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December 3, 2016

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The Difficulty of Legacy (In Honor of the Silicon Valley Jewish Legacy Shabbat) – Toldot 5777

This morning’s Torah portion, Parashat Toldot, generates stronger emotional reactions than most parashiyot in the Torah.  It opens with the story of Esau and Jacob’s birth, and continues to describe their difficult childhood and the events that lead to the schism that drives them apart for over two decades.

The protagonist of the story, Jacob, our Patriarch, does not come off well.  He manipulates Esau to acquire the birthright -which is the privilege of earning a double portion of their father’s inheritance.

Later, with his mother Rebecca’s guidance, he dresses up as Esau to deceive his father Isaac, and lies to his face in order to receive the blessing.  The blessing in question is the continuity of the covenant that began with God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, would inherit the Land of Canaan, and would be a blessing to the world.  This covenant passed from Abraham to Isaac, and now from Isaac to – because of his deception – Jacob.

It is not a pretty story.  Is not Jacob, our Patriarch, the one after whom the Jewish people will eventually be named, supposed to be a role model for us?  For that matter, what kind of mother is Rebecca, who would encourage her son to deceive his father and steal from his brother?  She is our Matriarch!  Do we not expect better?  It is troubling to read that one of the foundational stories of the Jewish people is rooted in dishonesty.

But let us take a step back from the story and look at it through a wide angle lens.

What we are reading is the all-too-real description of a family’s struggles over legacy, and it is not pretty.

We saw a similar struggle in the previous generation.  Ishmael, the older son of Abraham, is viewed by Sarah as a threat to his half-brother Isaac.  To remove the threat, she demands that Abraham banish Ishmael and his mother Hagar from the household.  This move ensures that the legacy of Abraham’s blessing, and the full, undivided inheritance of his entire estate, will pass to Isaac as the sole heir.

The struggles between siblings will continue in Jacob’s future household.  It first manifests in the relationship between Leah and Rachel, sisters, and co-wives to Jacob.  They struggle for position within the household.  Rachel is the more beloved, but Leah is the more fertile – and they each use their respective strengths to posture for dominance.  It is a similar tension to what we saw in the previous generation with Isaac and Ishmael.

The messy struggle for legacy passes to the next generation.  Once again, the father plays favorites, as Jacob bestows the infamous coat-of-many colors on Joseph.  The jockeying for control of the family legacy nearly leads to fratricide, as the brothers capture Joseph, plot to kill him, and finally settle on selling him into slavery and lying to their father about it.

So that is the birds’ eye view.  In context, Rebecca and Jacob’s deception of Isaac and theft from Esau are fairly typical of this family.

Let us not be overly judgmental.  How many families today struggle over issues relating to inheritance and legacy?  The actions of these families in the Book of Genesis are, sadly, all too familiar.

But there is a happy conclusion to this story.

The family eventually reunites in Egypt, where Joseph has risen to become Viceroy.  As Jacob is on his deathbed, all of his sons gather around him to receive a final message and blessing.  In the midrash (Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:35), Jacob is distressed that as soon as he dies, his sons will abandon God and begin to worship another deity.  The disfunction of previous generations will be repeated.  After all, Ishmael and Esau were both idolaters.

But the brothers respond, as one: Shema Yisrael, adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad.

Listen Israel – Israel is Jacob, after all, so named after his nighttime struggle with an angel of God.  Listen Israel, Adonai – the God whom you worshipped, who blessed you, our Grandfather Isaac, and our Great-grandfather Abraham – that same Adonai is our God.  Adonai alone.

Relieved, Jacob settles back in his bed and whispers: Barukh shem k’vod malkhuto l’olam va-ed.  Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom forever.

This is the first generation in the book of Genesis in which all of the children maintain the faith of their father.  God’s promise to Abraham, that he would be ancestor to a great nation that would be in a special covenantal relationship with God, is finally beginning to be fulfilled.

