AND THE ANGEL WHO SPOKE WITH ME RETURNED, AND HE AWAKENED ME AS A MAN WHO WAKES UP FROM HIS SLEEP. AND HE SAID TO ME, "WHAT DO YOU SEE?" AND I SAID, "I SAW, AND BEHOLD [THERE WAS] A CANDELABRUM ALL OF GOLD, WITH ITS OIL-BOWL ON TOP OF IT, AND ITS SEVEN LAMPS THEREON; SEVEN TUBES EACH TO THE LAMPS THAT WERE ON TOP OF IT. AND [THERE WERE] TWO OLIVE TREES NEAR IT; ONE ON THE RIGHT OF THE BOWL, AND ONE ON ITS LEFT. SO I ANSWERED AND SPOKE TO THE ANGEL WHO TALKED WITH ME, SAYING, "WHAT ARE THESE, MY LORD?" AND THE ANGEL WHO SPOKE WITH ME ANSWERED, AND HE SAID TO ME, "DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT THESE ARE?" AND I SAID, "NO, MY LORD." AND HE ANSWERED AND SPOKE TO ME, SAYING, "THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD TO ZERUBBABEL, SAYING: 'NOT BY MIGHT AND NOT BY FORCE, BUT BY MY SPIRIT,' SAYS THE LORD OF HOSTS.

(Zachariah 4:2-6 - from the haftorah for Shabbat Hanukah)

 

Not by might and not by force, but by My spirit

And he answered - the word of God will build the Temple.

(Ibn Ezra ad loc)

 

And he answered...'Not by might and not by force...' - Just as you saw the Menorah stand before you by its own accord, without any person setting up the lamps or pouring oil into them, so too the Temple shall be built without human effort but rather by God's spirit and will, and the vision will be further explained to you in detail.

(ReDaK ad loc)

 

Rabbi Joshua said: I received a tradition from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakai who heard it from his teacher, who heard from his teacher - a halakhah given to Moses on Mount Sinai - saying that Elijah will not arrive in order to proclaim some pure and others impure, to push away [demote someone's pedigree] or draw near [improve someone's pedigree]. Rather he will push away those who were brought near by force, and draw near those pushed away by force. The Beit Tzarifah family lived across the Jordan, and Ben Tzion pushed them off by use of force. Another family there was brought near thanks to Ben Tzion's violence. These are the kinds of cases in which Elijah will intercede, declaring pure and impure, bringing near and pushing away.

Rabbi Yehudah said: [Elijah will come] to bring near, but not to push away.

Rabbi Shimon said: To settle disagreements [regarding halakhah].

The Sages say: Not to push off or draw near, but rather to make peace in the world, for it is said: Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you and it concludes, he shall reconcile fathers with sons and sons with fathers.

(Mishnah Eduyot 8:7)

 

 

To be of Troubled Spirit - and to Talk About It

Dalia Marx

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, dreamt two dreams and the story of his dreams is told twice in our parasha. The first time they are described by the biblical narrator and the second time by Pharaoh himself, when we hear him relate the dreams that had troubled his spirit to Joseph, the Hebrew youth. A comparison between the two versions of the dreams opens up a rare window for us into the mind of the dreamer:

 

 

Some of the differences are merely literary variations, while others may help us to understand Pharaoh's perturbed state of mind. Through the latter we may also learn something about the dreaming psyche.

The first dream scene is revealed to Pharaoh as he stands upon the Nile. He is the unquestioned ruler, not only a king but also a god in his eyes and in the eyes of his people. He is upon the Nile, the source of Egypt's bounty and blessing. Contrastingly, when he tells his dream to Joseph he displays a humble attitude, describing himself as standing on the bank of the Nile. Pharaoh's dreams, which are not yet intelligible to him, show him that he does not posses absolute control. He is not existence itself, rather, he can stand in the periphery, on the river bank, and look upon his world from the side. Pharaoh is not trying to affect modesty before the Hebrew youth - his humble language reflects his having been shaken by his recent experience.

Pharaoh's retelling leaves out one important detail from the dream: and they stood beside the cows [which were] on the Nile bank. First the healthy cows make their appearance and eventually they are eaten by the sickly cows, but between those two events there was a stage in which the two sets of cows stood next to each other. This was a kind of respite, a situation of uncertainty regarding what would occur next. Perhaps the two groups of cows gauged each other's strength. However, Pharaoh sees none of this process; he only sees the impending calamity.

