Approaching Family Conflict

Joseph’s reunion with is brothers teaches us ways of reconciling with family.

Parashat Va’yigash 5770 / December 26, 2009

This is a very special time of year for being with family. I know this because all the commercials tell me so. But, I think it also happens to be true. This is the time of year when kids are home from college; the daylight hours are short and sometimes its just too cold to go out. It’s not surprising that many religions have festivals this time of year that are centered in the home. Holidays like Hanukah bring us together with family; and, even if we don’t celebrate it, Christmas is by default a holiday for Jews too. Everyone is home from work, kids are on vacation, most places are closed, relatives take the opportunity to visit – so we’re home with family. And Jews have a traditional way of celebrating Christmas – we order Chinese food and go to a movie! And, after a day of being hold up indoors with our entire family, the movies are often a welcome reprieve. You get to sit quietly in a dark room, not talking to one another, and yet you can claim that you just spent 2 ½ hours together!

Yes, this is the season when we tend to spend a lot of time with our families. And, all kidding aside, it isn’t easy for many of us. I, for one, have a perfect family, but I’ve heard that many families find this time of year stressful. Family can be so challenging because there’s always baggage with family. We sometimes harbor painful memories that are hard to let go of. We sometimes have unresolved conflicts. And, one of the things that make family conflicts so difficult is precisely that they are with family. These are people that, on some very fundamental level, you actually care about. We find family difficult because we love our family. If we didn’t care, it would be a lot easier – we could just walk away.

Family tension is nothing new. It has been with us since the beginning of time and it is a major theme in the Torah. This week we read the third of four parshiot on the life of Joseph and his very complex family drama. Joseph had a difficult childhood, to say the least. He was his father’s favorite son and his brothers resented him for it. This isn’t unusual. It happens in a lot of families. When I was a kid, if you were angry at one of your siblings, you might beat them up or break a favorite toy. Joseph’s brothers, however, plotted to kill him. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and they just sold him into slavery instead and told their father he had been eaten by wild beasts. So, you can imagine that Joseph had some baggage. But he survived slavery and he survived imprisonment; and through his own talent and hard work he rose to become the most powerful man in Egypt after the Pharaoh. He assimilated, changed his appearance, took a new name, married an Egyptian woman, and presumably put his past behind him. In fact, when he had his first child he names him Menasseh because {quote} “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home.” (Gn 41:51). It’s over, he’s put his past behind him, he’s forgotten the pain of betrayal and abandonment. Until his brothers reappear in his life.

I think many of us can identify with Joseph. You grow up, you leave home, you move away, get married, have kids, buy a house, advance in your career, get into therapy, make close friends, join a community… and just when you think you’ve got your life figured out – you’re family shows up! The nice little fiction of adulthood you’ve told yourself can come apart in an instant. That’s where we find Joseph in this Torah portion. He is confronted now by all the stuff that he thought he had put behind him and he comes to a realization that many of us have experienced. Joseph discovers that, when it comes to family, the stuff always comes back. There’s really no such thing as forgetting. And, now he has a choice to make. He can continue with the fiction he has created for himself, or he can finally face his brothers and the feelings they evoke in him.

Our Torah portion has a lot of wisdom to teach us about family conflict. I want to point out just two instances that I think can be instructive for us in our own families. The first is found in the brothers’ approach to Joseph and the second involves Joseph’s response to his brothers. Parashat Va’Yigash opens in the middle of a conversation. In last week’s parsha, Joseph – who’s identity is still not known to his brothers – had just put his brothers through a test, accusing them of stealing. This week’s parsha begins with Judah’s impassioned plea for mercy and opens with the words “va-yigash e-lav Yehudah…” “Then Judah approached him…” The 19^th century hassidic master known as the Sefat Emet points out that the Hebrew phrase is ambiguous. Who is the “him” that Judah approaches? The simple understanding is that Judah approached Joseph. But the Sefat Emet speculates: perhaps Judah approached himself – that is to say, for the first time in this stormy relationship with Joseph, Judah is actually introspective. For the first time in his life, Judah acknowledges his complicity in abusing Joseph. He takes responsibility for the pain he caused his father, He shows remorse for what he had done as a young man. And the Sefat Emet says that he was only able to do this because he was willing to actually look at himself honestly.

