Auto Emancipation

In the Torah this week we read of the Exodus from Egypt. After what seems like a relentless struggle between Moshe and the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh finally surrenders and lets the people go. The whole story though begs a powerful question.
Moshe knew all along that the desired end here was that the people of Israel be free . They had a destiny to receive the Torah and inherit the land of Israel. There was no way once they left Egypt that they were ever coming back. So why then does Moshe continue to ask the Pharaoh to let the people go for a three day holiday to worship Hashem as if indeed they will return. In truth the Pharaoh had every right to chase the people down when they headed to the sea... the three days Moshe had asked for had elapsed...and they clearly were not coming back...The Pharaoh felt duped and he went to get them...Why didn't Moshe say from the very beginning that it was the total liberation of the people that he wanted...Why the ruse?

I remember many years ago reading of the writings of the early Zionist thinkers. They were of different minds.Some, like Ahad Haam believed that we needed to wait to actually rebuild the land until such time as the powers that were then in the world would give us the rights to Israel. Those like A.D. Gordon felt otherwise. They argued that the Jews needed to come back to the land and reclaim it, even before being granted any rights to the establishment of a state by the sovereign nations of the time.They felt Jews needed to be the authors of their own liberation from the tyranny of the galut. And the granting of emancipation from any source from without would only compromise the development of the emerging new nation.

Just think of the story of the African-americans in the United Stated...They did not free themselves...they did not fight a struggle to be liberated from slavery. They were granted freedom...granted their rights by others in authority..It is no surprise then that actually becoming 'free' within themselves, developing the sense of self worth of the free man did not immediately occur. No document signed in Washington can give someone his/her sense of self worth. (On the contrary that it was given by others in a subtle way only continues to underscore that one needs someone else to make him/her worthy). No, they did not really become free until they fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King and the many other heroes of the period.
Only after the self-liberation of the 1960s could the promise of the freedom granted in the 1860s be realized.....A white President Lincoln's emancipation made a black President Obama legal...but only after the courage and sacrifice of the Blacks in America themselves could a Black President Obama actually be possible!

Is it any wonder then why Moshe only asked the Pharaoh to give the people a three day holiday.
Moshe knew it was not for the Pharaoh to liberate the people. They would have then been forever beholden to him and like the Blacks in America of the 1860's, free in name but enslaved in spirit. It was important, no, necessary that the people liberate themselves. That could only happen after they had some distance. They tasted freedom, albeit briefly, during the three days...With that experience behind them rather than return after the three days as promised to the slavery of Egypt they chose to not return. They chose to free themselves.They said 'We will no longer be slaves!'. They marched forward to the sea and to their fateful rendezvous with their oppressors and with their destiny.

The message I take from here is clear and its not only about my people or other peoples...its also about me...Any real 'becoming' that happens for me will not be the results of gifts bestowed from without. No one can 'make' me feel worthy or whole...No one can give me that which I lack for my self esteem...Others can help..and I need the help of others..But in the end I must emancipate myself. Like for our parents of the Exodus, like for the early halutzim and like for the Afro-americans 'becoming' is a process and it is both uneven and challenging...It is also a most sacred charge...and the reason I was put here on this earth...

Shabbat Shalom

Location! Location! Location!

Much of my life I have asked the question 'who am I?'...Surely self knowledge is core to spiritual growth...But of late I have come to a new question...one equally compelling and yet a question I had not thought so important.....'where am I?'....
For much of my life I thought where I was...the address of my existence...was an accident of my life...I could be here or there or anywhere for that matter...and it would make little difference...Who I was mattered...where I was was interesting but not consequential...

I have come to see that the address of my existence is core to my identity....and no accident...The Yisrael (my name) here...is not the same as the Yisrael who might be over there...anymore than the Yisrael who is the child of Joseph and Hannah (my parents) would be the same as the Yisrael who might be the child of some different parents...Place is central to who we are...Its no wonder that meshane makom meshane mazal...'if one changes ones place one changes one's fortune'...changing one's place for the mourner is the equivalent of changing one's name for the ill...

I came to understand that as I read the parsha of this week and noticed how often Moshe was called by Hashem to go to confront the Pharaoh as he goes out to the water...not in his palace...not in his royal habitat...but out by the Nile...why?...Why is Moshe told to go seek the Pharaoh out there?

