Vaerah: Discovery

Vaerah: Discovery

In our world, discovery means a step toward understanding  We believe that so much is understood: The Physics of Newton and Einstein; the chemistry of Dalton and Mendeleev, the biology of Watson and Crick and Darwin.  These ideas are the paradigms into which we fit our understanding of the world. 

Pharaoh lived before these ideas  demonstrated their power.  He also fit his world into paradigms. His world consisted of the usual and the magical.  But unlike most other people in his time, he had technologists of magic in his employ. He had the worlds greatest  technical capabilities at his disposal.  He did not exactly understand how these geniuses did things, but their ability to reproduce the first few actions of Moshe and Aaron made those wonders normal.   They were not uniquely special

Gd wants discovery.  Gd chose Moshe because he turned to the burning bush, He turned to investigate the unusual  He knew a wonder when he saw one!


Pharaoh is in the business of control.  He wants to deny the specialness of the events.  His technicians can also make snakes out of sticks, turn bodies of water  red and generate swarming frogs.  He can write off lice, marauding beasts, zoonoses, hail  to natural phenomona.-  perhaps they are exaggerated and their geographic distribution unusual, but these things happen.  They are not a revelation.  One need not look beyond the event and the damage it does.  These events  come from the extreme of random variation.  These are the black swans.


  there is a well known error: calculating the probability of an event that transpired This leads to an anti-Baysian reasoning, post hoc wonder at the coincidences.  How likely was it that  a jet plane  crashed it into the World Trade Center would cause the tower to collapse?  Before it happened: a vanishingly small probability.  Once it happened: it was a certainty.

Pharaoh was told, before hand, what he had to do to prevent the destruction of his land... but he did not listen.  The explanation was too wild and too threatening to his power.

Discovery is always a threat to the prevailing order

Shemoth: authority

There are two times in the parsha when a new king replaces the outgoing king.  At the begining , a new king arises who does not know  Joseph. וַיָּ֥קָם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף Onkelos translates this as:וְקָם מַלְכָּא חַדְתָּא עַל מִצְרָיִם דְלָא מְקַיֵם גְזֵרַת יוֹסֵף a king who did not fulfill Joseph's edicts. 

At least one  edict is mentioned in the prvious chapter, at the end of Genesis (50;21):וְעַתָּה֙ אַל־תִּירָ֔אוּ אָנֹכִ֛י אֲכַלְכֵּ֥ל אֶתְכֶ֖ם וְאֶֽת־טַפְּכֶ֑ם    Jospeph   had  arranged for a  welfare system for the Israelites They would be fed by the state.  But the new king started taxing them instead until they were  impoverished and subjugated. וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן עַנֹּת֖וֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם. Rashi relates this word misim to mas, tax. One can see poverty (oni) in the word anatho.

  This new king had instituted a new system that persecuted the previously privileged Israelites.  The fall must have been terrible, but they accepted it. They accepted the authority of the king.  They even participated and developed an internal hierarchy for the implementation of the servitude.  This was the new order.  Work to survive. 

Even the ultimate disrespect for Israelite life, the edict of infanticide, did not create a rebellion.  These people were cowed. 

 When Moshe grew up, he showed the people that they could protect each other, fight against their oppressors. The Israelites remained  loyal to the regime. 

But they hoped for a change. That is where the second change of administration comes in.   While Moshe, who had failed to generate a revolution, was in Midyan, there was another coronation, a new king appeared and the verse says that the people moaned וַיְהִי֩ בַיָּמִ֨ים הָֽרַבִּ֜ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיָּ֙מָת֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם וַיֵּאָנְח֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָ֖ה .  Why the juxtaposition of a new king and the groaning of the Israelites? Because the people hoped that the new administration  would lighten the burden, grant some rights to the Israelite, perhaps even remember Joseph and his edicts.   But they were sorely disappointed. There is no change. The people are disappointed , perhaps a bit hopeless.  Now they are ready for Moshe's arrival.  The elders accept his claim that redemption will come from another source, not from internal reform of the government.. 

