptance in society.  But one does not have to go back very far in our national past to find a time when this was not the case: when Jews were demonized, accused of being inferior, kept out of positions of authority, and denied permission to live in certain areas or enter certain professions.  This has been true at various times in pretty much all of Europe, the Muslim world, and even in the United States.

We know what it is like to be denied opportunities, to have the authorities treat us differently, and to have those charged with protecting citizens turn their backs on us.  At least, we should know what it is like, because it is undeniably our history.

When we were the victims of persecution, we cried out, and nobody came to our aid.  Now that the roles are reversed, are we really going to be silent?

The Torah’s message of remembering the Exodus from Egypt forbids us from being indifferent.

We cannot claim to be the victims of persecution and discrimination for thousands of years, and then do nothing when our neighbors suffer a similar fate, when we have the power to do something about it.

That is why so many Jews in America have gotten involved.

The motto of this movement, “Black lives matter,” is a fitting expression.  Black lives matter because every life matters.

Unless you are African- American, you cannot know what it is like to be black in this country.  So when significant majorities of African Americans report feeling discriminated against when it comes to their treatment by law enforcement officials, acccess to educational opportunities, and ability to compete in the jobs markets, it is not ok for someone who is not black to deny that experience.

It is the equivalent of someone who is not Jewish denying our own historical claims to being the victims of persecution and hatred.  Who are you to tell me that how I see myself is wrong?

And then there are the facts.  The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 1% of our population currently behind bars.  This is true both in absolute terms, as well as in per capita terms.

Of those prisoners, in 2009, 39.4% were non-Hispanic blacks, even though they comprise only 13.6% of the national population.

Now there are a lot of factors that might explain why people of color are so much more likely to be incarcerated, but I think we can agree that there are systemic problems that need to be addressed if those disparities are going to be reduced.  There is tremendous distrust between communities of color and those whom we entrust to keep the peace.

I don’t think anyone wants a continuation of the status quo.  We have to find a way to change it, restore trust, and create better opportunities for communities that have experienced generations of poverty and discrimination to finally break the cycle.

So what can we do about it?  First of all, peaceful protest has been an incredibly effective method of raising awareness.

Perhaps we can find wisdom from the reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers.  This morning’s Torah portion, Parashat Miketz, opens with a famine.  Jacob sends his sons down to Egypt, where careful planning has resulted in food to spare.  The brothers arrive, and are taken to appear before the Vizier, who happens to be their brother Joseph, whom they had sold into slavery many years earlier.

When Joseph sees them, he recognizes them immediately, but they do not recognize him.  Think of how psychologically difficult this must have been for Joseph.  His brothers had nearly murdered him, instead sending him into exile as a slave.  Now, when Joseph has the power to do whatever he wants, what does he do?

Maybe we should first consider what he does not do.  Joseph does not immediately reveal himself and tell his brothers that all is forgiven, nor does he have them executed on the spot or arrested.  Instead, Joseph pretends to be cold and cruel, accusing them of espionage.  He eventually sends them home with grain, but he secretly has their money put back inside their bags as if they had stolen it.

All of this is a ruse on Joseph’s part to determine whether his brothers have changed.  He knows that for real healing to occur, they must confront their past openly and honestly.

In the course of their interactions, the brothers express regret for what they did to Joseph many years earlier.  They indicate their concern for their father’s well-being, and their try to protect Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin, who is now their father’s favorite.

At each expression of remorse and brotherliness, Joseph is overcome with emotion and is forced to turn away so that he can weep without revealing his identity.  When he is finally convinced of his brothers’ sincerity in next week’s parashah, Joseph knows that the cycle of hatred and distrust has broken, and that the time has come when he can safely reveal his identity and reunite with his family.

This is a story of a family that is plagued by a history of discrimination that manages somehow to reconcile. To break the cycle of hatred, each side needs an opportunity to move forward.  Despite all of his power, Joseph is incapable of wiping away his brothers’ guilt.  Only they can do teshuvah.  Similarly, Joseph begins this story as a spoiled brat, bragging of his superiority and ratting out his older brothers.  He also needs time to mature.