I believe the answer is that for Pharaoh to be able to hear the message of Hashem he would have to be in a different place than the setting in which he was the god and all obeyed him...As long as Pharaoh was in the palace he would be unable to become the person he needed to become in order to listen to the will of Hashem...In the palace the context, the trappings, the social setting would all conspire to make it impossible for Pharaoh to be anything other than who he was..the obstinate god figure...who would destroy his people rather than admit wrong....Moshe is told to meet Pharaoh when he goes out to the water...when he is human...where he bathes and defecates like everyone else...where he can be free to be himself...and there ask him to 'Let my people go'.
In a different place Pharaoh can be a different person....and hope is possible!

The place where we inhabit defines us...It sets the boundaries and the parameter for what is possible...No matter how much we might wish to be other...unless we put ourselves in a different place it will be near impossible to make the changes we yearn for...Too many externals will keep us locked in...the expectations of others, the routine of our lives, the social norms around us...they all keep us from making radical change...In the context of our lives we are as stuck as Pharaoh...and the only way to make real change is to change our locus as much as we change our internal selves...

Coming to Israel did that for me....Change I could only wish for before became possible and real once I made aliya...For some of you I suspect there have been other changes in location as you sought a context to realize your spiritual yearnings. When we change our external settings we have a freedom to be and become...We are not constricted by the expectations of others or by the social norms...We do not worry about who we are offending or who will view us a inauthentic....We have no past that inhibits us...no fears that intimidate...We are free to be who we are meant to be

Changing where we are can make the formerly impossible real...Does it take courage to move one's space...of course...But without the external change one can spend one's whole life spinning a wheel in place with nothing ever getting done...To change the inside alone without a concomitant change of ones location is near impossible...If I want to be happy with 'who I am' ...I would do well to look to 'where I am ' and know that the answer to the one will say much about the possibility of the other...

Projection Makes Perception

Have you ever wondered....do those people who say the Holocaust never happened really believe it never happened? Can some otherwise intelligent people really deny all the evidence that confirms the horrific mass murder of Jews? Or are the Holocaust deniers just out and out anti-semites who know the truth but pretend otherwise?



That question came up for me again as I watched the protests around the world over Israel's incursion into Gaza. Tens of thousands of people chanting, marching, carrying signs all decrying Israel as a wanton aggressor. So many otherwise intelligent people oblivious to all the evidence of the evil that Hamas does and is. So many people of conscience calling the bad good and the good bad....How can so many people be so fooled?...Are they willful anti-semites, albeit closeted?

Or do they really believe the absurd, that somehow Israel a democratic caring society really has a hateful agenda against the Palestinians and the people of Gaza....



All one needs to ask is who are the soldiers of Israel...and who are the fighters for Hamas?...Israel's soldiers are its citizens...young men who live in the neighborhood and want only to go to college...get married and raise a family....They have no desire to fight...and would not if not absolutely necessary...They are the future doctors, lawyers, plumbers, carpenters, and landscapers...They are the backbone of Israel's future, now called upon, like every citizen, to fight for their country...On the other hand, Hamas's fighters are career terrorists who live to fight...and who have done nothing but fight...Their life has meaning only in the context of destroying Israel...They are not focused on building but rather on tearing down...They value power...pure and simple....

Yet remarkably in the diaspora even some Jews start to question who's right...

How does this happen...



All we need do to understand this paradox is read the opening passages of the parsha of shmot.

The Torah tells us that the Israelites prospered in Egypt, their number expanded and their influence grew...and then "a new king came to reign over Egypt, one who did not recall Joseph.... And he said to his people "the People of Israel are greater in number and more powerful than us....Lets strategize how to deal with them lest they grow still greater and when war occurs they will side with our enemies and fight against us and leave the land"."
And so a bitter servitude began, one whose end ironically ended with what Egypt most feared and sought to prevent. The Israelites had no reason to ever turn against their hosts...The precautions the host Egyptians took gave them one....

As a wise person once wrote, "Projection makes perception"...meaning that that which we want to see, albeit at times unconsciously, is that which we will in fact see..If we want to see someone as evil we will see the evil in them and similarly with the good...If we want to see someone as a threat we will see evidence of it everywhere...If we want to see a world absent of the good we will always find proof...If we want to deny the suffering of Jews we will see that which confirms it...and only that. My eyes see what my mind wants them to see...And then I bring proof to a conclusion I already desired with the evidence my bias produced..

Scientific experiments are rife with proofs that were not proofs, but rather results tainted by the desires of the one doing the experiment and his/her vested interest. The experimenter was sure s/he was seeking objective evidence to support a theory. And it was a surprise to him/her that s/he either over-looked or denied the obvious. Our desires and prejudices blind us.

