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It
was late, and normally he would have been on his way
home but he had some unfinished business at work, bringing
him back up the hill late that night.
Very
few people would even have noticed what he saw, much
less done anything about it, but to Aryeh, who was both
an expert in archeology, as well as very familiar with
the normal comings and goings in East Jerusalem, something
was clearly going on.
As
he headed up the hill from his home in Ir David (a Jewish
neighborhood in the valley below today's modern Old
City walls, which marks the site where King David and
his men first conquered Jerusalem three thousand years
ago) towards the Dung gate and the Kotel (Western Wall),
a long line of trucks was moving up and down the road,
in and out of the Old City.
Arabs
do not normally work late at night and certainly so
many trucks would have to mean a major building project,
which was strange considering the late hour. Suddenly,
his heart racing, he realized this many trucks could
only mean one thing. Half running up the hill, he headed
towards the Lion's gate on the eastern side of the Old
City .
The
Lion's gate, where in 1967 Israel's paratroopers had
stormed into the Old City, ending two thousand years
of foreign occupation and restoring an ancient city
to its ancient people, was also the only gate wide enough
to accommodate trucks of this size, and this many trucks
heading in and out of there could only mean one thing:
they had to connected to the work the Arabs were doing
on the Temple Mount!
Could
these trucks be taking archeological treasures from
the Temple Mount ?
For
thirty years, ever since 1967, Defense Minister, Moshe
Dayan had given control of the Temple Mount over to
the Wakf (the Muslim religious authority) in the wake
of the Six Day War, an ongoing theological and historical
battle had been going on concerning Jews' rights to
the Mount and the historical veracity of their claims
that this mountain had been the site of the Temple (known
as the Beit HaMikdash) a full fifteen hundred years
before the seventh- century birth of Islam.
Some
Arabs (most notably Yasser Arafat, as head of the Palestinian
Authority following the Oslo accords) had gone as far
as saying the Temple had never existed and that all
claims to Jewish history on the Temple Mount were a
complete fabrication.
Due
to its sensitive religious nature, no archeological
dig has ever been allowed on the Temple Mmount, at least
in modern memory, but rumors were rampant that the Muslims
were expanding the lower level of the Mosque of Omar
(also known as the El Aksa mosque, on the southern side
of the Temple mount) in a hall known for obvious reasons
as Solomon's Stables, and Aryeh was wondering if all
these trucks could have something to do with that.
Technically,
such building projects were illegal unless properly
approved, but if these trucks meant what he thought
they did, that fact did not seem to have made an impression
on the Wakf.
He
frantically began calling every reporter he could think
of, but imagine getting a call at midnight from a frantic
un-known voice that dozens of trucks were coming in
and out of the Old City ; would you get out of bed?
Finally
a Channel two reporter with an interest in archeology
decided to check it out and at 12:30AM arrived at the
Lion's gate with a camera crew; clearly, something was
going on.
Immediately,
Aryeh suggested he follow the trucks as far as he could
get inside the Old City, and he himself raced back to
get his car and follow the trucks heading out of the
Old City; where were they going, and what were they
doing?
His
discovery which has now become a famous and a matter
of public record was nothing short of an archeological,
historical earthquake.
The
Muslims digging out the Solomon's Stables area needed
to figure out what to do with all the dirt they were
digging up; after all, huge piles of dirt on the Temple
Mount would be clear evidence that they were digging....
So,
with a few greased palms and heads turned the other
way, fifty trucks, over a period of nearly a month,
simply dumped at least fifty (and some say as much as
two hundred!) tons of earth, in at least three separate
garbage sites in East Jerusalem.
Imagine:
Earth that has been untouched since the Romans burned
the second Temple two thousand years ago was dug up
and simply dumped in valleys in the middle of the night!
Of
course, one person's garbage dump is another's treasure
trove, and while much of the damage done and history
lost can never be recovered, what has been discovered
is nothing short of incredible.
In
a valley in East Jerusalem , an archeological dig has
been set up and volunteers from all over the world,
under the guidance of Israeli archeologists, have been
sifting through three thousand years of history.
Among
the finds: a Babylonian Arrowhead dated nearly twenty
five hundred years ago, from the Babylonian conquest
of the first Temple, and a twenty-six hundred year old
Seal ( clay stamp used to seal letters) with the Hebrew
letters ‘...liahu (Was this Eliahu? Chilkiahu? ) &
the family name of IMER (Aleph, Mem Reish), a priestly
(Kohanim) family name mentioned in the bible as serving
in the Temple during the first Temple period!
Can
you imagine? The Muslim Wakf's desire to erase Jewish
history, allowed Israeli archeologists to rediscover
a part of our past we never dared dream we could explore!
And
you can visit this valley in East Jerusalem (as we did
with an Isralight Mission a few weeks ago), and hold
these stones and artifacts in your hand!
