Hear please! The limits of communication

Genesis 37:6

"And he said to them, Hear, please, this dream which I have dreamed"

This is the second dream Joseph is sharing with his brothers. The words "Hear please!" stand out in their emphasis. The commentary Hizkuni writes that in this Joseph is trying to convince his brothers that this second dream proves it is all coming from heaven.

Yet he fails to convince them - on the contrary, they hate him even more. 

We have all had, no doubt, the feeling of debating or arguing with someone, and thinking, "If I just say the right thing, or use the right words, s/he cannot help but see the truth of my position." Advocates of specific political positions, for example, continue to urgently share videos of posts on social media thnking, no one who sees this can remain unconvinced. And yet people do. Because when they are entrenched, or entirely committed to their viewpoint, or emotionally blocked, it basically does not matter what is said to them, it will not make a dent. And the brothers were entrenched. "Hear please!" begs Joseph, thinking logic or divinely-sent evidence will win the day; but it is a lost battle from the outset.

I'd like to make a connection between the above and a question that has been troubling me for years.

Jumping to an earlier section of Genesis: Rebecca and Isaac seem to have a good relationship. They pray together for children (vs. Rashi);  and Isaac, unlike Abraham or Jacob, never takes a second wife, even though the children are long in coming. So why did Rebecca, seeing that he was about to give the birthright blessings to Esau, not sit down to discuss with him this plan? After all, she has a very strong proof that the blessings should go to Jacob - the fact that God told her even before they were born, "And the older shall serve the younger?"

It seemed to me that the answer lay in Eve's curse:

To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply the pain of your child bearing; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you (Gen 3 16.)

We can't help noticing the parallel with Gen 4:7:

If you do well, shall you not be accepted? and if you do not well, sin lies at the door. And to you shall be its desire and [yet] you shall rule over it.

The parallel set up by these two verses is: as woman is to man (her desire to him, yet he rules)

so evil inclination is to human (its desire to him/her, yet s/he rules)

Here, woman and evil inclination are drawn similarly. What is the resemblance? I felt that a woman stuck in a patriarchal system is not free to make her wishes known. Just as the evil inclination must work by subterfuge, whispering its seducations quietly in your ear and making you think it's a great idea to go do that evil thing, so too a woman must manipulate, whisper, and make the man think he is acting independently. This is truly a curse!

But just as Adam can free himself from the curse by harnessing nature and progressing, so too woman can free herself by changing herself and society. By becoming fully whole and balanced, she invites wholeness and balance in the man. And so we can head for equal relationship. Sarah Yehudit Schneider explains that this is the final destination: The Ari states in this place that the 7th and ultimate relationship between man and woman is when they meet “face to face and are completely equal.” (You Are What You Hate, p. 93)

* *

I still stand by the above idea, that the world must try to move towards equal and open relationship, of communication and respectful debate and listening. However, in the recognition that the world might not yet be quite there, I learned something from the Joseph story that sheds other light on Rebecca's action. Perhaps she was simply aware of Isaac's blind spot. He loved Esau and would not be able to listen to any argument under the sun. So she had to resort to this rather repugnant trick.

This is not ideal,  it also relates to an imperfect world, but at least it is not as gender-imbalanced or tainted by curse as the first situation. Both men and women have their blind spots. Communication is not always the solution to problems in relationship. People have all sorts of emotional blocks than can only be resolved in other ways than direct speech.  Had Joseph been wiser and more mature, he might have looked for other ways to convince the brothers than appealing to their reason.

We Must Not Be Noah

A blog post at Times of Israel

Unrequited Love

A blog post at Times of Israel

Fruit for fruit

Genesis 4:3

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

Why motivated Cain to bring an offering of the fruit of his land to God?

Many answers could be given, but in the dozens of Bibliodramas I have done with this story, one intriguing suggestion pops up quite frequently: Cain had heard all about the wonderful Garden of Eden in which his parents started their lives, standing in stark contrast with the laborious, demanding life they were now living. He wished to get back to that Garden; he wished to get back into God's graces. 

So he reasoned: God became upset when my mother took a fruit. I will give back fruit. 

This has logic. Yet he is not successful - God ends up accepting Abel's offering and rejecting that of Cain. Again, many explanations for this may be offered. But perhaps one message emerging from this is that you cannot fix things simply by reversing them. If you have hurt someone with offensive words, you cannot simply say to them the opposite or "I didn't mean it" or "I was joking". Rather, a process of apology and genuine conciliation, and a true process of repentance, must take place.

This was Cain's mistake. He ought to have tried to rectify the root cause of his parents' sin inside himself. Instead, he thought a technical action would do the trick.

Abel, on the other hand, brought the choicest of his flock. In this he was putting God above his own desires; and this, perhaps, was a (partway?) rectification of Eve's sin in priveleging her desires above God. Hence, his was accepted.

Make Shabbat Your Partner

Shabbat. I could barely live without it. In today’s insanely connected world, I need one precious day to peel my eyes away from screens and place them instead onto people, books, the sky! To reboot my fried brain. People all over the Western world are realizing the need for unplugging. They’re doing “analog weekends”, refreshing themselves before the week begins anew.

But Shabbat is hard for some populations – including people who are single, or lonely inside a bad relationship. For them, unplugging, disconnecting, can mean feeling very alone. I offer an idea that I hope is more than pleasant words or a flimsy bandage for a painful wound. And it is this: to make Shabbat our partner.

The midrash (Bereshit Rabba 8:11) says,

Now why did God bless [Shabbat]? R. Berekhia and R. Dostai said: Because it has no partner. The first day of the week has the second, the third has the fourth, the fifth has the sixth, but Shabbat has no partner… R. Simeon b. Yohai taught: Shabbat said before the Holy Blessed One, “All have a partner, while I have no partner!” God said to her, “The Community of Israel is your partner!

Knesset Yisrael, the collective of Israel, is the marriage partner of Shabbat. “V’yanuchu bo kol Yisrael” – the national soul rests on Shabbat. The beauty of Kabbalat Shabbat reaches its heights as communities sing Lecha Dodi in unison, greeting the beloved bride. We get ready for Shabbat, writes the Rebbe of Slonim, the Netivot Shalom, as we get ready for marriage. We speak about it, buy and prepare food in honor of it, spend time beforehand reviewing our deeds and cleansing ourselves in preparation. We do our best to make the day exciting and special – by learning Torah, sanctifying it, putting on lovely clothes, having festive meals.

When we let Shabbat in as a real presence, spend time with her and greet her return with joy, then she can fill up our empty places, she can hold us in her embrace. She is there faithfully, week in, week out, through all the fluctuations of season, mood,  life. We might have a flesh-and-blood partner, or we might not - but by our very birthright, Shabbat IS our partner. Eternally so, G-d's gift to us all.

To me, Shabbat has a real presence, she is there with me, palpably.