That's what happened to the Pharaoh. Rashi quotes the Talmud when he translates the verse referring to the new king "who did not know Joseph" as 'he made himself not to know'...Indeed all bias starts that way...We have a desire and then we 'make ourselves not to know'...Most often we are unaware that we have skewed our knowledge to support our preconceived position.

The worlds reaction to Israel's war in Gaza is a product of an underlying if unacknowledged anti-semitism. It thinks it is being objective...merely reacting to the facts...when in reality it is adapting and organizing data, albeit for most unconsciously, to support a bias against Jews and Israel...Hasbara can only go so far...No matter how well Israel attempts to use public relations tools to convey the truth and the correctness of its efforts ..where one does not want to see one will not...Is the world media biased? ...of course it is...Whats worse is that the bias is hidden even from the media itself...who therefore believe it is conveying the truth...when in fact it is conveying to the world that which provides evidence for a preconceived prejudice...

The deniers of the Holocaust, the world media, the protesters around the globe are all blinded by their projections...It is sad how the truth gets distorted by the very senses we rely on to come to know...
The others we may never be able to change...For ourselves, so that we come to know the truth...we must always have a love for the truth that is greater even than our love of ourselves....We must have the courage and openness to want to know even if that knowledge means we need to totally change who we are and the way we lead our lives....Then and only then can the truth be known to us...Then and only then can we know we have lived authentically and in concert with the will of Hashem....

For Eveything There is a Season....

Prince Charles continues to wait...His mother the Queen does not want to give up her reign...And now he is past sixty...When is it time to turn it over to our children?...When is it time to say "my life is done...let me share the time that's left investing myself in your life"?....The social psychologists call this 'ego transcendence'...the time when I make peace with the approaching end to my life by identifying myself with the life of my children or my community or my people.....

Its interesting to note as we read this weeks Parsha that Yaakov, unlike his fathers seems to know his time...Avraham lived till one hundred seventy five...Nowhere do we find that he blessed or instructed his children before he died...After Sarah died, at one hundred and thirty seven, he got married again and had a new family...While its true the Torah tell us that he seems to have prepared for his death by sending the new family away...from what we have in the Torah, there is no indication Avraham explicitly talked about his death with his children...blessed them..or instructed them. Avraham was to busy with his life and living(like the Queen?) to even think about changing his focus to his death and dying... Yitzchak does indeed bless Yaakov and Esav before his death..but sixty years before his death!...He seems to wrap up his life prematurely...Its hard to know how different things might have been had Yitzchak waited...At one hundred eighty..rather than one hundred and twenty...would he still have wanted to give Esav the blessing...Might he have known more...seen more?

Yaakov said to Joseph..."behold I am going to die..." as he asks him to be brought back for burial in Canaan...After blessings his sons the Torah tells us that he died immediately...Yaakov knew his time...The Midrash tell us that until Yaakov there was no illness in the world...Yaakov asked Hashem for it...presumably so he would know his time....He knew until when to be invested fully in living his life and when it was time to turn it over? "For everything there is a season...a time to be born and a time to die..."

It has been a very hard week for us...We have lost beautiful souls...the five chayalim who died sanctifying Hashem's name, fighting to protect His children and our land...Each of their stories is compelling...each a precious jewel. They had no time to say goodbye...They had no time to give over a blessing or instruction to those who remain...They had no time to change their focus from living to dying ...On the contrary, theirs was to fight till the last instant, living the heroic challenge before them...Yes for them too there was a 'time to die'...but not a season for dying...Unlike Yaakov their call was to never cease furthering the story of their life...they were not meant to turn it over to others...on the contrary theirs was to live bravely, as if they would not die...so we can be safe and our land secure...

So we have four models of 'dying' before us...Avraham, who might have been able to see his end but seems to have chosen not to...Yitzchak, who perhaps because he saw his father's missed opportunity, chose prematurely to give the blessing and wrap-up his life....Yaakov who chose his time well and lived his 'season for dying'...and our Chayalim who never had a season to die...and to whom we will remain forever grateful beyond words for living their life as if it was not about to end....so ours could continue...

May Hashem help us to live meaningfully and to know our seasons...So that we live as we are called to live and become who we are meant to be....

I received a message promoting a chavruta program for learning by phone in Israel for both men and for women that may be of interest to you...I pass on the email address..they have a website as well chavruta@b-2.co.il

Chazak Chazak V'nitchazaik!