We face a similar situation today.

The problems of racial distrust in our country today go back many generations.  We have made great progress, but it seems clear, both from the statistics as well as from the real life experiences of black individuals, that we have a ways to go.

Our communities tend to be separated rather significantly along socioeconomic lines, which in many cases are also racial line.  This means that we tend to interact mainly with people with whom we have a lot in common.  Our society, however, involves a great deal more diversity than most of our daily experiences would indicate.

As Jews, we must consider how our own experience of persecution sensitizes us to the plight of our neighbors when they experience persecution.

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January 19, 2013

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Bo 5773 – Pharaoh, Lance, and Us

This week, we are going to talk about someone who was larger than life. Someone who was at the top of his field. His competitors couldn’t touch him. He was invincible. Anyone who dared challenge him would be trampled underfoot.

And then, even when indications began to accumulate that he was not who he had claimed to be all this time, he continued to persist.

When some of the members of his team began to question his invincibility, he responded with threats, stubbornly holding out.

Finally, when the evidence could be ignored no longer, he backed down, admitting that he was not the person whom he had claimed to be.

But was the concession sincere? Did he mean it? Has he really come down from his high podium out of genuine contrition? Or, is it merely an attempt to shake off the feeding frenzy that has been attacking from all sides? Is he a changed man, or will he revert to his old ways?

Any guesses who we are talking about?

Actually, it’s two different men: Lance Armstrong and Pharaoh. Two people who were lured by the promise of fame and wealth. Of prestige. Of knowing that there is nobody else in your field who can touch you.

It turns out that these are extremely powerful forces. They can lead a person to set aside ethics, break the law, lie, and even abandon friends and family.

Of course, we have a role in all of this as well, just as the Egyptian people had a role in Pharaoh’s stubbornness. Lance Armstrong would not have achieved what he did without us: the fans, and the consumers.

His story of overcoming cancer was inspiring to millions. His charity did so much good. His unimaginable comeback in leading the US Postal cycling team to win seven consecutive French Open titles was simply astounding.

As it turns out, Lance Armstrong was using performance enhancing drugs for years. Through bribery and lying, he avoided being caught by drug testers. He threatened anyone who confronted him, including friends and teammates. He lied under oath.

Until recently, it all paid off. Lance Armstrong brought incredible prestige and money to the sport of cycling. He made a hundred million dollars or more in product endorsements and prize money. And he became one of the most popular sports figures in the world.

Never mind that it is so unbelievably unlikely that a person could accomplish what he accomplished without using performance enhancing drugs. Come on. Did we really think he could do something so impossibly unlikely on his own? Apparently we did. Or we wanted to. We wanted it all to be true. We love our heroes, so we are willing to overlook the ugliness.

But we also love to see our heroes come crashing down. We get a sick kind of pleasure when we witness the fall of someone who has achieved greatness to a level at which we can only dream. That’s why Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah this week has drawn so much attention.

“He wasn’t that good after all,” we can now tell ourselves. But are we any better off now that Lance has fallen from his podium? No.

I’ll leave it to others who follow these things more closely to do the close analysis. I hope that Armstrong’s extremely public admission of guilt is the beginning of a long process of teshuvah, of repentance. While public opinion will pass its own judgment, only time will tell if he is ready to become a new man. And only God and Lance will know if he has truly changed his neshamah, his soul.

Pharaoh shares much with Lance. Granted, there is a big difference between being an athlete and being the King of the most powerful empire in the world. The stakes, in terms of human lives, are much greater in Pharaoh’s case.

But Pharaoh, also, is addicted to power, prestige, and wealth. In his world, he is no mere human. He is the living embodiment of the sun god, and thus cannot concede to any challenge, whether that challenge comes from Moses, or from the Lord of the Universe.

Pharaoh’s pursuit of wealth and power and his single-minded desire to retain it, leads him to trample on the lives of the Israelites. He has ordered their enslavement, decreed the murder of their male children, increased their workload, and refused to let up even a little. Why? Greed and power. These slaves built him the garrison cities of Pithom and Rameses. His drive for wealth has eclipsed any smidgen of an ethical sensibility or human compassion.