How often in our own family squabbles do we refuse to look at ourselves? How often do we cast ourselves as the innocent victim? I’m sure Judah thought he had been victimized by his arrogant little brother. Perhaps he felt justified when he conveniently got rid of him. Now, with a little maturity, he is able to take responsibility for his own actions. And, this enables him to be empathetic.

The second instance I want to point out is Joseph’s response. Seeing that his brothers are truly remorseful, and feeling the pull of family and the possibility of seeing his father once more, Joseph can no longer hold back his emotions. In one of the most dramatic narrative moments in the entire Bible, Joseph breaks down and reveals his identity to his siblings and forgives them. He then asks them to go back to Canaan and return with his father, Jacob. And then the Torah says that “As he sent his brothers off, he told them, ‘Do not be quarrelsome on the way’” (Gn. 45:24). It seems like a somewhat odd thing to say – what exactly did Joseph mean by that?

Rashi comments that Joseph understands that family reconciliation is not easy. Joseph fears that, despite his expression of forgiveness, the brothers might turn to one another and blame each other for having sold Joseph into slavery. On the long trek back home, they might rehash the past and point fingers at one another. Does that sound familiar to you? Has it ever happened that you’ve reconciled with a family member – you’ve talked the issue out, you’ve forgiven one another – but its so easy to rehash the argument over who started it? “Who started it?” is not an irrelevant question – it does matter – but that conversation rarely helps us move forward in our lives. Focusing too much on what happened and who started it distracts us from our shared goal of being part of one another’s lives.

So, while we spend this winter break with our families, let us remember the wisdom of the Torah. Like Judah, let’s try to be more self-reflective: acknowledging the role we play in perpetuating conflict, remembering that we choose how to react to others, recognizing the feelings we have that sometimes make it difficult to forgive. And, as we try to mend some of those feelings, let’s take Joseph’s advice and remember that rehashing the past is rarely helpful.

And, if none of that works: I hear Avatar is a lot of fun.

The USY Experience

USY is so vital to our youth because living a meaningful Jewish life is something that must be experienced.
Vayishlach 5770 / December 5, 2009

This morning we set aside some time to celebrate and showcase our HEA youth and our USY chapter. Thank you Mark for ­­­­­­speaking about the importance of USY and for the energy you bring to your work; and thank you Levi for sharing your experience with USY in Israel. You touched upon the very essence of USY’s importance to us as a Jewish community. What makes USY so important for our youth is the power of experience. What we teach our young people in religious school is vital – the knowledge we try to instill provides building blocks for success as a Jewish adult. The training we put you through to become a bar or bat mitzvah provides you with skills that make it possible for you to walk into any synagogue in the world and feel at home. But, nothing is more effective than experiencing Judaism and living it. Nothing you learn in school can replace the power of experiencing Judaism with all of your senses – the smells, the sights, the sounds, tastes and textures of Jewish life. Judaism is not merely a philosophy; it is how we as Jews walk in this world. It is the source of the values and principles that should guide us in our lives. And, it is the basis upon which we seek to repair what is broken in our world.

When our children are young, it is incumbent on us as parents and adults to communicate our values by making our homes places that reverberate with the rhythms of Jewish life. But you are no longer children. As teenagers, you are beginning a process of striking out on your own. You are starting to make decisions for yourself and choosing how you want to live your life. And, Levi, you talked this morning about what it was like to experience that independence among peers while travelling through the historic homeland of our people. Going to Israel and seeing the country for yourself and experiencing some of what it means to live in Israel, you learned something that can’t be taught from books. You learned why our national homeland is called Yisrael.

