Parashat Vayetze, Genesis 28:10-32:3

The delight of being "heard and understood" is something essential to humanity.

You know how you sometimes realize just a moment too late that a mistake has been made? We experienced that in my family this past week. We finally broke down and bought a "smartphone," one of those contraptions that allow you to access the web 24/7. Such devices should come with a warning attached, similar to the warning about the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. For the individual who mainly communicates by email, the smartphone can turn a tool of convenience into a source of addiction.

It is most astonishing how the internet, a form of communication less than 30 years old, is so much a part of our lives. The same observation was probably made about the telephone at one time. On that fateful March day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell could not even begin to imagine how his successful experiment would transform the way we live. He did make a note in his journal that in hindsight reveals much, not about the invention itself, but about the inventors. In a journal entry dated March 10, 1876 Bell wrote: "I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you.' To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said."

The delight of being "heard and understood" is something essential to humanity. We all want to be heard, we all want to be understood. We send a message into the void, eagerly anticipating a reply. Over time, our eagerness has turned into impatience, as our modes of communication have become increasingly sophisticated. Responses need to be virtually instantaneous.

Being "heard and understood" is as old as the lessons in the Torah. Our patriarchs communicated with those around them but also had a special relationship with God. Rabbinic tradition (Berachot 26b) takes this relationship and develops it into a revolutionary form of communication with the Divine: the daily prayer services that replaced the sacrifices. The prooftext for Jacob's having instituted the Ma'ariv (evening) service is found at the very beginning of this week's parasha: He came upon (va-yifga) a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. (Genesis 28:11) The Talmud connects va-yifga to a variation of the same root in Jeremiah 7:16, where the word tifga, to intercede, is related to prayer.

If we learn about the establishment of the prayer service from the patriarchs, we can also learn much about the essence of prayer from the matriarchs, and specifically from Leah and Rachel. These two sisters, both married to Jacob, appear to be in competition to see who can provide Jacob with the most offspring. Rachel even admits to this rivalry when she names one of the sons of her handmaiden, Bilhah: "A fateful contest I waged with my sister; yes, and I have prevailed." So she named him Naphtali. (Genesis 30:8)

Their prayers and the efficacy of those prayers come through in their desire to bear children. With Leah we are told that God heeded (va-yishma) Leah, and she conceived and bore him a fifth son. (Genesis 30:17) Similarly with Rachel we find out that…God remembered Rachel; God heeded (va-yishma) her and opened her womb. (Genesis 30:22)

Apparently God does a lot of listening with the matriarchs, especially as far as babies are concerned. First we have Sarah's laughter as a reaction to the news that she will bear a son. She denies laughing to herself, but God responds "You did laugh." (Genesis 18:14) Then Rebecca encounters difficulty in her pregnancy and turns to God: But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, "If so, why do I exist?" She went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord answered her… (Genesis 25:22-3) Finally, we have the two sisters, whose private petitions we do not know, but we have the end result. In both cases God heard them, though we must bear in mind that the response was not instantaneous, neither for Leah nor certainly for Rachel.

There are other examples in the Torah of God heeding (va-yishma) human beings. God listens to Moses' plea not to destroy the people after the incident of the Golden Calf. (Deuteronomy 9:19 and 10:10) Later on, in the book of Judges (13:9), God listens to Manoah and provides him with a son, Samson.

How fortunate these individuals are to know that their prayers are heard and answered! In the Bible it is taken for granted that people have conversations with God. In rabbinic times our sages, struggling with the issue of having our prayers heard and answered, concluded that "One's prayer is heard if God is approached with heart in hand." (Ta'anit 8a) Certainly, in the instances quoted above, the fervency on the part of the person praying is evident. Yet we can all point to instances of deeply felt prayers that have had heartbreaking results. Too often, our attempts at dialogue with the Divine seem to end up as soliloquies.

Only inside can we feel if there is any reply. No activity in the world can conclusively demonstrate dialogue. Perhaps in the subjective chambers of the individual soul one may conclude that there was communication, but it is highly personal and ever uncertain. Everyone who prays struggles with the deep fear that this time, the only answer will be absence, silence.

Rabbi David Wolpe, The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God

Is there a problem with us, with our mode of communication, or our expectations?

It is incorrect to describe prayer by analogy with human conversation; we do not communicate with God. We only make ourselves communicable to Him. …

Prayer is an answer to God: "Here am I. And this is the record of my days. Look in to my heart, into my hopes and my regrets." …

The purpose of prayer is to be brought to His attention, to be listened to, to be understood by Him; not to know Him but to be known to Him. To pray is to behold life not only as a result of His power, but as a concern of His will, or to strive to make our life a divine concern.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel , Man's Quest for God, as quoted in 

Modern Thinkers Reflect on Jewish Prayer , myjewishlearning.com

 To paraphrase the old telephone commercial: "Reach out and touch some One." We may not always get the response we seek; we may not even sense the acknowledgment. Then why bother to connect? Because this very act of yearning imbues our life with holy purpose.

