Parshas Va’era: We’re All Part of a Bigger Plan

This week our car broke down. It doesn’t look like a quick or easy fix and it was pretty inconvenient and uncomfortable being stuck on the side of the road out in the bush with two babies. It is the kind of incident that leaves you wondering why such a thing would happen.

As Rabbi and Rebbetzin we often get asked this question of why G-d allows bad things to happen. Of course the answer is that everything is part of a bigger plan we do not understand. G-d loves each and every one of us and our suffering is ultimately for the good.

But these ideas are abstract and hard to integrate.

This week’s Parsha exemplifies this concept. As you recall, after Moses first asks Pharoah to let him go, he makes the Jews work even harder. And now when Pharoah is finally ready to let the Jews go, G-d hardens his heart so Pharaoh can continue to cause the Jews suffering.

Imagine living in that moment. It would seem as if G-d was being unkind, or even cruel. But it is not so.

Looking back at the exodus from Egypt, we see many reasons it was necessary. The Jews had to undergo a stressful time in order to grow and change. G-d had to make miracles to show that He exists and cares for us. And Pharoah had to make the decision to free the Jews completely on his own, so his heart needed to be hardened in order to exercise free will.

But do you think at the point when Pharaoh’s heart was hardened the Jews saw it as a good thing? Or were they, like us, also lamenting, “Why, G-d, why?!”

Time and distance and wisdom can sometimes enable us to see and understand His plans, but not always. It is up to us to exercise the faith and trust to know that He IS looking out for us and taking care of us.

Shabbat shalom!

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Parshas Shemos: Of Births and Babies

Rabbi Ben with Akiva and Levi

This week while Rabbi Ben was learning, he read to me from the Talmud, that in the days of Moshiach, women will have a child every day.  We don’t know about you, but a child every day seems like more than we’re quite ready to handle. For myself, having only recently given birth, the thought of doing that every day does not sound like my idea of a fun time.

How about having six at a time instead?  We learn that in Egypt the Jews were “fruitful and swarmed and increased and became very, very strong.” Rashi learns out that this means the Jewish women had six babies at once.

How could this be possible? In recent years, multiple births have become more common, thanks at least in part to fertility drug usage. Still, sextuplets are a rare enough occurrence that most instances get a fair amount of media coverage.  And even in twin and triplet births, the rate of birth defects and health problems are greater, so how much more so if six babies are born at once? Now imagine the women in Egypt were made to do backbreaking men’s labor, even while pregnant, and without modern medical intervention and care. How can we possibly believe Rashi?

The answer, of course, is that G-d made a miracle.  When we think about the Exodus from Egypt, miracles are one of the first things that spring to mind.  So this is not too far off.

And Rashi wasn’t just pulling numbers out of the air – he did calculations to figure out that there were six children per birth.  The census one year after leaving Egypt states that there were 22,273 first-born males. Doubling that to account for the number of first-born females gives us 44,546 – the number of families (since there is only one first-born child per family).  The census also tells us that there were 603,550 men between the ages of 20 and 60.  We can double this to account for males above and below these ages, to give us 1,207,100 males. Doubling it again to account for females gives us 2,414,200 Jewish people total.

In those days, according to the Talmud, a woman needed two years after having a child before she could conceive again.  Once we consider the year needed to conceive and account for gestation, there could have been only one birth every three years.  A woman could have had then about 9 or 10 babies during her lifetime.  Yet, when we divide 2,414,200 Jewish people by the 44,546 families the census tells us there were we end up with 54 people in each family… enough for each family to have had 6 children per birth, 9 times.

Pretty amazing, right?

We think having one baby at a time is challenging enough, let alone six, and we’re kind of hoping that having one baby per day in the times of Moshiach is allegorical (Where would they all sleep? How would you remember all their names?).  I guess we will just have to wait to find out!

Shabbat Shalom!

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Parshas Vayechi: Experiences and Expectations

We humans are experts of expectations.  We apply our expectations to everyone and everything.  Our ability to forecast similar results in future situations is part of what has allowed us to advance so much.  We can even learn and apply others’ experiences to our own future expectations – something the animal kingdom generally cannot do (and definitely cannot do to such an advanced level).

Unfortunately, expectations can often be misleading.  We base our expectations of other people on past interactions – but not necessarily with those same people.  One might watch how his mother or father acted and expect his/her spouse to act the same. One may look at how well they did as a student and expect their children to do the same.  Or one might have expectations of others without necessarily knowing from whence they came.  A boss might have scrupulously honest employees, and yet constantly suspect them of cheating him.

When we can point to past experiences that logically color our expectations, we can more easily change them. But more often than not, we don’t really know why we have the expectations we do, especially of other people.  We learn from Torah teachings that the faults we see in others are those we ourselves have.  Conversely, if we do not have a particular character trait we have a harder time seeing them in others. So, you might have a boss with honest employees who suspects them of stealing because he himself is the kind of person who would take advantage of an employer. Or, you might have a boss with dishonest employees who are cheating him, but he would never imagine that of them because he himself would never think to do such a thing.

In this week’s parsha, our forefather Yaakov (Jacob) dies.  After he dies, Yosef’s (Joseph’s) brothers are terrified that now he will exact revenge on them for the wrong they did him. Why? Yosef has already told them in no uncertain terms that he has forgiven them for everything.  They can see for themselves the good that has happened to Yosef as a result of their action. And Yosef has even placed them in exalted and privileged positions within Egyptian society, in addition to providing them with food and sanctuary in their time of need.

