Month: December 2024

You have to wonder what Yosef (Joseph) was thinking when he was thrown in jail at the end of last week’s Parsha (Torah portion). At 17, he is kidnapped and sold by his brothers. He winds up in a foreign land and successfully works to earn his master’s trust. He is falsely accused of sexual abuse and is thrown in Jail. He works to gain his jailer’s trust and succeeds again. He correctly interprets the butler’s and baker’s dreams. He asks the butler to remember him to Pharaoh so his wrongful imprisonment can end and nothing happens.

If I were in Yosef’s shoes, I might despair and perhaps even think that Gd hates me. After all, what else can go wrong for him? 

Bereishis, Genesis, is all about proper individual conduct. In Yiddish, we use the word Mensch which Wikipedia describes as:

Mensch^[1] means “a person of integrity and honor”.^[2] A Mensch is “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real mensch‘ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.”^[3] The term is used as a high compliment, implying the rarity and value of that individual’s qualities.

Bereishis, then, is all about being a Mensch. We cannot discuss being a Mensch without dealing with proper behavior with family and the consequences when behavior is not proper. Hence, the Torah pivots this week and tells us the story of Joseph and his brothers. 

Robert E. Lee famously said, “It is well that war is so terrible; otherwise, we should grow too fond of it.” Many famous military men glorified the concept of war. I never understood that. War, to me, seems like the ultimate form of evil. It is organized, wholesale murder to achieve political goals. 

Am I, then, a pacifist? No. As horrible as war is, it is sometimes necessary. History teaches us that. There was a powerful pacifist movement in the United States while Europe marched towards a genocidal war. If that pacifist movement had kept the United States out of the war, two things would have happened: First, Europe and Asia would have fallen under the tyrannical, racist, homicidal governments of the Axis powers and millions more would have died. Second, the United States would have been alone when the Axis powers eventually attacked her. That would have put the United States against the vast combined power of Europe and Asia. Could the US have won that? I am doubtful. A dark age would have descended over the entire world and untold additional millions of innocents would have perished.

As always, all textual Hebrew quoted along with their translations are taken from Sefaria.org unless otherwise noted.

The book of Bereishis is all about character. It is meant to teach us, through the stories it tells, about what proper behavior is: how we can be better people and build a better world.

The Torah portion of Vayetzei tells a story of an act of kindness, so great, so monumental, that it would move Hashem Himself in the future.