Parshat Shemot: Shakespeare’s ‘Greatness’

William Shakespeare knew exactly how to crystallize human traits and experiences into timeless sound bites.

In Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5, Malvolio reads Maria's letter (believing it to have been written by Olivia's hand):

"If this letter falls into your hands, think carefully about what it says. By my birth I rank above you, but don’t be afraid of my greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them...."

This quote has been occupying my mind recently. Not because I think of myself as being great (in any of the dimensions described!) I am simply trying to understand how it can apply to the person we are going to meet for the first time in today's Parsha, namely Moses or as we know him - Moshe Rabeinu - Moshe our teacher.

The so-called ‘Prince of Egypt’ appears to have ticked all three boxes!

Exodus 2:

A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

Rashi adds that when Moshe was born, the entire house was filled with light.

The Torah is informing us that Moshe's birth was notable and that he needed to be protected, hence her hiding him until she had no option but to place him in his 'Moses Basket' in order to save his life from Pharaoh's genocidal decree.

We know that over time, Moshe duly achieved greatness, but as for having it thrust upon him, the Torah does not hesitate from describing his reluctance in taking on the leadership of the people. The long dialogue described in Chapter Three is a case in point.

Gd says:

Exodus 3:

(10) Come, therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh, and you shall free My people, the Israelites, from Egypt.”

Moshe responds:

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?”

Gd replies:

“I will be with you; that shall be your sign that it was I who sent you. And when you have freed the people from Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”

To which Moshe says:

“When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

Moshe is trying every which way to find a reason not to take on the leadership of Bnei Yisrael. Further along in the conversation, even after Gd has turned Moshe's stick into a snake and reversed it back into its original form followed by a miracle with his hand becoming leprous before reverting to its regular skin colour, Moshe is still arguing!

Gd tells him that He will turn the waters of the Nile into blood…and what is Moshe's response?

“Please, O L-rd, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”

Understandably at this point, Gd's patience is wearing thin!

And the L-rd said to him, “Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the L-rd?

Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say.”

But he said, “Please, O L-rd, make someone else Your agent.”

The L-rd became angry with Moses, and He said, “There is your brother Aaron the Levite. He, I know, speaks readily. Even now he is setting out to meet you, and he will be happy to see you.

Yes, my friends. Some have greatness thrust upon them!

It is not difficult to empathise with Moshe's dilemma. A man whom we are informed was the 'humblest of all men' has been forced to act against his better judgement. We know that Gd knew the measure of this man and that, yes, Moshe did end up becoming the inspirational leader that we shall discover over the rest of this Jewish year. But what can we, mere mortals who struggle to tick any of Mr Shakespeare's statements learn about greatness?

And to be precise, what is 'greatness' and who can judge it (granted that we don't have the close relationship that existed between Moshe and Gd)?

In trying to understand the nature of greatness, I don't think people would argue that Rabbi Sacks ztl was a very special human being. He inspired millions of people throughout the world as did the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Amongst our Gentile brethren, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King dedicated their lives to improving those of others (and King was assassinated for his efforts). Winston Churchill was possibly this country's greatest leader due to his courageous and isolated stand against Hitler. Can we decide into which of the categories each respective individual would fit? How many of the above would have followed Moshe's lead in struggling with the third classification? Who could wish to have 'greatness thrust upon them?'

Sometimes, there is no choice because decisions have to be taken and leaders need to be found. Some seek to fill the vacancy and as a result, 'achieve greatness' and some, very few indeed are born great. I think Rabbi Sacks and the Rebbe might have been blessed with this but how can we know?

'Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe' by Robert Matzen is a book that I recently heard through my phone's Audible app. It compared James Stewart the actor with a civilian who entered the air force as a Private at the start of the War and ended it as a Colonel. He retired from the air force in 1968 as a Major General.

It is hard to square the tall, gawky and hesitating pre-war actor with the decidedly non-celebrity decorated flyer at its conclusion but during his four-year service, he lost many comrades and nearly didn't make it through alive. Witness how he aged on celluloid between the late1930s and the films he returned to, starting with 'It's A Wonderful Life' in 1946. In his case, he achieved greatness, with or without it being thrust upon him.

Perhaps the significance of one's impact on others can only be truly measured after a person has departed this world. If that is indeed the case, then the fact that we never stop reading about Moshe Rabeinu's life and how he was the human conduit that led our ancestors out of Egypt to the banks of the Jordan River is testament to his achievements.

