Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach! We
are reaching the end of our joyous 8 nights of lights, celebrating Chanukah. As
we know, Chanukah is at its core a holiday about embracing a freedom of
religion, a pride in being Jewish, and a refusal to change just for the sake of
fitting in with those in power. As modern, progressive Jews, we have changed
ourselves a bit to keep up with the times, but we maintain our Jewishness and
can still appreciate our ancestors who fought for our right to do so. The
emphasis of the miracle of the oil takes on a new importance for our rabbis who
lived in ancient Babylonia, at a time when maybe talking about fighting foreign
governments didn’t seem like a good idea, ironically further emphasizing from
an historical point of view the importance of true freedom of religion.
In this week's Torah portion,
Parashat Miketz, Joseph makes his way out of his jail cell and into the inner
circle of Egyptian leadership. The pharaoh himself arranges for Joseph to marry
an Egyptian woman of high status, and she bears him two children. The first is
Menashe, meaning "God has made me forget my hardship and my parental
home," and the second is Ephraim, "God has made me fertile in the
land of my affliction." Joseph is ready to fit in with the Egyptians, but
there's a level of obvious discomfort in it. He has come from a home where his
own family members wanted to kill him, and fled to a place that has (aside from
his stint in prison) mostly been good for and to him. He is able to rise to a
position of power, but is unable to feel totally Egyptian. I'm not sure exactly
what to make of this, but I think there's something worth acknowledging in the
need to assimilate for survival. Did Joseph marry his wife because he loved her
or because that was the only to keep himself from getting thrown back into the
prison cell? Did the Hellenized Jews throw off Jewish observance because they
were bored of it or because it felt unsafe to continue to do so? Did Babylonian
Jews shift the focus of Chanukah because it felt unsafe to celebrate the victory
of the Maccabees or because fire looks cool? When we give gifts for Chanukah
now, is it because that feels like it is really the right thing to do, or
because we are trying to compete with Christmas?
Rashi offers a Midrash on the
story of the famine in Egypt, that the soil didn't stop producing food, but that
the food grew and then immediately rotted. There's this sense of intense and
immediate terror in this Midrash, that all of what we have may fall apart in
front of our eyes at any moment. Joseph, the one in charge of managing the
famine, is not only concerned about the physical rotting of the produce, but
that all of what he has built for himself may rot. His children, half-Israelite
and half-Egyptian, are central to his feeling rooted in the strange land of
Egypt, and their names reflect his fear of this new place as well as his desire
to assimilate into it, his remembering of home and his desire to forget it, his
concern for life, staying alive, giving life, keeping alive. We're all in
various ways assimilated Jews, trying to live safely in the broader communities
we are a part of, but still feel in some way a pull to our Jewishness. May we
find safety and strength as Jews, living by our values and with our traditions
in mind, in whatever way that feels honest. May we welcome the stranger, as we
were strangers in the land of Egypt, and may we stay alive and thriving, give
life and keep alive those around us to the best of our abilities. Amen, Shabbat
Shalom and Chag Urim Sameach.
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