When Jacob dies, the brothers are terrified that Joseph is now going to go after them.  But he doesn’t.  Instead, he promises to take care of them.  The family is reunited, and can now, finally, begin its transformation into a nation.

So when we read the stories about Jacob and Rebecca behaving dishonestly, we must not do so without keeping an eye on the bigger picture, and without remembering that the family will eventually learn, will eventually forgive itself, and make a commitment to be a united people with a common faith shared by their ancestors.

We are reminded of this every time we recite the Shema.  The Rabbis were wise to include the Shema in our prayers.  In addition to a proclamation of belief in God, it is also a commitment to the unity of the Jewish people, both among our fellow Jews today, and with the generations that have come before and those that will follow us.

That is why it is so important for us to consider the legacy that has been left to us by those who came before, and to think seriously and act on what we need to do to ensure that there will be a legacy for the generations that follow.

Our world is changing rapidly.  The old models of how Jewish institutions are supported are less and less effective.  To ensure that there will continue to be synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, Jewish schools and educational initiatives and Jewish philanthropic organizations, those of us who value these institutions will to have to take concrete steps to ensure that they will be around for our children, grandchildren, and beyond.

We cannot be complacent if we want to preserve the legacy that began, somewhat messily, with our Patriarchs and Matriarchs – but that has continued unbroken for thousands of years, ever since that first, unifying Shema recited together by Jacob’s sons.

Our community Legacy Project is an extremely important opportunity for us.  It offers us a concrete way to support Jewish peoplehood long after we are gone, to ensure that the Jewish institutions that have been so important to our own lives will be able to play such a role for future generations.  Now is the time to put our legacies in place.

I hope you will join Dana and myself in ensuring that our children and grandchildren will be able to proudly recite the Shema, knowing that their parents and grandparents cared deeply about continuing the legacy of the Jewish people.

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November 14, 2015

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Jacob’s Story – Toldot 5776

Jacob the Liar.  Jacob the Trickster.  Jacob our Patriarch.

Every year, when we come to this week’s Torah portion, at least one person, usually more, comes to me with something critical to say about Jacob.  How can such an immoral person, a thief and manipulator – be one of our Patriarchs?  But the Torah tells the story from a bird’s eye view, without passing judgment on Jacob or any of the other characters in the story.  What about Jacob the person – the son, the brother?  How did he become who he became?  With your permission, I will attempt to delve into Jacob’s character from a first-person vantage point.

My name is Ya-akov, which means “Heel.”  Why anyone would name their child after a heel is beyond me.  They say that I came out of my mother second, holding on to my twin brother’s foot as if I didn’t want to be left behind, or perhaps even as if I was struggling to come out first.  Anyways, being called a “Heel” all of the time has got to be somebody’s idea of a cruel joke.

Right now, I’m on the run.  My brother vowed to kill me – and I believe he just might do it.  So I had to skip town in a hurry, with nothing but the clothes on my back.

Let me tell you about my brother, Esau.  First of all, I cannot believe that we are even related, much less twins.  He is my opposite in every way.  He is big and strong.  He has red hair all over his body.  He spends as much time as he can away from home, hunting out in the fields with his bow and arrow.

And let’s just say that he is not much of a reader.  He is brash, quick-tempered, and prone to hyperbole – not that he knows the meaning of the word.

Not only that, I think Esau might be evil.  What does he do all day when he is out in the fields?  I know he is a good hunter, and he always brings home a fresh kill for my father, but he is gone so long that he has to be up to other things.

I have my suspicions.  And there are rumors.  They say (Genesis Rabbah 63:12) he spends a lot of time with the ladies.  And not just the single ones.  (Ibid. 65:1) I even heard that he once forced himself on a young woman who was engaged to be married.  But nobody is going to mess with Esau – so he gets away with it.

I also overheard our servants whispering that they heard Esau killed a man.  There weren’t any details, but knowing my brother, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out that it is true.