The reason for our name, Yisrael, comes from this week’s Torah portion. In parashat Va-yishlach, Yaakov is preparing to confront his brother Esav and he’s very nervous – he doesn’t know if Esav still holds a grudge. You’ll remember that Yaakov had swindled his brother Esav out of his birthright and later he deceived his father, Yitzhak, into giving him the blessing reserved for the first born. Despite our reverence for Yaakov as one of our patriarchs, we can’t deny the fact that Yaakov – in his youth – was a not a very good person. He got what he wanted through deceit and treachery. As a youngster, he lived up to the meaning of his name – he was named Yaakov because he was born grasping at his twin brother’s heal. And, he spent most of his early years pulling and clawing for whatever he wanted by any means he could devise. Esav was murderously angry with Yaakov; so Yaakov fled. And, once he separated from his family, for the first time in his life he really had to fend for himself and face challenges head on. So, now on the eve of his reunion with Esav, we find a very different Yaakov. And this transformation he undergoes reaches a dramatic climax when, during the night, he is confronted by a mysterious figure who attacks him.

Who is Yaakov fighting? Most traditional commentators understand that this is an angel from God. I prefer the explanation given by the 19^th century Hassidic master known as the S’fat Emet who says that Yaakov is finally confronting himself, wrestling with his own conscience; flexing moral muscles he didn’t know he had. But, this time he cannot defeat his conscience with tricks and deceit. But, Yaakov doesn’t give up, instead he demands that his opponent give him a blessing.

What blessing did Yaakov receive? The adversary responds, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Yaakov.” The other then says, “Your name shall no longer be Yaakov, but Yisrael – for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

The blessing Yaakov received, however, was not a new name. The blessing was the struggle itself. As teenagers you too are in the midst of struggles. Getting older and becoming an adult is not easy and you have a lot to figure out. But the struggles are not a curse, they are, instead, the blessing. The story of Yaakov becoming Yisrael teaches us that the truly valuable learning we do in life comes about by grappling with ourselves. The real growth comes through experiences and ordeals. As teenagers, you are experiencing new things, making choices for yourselves, charting out a path for your own life. And USY is so important because it gives you the opportunity to experience these changes in a Jewish context – in community with other young Jews, imbedded in a framework of Jewish values and ideas. USY is fun – very fun. But, while you’re having fun with your friends, you’re also learning what it means to be part of the adult Jewish community, how to live in this world as a Jew, and how to engage in a productive struggle with God.

So, I want to give you a blessing this morning just as the angel blessed Yaakov. I bless you that you keep working hard at becoming adults. I hope you will remember that we are Am Yisrael – a people continually engaged in the struggle to live by the ideals God sets out for us. That struggle begins now; but, I want to let you in on a secret – the struggle never ends. That struggle is at the heart of what makes us human beings created in the image of God. That is why it is so important for you to stay connected to the Jewish community – because we offer you a context in which to face those struggles. So, I hope you will deepen your involvement in USY, in the HEA community, in Hillel and I hope you know that you always have a home among our people.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

More than a real estate transaction, Avraham's purchase of a burial plot for Sarah was an act of true love.

Chayei Sarah 5770 / November 14, 2009

Melanie and I have a running dispute between us. It is one of those disagreements that reveals a fundamental differences in our personalities and outlooks. The disagreement is over the practice of re-gifting. Come on, I know you’ve all done it. Someone has given you a gift and you’ve looked at it and said, “that’s nice, but I don’t really want it.” So you put it in the closet and, in a pinch, you’ve turned around and given it to someone else. Johnny Carson famously joked that there is really only one fruitcake in the world that gets re-gifted over and over again. Some people have closets full of presents they plan to re-gift.

Melanie doesn’t really like re-gifting. She says it’s impersonal. I, on the other hand, rationalize it with Talmudic logic: If someone gives you a gift, it becomes you’re property. If it is your property, then it is yours to dispose of as you wish. What difference is there in an item you bought and an item you received as a gift? It’s value is no different. Therefore, there is no difference in giving someone something you bought and giving someone something you received as a gift. Besides, perhaps the person you give it to would appreciate it more than you do… after all, recycling is very popular these days.