But it is not all on Pharaoh. He believes what everybody is saying about him: that he is the sun god; that he is all-powerful; and that he deserves it. Pharaoh’s “fans,” so to speak, have reinforced all of the unethical behaviors of which he is guilty. And they have benefited too, with a slave underclass to make their lives a bit cushier.

Years of sycophancy have made Pharaoh hard-hearted towards Moses’ cry of “Let me people go.”

So God brings ten plagues of evidence to demonstrate that Pharaoh is not divine. Towards the end, his people are convinced. They abandon him, and urge their king to let the Israelites leave. The Egyptians have finally begun to appreciate their slaves as human beings, and especially Moses, the Prophet of the true God of the Universe. As this morning’s Torah portion tells us, “The Lord disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people. Moreover, Moses himself was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and among the people.”*1*

God’s plan, from the beginning of the Book of Exodus, has been to demonstrate to Pharaoh that no human being is that great. But the message is not only directed at him. God is clear that all of Egyptian society is complicit in the oppression of the Israelites. The sin is not only Pharaoh’s, and the punishment is not alone for him to bear. The lesson that God has set out to impart is directed as much to the Egyptian people as it is to Pharaoh. And through them, to the rest of the world.

What is that lesson?

Ultimately, it is a lesson of humility. As humans, we need to know our limits. We are not gods. We are not superior to one another. We are not immune to norms of basic human morality. And none of us are above the laws of a just society.

This message is timeless. For there will always be those who do not see themselves as being subject to typical norms of human behavior. Whether we are talking about politicians, business people, entertainers, or professional athletes.

But we also can’t just sit back and take silent pride in the moral failings of public figures.

We need to remember that we are an integral part of this system. Without a public to care about their lives, there would be no famous people. There is a part of me that feels bad for those celebrities whose egos and faults are reinforced and strengthened by the public’s attention. I cannot imagine how difficult it wold be to live ethically, to be one’s best self, under such scrutiny.

I hope that Lance Armstrong is sincere. I wish him the strength to face the consequences of his actions, and to correct the harm that he has caused.

And I hope that we can take a sober look at ourselves, and acknowledge how we contribute to a society that pushes people to allow greed and the quest for money or power to inflate the ego and suppress good behavior.

*1*Exodus 11:3

 

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January 5, 2013

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Ki Tov Hu – Shemot 5773

When my sister in law had her first child, she called up my wife and asked her, “Isn’t my baby the most beautiful baby you have ever seen?”

To which my wife responded, “No. My baby is the most beautiful baby ever.”

Of course, they are both right. To every mother, her baby is the most beautiful, and she would do anything for that child.

This is a phenomenon that goes all the way back to the beginning of the book of Exodus. The Israelites are enslaved in Egypt. Pharaoh and the Egyptians have been oppressing them. After trying, unsuccessfully, to compel the midwives to murder any male child born to an Israelite, Pharaoh issues a more specific decree: all Israelite boys are to be thrown into the Nile.

Then, in chapter two, the camera zooms in from the wide angle lens to focus in on one particular baby boy: “A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months.”

And so begins the story of Moses. A couple of problems with our text.

First, as illustrated by the interaction between my wife and sister in law, there is nothing extraordinary about a mother looking at her newborn baby boy and noticing how beautiful he is.

Second, there is also nothing unusual about a mother trying to defy a horrific decree by keeping her son in hiding.

As Nachmanides says: “All women love their children, beautiful or not, and they would all hide them to the best of their ability; there is no need to say that he was beautiful to explain why she hid him.”*1*

The universality of a mother and father’s love of her or his child is a given, across all time and culture. So why would the Torah take the time to mention something so obvious?

Naturally, there are a number of commentaries from our tradition that give us additional insight into Moses’ birth. The Torah states, Vatere oto ki tov hu – “When she saw how tov he was…”*2* What does tov mean in this context? The Talmud offers five explanations*3*:

“Rabbi Meir says: His name was Tov” Remember that he does not receive the name Moshe until the Egyptian daughter of Pharaoh rescues him from the Nile River. Tov was his birth name.

