Oh brother, where art thou? Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky The Jewish Center 5770

Transcription

1 Oh brother, where art thou? Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky The Jewish Center 5770 Amidst the renewed controversy about the canonization of Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church has turned its attention to more pressing and lofty theological matters. I refer, of course, to the popular animated TV show of 20 years, The Simpsons In an article of December 22, the Catholic Church issued commended The Simpsons, saying that if it had not been aired, too many people would not know how to laugh, and that it s success is due to its realistic and intelligent writing, particularly on matters of faith, with which Homer has struggled for the show s duration. While the show certainly is theologically sophisticated, and extremely entertaining, it s quite surprising that the Vatican chose to highlight this family, which is America s favorite precisely because it is so dysfunctional. Consider a few examples from the mountain of evidence: Homer Simpson got arrested for drunk driving, and framed his wife Marge for the crime. Maggie turned her family in to the police on her family after a heated session of Monopoly, in which Bart cheated by using Legos for hotels. The family left the aging grandfather, Abraham Simpson, at the gas station on a family vacation. While this has been known to happen by accident in certain nightmare scenarios, in this case it happened on purpose. The Simpsons are so entertaining because they never change, and are extreme examples of what we certainly hope our families are not. But how different are they really? 1

2 ג( After a long period of negotiation, and endless back and forth with the intransigent viceroy, Yehuda finally snaps and delivers the impassioned speech at the beginning of this week s Parsha. Yosef wanted to hold Binyamin hostage while they returned to their father, but Yehuda explained that this would be the end of Yaakov, as he had already lost one son, and could not bear to lose another. It was this impassioned speech that caused Yosef to reveal himself, with five simple words that dumbfounded his brothers: מהההה פרק בראשית ( ויאמר יוסף אל אחיו אני יוסף העוד אבי חי ולא יכלו אחיו לענות אתו כי נבהלו מפניו: Our sages view these words not simply as a revelation, but as a frightening rebuke: צגגגג פרשה וילנא) (וילנא רבה בראשית יא ר' אלעזר בן עזריה אמר אוי לנו מיום הדין אוי לנו מיום התוכחה, ומה יוסף הצדיק שהוא ב"ו כשהוכיח את אחיו לא יכלו לעמוד בתוכחתו, הקב"ה שהוא דיין ובעל דין ויושב על כסא דין ודן כל אחד ואחד עאכ"ו שאין כל ב"ו =בשר ודם= יכולים לעמוד לפניו. The question is obvious: What about this phrase is actually a rebuke? What is it about what Yosef said to his brothers that made it so difficult for them to respond? Why is this short phrase a harbinger of what we are going to face on the Day of Judgment? Rav Asher Weiss is the foremost student of the previous Klausenberger Rebbe, of blessed memory, and one of Israel s most exciting and unifying Torah scholars. Though he is Chareidi in ideology and certainly in appearance, there is nowhere he will not go to teach his startlingly innovative Torah. He has delivered classes in institutions across the spectrum, from Chassidish to Hesder Yeshivot and everything in between, and in his 2

3 Kollel and Beit Din in Jerusalem for training Rabbinic judges, admission is based on merit and character, and not on ideology, and one can walk in and see a Chassidic man studying with a man wearing a knitted Kippah. In addition to his outstanding accomplishments in the world of halacha and Talmud, Rav Weiss is an excellent darshan, and this morning, I d like to share with you his explanation of this enigmatic passage. Yosef s phrase was a stinging rebuke to his brothers because it was so simple. All he did was reveal himself to them- and in this revelation, he disproved completely the longstanding assumptions they held about him. In their minds, Yosef was still an immature teenager who preened excessively and told tales about them to their father, and it because of his willingness to tell on them to advance his standing that they felt he had to be eliminated. Indeed, our sages in numerous places describe that the brothers had convinced themselves that this was the halachically correct course of action. And even when they professed their belief that their troubles in Egypt befell them because they were indifferent to Yosef s tears, a careful reading of the narrative shows they never expressed regret over the sale itself. As they were now prostrated in front of the Egyptian viceroy who held their fate in his hands, who was the second most powerful and wealthy person in all of Egypt, they realized that that immature teen no longer existed. Instead, he was replaced by a responsible, powerful adult. This is the humiliation that we face at the end of days- when we are confronted with the reality that our long standing assumptions are wrong- the assumptions we have spend a lifetime crafting ideologies, rationales and justifications to uphold. 3

4 It is particularly appropriate that the paradigm for this lesson is Yosef and his brothers, for one of the areas in which we have the most trouble letting go of assumptions and impressions is in the area of family. So much of family dysfunction- in the manner of The Simpsons, but also in real life families- is premised on the inability of people who are, or should be, close to one another to let go of the narratives they have in their head about others. And this is true even in the healthiest, most loving and most nurturing families. Parents continue to infantilize their children because they have difficulty accepting the notion that the child has transitioned out of diapers and can make his or her own decisions. Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Tefiloh in Baltimore is fond of telling the story of what his mother said at his wedding. As everyone was leaving and the band was packing to go home, his mother turned to him and said, That s enough Mitchy, lets go home. This is one of the reasons that parents often keep their kids rooms as a museum, exactly they way they were at the time they left the house. I can often tell the age of the adult children in the home I m staying by the posters of sports teams and celebrities that are on the wall in the room they used to occupy... Children often hold assumptions about their parents, as well, that they have difficulty shaking. Even if parents are able to relate to their children as adults, children often assume that their parents still see them as children, that they cannot take them seriously and will never understand what they are going through. And it s not just true between parents and children. It s true amongst siblings as well. Alfred Adler s assertions about the importance birth order in the development of a person have met with mixed reviews from researches, but psychologists do recognize that sibling relationships last a lifetime and that many of the patterns developed in the formative years may carry over into 4

5 adulthood. We see it in our own lives, with ourselves or our friends; no matter the age or stage in life, whenever siblings get together, they have the tendency to fall into the same patterns that had been in place in their youth, because it is so difficult to let go of assumptions and perceptions they have about one another. Yosef s stinging rebuke to his brothers, in which he demolished their ossified mode of thinking about him in five simple words, is a challenge to us as well. No matter how loving our families are, and how excellent our relationships might be, they can always use some work. If we are able to look at the people closest to us in a new light, by taking them seriously and updating our assumptions about them, we will have truly rewarding and meaningful relationships. 5