Will you hear my voice, my distant one, 

will you hear my voice, wherever you are —

a voice calling strong, a voice crying silently 

and above time, commanding blessing?

…I shall wait for you until my life dims,

As Rachel awaited her lover.

Rachel, Sorrow Song (trans. Wendy Zierler), 

in The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 182

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel

Parashat Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8

On behalf of Jack and Sam Markle...in memory of their parents Bessie Slywowicz and Sam Markle.

This week we are given an additional memory, that of the eternal outsider.

In the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle complains to the man wooing her: "Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through…" She dares her suitor to put his words into action as is indicated by the title of this song: Show Me. While Eliza's focus is romance, her challenge of transforming words into action is at the heart of a familiar phrase found in this week's parashah.

Three little words in Deuteronomy 26:5 contain within them the catalyst for transforming words into action: arami oved avi, a seemingly simple phrase that is among the more ambiguous ones in the Torah. (This verse has been analyzed in detail in an earlier parashat hashavua.) Translations include "my father was a wandering Aramean.," "my father was a fugitive Aramean," "an Aramean caused my father to be lost," and "an Aramean tried to destroy my father."

Who is the father? Is it Abraham, who sojourned in Egypt for a while? Is it Jacob, who went down to Egypt with his family, seventy people in all? And who is the Aramean? No Aramean pursued Abraham; Laban pursued Jacob, and he was the son of Bethuel the Aramean.

This trio of words, which forms a central part of the Haggadah, has been challenging us throughout history. In the actual Torah portion, they are part of a ritual formula recited by the ancient Israelite farmer when bringing the offering of first fruits to the sanctuary:

When you enter the land that Adonai your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that Adonai your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where Adonai your God will choose to establish His name. You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, "I acknowledge this day before Adonai your God that I have entered the land that Adonai swore to our fathers to assign us."

The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of Adonai your God.

You shall then recite as follows before Adonai your God: "My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to Adonai, the God of our fathers, and Adonai heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. Adonai freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me."

You shall leave it before Adonai your God and bow low before Adonai your God. And you shall enjoy, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that Adonai your God has bestowed upon you and your household. (Deut. 26:1-11)

Last week I referred to (1) the importance of historic memory in Judaism and (2) how history is seen as a record of the encounter between God and the Jewish people. The words spoken by the farmer when bringing the first fruit are crucial to this collective memory:

"Here, thanks­giving is to be rooted in the past, with its glories and its difficulties: The facts of near destruction in ages gone by (or in recent memory as the case may be) were set down, as necessary recollections for an Israelite’s thanksgiving. Whether the danger to survival came to an Abraham or to a Jacob, whether the ancestor was threatened or merely lost (physically? spiritually?) is less impor­tant than that the past needed to be seen as impinging on the present, and that God's beneficent guidance needed to be rehearsed from generation to generation. The very opaqueness of the language may in fact have prevented the obligation from being identified with the remote past only, and instead served to render it of continuing significance." (Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, ed., The Torah: A Modern Commentary)

However one translates these three words, the message is clear: This formula recounts the essential action that God plays in history. But there is more to it as well. Arami oved avi is not a history lesson. It is essentially a prayer.

In Worship and Ethics, Rabbi Max Kadushin describes two different types of prayer. First, there is "phenomenal" prayer, wherein the blessing relates directly to the experience. This would be saying ha-motzi before eating a slice of bread. Then there is the "meditative" prayer, which builds on the basic experience. The example Kadushin uses is the birkat ha-mazon, the grace after meals, which offers thanks for food and then builds on that by thanking God for the land, for Torah, for God's role in history and concludes with a prayer for Jerusalem. Kadushin sees this as: "An actual concrete example of God's love, a phenomenal experience, here initiates the chain of religious experiences." Similarly, arami oved avi is more than collective memory; it is also a "meditative" prayer on the nature of God's role in history and our relationship with God.

There is one more crucial element in this formula and in prayer in general. Kadushin notes that in prayer we not only gain an awareness of ourselves "as an object of God's love, but an awareness of the self that includes society."

The formula arami oved avi impresses on the individual that he is the eternal stranger, that she is the symbolic other. In this regard arami oved avi builds on the message in last week's portion that taught us zachor - remember what Amalek did to you. Last week the lesson dealt with collective memory that is essential to our survival. This week we are given an additional memory, that of the eternal outsider. This memory is meant to raise within us an awareness outside ourselves, embracing and protecting those in society who our modern "Arameans," or who are vulnerable to attacks by modern-day "Amalek."

Memory, prayer, and action are threads within the formula first recited by our ancestors. Voicing these words today, we too experience the transformative potential of words. Perhaps this is best expressed by the writer Ingrid Bengis "For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change."

Shabbat shalom,
MS