First Pharaoh emphasizes the bad looks of the second group of cows, which were unlike any he had seen in the entire land of Egypt (verse 19) and whose hidden threat would only be revealed later. Next, he offers his own evaluation of the event: And they went inside them, but it was not known that they had gone inside of them, for their appearance was as ugly as in the beginning.

Here too, Pharaoh focuses on the result rather than on its causes or on the process to which it belongs. The cow, the beautiful calf which symbolizes fertile Egypt, has been hurt. Pharaoh is not surprised so much by the cows being eaten, since they are quite vulnerable animals. Rather, he is mostly surprised that they were eaten by their fellow cows - by weak and sickly cows, rather than by some foreign force or beast of prey. The ridiculousness and grotesqueness of the scene is what generates terror.

Careful readers will discover a similar pattern of differences between the second dream as it is described by the biblical narrator and as it is retold by Pharaoh, but let us go on to consider the way the dream experience is described. Both the biblical narrator and Pharaoh himself mention that he woke up after the first dream. However, while the narrator states, And he fell asleep and dreamed again, Pharaoh does not mention that he fell back to sleep. It seems that he dived straight into the dream. The boundary between dreaming and wakefulness is blurred for him. He feels confused and lost between the reality of his life as ruler and the virtual reality of his dream.

The necromancers cannot decipher Pharaoh's dreams. Are they incapable of interpreting what any penny-psychologist would see? Pharaoh feels that the necromancers understand his dream's message but refuse to tell it to him: no one tells me. How could they stand before the great sovereign and tell him that he suffers from anxiety due to his eminent status? That it is precisely his unquestioned status that makes him so vulnerable? That bountifulness brings fear of lack? That the blessing generates fear of the curse?

Now the Hebrew youth arrives. A slave, he was rushed from the prison, given a quick shave, and hastily dressed so that he could try to help the imperator. His first words to Pharaoh, Not I; God will give an answer [that will bring] peace to Pharaoh, exclude the possibility of the situation being interpreted as a contest of power between the two, and it allows Pharaoh's troubled heart to speak without fear.

Are Pharaoh's dreams (which, as Joseph says, are one dream) interpretable in only one way, the way that Joseph managed to reveal? Or could it be that thanks to the divine spirit that rested upon him, Joseph understood the king's distress and addressed it? Either way, we can see that the essence of the dreams' solution is the limiting of Pharaoh's unlimited power. Every reasonable father or mother knows that they must set up clear limits in order to give their children a sense of security. Every religious man or woman knows that in order for freedom to be real it is necessary to set boundaries upon it.

Pharaoh could have ignored his dreams but he chose to try to gain meaning from them. He asks and investigates, he invites all the necromancers of Egypt and all its sages, but they are unable to help. The necromancers are practiced in exhibiting showmanship with their impressive answers; they make snakes jump and fires burn, but they are unable (or unwilling) to understand the complexities of the human psyche.

Joseph, in contrast, understands that while people do not have control over their dreams they do have control over what they make of them. And so, the first dream interpreter we come across (an unconscious dream interpreter) is Pharaoh himself, who lends significance to his experience. The second interpreter is Joseph, who is a dreamer himself, and the son of a people whose experience is founded upon a dialogue with the divine and the eternal. He is able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams.

Pharaoh rules over a vast land which, unlike its northern neighbor, is not dependent upon rain or the gifts of nature. The Nile is like a tremendous womb that supplies all of Egypt's needs, just like the healthy milk-cow and the good sheaves. One must value nature's gifts in order to feel some measure of security; one must limit irresponsible consumption and make preparations for the years of famine. Such years can be expected to come for such is the way of the world.

Limitation and restraint are the prerequisites of human civilization. Not limitation for the sake of hunger or self-denial, but rather restraint for the sake of always valuing and taking notice of the grace given us. This approach stands at the foundations of Beit Shammai's ruling that we must remove a candle each day from the Hanukiya (lately we hear voices in Israeli society calling for the adoption of this view). In contrast, Beit Hillel is sensitive to human fears of extinction, the fear which stands at the basis of Pharaoh's dreams and of the hidden fears born by many among us. That is why Beit Hillel calls for the light to be increased each day.

Each day, as we light another Hanukah candle, we become aware of the bounty with which we are blessed and recognize that it should not be taken for granted.