And yet, my father, Isaac, clearly favors Esau.  He barely even acknowledges me.  Every day, Esau struts back into our homestead with his bloody carcass from that day’s hunt.  He roasts it up just how dad likes it.  Then he changes out of his soiled clothes  (Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:15) and brings the meat to father with a glass of wine (Genesis Rabbah 63:10), which he keeps refilling.  He plays the part of the obedient, respectful son to a T.

He asks father questions to try to foster an aura of righteousness that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  One day, I overhead him asking about the proper way to tithe salt and straw, as if he has ever tithed anything or offered a single word of praise to God in his life.  But father thought Esau was so pious, he talked about it for days.  There isn’t even an obligation to tithe salt or straw.  (Rashi on Genesis 25:27)   He hunts our father’s emotions just like the prey that he tracks out in the wilds.

The worst part of it all is that this so-called brother of mine, simply because he came out a few seconds before me, is entitled to receive a double inheritance of our father’s estate.  This brute, who knows nothing about running a farm, managing a household, or maintaining good relations with neighbors, will get to take over the family business.  He is going to squander everything that our grandfather Abraham and our father Isaac built to satisfy his own gluttonous passions.

Does my father, Isaac, see any of this?  He is a wise man, and a good man.  How can he be so blind?

I sometimes think that he feels guilty about what happened to his own half-brother, Ishmael.  Even though Uncle Ishmael was the son of a slave, he was still Grandfather Abraham’s oldest child.  After my father was born, Ishmael was sent away so that we wouldn’t be a threat, and so that father could be the uncontested heir.  Ishmael grew up into a wild man, quite the opposite of dad.  But I wonder if father feels that he somehow owes something to Ishmael that he cannot repay, and so he overlooks Esau’s terrible qualities.

I could not let Esau inherit our father’s possessions.  Not because I thought they should be mine.  But because Father doesn’t see Esau as he truly is.  So when opportunity presented itself, I took advantage.

One afternoon, I was cooking a red lentil stew.  I have to stay, I am quite the chef.  Because I have spent so much of my time around the tents and with mother, I have picked up a thing or two in the kitchen.

Esau came in from the field in one of his moods.  He had been tracking an ibex or antelope or something that had gotten away, so he was pretty upset.

“Argggh!” was the announcement of his approach.  I heard the clattering sound of a bow and quiver of arrows as it was thrown to the ground.

Then Esau shoved his ugly, dirty, hairy face in front of mine.  “I’m starving!” he shouted.  “Give me that red red stuff!”

Startled, I looked in his face, and saw my chance.  “Sell me your birthright, and you can have as much as you want.”  I knew exactly how he would respond.

“I’m dying of hunger here.  I’ve got no use for a birthright!”

But I wanted to be sure.  “No.  You’ve got to swear to me.”

“Fine!  Whatever!  I swear you can have the birthright.  Now gimme that red stuff!”

So I let him have it.  He ate, drank, got up, and stormed off.  I don’t think he even tasted the soup.

Now let me tell you about my father.  One year, there was a famine, so he moved the household to Philistine territory, near Gerar.  Father did not feel very confident in himself, so he told everyone that his wife was actually his sister so they would not be tempted to kill him and steal her.  Well, the ruse did not last very long.  When King Avimelech saw them fooling around out in the fields one day, he summoned father to the palace for an explanation.

Overall, though, we did pretty well in Gerar.  Father made a lot of money.  But the locals were not pleased, so they started stopping up all of his wells.  Those wells, by the way, were wells that Grandfather Avraham had dug many years ago.  Then the King ordered us to leave.  Instead of standing up for himself, father just acquiesced, and we moved further out, to a dry riverbed.

Farther sent his workers out to re-dig the stopped-up wells.  Whenever they struck water, the locals came out to claim them as their own.  So what did father do?  He gave in and moved on to dig another well.  After three times, he just picked up and moved us all far away to Be’er Sheva.

I hate to say this, but my father is not a brave man.

He is blind to my brother’s wickedness, and he lets people push him around.

Mother?  She is another story entirely.  Rebecca is a force to be reckoned with.