“Rabbi Judah says: His name was Tuviah” – This answer is similar to the first one, with two additional letters, yud, heh. These are letters from the name of God. It is common for biblical names to incorporate the Divine name.

“Rabbi Nehemiah says: [She foresaw that he would be] worthy of prophecy” – That is to say, Moses’ mother saw something in him that was not typical. Guided herself perhaps through prophecy, she saw God’s presence in this child in a way that made her confident he would be saved if she took extraordinary measures, which might explain why she sent him off in a basket down the Nile River.

The Talmud’s final two explanations are based on another appearance of the word tov in the Torah: Va’yar elohim et ha’or ki tov*4* – “And God saw that the light was tov.”

The word tov appears seven times in the account of creation. It indicates God’s satisfaction that each of those things that are declared tov have been made complete. The Talmud’s fourth explanation builds on this.

“Others say: He was born circumcised” Circumcision is the perfection, or completion, of the male body. So when Moses’ mother sees him and declares him to be tov, it means that he came out circumcised.

Finally, the last explanation is by the Sages: “At the time when Moses was born, the whole house was filled with light — it is written here, ‘And she saw that he was tov,’ and elsewhere it is written: ‘And God saw that the light was tov.'” Moses came out glowing. He was glowing with potential, a new creation. Like the light that God created and separated from darkness on the first day, Moses’ birth heralds the dawn of something new.

Moses is certainly an extraordinary human being. He deserves to have a a story recorded in the Torah about his birth. But the truth is, every child born is beautiful, tov, in all of these senses. Beautiful, complete, perfect, blameless. A continuation of creation. But more than just tov in the present, in that miraculous moment of coming into being. A new human being is also tov in the sense of containing the potential for redemption.

That is why we welcome Elijah the Prophet at a Brit Milah or a Simchat Bat ceremony. Elijah, Jewish tradition teaches, will announce the coming of the Messiah and the redemption of the world. Every baby who is born has the potential to bring the world closer to redemption.

This is why, in our family, we tell our children “I can’t wait to see who you will become.”

This past week, the children of Newtown went back to school for the first time. Our nation is still going through a process of soul-searching after the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school. Those twenty children, all of them tovim: beautiful, perfect creations, contained within them so much potential for goodness in our world.

The tragedy has opened up a conversation about violence in our society, gun control, mental health services, violent video games, eroding moral values, and more. These are important conversations to have. While the connections between any one particular policy issue and different outcomes is often difficult to establish, there is a widespread sense that we are off course, and not doing enough to protect and cultivate the tov in our children.

Many faith communities are getting involved in these issues, including among American Jews. The leadership of Conservative Judaism, representing all of the various bodies of the movement, have recently reiterated its call for tighter regulations of the sale of guns and ammunition through adoption of common sense gun policies.

I am skeptical, given our fractured society, whether anything will be done.

But I want to come back to Nachmanides, who stated the obvious, declared, and I’ll take the liberty of making a couple of slight adjustments “All men and women love their children, beautiful or not, and they would all protect them to the best of their ability…”

We may think we are doing the best we can in our own sheltered communities. But we are part of a much larger society, in which the evidence would suggest that we are falling short of Nachmanides’ assumption. We are not protecting our kids to the best of our ability. And that has to change.

When Moses was born, light filled the room. When his mother saw it, she saw his beauty, his potential, his ability to bring goodness into the world, and she declared him tov. Every child fills our world with light. It is up to us to recognize it and build a society in which it can shine.

*1*Commentary on Exodus 2:2

*2*Exodus 2:2

*3*BT Sotah 12a

*4*Genesis 1:4

 

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December 22, 2012

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Connecting the Dots – Vayigash 5773

We would expect Joseph to be furious with his brothers. Several parashiyot ago we hear them say “come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we can say, ‘A savage beast devoured him.’ We shall see what comes of his dreams!”*1*

It is only thanks to Reuben and Judah’s desperate intervention that Joseph is sold into slavery instead.