Being born great might be hard to quantify in others. Achieving greatness is no doubt easier but if all else fails, then perhaps our only path is through having it thrust upon us. If the result is that we impact the lives of others to the kind of degree demonstrated by the aforementioned people, then we can surely attest to the veracity of William Shakespeare's timeless quote.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parshat Vayechi: It’s All About Us!

I recently thumbed through my old primary school report book. Do you remember those?

Junior 4 (the final report), when I was 11 years old and seven months.

Arithmetic: Beginning to develop some thought but needs much guidance.

Geography: A slow worker. Tends to answer without sufficient elaboration.

Writing: Letters not well formed.

Craft: Average. Is satisfied with rather mediocre results. (Which is my favourite comment so far).

Reading: Loves to read and reading aloud, is very expressive.

My love of reading was not news to either myself or my parents, for in Infants 2 (when I was seven) my teacher wrote:

"In reading, Claude has certainly shown very good progress and now enjoys reading his books".

I may have been an 'F' student when it came to woodwork and needlecraft. Maths was never a strong point but from early on I discovered books and as a result the pleasure that emanates from reading them - and I haven't stopped lapping them up!

I have been reading a great deal recently as a result of not being able to listen to music since my mother's passing in April. My sister-in-law, Louise, recommended Amazon's Audible service which allows you to listen to audiobooks for a modest monthly fee. I haven't looked back since and, as a result, have had the opportunity to hear a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, ranging from wonderful 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' and 'Remains of the Day' to the extremely moving ‘Telephone at the Edge of the world’, which is simply unforgettable.

However, if I had to identify a single genre that I have returned to repeatedly since my childhood, it would definitely consist of biographies.

I used to think that writing an autobiography was the height of conceit. After all, is a person so important that they feel they need to share their inner secrets with the rest of the world? I suppose that you might level this charge at a young person who has yet to live their life through to a decent age, but could one really accuse a genius like Charlie Chaplin or the 'Last Fighting Tommy', Harry Patch, of being self-absorbed? Both men had a story to tell and in doing so, they shared a part of history that enables us to connect to the past. Indeed, in my own family a great-aunt wrote a book about her childhood which sheds a fascinating light on my maternal grandfather's very early years in Sydney.

In fact, my own mother wrote her memoirs for my children which they will be able to share with my grandchildren, Please Gd. You may be wondering where all of this fits in with this week's Parsha or within the Torah itself, so let me explain.

Vayechi begins with the following verse:

Genesis 47:

(28) Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, so that the span of Jacob’s life came to one hundred and forty-seven years.

We have reached the end of the road for the Patriarchs.

Yaakov is about to die and he wants to leave a legacy for the next generations who have taken on the name of Bnei Yisrael - the children of Israel. It is the only Parsha in the Torah that continues on from the last one without the introduction of a new paragraph - it is literally 'stom- closed’. Our Rabbis explain that this is because, with the death of Jacob and the settlement of his family in Egypt, a long, closed period of suffering was not far away (as we shall soon discover in Sefer Shemot (Exodus)).

I would like, however, to focus on a different interpretation of the first verse, as per Chizkuni, a 13th century French Rabbi and Commentator. He writes:

"...(that) It was only during Yaakov's last seventeen years in Egypt that his mind was at rest and not beset by serious worries of one kind or another. In fact, this whole verse has been inserted in the Torah as a compliment to Joseph who was the cause of Yaakov’s last seventeen years being happy years. During those 17 years he repaid his father who had sustained him for the first seventeen years of his life, by providing for him during the last 17 years of his life. He had been seventeen years old when he had been sold."

We are told that Yaakov 'lived' in Egypt.

According to Chizkuni, there is 'living' and 'living'. We can choose to live our lives and accept each day as it greets us or we can 'live' our lives in the knowledge that this is indeed the best time in our life. Yaakov really appreciated what was happening to him. He was reunited with his beloved son and for those final seventeen years, life was really 'as good as it gets'.

A well written and absorbing biography is much more than a chronological record of a person's life. It allows us to understand what makes them 'tick'. To share in their joys and also empathise when life is not so rosy.

I still recall many of the biographies and autobiographies that I have read and, for the most, the way their subjects faced the challenges in their lives, were inspiring and revelatory. My abiding interest in history and how it impacts on human beings drives my fascination with their life stories and this is also where the Torah shines its Divine light, sometimes at its brightest.