Like I said, I spend most of my days by the tents.  But those days are not idly spent.  She makes sure of that.  Mother is constantly drilling me to learn.  She made sure I could read, and that I knew my numbers.  She taught me to watch people, to read their emotions and understand their motivations so that I would know how to deal with them.  She made sure that I understood how the household worked, and how to manage our people.

Let me tell you – she is a demanding teacher.  Do not talk back to that woman.  You do what she says, or else.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my mother.  But it’s a complicated relationship.  Sometimes I think that she is too much in my business.  She misses nothing.

At least she doesn’t have any illusions about her eldest son.  Mother knows exactly who, and what, Esau is.  Unfortunately, father cannot tolerate anything bad said about him – even when she confronts him with the truth.  It’s infuriating.

One day, mother came to me in a rush.  “Quick, Jacob.  Your father has just asked your brother to go out and hunt him some game.  He is about to give him his innermost blessing.  We cannot allow that to happen!”

“But,” I protested, “I’ve already gotten the birthright from him.  What do I need the blessing for?”

“The Lord made a sacred promise to your grandfather that his descendants would become a great nation and be a blessing to the world.  That blessing passed on to your father.  It cannot go on to your brother.”

“But he is the oldest.”  I said.

Then her face softened.  “I never told you this.  My pregnancy with you was terrible.  I thought I was going to die.  It was something unnatural.  So I asked the Lord ‘what’s the point of all this?’ and I received an answer: ‘Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people shall be mightier than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.'””

“So Jacob, it must be you.  Go select two animals from the flock.  I’ll prepare them the way that your father likes.  Bring them in to him, and he will give you his blessing.”

I sucked in my breath and spoke back to her again: “But mother, there is no way that father is going to think I am Esau.  Yes, he is blind, but Esau is covered in hair, and I’m smooth-skinned.  As soon as father touches me, he is going to know who it is, and then I’m going to be cursed.”

“Let the curse fall upon me.” she snapped.  “Just do it.  The future depends on it.”

You should have seen her in that moment.  Her eyes were blazing.  Her face was scarlet.  I had to do what she said.

So I got the animals and gave them to mother.  She prepared the meal while I snuck into my brother’s tent to steal his clothes.  Then I took some animal skins and put them on my arms so that they would feel like Esau’s.  Yes.  He is that hairy.

I brought the food in.  “Father,” I said.  “It’s me your son.”

“Which son are you?” he asked.

I gulped.  “I am Esau, your first-born.  I did what you told me.  Please sit up and eat of this game, so that you can give me your innermost blessing.”

“That was fast,” he said.  “How did you come back so quickly.”

Without thinking, I responded, “Because the Lord your God granted me good fortune.”  That was a stupid thing to say.  Esau would never talk like that.

Father seemed suspicious, and he said, “come closer so I can feel you, and know whether you are Esau or not.”  He suspected!

So I approached and nervously held out my arms for him to feel.

“The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.  Are you really Esau?”

“I am.”

“Then serve me so that I may eat of my son’s game and give him my innermost blessing.”

So I did.  My father ate, and then he called me over close and asked me to kiss him.  Holding my breath, I did as he asked.

“Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of the fields that the Lord has blessed.”

Was this really going to work?

Apparently it was.  He blessed me.  “May God give you Of the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth, abundance of new grain and wine.  Let peoples serve you, and nations bow to you; be master over your brothers, and let your mother’s sons bow to you.  Cursed be they who curse you, blessed they who bless you.”

Believe me, I got out of there as fast as I could.  I rushed past mother, who was waiting outside the tent, and went to get out of sight as quickly as possible.  I did not want to be around when my brother got back.

Good thing, too.  Because Esau showed up seconds later.  I was hiding in my tent, so I don’t know what happened when they figured out what I had done.  But a little while later, I heard the loudest scream I have ever heard.  It was filled with pain, anger, and rage.