Meeting the Moment!

With this week's powerful climax of the drama of Joseph and the brothers we begin the close of the book of Breishit. We will shortly leave the story of persons and families to engage the story of the People of Israel and the revelation of the laws by which the People is to live.

What legacy am I left with? What challenge do these engaging dramas of our fathers and mothers and the many other characters who inhabit the pages leave us? The stories are all different, the characters diverse. Some are good, some are bad. Their actions evoke a wide range of emotions from sadness to joy and from disdain to embrace. Is there a red thread we can find as we look to make a hadran for Breishit in the coming weeks? Is there a underlying message that transcends the individual stories and is present in all?


I invite you to answer that question for your self? For me the red thread, the compelling message present throughout the book..at least for this year...is that wherever we are, whatever we face in life .. no matter how seemingly small or personal, it may well be our Waterloo... To do the right thing may justify our whole existence. To do the wrong thing may compromise our right to have been born. Moreover to do the right thing may bring a gift only we can bring to the messianic edifice. To do the wrong thing may hold back mashiach's arrival.

Yehuda had no idea that he was before Joseph and the whole future of the Jewish people depended on his rising up to the occasion to put his life on the line to save Benjamin. Nor did he know that in saving Tamar his daughter-in-law from the fire he saved the lineage of the Messiah. These were for him individual moments of testing....personal and private. Yet if he had failed either, the consequences would be beyond historic. The same is true for all the character tests our Avot and Imahot experienced and even for those who play lesser roles in the Book. What if Eliezer had not brought back Rivka saying he could not find a suitable wife? What if Joseph had simply given in to the awesome temptation of Potiphar's wife? On the other side, what might have been if Esav had over-come his hunger and not sold the birthright to Yaakov? Would Yaakov still have gone in at his mothers request to take the blessings? Could Noah have had any idea that his private righteousness would save the existence of humanity?

Each of us has moments that are consequential beyond the personal testing of either doing a mitzvah or committing an avaira. These are moments of calling, moments for which we were created. According to many teachings each person has a unique avoda or role to play in the completion of the story of humanity and the bringing about of the ultimate redemption. Its a role that is reserved exclusively for us. Each one of us has moments when we are Yehuda or Yosef or Noah..Completing those moments successfully means we have fulfilled our destiny, failing means we have compromised the progression of the world to the yemot hamashiach.

Breishit teaches me that I cannot know when those ultimate moments will be before me...Yehuda, Joseph, Noah, Eliezer, Esav and all the many many others did not know. Yet they needed to live their personal challenges as if the whole world depended on them. The Rambam taught... every person needs to see the him/herself and the world as exactly balanced between the good and the evil and the deed before him/her to do is so consequential that it will tip the scale and hence tip his/her fate and the fate of the world either for life or for destruction.

Brieshit challenges me to mindfulness, to living the moment fully, to embrace the gift of the single mitzvah or act of kindness as if its consequence will either sustain or destroy both me and the world...And who knows...it just might!

Its Tough to be a Hero..A Channukah Thought

Its Channukah, a holiday celebrating the triumph of the Jewish spirit over the repression of enemies. We might have been alive today without Channukah...but we would not have been Jews. The heroic commitment of men and women to maintain their yahadut in the face of persecution and at the risk of death is inspiring.

Who are these heroes...some we know by name; Yehuda of the sons of Mattityahu, his four brothers who we refer to as Hasmoneans. Yet whats amazing is that even as Channukah lives on as a Jewish holiday two thousand years after the events, and will according to our sages live on as a Jewish holiday into the messianic days and beyond, the heroes of Channukah have no personal presence in our world...and have been absent for near as long as the holiday they inspired exists.

The Talmud teaches us that "anyone who says s/he is from the family of the Hasmoneans must be a slave (non Jewish)." It tells us that the last of the distinguished lineage that inspired the revolt against the Syrio-Greeks committed suicide...and that occurred not much more than a hundred years after the Channukah victory. Moreover according to Megillat Antiyochut Yehuda died in the wars against Antiochus, as did his brother Eliezer. They never even got to celebrate the rededication of the Beit Hamikdash.

Channukah may be celebrated as a holiday for children, what with the gelt, presents, latkes etc.
But surely the story is not one of a happily ever after. Its a story of sacrifice and of tragedy...of national triumph yes but at the expense of individuals whose personal lives and legacies were lost forever. Just consider the power of the reality that no one can say today I am a descendant of the Hasmoneans...no one!