But the people in the trenches do not accept the revolution.  When the Pharaoh has them collect their own straw, they just do it.  When they cannot fulfill their daily quota of brick production, the Israelites blame themselves.  They are jockeying for work permits, they are trying to please the boss, the immediate supervisor.  They do not listen to  Moshe, they do not listen to the organizers in the ghetto telling them to fight.  They try to work- as their brother and sisters are carted off.  They look for survival permits from the Reich, as the number pf permits dwindles and more and more friends are taken away. 

Did the story of  Moshe teach them the right lesson for the umschlagplatz?

Vayechi: Legacy

The last parsha of Genesis has similarities to the last parsha of the Torah, Zoth Habracha.  Both contain the "blessings" to the tribes, followed by  the death of the leader of Israel.  Vayechi deals with the descent to Egypt, the long nation building enslavement.  Zoth Habracha deals with entering the Promised Land, the liberation.    The leaders in Vayechi  are taken to the Promised land for burial (eventually), Moshe is buried on the outskirts, in an unidentified place. 

Where one is buried is a key issue in Vayechi.   The parsha starts with Jacob's insistence on burial in the ancestral crypt. A large  section of the parsha is dedicated to the details: the Royal permission, the embalming, the  mourning period,  the procession.  It was a big deal.  It would have been much easier if the clan had returned to Canaan.  But they stayed in Egypt, presumably to make a living, Vayechi. 

Burial in the Promised Land was so  important that the parsha ends with Joseph requesting re-burial  there when the nation finally ascends.  Moshe personally minded that obligation. 

After the holocaust, my parents came to America.  They could have gone to Palestine, the promised land, but they felt that they had to make a living.  They felt that they were in the world of Vayechi.  

During the organized murder, my father was a slave in the death camp.  He was well fed. My mother was "free," hiding in the woods.  She was on the edge of starvation.  The children of Israel traded their "freedom" for the slavery of the nourished.  They were enslaved to their sustenance. 

The dead need no bread. They are a memory marked by the location of their remains.  Their burial place reflects on the meaning of their lives. 

Burying my parents in Israel was  one of the greatest adventures of my life.  I cherish it as part of their legacy

Vayigash: immigration

Joseph, in Vayigash, generates what the Jew will become: a sojourner-citizen.  Joseph's revelation: that his brothers have come, identifies his origin.  Oh yes, he is one of those people that came from Aram, entered Canaan in trepidation  and ready to fight the forces of the Esau hegemony, wiped out the Shechem clan with guile, spurning their invitation to assimilate.  Oh yes, Jospeh is one of those guys...and, by virtue of Joseph's special relationship with Pharaoh, we are inviting them into our land!

Furthermore, they are communists ( shepherds),  They hold grazing lands in common, they do not fence their territory for cattle, like good, individualistic Egyptians.  

Joseph encourages his brothers to stretch the truth, say that they are cattle men, to integrate into Egypt...and they do not do that, they tell the truth. They are settled in  Goshen the city of approach, nearby, but not quite there.    There is a Goshen  in New York State, but the real Goshen of America is New York City, islands off the coast .

Joseph was the model for  Einstein and Haber  and all of the Jews that saved the world. He was not above profiting from his insights, but he could never rise to the position of ruler.  He had to accommodate to the local customs. Ordinary Egyptians could not share his table.  Even as viceroy, he was an outsider, a Jid.   Yet, he was loyal to the Pharaoh that had brought him out of the pit, to sit near the princes of the land.

We know how the story ends,  In their quest to fulfill their dream, the Hebrews destroy Egypt, drown its army, and do not even return to reclaim the land along the Nile.  Now, even settled on their  Promised Land, they remain sojourner citizens. 

  Jews are dangerous...perhaps most of all... to themselves.