Perhaps the brothers have a guilty conscience.  Yosef is known as the first “tzaddik” and one of his strongest character traits was his emunah, his faith and ability to see G-d’s hand in everything.   His brothers, on the other hand, may have imagined themselves going through what Yosef went through, and doubted their own ability to truly forgive in such a situation.  Because they didn’t believe in their own abilities, they therefore projected this onto Yosef and doubted his ability to forgive.

We must be very careful with the expectations we project onto others.  We may expect too much or too little of them, based on what are actually our own strengths and weaknesses. When we catch ourselves expecting something of someone else, we must always ask ourselves where this expectation comes from. If we cannot identify it in our past experiences, we should look inside ourselves. Are we expecting an action that we ourselves would do? Is it a strength we have that someone else might not? Or is it a weakness we really have that we need to work on to grow? By doing this, we not only promote our own personal growth and self actualization, but we also give ourselves the tools we need to improve our interpersonal relationships.

Shabbat Shalom!

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Internationally renowned Adelaide Jewish artist Franz Kempf AM has been awarded the 2013 M.U.A. ‘Blake Prize for Human Justice’ for his oil painting ‘The Outrageous Has Become Commonplace’. Speaking at the annual Blake awards, Kempf observed the modern desensitization to human tragedy: “We are confronted on television every week by the most atrocious acts which flick on and flick off the television while people are sitting, some even eating breakfast and looking at it and I just find that too confronting for words”.

His painting aims to express the horror of the holocaust by depicting the bodies which were found in the camps and showing them on a tilting table, being discarded, to make the image more confronting. He notes “that atrocious act [the holocaust], now we see every day on television, from Pol Pot to Syria to Vietnam, everywhere. I hope to mirror that atrocity in a more confronting way”. Illuminating the tangled bodies is an ethereal glow of light from which the bodies are being cast away.

The painting was originally displayed in Adelaide as part of an extensive collection for Franz Kempf’s ‘Days of Masks and Riddles’ exhibition. Professor Sasha Grishin, Head of Art History at the Australian National University, has described Franz Kempf as one of our major contemporary artists, and observed:

”his work with its preoccupation with humanist themes and the eternal questions of faith and being appear timely and relevant for our times. Beautifully crafted and displaying a superb sense of visual intelligence, Franz Kempf’s paintings and graphics in this exhibition celebrate the human spirit and convey the deep conviction in the sacredness of human life”.

Accompanying his oil painting in each exhibition has been a quotation from Rev. John Bachman (1790-1874) a social activist, which mirrors the insight depicted in Kempf’s work:

‘The war is no longer declared but contrived. The outrageous has become commonplace.  So what has changed? We are now confronted by a disdain for diplomacy, and a reliance on military or paramilitary forces to settle disputes. With little concern for the innocent victims. Collateral damage?’

The Blake Society, named after the visionary artist and poet, William Blake, is a non-profit organization that implements and manages an annual Prize and Exhibition program for contemporary art and poetry exploring the themes of spirituality, religion and human justice.
The Blake Prize categories include the main Blake Prize, the Blake Prize for Human Justice (sponsored by the Maritime Union of Australia) and the Blake Poetry Prize (administered and managed in partnership with The NSW Writers’ Centre).

Further information:

Franz Kempf speaking at the award ceremony:

Blake Prize 2013 Human Justice Award http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnllMEGbxXg

The Blake Society http://www.blakeprize.com/

Franz Kempf paintings and prints are available from BMG Art: http://www.bmgart.com.au/

Parshas Vayigash: Remember Who You Are

In this week’s parsha we see Yaakov (Jacob) traveling down to Egypt.  Along the way, he has a dream in which Hashem (G-d) comes to him and tells him not to be afraid, that he should resettle in Egypt.  Was Yaakov afraid? And why did he have to stay in Egypt? It makes sense why Yosef (Joseph) would need to stay in Egypt, but why Yaakov? What was so important that G-d Himself had to command him to go live there?

Egypt was fundamentally different from Canaan (the land of Israel at that time).  Yaakov’s father and grandfather lived there and were well known and respected.  For the most part, the family was accepted.  Perhaps they were viewed as a bit eccentric, or even heretical, but nobody in those days cared all that much.  In fact, as Rabbi Bernie Fox of the OU points out, the Canaanites’ acceptance of Yaakov’s family was so total and complete that Shechem, a prince, fell in love with and asked to marry Yaakov’s daughter Dina.  Even when told that he and his entire city would have to be circumcised (as adults, with no anesthetic!), he did it, and commanded his city to do so as well.  The Jews were accepted fully.

Egypt, however, was not like that.  There, Yaakov’s family would really be viewed as heretics, and in the wildly religious Egypt, that was not something to be overlooked.  The Jews were not even permitted to eat at the same table as the Egyptians!  This applied even to Yosef, who was second to no one but Pharaoh himself.  In Egypt, the Jews would remain separate.

You see, Yosef was afraid to leave the land his family had settled, which had been promised to him and his ancestors, which his father (Yitzchak, Isaac) had been forbidden to leave.  But he had to go and live in Egypt because if he and his entire family did not, the assimilation would be so total that the Jewish people would have been wiped out before it even began.

Unfortunately, we face this very problem today, quite strongly.  In many Western cultures, the assimilation is very strong.  Marry someone who’s not Jewish and he won’t mind if you want to celebrate Chanukah instead of X-mas.  He’ll be happy to come with you to your Pesach seder, he just might invite you to his family’s Easter dinner.  And what’s the harm in that? It’s only a dinner, right?  And the circle will spiral downwards – assimilation is a slippery slope that poses a big threat to Judaism.

It’s often been said that Antisemitism has done a great job at keeping Jews Jewish. Please G-d we can do without this, however we must always remember that we are different no matter how much the place in which we live welcomes us.

Shabbat Shalom!

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