Dr. Dalia Marx teaches Midrash and liturgy and is a visiting professor at the Potsdam University in Germany

 

Readers Respond:

I greatly enjoyed Chaim Rubinstein's article, "And the children struggled within her" from the parashat Toldot issue. The notion that twins can represent the internal battle that is the lot of kol adam bekhol zeman uvekhol makom [all human beings in all times and place] (as the early Hassidic darshanim would put it) very much spoke to me.

I would like to add another two pairs to the list of polar opposites: the first is "Adam the first" and "Adam the second" or "majestic man" and "the man of faith" as found in Rabbi Soloveitchik's essay, "The Lonely Man of Faith." The second is the difference between the hasid and the mitnaged as archetypes, or as Rabbi Soloveitchik so well described it in his eulogy for his father-in-law, the Admur from Telena, with the expression kedusha umalkhut ["holiness and kingship"].

I would like to question one point in Chaim Rubinstein's article. The author identifies the intellectual side with the "soft, feminine aspect," "the aspect of Jacob" as against Esau, who was stormy and emotional. This is founded upon the notion that the rational mind is calmer and more internalized, while the emotional side can find expression in outbursts of anger and violence. According to the author these latter are associated with the masculine, Esau-like aspect. This is simply not true. Anyone who has even slight acquaintance with the academic world or with the literary world knows that competitive energy can flow into the life of the mind and high culture, and that the written word can serve as a weapon in personal combat. According to my own opinion and experience, the heart and soul, rather that the cool, dry, and sometimes quite egocentric mind are the main sources of the aspect which "supports and helps... [and] understands" (in the emotional, human sense)

This was one of the things I learned from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Rabbi Shlomo's life was, in my opinion, perhaps the example in our generation of a man of the mind, a great scholar possessing wide knowledge of all areas of Torah, both exoteric and esoteric, a man gifted with considerable analytic powers who deliberately and consciously chose to leave all of that for the sake of the heart. He developed a plain language of the heart and soul, of song and stories and straightforward speech in order to reach the hearts of a public alienated from Judaism. (Interestingly, he was a twin himself).This is not the place to continue at length.

Yehonatan Chipman, Jerusalem

 

Chaim Rubinstein, author of the article, comments:

I would like to expand upon my friend's words with two points. First: in one place I emphasized duality over singularity. Singularity supports itself while members of a pair must counter-balance and support each other. Polar differences are only one aspect of duality. The more deeply we think about it, the more duality becomes holism, a situation in which the foundation would be undermined by the pair's separation. The second point: intellectual and emotional aspects can only be separated artificially. For example, it is known that comprehension is strongly influenced by the emotional state; no thought is free of emotional influences. I admit that I was influenced by the classical commentators when I followed the exegetical line of "man of tents [refers to] the tents of Shem" [i.e., that Jacob dwelt in the midrashic "house of study of Shem and Ever" - translator's note] and from there to an identification of Jacob with scholarship and intellect. I do not deny that there are tongues that became swords, but I was not thinking of that. There are two different ingredients to thought, the analytic and the intuitive. Analytic thought solves book-keeping problems while intuitive thought discovers new worlds. I imagine analytic thought as being like a system of intermeshed gears of various sizes, while intuitive thought is like waves lapping the beach. I compare analytic thought with masculinity and its female partner is certainly feminine. Thus, the softness and the depth of the world of scholarship doubtlessly come from the Jacob-like aspect. Combativeness and debate come from the Esau-like aspect of the soul. That is what I was referring to.

 

Comment on Nahem Ilan's article (parashat VaYetze)

In his enlightening article, Nahem Ilan teaches us about the last word of parashat Vayetze - Mahanaim - and its unique double-plural form. Biblical commentators beginning with R. Avraham Ibn Ezra identified the two camps with the camp of God's angels and the camp of the patriarch Jacob. RaMBaN even writes "both were the camps of God, [both] bless Him and avow to God's unity, may His name be blessed for all eternity." I would like to mention that this double plural form is also found in the name Yerushalayim and tradition points to a similar doubling: "Jerusalem of above" and "Jerusalem of above." Jacob's vision of peace - in which human beings and the angels of God are united in proclaiming God's unity - is well-situated in his life story, between his reconciliation with Laban and his reconciliation with Esau. May the deeds of our father Jacob be a sign for his children, that we may take courage and be reconciled with our Palestinian brothers so that we may be unified in our unification of God in Jerusalem!

Daniel Rohrlich, Jerusalem

 

 

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