Now, while I think that re-gifting is generally ok, I do agree with Melanie that there are moments in life when gift giving is more than a social obligation. If it were your child’s wedding, if it were your wedding anniversary, you wouldn’t go rummaging in your re-gifting closet. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be authentic and it wouldn’t be the genuine expression of love that is called for.

This week’s Torah portion opens with the death of our matriarch Sarah. At the age of 127, Sarah dies in Hevron and Avraham seeks out an appropriate burial plot for his wife. And the Torah goes into a great deal of detail in describing how Avraham went about acquiring this plot of land. Avraham approaches members of the Hittite tribe that occupied that region and asks them for some place to bury his wife. One Hittite, Ephron, steps forward and offers to give Avraham the cave of Machpelah that is at the edge of his property. But, Avraham insists on purchasing the land at full price. This is remarkable because Avraham already had a claim to the land. After all, God had promised him and his descendents the entire land of Israel. The Creator of heaven and earth, the Master of the entire universe, the ultimate owner of the everything, who can dispose of his property in any way He sees fit, already gave this land to Avraham. But, Avraham does not make that claim, nor does he accept the gift from Ephron, but instead he insists on purchasing the land.

Many of the traditional interpretations of the Torah comment that Avraham purchased the cave of Machpellah, and did not receive it as a gift, in order to establish legal residency in the land God had promised him. That may be true; but equally true, I think, is a deeper and more emotional reason. In our tradition, the burial of the dead is referred to as Hesed Shel Emet – an act of the truest kindness, it is the ultimate act of love. In fact, Hesed Shel Emet is a sacred duty – a mitzvah that is incumbent on all of us. That is why, everyone who attends a funeral participates in placing earth on the grave. I’ve always wondered what non-Jews must think when they see us line up to take our turn shoveling. To an outsider, it might seem morbid. But it is anything but morbid. It is an act of kindness and respect. It is called Hesed Shel Emet – true love – because it is an act of kindness that can never be repaid. It is an act that a person can never do for themselves, and for which we can never hope to receive any thanks.

Thus the story of the acquisition of the Machpelah is not simply a real estate transaction. On a deeper level it is a lesson in love. By purchasing the burial plot for his wife, Avraham expresses his love for Sarah. It isn’t good enough to give Sarah the land that was gifted to him. True love means giving what is intimately yours. True love can’t be re-gifted. That is, by the way, also the reason why a groom must own the ring he gives his bride. One of the lessons we learn from this parsha is that a true gift of love has to mean something to you. It has to cost you something… It has to be something that comes from your very being. It is a poignant lesson that the first Jewish acquisition of land in Israel was an act of love between two people.

It is perhaps a painful irony that the first piece of property our people owned in the Land of Israel was a burial plot, but I don’t think it is surprising at all. Wherever Jews have gone in our history we have expressed these values. If you look into the history of Jewish migration you will find an interesting pattern. One of the first things Jewish communities do when they migrate to a new place is establish a cemetery and a hevre-kadisha (a burial society). The cemetery is often the oldest Jewish institution in a town – even older than its synagogues. This fact speaks to the values that we hold. How we care for our dead, is an indicator of what we value in life.

The other lesson we learn from Avraham’s behavior is what we also learn from Shir Ha’Shirim (the Song of Songs) when it says, “love is as strong as death” (8:6). Judaism isn’t clear on what happens to us after we die, but Judaism does teach very clearly that the bonds of love don’t end with death. Avraham’s lesson is that love doesn’t die with the passing of our bodies. We all know this to be true from our own lives.

God did indeed promise us the Land of Israel and the Torah’s emphasis on the purchase of the cave of Machpellah makes a legal claim to it, but this Torah portion also teaches us that God’s truest gift to us is a soul that doesn’t die and a heart that does not cease to love.