All
of which leaves one wondering: how do hundreds of millions
of Muslims continue to deny what is now so obviously
historical fact?
Is
it a conscious decision to deny the truth? Or can so
many people really convince themselves that what seems
so obviously to be the case as the existence of an ancient
Jewish State in what is today the state of Israel be
impossible?
Make
no mistake about it: this question is not limited to
any one particular ethnicity, religion, or theology.
How do tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people still
believe the Holocaust never happened? And how are there
still people in the world that believe that Stalin was
a savior to the poor people of the world?
For
that matter, how do people look at the same scenario
and see completely different realities? How is it that
so many people living in Gush Katif (in the Gaza strip)
facing thirty thousand soldiers and policemen still
believe, that the disengagement would never happen while
others could not understand why it took so long? Or,
from the other end of the political spectrum, how, nearly
fifteen years and countless terrorist attacks, missile
launches, and suicide (homicide) bombers after Oslo
can some people remain convinced that Oslo could have
and still might work, while others view it as the greatest
calamity since the Holocaust?
To
be sure, our purpose is not to take a particular political
position, but rather to question how it is that we seem
to become so ensconced in the positions we have taken.
This
week's portion, Miketz , and its place in the
story of Joseph and his brothers, presents us with a
fascinating perspective on this question.
Perhaps
a bit of Biblical background is in order:
Sold
by his brothers into slavery some twenty years earlier,
Joseph, who has now taken the Egyptian name Tzofnat-Paneach
, has, by Divine design, been elevated to the grand
position of Viceroy of Egypt, the second most powerful
position, in the most powerful empire the world had
ever known.
In
the midst of a devastating famine caused by drought,
the entire region has become dependant on the Nile-river
based Egyptian economy, and the only food to be found
is being controlled and doled out by none other than
Joseph himself.
In
the course of time, the same brothers are forced to
come to Egypt in search of grain, and soon find themselves
accused of being spies, standing before no less than
the Viceroy himself, who unbeknownst to them, is the
same Joseph they mercilessly sold into slavery all those
years ago.
Sounds
like a great Hollywood movie, right? It gets better!
Joseph is presented with an incredible opportunity:
the chance for a most delicious payback. But revenge
does not seem to be on his mind (else he would have
had them all thrown into a pit...) and instead he orchestrates
a series of puzzling events that allow the brothers
to re-live the same opportunity they missed when Joseph
was in the pit; the chance to put their younger, seemingly
more favored brother (by their father Ya'acov) before
them.
First,
Joseph ascertains that these brothers (who according
to rabbinic legend in the Midrash gave Joseph
the ‘excuse' to accuse them of espionage by entering
the city separately despite obviously (because they
alone all looked to be ‘Hebrews'?), claim to have a
younger brother they have left at home, and then he
takes one of their lot (Shimon) prisoner, warning he
will not be released, nor will they be allowed to return
for more food until they bring their brother Binyamin
(Benjamin) back with them.
Then,
just when they are finally leaving their brother Shimon
behind in Egypt with heavy hearts (Shimon was the brother
who instigated the massacre of the city of Shechem
after the rape of Dinah; perhaps they would remain
true to color and simply abandon him in Egypt?) they
open their packs on the road to discover all the money
they were meant to have paid (for the Egyptian Grain
they were carrying) still in their possession. Are they
being set up? Will they be accused of theft from the
Egyptian crown (a crime punishable by death)?
“...Vayomer
el achiv: hushav kaspi, ve'gam hineh be'amtachti; va'yetze'
libam vayecherdu' ish el achiv laimor: ma zot asah Elokim
lanu?”
“...And
he said to his brother, my money has been returned and
behold it is in my pack; and their hearts went out and
they trembled, one to his brother saying: what is this
G-d has done to us?” (Genesis
(Bereishit) 42:28)
Clearly,
the brothers see this as no less than a calamity. The
thought that the mightiest empire on the face of the
Earth, the personification of evil that was ancient
Egypt might now be hunting them is clearly cause for
concern.
And
yet, interestingly enough, they immediately seem to
question no less than G-d himself! ‘How could Hashem
(G-d) do this to us?' is the question that immediately
escapes their lips.
Now
to be sure, one could view this question as the faith-filled
desire to place any seemingly challenging event in front
of the lens of Divine Omnipotence. In other words, one
might assume they are accepting this new challenge as
G-d's will and are merely accepting their own responsibility
to try and understand what G-d really wants of us. True
faith, after all, implies that everything that comes
your way has a reason, right? And in that case, ‘ ours
is not to reason why, ours but to do or die' ,
correct?
Not
my job to figure why I may be having a hard time, mine
is only the challenge to decide what I think I am meant
to do with it: what do I think Hashem wants of me?