Even though things eventually turn out pretty good for Joseph, just try, for a moment, to imagine what it must have been like for him when his brothers threw him into that pit so many years ago. Imagine the insults they must have shouted. The taunts. The hatred.

Even if, physically, Joseph comes out on top, I can’t imagine the emotional trauma that a younger brother would experience when his older siblings abuse him like that. We would expect that rejection to stick with Joseph throughout his life.

That is why his reaction to his brothers in this morning’s Torah portion is so remarkable.

When he finally reveals himself, listen to what he says: “I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you… God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth… it was not you who sent me here, but God…”*2*

Just contrast Joseph’s attitude to the brothers’ attitude years before. They are extremely short-sighted. They are thinking only in the moment. Here is this annoying little brother of ours. He thinks he’s so great. Just look at that ornamented tunic that he is always prancing about in. Father loves him best.

The brothers are stuck in their own anger, in the moment. When they act, they don’t consider the repercussions.

Not so Joseph. He is focused on the big picture. If there are any leftover emotions of anger, or desire for revenge, we do not see them.

Instead of his brothers comforting him and apologizing to him, it is Joseph who is doing the comforting! They don’t even have a chance to apologize. He absolves them of guilt, explaining their horrible behavior as God’s plan. It had to happen that way so that Joseph could be brought to Egypt, become vizier to Pharaoh, and save their lives.

The entire Joseph story is marked by peaks and valleys. Joseph rises to the top, and then is cast down, only to rise again in most remarkable fashion. We see this pattern repeat itself in his father’s house, Potiphar’s estate, and Pharaoh’s court. Throughout, Joseph sees the active hand of God in his life. We, the readers, do not see God’s direct intervention in Joseph’s life at any point in this story.

It is Joseph himself who connects the dots. He chooses to see a pattern in the random events that befall him. That pattern points to a Divine purpose. A purpose that is first foretold in his boyhood dreams of his brothers bowing down to him. Now we discover that those dreams have been fulfilled, in the most extraordinary way.

Unlike the rest of the Book of Genesis, in which God’s hand is much more apparent, the Joseph saga is like the world we know. We, like Joseph and his brothers, choose how to see the peaks and valleys of our lives.

Are they a series of random dots, ultimately patternless and meaningless. Are we alone to make decisions by ourselves? When outside forces impinge on our lives for good or for bad, are they essentially random and unpredictable?

Or, do we connect those dots in a way that points to a purpose for our existence? Do we see the things that happen to us in the context of Jewish history? Do Jewish beliefs, traditions, and practices help us contextualize the blessings and tragedies that we all face? In short, is God involved in a purposeful way in our lives?

*1*Genesis 37:20

*2*Genesis 45:4-8

I got some ideas from a D’var Torah called Unanticipated Consequences, by Rabbi Marc Wolf, Vice Chancellor and Director of Community Engagement for the Jewish Theological Seminary

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Joseph’s Land Reform – Vayigash 5771

Wherever you see yourself on the political spectrum, I think you will probably agree with me that we are facing serious economic problems that need to be addressed.  Problems of long term debt, of expenditures that are far exceeding revenues.  Our elected leaders are going to have to do something pretty dramatic to deal with these problems.

And it has been so frustrating watching both parties in Congress  quibble over politics.  First the Republicans promise to block anything that President Obama sends their way, even if it is an idea that originated in the Republican Party, and then when he finally gets them to agree to a compromise, the Democrats refuse to accept it.

California is even worse.  We have seen the budgetary problems pushed off from one year to the next, with the State Legislature refusing to ever actually address the real issues.

Perhaps there is some wisdom to be gleaned from an ancient source.  We read this morning of one of the most remarkable, peaceful, successful, and well thought out national economic transformations in history.  And it all happens in just fourteen years.

7 years of plenty, 7 years of famine

Joseph was appointed as Prime Minister because of the plan that he outlined to Pharaoh after he interpreted his dreams

Let all the food of these good years that are coming be gathered, and let the grain be collected under Pharaoh’s authority as food to be stored in the cities.  Let that food be a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which will come upon the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish in the famine.  (41:35-36)

When the famine hits after seven years, Joseph, and the Egyptian government, are ready for it.  People start flocking in from all over the Egyptian empire, and even from surrounding lands.  Enough food was saved to feed everyone, even the foreigners.