That night, mother came to my tent.  She grabbed a travel bag and started rushing around, grabbing things to pack into it.  “Jacob, you have to leave immediately” she said.  “Esau is furious.  He is swearing that as soon as your father dies, he is going to come after you to kill you.  Here is what I want you to do.  Leave the country, and travel to Haran, where I was born.  Find my brother Laban.  You can stay with him for as long as you need.  After Esau calms down, I’ll send for you.”

That’s it!?  My mother forces me to trick my father and infuriate my brother – and now I’ve got to go into exile!?  What did she think was going to happen?  Not that I shouldn’t have been the one to get the blessing, mind you.  I agree with her there.  There is no way that Esau’s descendants will be blessings to the world.

But it’s not like she gave me any alternatives.  What was I supposed to do?

So I packed my things, and was about to leave when my father sent for me.  “Uh oh.  Now I’m in for it,” I thought.  “Here comes the curse.”

I went back into father’s tent, terrified of what was to come next.

“You shall not take a wife from among the Canaanite women,” he ordered.  “Up, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and take a wife there from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother.”

It sounds like mother got to him first.  She must have complained to father about the local women so that he would think that it was his idea to send me abroad.  She is a devious one.

Then father gave me another blessing.  “May El Shaddai bless you, make you fertile and numerous, so that you become an assembly of peoples.  May He grant the blessing of Abraham to you and your offspring, that you may possess the land where you are sojourning, which God assigned to Abraham.”

He didn’t say a word about my deceiving him.  Nothing.  I was flabbergasted, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out what he was going to say next.  I hit the road immediately, and that’s where I am now.  Be’er Sheva is behind me.  I think I am out of my brother’s range.

So now you know my story.  Before you judge me too harshly, please consider what I have had to deal with in my life up until now: a brother who could not be more different, who is crude, uneducated, wicked, and deceitful; a father who cannot stand up for himself, and who allows himself to be deceived; and an overbearing mother who knows how to get what she wants, but whose love is, at times, suffocating.

I think it’s good for me to get away for a while, to escape this atmosphere of dishonesty and duplicity.  It’s time for me to chart my own course.

 

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November 26, 2014

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How to Behave as Jew in the Wider World: Toldot 5775

One of the wonderful things about Torah is that there are so many different lenses through which to read it.  Tradition uses the word Pardes, meaning orchard, as an acronym of four styles of Torah interpretation.  The peh is for p’shat – the plain sense meaning of the text.  What did these words mean to the ancient reader who spoke the language and lived in the society that the Torah describes?

The resh is for remez – hints that are alluded to in the Biblical text.

The dalet is for d’rash, or midrash, (fancy word: exegesis).  This is the attempt to explain silences, contradictions, and problems in the text in ways that are not possible from within the text itself.

And finally, the samech is for sod, secret, which refers to the hidden kabbalistic, or mystical truths which are hidden beneath the surface of the text.

All four methods of biblical interpretation are valid, and all four are Jewish.  All have the capability of revealing religious truths.  Whenever we study Torah, it is crucial that we understand which method of interpretation we are using.

This morning, I am going to request that we suspend our skepticism for the next few minutes and immerse ourselves fully in midrash.  In the midrash, Jacob is a good, pious person.  Easau is wicked.  And Lavan is a liar and a cheat.  For now, we need to accept that particular understanding of these characters.

Parashat Toldot introduces us to the third generation of the Patriarchs.  Rebecca is pregnant with twins, and they are already struggling in her womb.  It is such a difficult pregnancy that she wonders if it is even worth it to be alive.  The Torah tells us that she goes to inquire of the Lord, seeking a prophecy which will explain what is going on inside her body.  The nature of her sons is then revealed, with a prophecy that the older will serve the younger.

The midrash (Genesis Rabbah 63:6), as we might expect, expands the story.  Whenever Rebecca would walk in front of study houses and synagogues, Jacob would struggle to get out, and whenever she would walk next to houses of idolatry, Esau would squirm to make his escape.

Another midrash (Yalkut Shimoni Toldot 110) identifies the location from which Rebecca seeks out God’s answer to her travails.  She travels to the Beit Midrash, the academy, of Shem and Ever, where the answer is revealed.