What Channukah says to me is that if I want to know the blessings of life in this world I need to attach myself to my people. As an individual, even if I have lived a life of goodness and sacrifice, I can have no expectations of health, life and continuity. I and all that I have created, including my heirs, can disappear in a flash. There is no family no matter how large or how wealthy that
can insure its survival. I may need to know my 'I' inorder to realize my tachlis. But it is in belonging and in knowing my self as part of the klal that I have a future and a hope.

Living with the Klal is the gift of living in Eretz Yisrael. Unlike the galut where one is forever conscious of his/her uniqueness and otherness...here in Eretz Yisrael one feels the sense of belonging. Here we live the destiny of the klal every day and it overshadows any personal story.
Here, while true it is Yehuda and the Hasmoneans sufferred personal tragedies, Channukah is the Yom Tov of hope, triumph and yes joy!
Chag Urim Samayach!

Learning Life's Lessons

My father, zichrono l'vracha, would often share a story, this time of the year, of the boy whose father told him the story of Joseph, as the parsha of Vayeshev arrived. An emotional child, he was moved to tears. Infact the boy cried not only the first year but even the second year when his father reviewed the drama. The third year, as his father told the story to him again, the boy remained unmoved. His father, noticing the change, asked "why no tears this year?"

The boy said " I felt sorry for Joseph two years ago....and even last year it was sad to think of how terrible it was to be betrayed by your brothers...But if he didnt learn not to trust them by the third year then he has no one to blame but himself".



The story of Joseph and the brothers remains new and fresh to us each year. First we hear it as children and identify with the rejected Joseph. As we get older we may hear the story and identify with siblings in conflict who despite all they have in common can't seem to get along.
As we age we may identify with Yaakov and the anguish of a parent who has lost a child either by dint of a tragic death of through emotional/spiritual separation. The story speaks to us wherever we are in our lives and has something to say...that is...if we..like the child in my father's story continue to experience it as current...

Today as I write this blog we mark Yud Tet Kislev (the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev) a special day for many hassidim but in particular for Chabad Hassidim who celebrate the Alter Rebbe's liberation from Russian jail. In the Rebbe's most famous work, Tanya, he provided an epistemology, a philosophy of how we come to know things, in accord with our tradition. The Rebbe pointed out the original step in coming to know is chachma. The word chachma comes from contracting two Hebrew words koach mah, loosely translated as 'what is its potency'. The way the Rebbe understood it, coming to know is a process. It starts with a flash intuition, the koach mah or chachma in which all the insight is contained as an undifferentiated whole...and only after being received moves from there to bina...a more processed and analyzed understanding of what one comes to know.

The critical context necessary to experience the first stage of the koach mah is the soil of humility. It is humility that makes it possible to receive the flash insight. Inorder to be even be able to come to chochma one first needs to get one's self out of the way. It is no coincidence that Moshe was both the anav who said of himself v'anachnu ma, what are we, and the great Rebbe of Klal Yisrael.

How is it that Yehuda was able to be a different brother to Benjamin than he was to Joseph?
What was the process of his teshuva?. The change in Yehuda begins with "and Judah went down from his brothers..." as the parsha this week tells us. The term vayered, can simply mean 'to travel'. But our sages understood it to mean that Yehuda indeed 'went down'... that he was demoted in their eyes from his leadership position as a consequence of his advice to them to sell Joseph....The story of Tamar further humbled Judah as he is compelled to acknowledge both his wrongful judgement of her and his own shame.

It was Judah's stature that prevented him from seeing Joseph for who he was. And in contast, it was in the humbling of Judah that it became possible for him to perceive the chochma necessary to recognize the truth. Humility makes all change possible. Arrogance keeps us both blind and stuck.

With all the goings on in the financial world, with one scam after another being revealed and billions of dollar being lost...its clear the underlying cause is not greed but arrogance....It is the arrogance of fund managers and CEOs which prevents them from facing their failures. It is arrogance that causes those in positions of authority to cover-up their errors rather than admit them. And the price of that arrogance is the piling up of losses upon losses and engaging in ever more menacing intrigues to hide mistakes.

Sometimes we all need a little humbling...Its the yerida l'tzorech aliya, the downfall that actually is necessary for our rehabilitation and ultimate ascent. I live in Jerusalem on Klein St..klein means small....Many of us would do well to spend some time on that street....I know it is the right home for me.