The Torah describes how it played out.  First, the people bring their money to pay for the food.  When the money runs out, they pay for food with their livestock.  When the livestock all belong to Pharaoh, the people beg Joseph to feed them in exchange for their land and their selves.  They ask to become serfs to Pharaoh.  As part of this plan, the population of Egypt is resettled, town by town.    Joseph then gives the people seed to plant their crops, and requests that they turn over twenty percent of their yield to Pharaoh.  Only the Egyptian priests are allowed to keep their land, along with receiving their food allotment from the government.  The end of the account informs us of the Egyptian people’s gratefulness to Joseph for his successful guidance of them through the famine.  In a postscript, we are told that it is still the law “today” that one fifth of the produce belongs to Pharaoh, except that which is owned by the priests.

How do we read this story today?  One twentieth century Israeli writer called it “State Communism.”  “Control, centralization of food supply, and equal distribution accompanied by the nationalization of private property, first of money, then cattle, and finally, land.  Henceforth all the lessees of Pharaoh’s lands pay him “the state” ground rent, and live on the residue.”  (Nehama Leibovitch, New Studies in Bereshit, p. 525)

I think there is a modern tendency to read this story too negatively.  To blame Joseph for strengthening the power of the central government, and for ultimately turning the Egyptian people against the Israelites.  This sets the stage for the eventual enslavement of the Israelites by a populist, and possibly fascist Pharaoh who the Torah reports “did not know Joseph.”

Of course, interpretations like this reflect more about twentieth century political discourse than they do about the ancient world.  If we want to understand Jewish values, then we have to look at how this episode has been understood by our tradition.  We will find that the tradition views Joseph’s actions quite favorably.  It suggests something about the values that society and its leaders ought to bring to public crises such as the famine in ancient Egypt, and perhaps even the economic situation that we are facing today in California and in the United States.

There are some interesting details of Joseph’s plan that the midrash and commentators do not overlook, and nor should we.  The Torah notes that he had the grain collected and deposited “in the cities.”  The midrash explains that Joseph decentralized the food distribution system by locating the storehouses in local cities and towns.  That way, people did not have to travel all the way to the capital for food.

Another midrash describes how he collected all sorts of different kinds of foods, from various grains, to raisins and figs.  And each type was stored in a way that was most appropriate to avoid spoilage.

Joseph oversees the rationing system to make sure that everyone in society is able to get through the lean times.  Most of us in this room have not had to live through periods of food rationing.  The great twentieth Israeli Bible commentator, Nechama Leibowitz,  who knew scarcity, writes, “For those who have experienced one and even two world wars, Joseph’s rationing operations are no novelty, but for previous generations they were, and we may presume that they constituted something entirely revolutionary in his own time.”  (New Studies in Bereshit, p. 520)

Without the rationing, I think it is safe to assume that the wealthy would have gotten through ok, and the poor would have starved.  It seems to be the way of the world.

And without careful administration, profiteering would have been rampant.  Indeed, a midrash explains how Joseph prevented price gouging by restricting people to enough food for their own needs, but not extra that they would be able to sell on the black market.  Further, nobody was allowed to enter the country without first registering his name and that of his father and grandfather.  In other words, he established a passport control system.

But if everything was organized so well that nobody was left to starve, why does the Torah describe the Egyptians as crying “out to Pharaoh for bread”?  (41:55)  The 18th century commentary Or-Ha-hayyim answers that the cries were more for psychological reasons than for physical ones.  And Joseph responds to their cries appropriately:

Since a person who has bread in his or her basket cannot be compared to one who has not.  [Joseph] therefore meant to satisfy the psychological feeling of want by opening the granaries for them to see the plenty garnered there and rest secure .