Who are Shem and Ever, and why do they have an academy?

Shem is one of the three sons of Noach, who survives the flood and begins humanity’s repopulation of the earth.  We do not know much about him from the Torah, only this:  When Noach gets drunk and passes out naked, the middle brother Cham does something inappropriate and unforgivable.  Shem, with the youngest brother Yefet, do not look at their father and respectfully bring him a cloak to cover himself.  As a result, Noach curses Cham and blesses the other two children.

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem… May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem…”  (Genesis 9:26-27)

Notice that this blessing associates Shem with God.  It also refers to tents, in which the younger brother seems to be finding shelter.  Thus, Shem seems to have been a monotheist, and a man of some standing.

Ever, the other Head of School, is Shem‘s grandson, and we have no distinctive information about him from the Torah.

From these scant details, the Rabbis develop a sophisticated narrative about the state of monotheism before Abraham.  Shem, later joined by his grandson Ever, establish a tent, understood metaphorically as a Beit Midrash.  There, they teach about God and God’s commandments.

But, you say, the Torah has not been given yet, so how is it possible that there can be mitzvot?  According the Rabbis, the seven mitzvot of the children of Noach have been given, and it is these which serve as the curriculum of this proto-yeshiva.  Among these commandments, which our tradition understands as applying to all of humanity, is the requirement to have societies governed by laws that are administered justly and fairly.  To create such laws certainly necessitates extensive learning, and that is the kind of learning taught by Shem and Ever.

So who makes up the student body?

One of the valedictorians is Abraham.  It is in the Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever that he receives his introductory instructions in theology.  He first learns about God from them.  But was not Abraham an iconoclast, the first person to bring monotheism into the world?  Not in this midrash.  The difference, however, is that Abraham brings his message of monotheism out into the world.  He proselytizes, so to speak, and quite effectively, whereas Shem and Ever are cloistered in their ivory tower (or tent).

In the Babylonian Talmud’s Tractate Avodah Zarah (BT Avodah Zarah 14b), which deals with Judaism’s laws against idolatry, a tradition is recorded that Abraham himself studied that same tractate.  When he studied, however, it was comprised of four hundred chapters.  He really had to know his stuff if he was going to go out into an idolatrous world and convince people of the existence of the One True God.  In our Talmud, Tractate Avodah Zarah is only five chapters long.

A generation later, Abraham sends Isaac to the Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever after his near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah.

You can probably guess by now that Jacob will end up enrolling in his father and grandfather’s alma mater as well.

According to the midrash, Esau and Jacob spend their first years with their lives somewhat intertwined.  They have yet to fully differentiate.  By the time they reach their thirteenth birthday, their personalities have been revealed and they start to go their own ways.  The Torah describes the respective characters of Esau and Jacob.  Va-yi-h’yu Esav ish yodea tzayid ish sadeh, v’Ya-akov ish tam yoshev ohalim.  “Esau was a man who knew the hunt, a man of the field, while Jacob was a simple man, a dweller of tents.”  (Genesis 25:27)

The midrash (Genesis Rabbah 63:10), noting that Jacob seems to be spending a lot of time in tents, identifies them as the same tents of Shem and Ever.  In other words, he enrolls in the prestigious Beit Midrash that his ancestors had established generations earlier.

He goes back later for graduate school.

This morning’s Torah portion ends with Jacob fleeing from Esau’s wrath after he steals the older twin’s blessing.  Rebecca urges her favored son to travel East to her brother Lavan’s home in Haran to wait for Esau’s temper to cool.  Isaac then offers Jacob a parting blessing and sends him on his way.

Rashi, based on a midrash in the Talmud (Rashi on Genesis 28:9), then performs some detailed calculations.  He looks at the various ages of the characters that are described at different points in the story, and comes to the conclusion that there are fourteen missing years between the time that Jacob leaves home and when he arrives at his uncle Lavan’s household.

Where did he go in the meantime?