Noble
to be sure, but hardly in keeping with the “ trembling”
and clear anxiety the brothers display here. If
you really believe Hashem is running the world and everything
has a purpose, shouldn't the first assumption be there
must be something about me and
my life that warrants this
situation?
And
especially in the case of Joseph's brothers who quite
clearly still have guilt over having sold their brother
into slavery years earlier, one would imagine they might
consider this to be warranted due to their past behavior,
instead of immediately questioning G- d?
Even
more questionable however, is not what the brothers
do but consider, but rather what they don't.
Recall,
that while Ya'acov assumes his long lost son Joseph
is dead, the brothers know he was sold and have every
reason to assume he might well be alive, and even advising
or serving someone who might be connected to the bizarre
series of events that surround their foray to Egypt.
One
wonders then why it never occurs to the brothers that
Joseph might be connected to the events at hand. Is
it not curious that of all the tens of thousands of
people coming to Egypt for food, these ten brothers
find themselves brought before no less than the Viceroy
himself?
And
how is it that when they are brought before Joseph none
of them recognize their own brother whose face (being
sold into slavery) must still haunt their dreams?
And
why is this Viceroy so interested in their father Ya'acov
constantly asking if he is still alive? Why does this
not arouse the brothers' curiosity?
And
then there is the astounding similarity of events to
the cause of the selling of Joseph in the first place?
All those years ago, Joseph tells the family of his
dream that the brothers' bushels are bowing to his,
and that the moon, the sun and the stars are bowing
before him, and this so outrages the brothers, it pushes
them over the edge, causing them to nearly kill (and
actually sell as a slave) their brother. Is this not
a moment one would expect to be carried in their collective
consciousness? And yet, here they are, bowing down together
before a ruler they ought never to have met, and they
do not even question whether Joseph might be involved?
And
as if this is not enough, why would an Egyptian ruler
who represents the ancient equivalent of a Nazi ReichsFuhrer
accuse them of espionage, a charge with almost no basis,
and then essentially let them go, simply to bring their
brother back?
How
is it that this Egyptian ruler who commands such a high
position in the world center of pagan idolatry would
say nonetheless:
“
et ha'Elokim ani yareh” , “I fear G-d” (See
42: 15-20)?
To
top it all off, when the brothers return to Egypt with
Binyamin, and are invited to the Viceroy's home for
a feast (Genesis chap. 43), they are inexplicably seated
in the precise order of their birth which, while causing
the brothers to ‘wonder' (42: 33), incredibly does not
cause any of them to think Joseph might have something
to do with it! Well, how on earth else would the Viceroy
know the order of their birth?!
(Indeed
the Talmud (tractate Chullin 91a) suggests
on the verse (43:16):
“Tavoach
tevach ve'hachen”,”Slaughter the animal and prepare
it”,
that
Joseph instructs his staff to prepare the feats for
the brothers, that they ritually slaughtered it and
removed the sciatic nerve (the gid hanasheh ,
a family (Jewish?) custom dating back to Yaacov's struggle
with Eisav) in front of them. But how would the Egyptians
know about this custom?)
Yet,
despite all of these indications, the brothers just
go on about their business never questioning all of
these events!
In
fact, despite having discovered the money in their packs
on their last journey from Egypt, and despite their
horror and despair in that moment, they nonetheless
buy their grain and take their packs, never checking
to make sure they are only holding grain nor checking
the bags to be sure nothing is ‘planted' in them, as
such allowing not only all their money to be again returned,
but the goblet of no less than the Viceroy himself to
end up in their bag!
How
do they not wonder how such a valuable object as a goblet
which would cause the kings' men to chase them all the
way from Egypt, ended up in Binyamin's pack?
Finally,
despite all these clues, the brothers are still speechless
with shock when Joseph finally reveals himself to them.
Why is this so shocking? Why did not a single one of
them see this coming at all?
Are
we missing something? One doesn't need to be Sherlock
Holmes to see something is awry with this story! So
what is really going on here?
There
is, perhaps, one thought that might go a long way towards
explaining this inexplicable lack of perception the
brothers seem to display and which may as well be part
of the underlying message of this entire story.
Maybe
the issue is not the events they should see now, but
rather the actions they performed then, and the impact
those actions continue to have on the way they see things
now.
The
Torah ( Shemot (Exodus) 23:8) makes a point
of saying, in discussing the prohibition against bribery
of a judge:
“...Ki
hashochad ye'aver pikchim...”
“...For bribery blinds the eyes of the wise.”
An
interesting choice of words; why does bribery blind
the wise, instead of merely making it
more difficult to see? After all, it's not as though
a bribed judge cannot see truth and justice at all,
it's just that their sight is now warped, or tainted,
no?
