A Work in Progress

This week’s Torah portion is Toldot, which means offspring or generations. It tells of Isaac and Rebecca’s family and the birth of Rebecca’s twins, Jacob and Esau; there is Esau’s selling his birthright to Jacob, Isaac digging wells of water, God renewing the promises of many descendants and the land to Isaac, and Jacob’s stealing the blessing of his father, meant for Esau. Esau was born first, covered in red hair. The name Esau comes from the verb ASA, to do or to make, and Esau was also a do-er: a man of action. Rashi said everyone called him Esau because he was fully made, completed. He was done.

Jacob was born second, grasping Esau’s heel, and he was named Yaakov, heel, or that which follows. The Torah gives a brief description of the two boys: Esau became one who knows trapping, a man of the field; and Jacob was a quiet man, abiding in tents. Not all translations say quiet. Rashi says wholesome. Another translation is mild. But the Hebrew says, Tam. Tam literally means finished, perfect, complete whole, innocent, or simple. It is the same word used for the Simple Son in the section of the Passover Hagaddah that tells of the four children, or historically, the four sons. We can see that Jacob and Esau were very different, but that each was complete in his own way. In a sense, they make up complete person when their attributes are combined: the outer qualities of Esau and the inner qualities of Jacob.

This is what makes Jacob so much more interesting than Esau. Jacob is far from perfect: he schemes, he cheats, he lies, he tricks, he steals. There are depths to Jacob. Esau may be finished, but Jacob, like us, is perfectable. Jacob had all the inner resources he needed to become a holy person. And that he actually gets there should give us great hope for ourselves. What sets Jacob so far above Esau is that he is willing to grow. The S’fat Emet comments on a later verse in this portion: “And Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found living waters (Gen. 26:19).” He says that “the Torah is called water because it’s found everywhere; and as is true with seeking water, it depends on how deep one wishes to dig, and how sincerely one wants to have Torah.”

Jacob was always trying to catch up with his slightly older brother. He shows his desire to overcome his younger brother status, but also his deep desire to be a leader, when he impersonates Esau to receive the blessing of the firstborn; his desire to be a person of goodness when he dreams of the ladder reaching to heaven and vows to give to charity and establish a house of God, and finally a desire to be a blessing when he wrestles with the angel and leaves behind the deceptive nature he no longer needs. Jacob’s striving to best Esau never stopped. His inner growth allows Jacob finally to surpass his brother.

We are all meant to be a work in progress. We are never finished. Our desire to grow and to rise toward holiness and our willing-ness to do the inner work we need to do will determine how far we can travel along the road that leads to the Divine. As Jacob found out, we are not alone on this journey. We receive help and support along God’s path. May we know that we have been given great spiritual potential for goodness and for Godliness, and may we strive like Jacob, to use these gifts, by being willing to learn and willing to grow.

Lessons of Hurricane Sandy

At this time of great difficulty for so many in NY, NJ, and CT, we look at the Torah with different eyes, trying to find light in the darkness, whether your darkness is physical or metaphoric, hoping to find warmth in the cold, and praying for heat and hot water in all your apartments. One lesson in this week’s portion comes from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. An obvious thing to take from it is that there was a reason for the destruction. People were choosing the wrong things, from a moral standpoint.

For us, we know that our choices, environmentally speaking, haven’t always been great, but they haven’t been terrible either. Humans began by burning wood for warmth. Then we moved on to coal, then oil and gas. Possibly our worst choice is bio-fuels, in which not only oil and gas, in the form of farm machinery & pesticides, but also good farmland is used to produce grain, which, by using even more oil and gas, is turned into ethanol, which is then burned. Hurricane Sandy sent a message to the seat of financial power. The climate is changing because we have changed it. Our choices weren’t bad. Perhaps we have been a little self-indulgent, energy-wise. Our choices weren’t necessarily wrong: we had to heat our homes and, for those who live outside a large city, drive to a place of employment. Admittedly, we have taken the lazy way out. Some have become used to making the easy money. We have not planned for the future or supported research and development leading to new forms of energy. We can now see that the old choices are no longer good ones. They don’t work anymore. God, or if you like, the Universe, is asking us to move on. This happens to us in every aspect of life. We are asked to choose a new way. The new way we must choose is very simple to state, but will be challenging to implement. We have to let the sun power our world. We can’t burn things anymore. The sun’s energy powers the wind and the waves. We can use wind and wave power, solar power, and renewable hydroelectric power if we decide to put our minds to it. We’ll figure out the storage issues. We may even figure out nuclear fusion (fission is too dangerous and too radioactively polluting). We could even use the millions of feet walking along New York City’s sidewalks for part of our power needs.