You can probably guess by now.  What do people typically do when the economy takes a downturn?  They go to graduate school.

Jacob reenrolls in the Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever.  Why is it so important that he spend this time learning?  Because of where he is about to go.  Jacob leaves penniless, but his destiny is to become wildly successful in his time abroad.  Jacob will prosper in Lavan’s house.  But there is an inherent danger, as Lavan is not a good influence.  He is greedy and duplicitous.  There is a real risk that when Jacob is away from home, outside of his parents’ influences, he will assimilate Lavan’s value system.  How can Jacob spend so much time with Lavan without becoming him?

He needs an inoculation from the influence of his no-good uncle.  That is where school comes in.  Education is what will enable Jacob to retain his values despite his environment.  Intensive Torah study inside the academy will prepare him to live a life of Torah out in the world.

Jacob might also need some time to mature on his own.  After all, the fact that he is running for his life is kind of his own fault.  He has outnegotiated Esau for the birthright, stolen the blessing from him, and lied and tricked his father.  Perhaps Jacob needs to go back to school for some moral reeducation as well.

As it turns out, Jacob does well in Lavan’s household.  He spends twenty two years there, builds a family, and acquires great wealth.  Jacob eventually must leave, however, as it is not his home.  He knows that to fulfill his destiny, he must separate and go back home.  One of the first things he does after returning to the Land of Israel is to force all of the members of his household to throw out any personal idols that they have brought with them.  Those idolatrous values from Lavan’s home will have no place in Jacob’s household.

On one level, these midrashim about the Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever are anachronistic.  They retroject the Rabbis’ values of Torah study into an ancient time which clearly had different priorities and institutions.  On the other hand, by using recognizable contemporary symbols, these midrashim are able to tell us something about what was important to the Rabbis in their own time, which may help us better understand the situations we face in the present.

In sending Jacob to yeshivah, the midrash does the same thing as I did a few minutes ago when I described Jacob’s return to yeshiva as graduate school.  This is one of the ways that Torah comes alive for us.

So what are the Rabbis trying to tell us in these midrashim?  They are making a point about how we can best prepare ourselves and our children to deal with the world successfully without taking on the bad qualities of that world.

One lesson they may be imparting is how to best prepare oneself to maintain one’s values within a wider society that does not share them.  That sounds pretty relevant to me.  Judaism has always struggled with finding a healthy balance between engaging with the world, incorporating positive elements from other cultures, and resisting the negative ones.

Let me share an example.  This coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is known as Black Friday.  Over the last several years, we have seen Black Friday pushed back earlier and earlier onto Thanksgiving, giving consumers more opportunities to buy stuff and giving retail workers less opportunities to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It creates a sense of competition between stores to move up their openings times so that their competitors do not gain an advantage.  And it creates competition between consumers who feel that they need to be first in line in order to get the best deals.  The result is a cheapening and weakening of Thanksgiving, which in my opinion is the one national holiday that most Americans seem to take seriously.

The Canadian organization Adbusters created a campaign a few years ago called International Buy Nothing Day, on which people are urged to not spend any money on Black Friday.

As Jews, we do not really need to set aside a day for anti-consumerism.  We already have Shabbat, which instead of once every 365 days, occurs once in seven.  Nevertheless, every year when Black Friday roles around, I am so happy to be Jewish, and to not have that pressure to go out and get the best deals on Christmas presents.  I would put Black Friday in the category of things from the dominant culture for us to avoid.

But we have assimilated much that is good into our tradition as well.

In recent decades, we have incorporated into Judaism values like feminism and social action while struggling to resist messages that promote violence and encourage immodesty.  How do we inculcate the moral strength to stick by the values of our ancestors?  Through learning.

The lesson here is that a deep education in Torah lays the essential moral groundwork for going out into the world and behaving as a Jew ought to behave.  It was that education, at least according to the midrash, that was available to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  It was that education that made it possible for Jacob to go abroad, away from the protective influence of his parents, retain his values in a foreign culture, and eventually return home with those values intact.