In
fact, though, the Torah may well be suggesting that
the bribed judge is no longer capable of seeing truthfully.
No matter how clear justice might be, bribery warps
his vision to the extent that he no longer is capable
of seeing things the way they really are.
And
this, perhaps, is the brothers' undoing. A long time
ago they made an assumption, that Joseph's motivations
were impure, that he was simply after the birthright,
and that perhaps ego and greed were coloring his actions
and flavoring his dreams.
The
result of that assumption was the righteous indignation
that led to their selling of their own brother as a
slave. Incredibly, twenty years later, in suggesting
that perhaps all these terrible events were occurring
to them because:
“...ve'lo
shamanu' eilav be'hitchaneno' eileinu...”
“...we did not hear (listen to) him when he beseeched
us...”
the
brothers never suggest they were actually wrong to sell
him, but merely are pained they were not more moved
by their brother's pain! Despite it all, they still
think they were justified in selling him! It is still
a legitimate course of action in their eyes, because
to accept that Joseph was actually a tzaddik ,
means that their entire lives have been a lie and that
everything they did was wrong. And that is a very difficult
thing to do.
To
actually recognize that the assumption which forms the
core of a person's entire life journey could be completely
mistaken and that my entire life might be built on false
premises takes an enormous amount of strength and great
inner resolve, not to mention character.
Rare
is the individual who is prepared to make such an admission,
but this perhaps, is the level the Torah wants us to
aspire to reach, in unraveling before us the human drama
that is the story of Joseph and his brothers.
Indeed,
four thousand years later, Adlerian psychology will
base its theories of self correction on the discovery
of a basic flaw which is essentially an assumption often
arrived at early in life, usually as the result of some
form of trauma, that is the root of all the mistakes
a person struggles with in his or her life.
(For
example, a person who does not seem capable of maintaining
a serious relationship long enough to commit to marriage,
might discover in therapy that he grew up watching his
parents in an unhappy marriage and came to the flawed
subconscious conclusion that marriage inevitably makes
you unhappy. It goes without saying if you subconsciously
think marriage makes you unhappy, it's no wonder you
can't seem to get married! And once you realize this
is your basic mistake, and recognize it as such, you
can correct it and discover happiness in a relationship....)
Despite
all the obvious signs, the brothers simply cannot see
the obvious solution to the mystery that confronts them.
To do so is to admit that the dream has come true, and
that they are in fact bowing to their own brother, and
that would mean they were wrong, and their lives have
been based on a completely flawed assumption.
And if Joseph is a tzaddik , then they are
the villains, which is a very hard conclusion to draw.
We
need look no farther than today's newspapers to find
this lesson all around us.
If
Oslo was a failure, because we had no real partners,
then that would mean all the death and violence since
then was the result of that failure and we need to completely
change directions, and that is a very hard pill to swallow.
Far easier to keep trying the same experiment, no matter
how strange that may seem, than admit such far-reaching
errors.
And
if the disengagement really means the majority of the
Israeli public could care less about eight thousand
people and their land amongst the Arabs, then that might
mean Gush Emunim's entire policy of populating
land as opposed to educating people might be completely
mistaken, and that might mean thirty years of mistaken
decisions, which is an equally difficult pill to swallow
if true.
Indeed,
these are examples are on a national level, but this
suggestion is just as applicable in our personal day
to day lives.
If
I am miserable as a lawyer because I chose the field
for the wrong reasons then I might need to accept twenty
years of mistakes, in order to make life better. And
if the fellow or relative I am angry at actually had
a point, then I might need to accept that I have been
walking a path of behavior based on a completely mistaken
assumption....
This
may be one reason why this portion of Miketz
always falls on the Shabbat of Chanukah: because this
is the essence of what Chanukah was all about.
Too
many Jews were living lives based on Greek assumptions
that from a Jewish perception were completely flawed.
And that may be why the festival of Chanukah is all
about lighting the Menorah, because the solution to
correcting flawed assumptions, is to hold them up to
the light of impartial analysis, the light of objective
truth, which from a Jewish perspective is the ancient
and ever beautiful light of Torah.
Indeed,
on Chanukah the Temple was not destroyed and rebuilt,
it had simply become polluted by Greek idolatry and
paganism. So the Macabees cleaned up and re-dedicated
it; hence the name Chanukah, related to the word chen
, or inner beauty.
Chanukah
is about looking deep inside us to rediscover the inner
beauty that was always there; the beauty that shone
forth before our mistaken assumptions clouded them over
and hid them away.
This
year, may we have the wisdom to discover our mistakes,
the strength to correct them and the courage to change
our ways and paths, opinions and perspectives, to live
up to those new assumptions.
Best
wishes for a wonderful Chanukah, full of joy and light
for all people everywhere ,
Shabbat
Shalom,
Rav
Binny Freedman
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