Va'erah: perception

Va'erah: perception

What did Pharaoh think was going on?  The waters turn to blood;  frogs, lice, animals, pestilence, boils, hail...Often, there are predictions and he always turns to Moshe to stop them. 

Phaoraoh and the Egyptians must have thought that Nature was turning against them.  The consequences of global warming.  He saw that often a  plague was the consequence of the preceding plague: The water turned to blood, the frogs had to leave the water.  A mixed multitude of beasts trampled through Egypt and infected the indigenous cattle and the human manifestation ( of hoof and mouth disease) was boils. What is so miraculous?

He saw J as having the power to stop these terrible events, but not necessarily as their cause.

Meanwhile J backs up whatever Moshe negotiates. The time when the plagues terminate is the demonstration of power

This is a time when Gd wants to demonstrate powers. Once and for all times, so that it will be repeated annualy, ,weekly and daily.  So it will never have to happen again?

Will Gd save us from global warming and our half baked schemes to stop it? There are certainly some hard hearts on that debate.

Shemoth: Union

Shemoth: Union

What the Israelites were lacking in Egypt was a union, a body to negotiate for them, to get them their rights. 

It is only after Gd appears to Moshe that the idea of demanding consideration from the (very outnumbered) bosses occurs to anyone.  And when the demands are made (for a 3 day vacation) , and greeted with the usual fat cat solution of greater oppression (make the same number of bricks, but gather your own straw), the old-guard leadership immediately buckles, criticizing the new Revolutionaries.  Will the 777X be made in Seattle?

The emotional content of the story emphasizes how hard it is to protest alone. The overwhelming insecurity of demanding what is right...but no one is with you.  That is why Gd introduces the name Ehieh: I will be with you. When you are right, you are not alone. Gd is with you, so the power is with you. 

The women of the chapter are the heroes.  The midwives who dare to defy the murderous edict of Pharaoh.  Moshe's mother, who bends the law by placing her son in the river...but in a boat. Pharoah's daughter who openly defies the intention of her father.  Moshe's sister, who magnifies the defiance by offering a Hebrew wetnurse for the patently Hebrew child. Tziporah who circumcises her son with a rock (!) to rescue her  bridegroom of blood. Perhaps the women are less alone because they carry the generations in themselves.

One set of critical names that is dealt with in the parsha is the names of Gd. After some detours, Gd reveals to Moshe the name Y.  But we had seen this name before in Genesis The last appearance is in Jacob's blessing for Dan ( 49;18).  This name of Gd does not appear anywhere else in Jacob's blessings ( perhaps the one mention is  slip). This Y name does not appear for 10 chapters preceding 49.  Even when Gd appears to Jacob to go down to Egypt (46;2), it is not Y ( who previous appeared to Jacob, and Isaac and Abraham), but E.  The last time Y was evoked, Jacob was entering the land and fearing Eisov's approach (32;10),  the last time Israel was unified. It looks like Y was forgotten. Was it the disunity of Israel that caused the amnesia? No unity, No strength. 

With Gd on his side, Moshe can deal with the illusion that is our perception of the world.  Gd tells Moshe to  throw down the staff and it turns into a snake.  Gd tells Moshe to grab the terrifying serpent by the tail ( the wrong end), and Moshe does it...he knows it is only a stick.  He knows that the stick can be a deadly serpent.  He gets it, becuase Gd is with him 

Gd be with ye.

Vayechi: the Structure of Genesis

Vayechi: the Structure of Genesis

In the beginning of In the Beginning (  the first chapter of Genesis), Vyehi ( hey, not cheth) is used over and over again.  There, it seems to mean that Gd's will was manifest as a creation, something came into being. 

Those creations all had a continued existence for at least the duration of human history.  In Vayechi, this weeks parsha, the word with a cheth, we are told of lives  whose significance stretches to the present and beyond. The lives of Jacob and Joseph , etc.

Soon after the birth of the first  to sons of Adam and Eve, the mortal  competition between siblings begins: for Gds' recognition,  for  the parental blessing, for ascendancy.    The struggle is taken up by the sons of Noah, the sons of Terach, the sons of Abraham and Isaac. It  reaches one of its climaxes in the interaction of Joseph and his brothers, the sons of Jacob.  In the Joseph story, the brothers (almost) kill Joseph, and there is a resolution  in  their request for forgiveness and their  pledge of slavery to Joseph. This pledge of slavery to the viceroy of Egypt may have had some serious consequences.

The arrangements made for Jacob's burial , leaving the cattle and children in Egypt, was probably the paradigm that Pharoah had in mind when he offered the Israelites a Holiday outing instead of liberation during the ten plagues.  The significance of an act can far outlive the actors

Better a live slave than a dead hero?.... up to a point                                                  

Vayigosh: trepidation

 Vayigosh: trepidation

I hear the gosh in VaYigosh,  The temptation to awkwardly  shuffle the feet, the knees knocking into each other  as Yehuda trembles in fear before Tzaphnas Panea (Joseph). 

Yehuda approaches, but he must keep his distance.  Yehuda is lowly and Joseph is great. Yhe pitiful brother from the pit is looking down with pity at the brother who sold him into slavery.  But Yehuda does not know that .  Yehuda is standing in front of the Great and Powerful  Zaphnas Paneah, distributor of food and his own idiosyncratic justice. Judah is cowardly lion and scarecrow in one. He has come to rescue his Dorothy, sacrifice himself so that she can go back to Kansas, so that Benjamin can go home. 

Toward the end of the parsha, Joseph acquires the world's wealth, establishing Pharaoh as the economic ruler of the world.  As the people sequentially hand over all their money, sell off their posessions, and ultimately sell themselves  for sustenance, they must approach Joseph. 

 I am sure that each time they approached the increasingly mighty viceroy, as they were progressively impoverished, their  trepidation increased.  It was hard to imagine that Joseph had sympathy for them. But Joseph's sympathy was a true and ambivalent sympathy that came from his own experience as a man betrayed by his brothers, a slave, and a prisoner.  He knew both sides of that story.  He knew how low a victim can descend and how high he rise.  And he he knew much of the role of Elokim, the master of fate, arbiter of justice, ruler of history.

Nelson Mandella seems to have had a Joseph quality.  He seems to have considered his misfortune, including his imprisonment, an opportunity to emerge and lead.  And when he emerged  to  lead, he was not vengeful to his former oppressors, he reconciled with them.