There is one more lesson from Vayera that I’d like to address. It’s about caring. The Torah says, referring to Abraham, And he lifted his eyes and looked, and three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed to the ground, And said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in your sight, pass not away, from your servant; Let a little water, be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; And I will fetch a morsel of bread, to comfort your hearts; after that you shall pass on; seeing that you have come to your servant. And they said, do so, as you have said. And Abraham hurried to the tent to Sarah, and said, Hurry, three measures of fine meal, knead, and make cakes. And Abraham ran to the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it to a young man; who hurried to prepare it. And he took cream and milk, and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood over them by the tree, and they ate.(18:2-8)

Abraham truly cared about the three travelers who appeared at his door. He hurried to help them, to feed them, to show them courtesy and respect, and to give them his very best. He didn’t know they were angels until later. The phrase, “He stood over them,” is interesting and quite telling. Angels receive their orders from God. One understanding of angels is that they are simply energies, in any form, sent to accomplish certain acts. When a caring, generous impulse comes from us, and when we act upon it, we stand above the angels. That’s the gift that dwells within free will. Abraham honored the Godliness in the angels before he knew them to be Divine. He tried to help them and care for them simply because he thought they were human. May all the love and generosity we show to each other during these trying times be noticed and blessed. May we be even more sincerely caring than we have been before. The Chassidic masters taught: the path to God leads through men. May we help each other in our time of need, acting as angels for each other, and being even higher than that: people who care, standing heads and shoulders above the angels.

Take the First Step

This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha, which means, go for yourself. God speaks to Abraham for the very first time, with the offer of great blessing, if Abraham will follow God, leaving his native land to journey to Canaan in order to establish a new nation there. Abraham does so and God promises him the land four separate times in this portion. At the end of Lech lecha, God makes a covenant with Abraham: every male will be circumcised at the age of 8 days. Abraham, 13 year old Ishmael, who is Abraham’s son with Hagar, the maidservant, and all the men in Abraham’s employ become circumcised.

Just what is this covenant all about? We hear so much about the covenant, but what exactly is it? A covenant is usually an agreement between two people. Each party has an obligation. Abraham has two obligations: to accept God for himself, his household, and for all the generations that will follow, and to circumcise himself and all the males in his household, as a sign of that acceptance. God takes on three obligations: to give Abraham offspring, who will become great nations, to give him the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession, and to be a God to Abraham and his offspring forever. God had great faith in Abraham, knowing that Abraham would not only agree to the terms of the treaty, but that he would complete all the circumcisions on that very same day, acting with that admirable quality that Moshe Chaim Luzzato called alacrity, in his famous work, Path of the Just. Rashi, our famous Torah Commentator, taught us similarly, do not delay a mitzvah (Bo).

Abraham had such a difficult thing to do. There is a haftarah that we read in the spring in conjunction with the book of Leviticus, about doing something difficult. Naaman, Captain of the army of the king of Aram, was a leper. The Prophet Elisha, told him how to cure his leprosy: requiring him to bathe 7X in the Jordan. Naaman became enraged at the ridiculousness of the suggestion; and his servants came near, and spoke to him, and said, “My father, if the prophet had bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather then, when he said to you, Wash, and be clean (2 kings Chapter 5)? It is so much easier for most of us, to accept the covenant and to circumcise, not usually ourselves, but our children than to do what Abraham did.

But what does the Torah mean in the beginning of this section, when God said to Abraham, “Walk before me and be perfect”? We have to remember that Sara did not conceive Isaac until after the circumcision. Walk before me then means that God is saying to Abraham, I will follow you. I will be watching you and I will come after you. Please take the first action, otherwise, I can’t do anything. Your action will be completed by me. I follow your lead. Are we then leading God? Of course not. The Eternal One is our Divine teacher: showing us which way to go. God points the way. We must decide whether to go there. The covenant has been accepted for us because it simply is an enduring truth that all existence is One. And yet, it is up to us to act, taking upon ourselves the obligations of the covenant in every choice we make. May we know that our Divine Guide is both in front of us as well as following us, and may we, like Abraham, find great blessings by walking forward on the path that leads to kindness, generosity, compassion and love.