Now one might be inclined to assume that Joseph reserved special treatment for his own family.  After all, the Torah describes how he gave them the best land for raising livestock.  Not so, says the commentator Sforno.  The Torah states that “Joseph sustained his father, and his brothers, and all his father’s household with bread, down to the little ones.”  But Sforno quotes the Talmud to explain Joseph’s honesty.  “When the public experiences calamity, let no person say, I shall betake myself to eat and drink and couldn’t care less.”  (BT Ta’anit 11a)

Furthermore, the text describes how Joseph collects all of the money, and brought it faithfully to the house of Pharaoh.  He does not skim anything off the top to build up his own private hoard, explains medieval Spanish commentator Ramban.  Joseph is an honest civil servant.

When the Egyptian people beg to sell themselves into slavery, Ramban explains, Joseph actually refuses.  He purchases the land from them, but not their bodies.  Normally, Ramban claims, the King would keep eighty percent and the serf only twenty percent.  But he treats the Egyptian people like landowners, and the Pharaoh like the serf, reversing the relative percentages.

Ramban’s numbers are a bit exaggerated, but we do have some data from the ancient world.  A tax rate of twenty percent would not at all have been considered excessive.  During the reign of Hammurabi, the state received between half and two thirds of the net produce, after deduction of expenses.  Interest rates in Babylon for loans of produce were thirty three percent.(Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary:  Genesis, p. 322)  It seems that Joseph’s economic policies, in light of the times, were quite reasonable.

And I think we have to take the Torah at its word when it says that the Egyptian people were grateful to Joseph.

But is this the Torah’s final word?  Is it presenting for us an ideal model of the economic makeup of a society, or of how to get through a national crisis?  Is this a model that we ought to be looking at for moral guidance today?

There are some internal hints that suggest that the answer is no.    That the Israelite approach is different than the Egyptian one.  The first hint is in the role of the priests.  The Egyptian priests come off as a privileged elite.  They get to keep their land, and they continue to receive their regular allotment from Pharaoh.  Compare this to the tribe of the Levites, about whom it is written, “they shall have no territorial share among the Israelites.”  (Num. 18:23-24)  In exchange for their service on behalf of the nation, they receive tithe payments, but they do not get to own land.  So what is their inheritance?  According to Deuteronomy, “the Lord is their inheritance.”  (Deut. 10:9)  The Torah seems to be concerned with not allowing them to take advantage of their status to become overly powerful.

Another way in which the Torah signals that this is not the ideal is in subtly emphasizing the role of the Egyptian people in the economic transformation.  It is the people who offer themselves to be serfs to Pharaoh.  Rather than take responsibility for their own redemption, they willingly turn over responsibility to the state.  As Nahum Sarna explains:  “The peasants initiate the idea of their own enslavement and even express gratitude when it is implemented.”  (Ibid., p. 323)

In contrast, what does the Torah say about land ownership and serfdom in the land of Israel?  In Leviticus, God states:  “The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me.”  (Lev. 25:23)

And regarding serfdom, it states:  “for they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude.”  (Lev. 25:42)

The ancient Israelite economic model is based on private ownership, with limits.  And it works pretty strongly to prevent citizens from becoming enslaved to one another.

Where does this leave us?  Do we find anything in Joseph’s shrewd leadership that might help us in our current predicament?

Well, everything I have been reading seems to suggest that the only way to really solve our economic woes is through pretty radical changes to some very expensive programs, as well as a significant reworking of our taxation system.  I don’t think anything that is currently before Congress or the State Legislature comes close.  When you compare it to about what Joseph managed to accomplish over a fourteen year period of time, it seems pretty remarkable.

The important thing to remember is that Joseph, at least the version of him that is presented by the Jewish interpretive tradition, is being guided by certain core values:  That nobody will be left to starve.  That regulation should prevent profiteers from taking advantage of the system.  And that special interests are not given special treatment.

It is also important for us to remember that the Torah’s ideal is  ultimately not what is to be found in Egypt, but rather that which is to be found in the Promised Land.  It is the establishment of a society in which the fundamental equality of all human life is valued, regardless of one’s socioeconomic status, and in which freedom is a core right.

I pray that sooner, rather than later, we will be able to responsibly, and effectively, address the current problems in our society with the same kind of courage, commitment to morals, and compassion for all human beings that our ancestor Joseph once did in Egypt.