Our Rabbis tell us that there are seventy aspects to the Torah (Shivim Panim laTorah) which can be interpreted in many different ways. On the one hand, it is a guide on how to live an ethical life, as witnessed by the deeds of our Patriarchs, Matriarchs and their descendants such as Moshe, Aharon, Miriam and Joshua. On the other, a great deal of space is given to detailing our complex laws and providing a template for creating a just and moral society. And on the other hand, it presents a narrative of our history, starting with the creation of the world and ending with the death of Moshe.

Sefer Bereishit acts as a biography of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah and those people associated with them and this feeds into the other four books. We read about their strengths and weaknesses, personal successes and failures. We learn of their joy and sorrow and of the lessons they learned, sometimes in a very painful manner.

Following on, I would even venture to say that the Torah as a whole, amongst its other glorious achievements, manages to be a biography of the Jewish people. For if you want to understand what makes us, well, ‘us’ - dip inside our Holy Book and see for yourself.

Amongst my very favourite books, The Torah (and its two companions, Neviim and Ketuvim) are at the very top of my Biographical list.

Happy reading!

Shabbat Shalom

Parshat Vayigash: Yehudah

Last Monday, on the last day of Chanukah, my friend Lenny passed away before he’d reached his fifth decade.

Whilst I refer to him as a friend, I didn't really know him that well but one thing I can say unequivocally is that I loved him and what's more, I know that Lenny loved me.

Lenny loved everyone.

Yehudah Leib ben Shlomo zl was a very special individual. His second name of 'Leib' is Yiddish for 'Lion'. He was literally named the 'Lion of Judah'. Taking this one step further, the word 'Lev' in Hebrew means 'heart' and I couldn't think of a more appropriate moniker to describe him.

However, on Shabbat, we are not allowed to give hespedim, eulogies and so in his blessed memory, I would like to respectfully dedicate the following:

Genesis 44:

בראשית מ״ד:י״

(יח) וַיִּגַּ֨שׁ אֵלָ֜יו יְהוּדָ֗ה...

(18) Then Yehudah approached him...

These words appear at the very beginning of the Parsha and they are informing us that something extraordinary is going to take place. What makes the speech that he is about to give all the more remarkable lies in the journey that Yaakov's fourth son has taken to reach this point in his life.

Before we can understand its impact, let me quote some earlier verses regarding Yehudah's behaviour and personality.

Firstly, regarding the sale of Joseph (from Parshat Miketz):

(26) Then Yehudah said to his brothers, “What do we gain by killing our brother and covering up his blood? (27) Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let our hand not be upon him. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh.” His brothers agreed.

Yehudah saved Joseph's life and that is commendable, but the Ramban adds the comment that in selling him to the Ishmaelites, “Who would take him off to a distant country, their deed could not be discovered,” his motives weren’t as pure as they seemed at first.

Genesis 38:

(1) About that time Yehudah left his brothers and camped near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah.

Rashi explains that when the brothers returned to their father and saw the grief they had caused, they repented for their sins and blamed Yehudah for having suggested the idea of the sale. As a result, they removed his leadership position from within the brotherhood.

A few years later, Yehudah is tricked by the righteous Tamar and upon realising her ruse, the Torah informs us:

(24) About three months later, Yehudah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot; in fact, she is with child by harlotry.” “Bring her out,” said Judah, “and let her be burned.”

When she produces his signet ring, cloak and staff, he learned that:

(26) Yehudah recognized them, and said, “She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he was not intimate with her again.

Keeping in mind these verses, let us look at some of Yehudah's speech to Joseph.

Genesis 44:

(19) My lord asked his servants, “Have you a father or another brother?” (20) We told my lord, “We have an old father, and there is a child of his old age, the youngest; his full brother is dead, so that he alone is left of his mother, and his father dotes on him.”

Note the language that Yehudah uses to describe the relationship between his father and brother.

Let us continue....

(21) Then you said to your servants, “Bring him down to me, that I may set eyes on him.” (22) We said to my lord, “The boy cannot leave his father; if he were to leave him, his father would die.” (23) But you said to your servants, “Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, do not let me see your faces.”

Further on, he concludes with the plea:

(33) “Therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers. (34) For how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me? Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father!”

We are witnessing a complete volte-face on the part of Yehudah. The same man profited from Joseph's sale, having recently eaten bread with the others whilst their 17-year-old brother languished in a pit. This individual lost his revered place in the pecking order and faced humiliation at the hands of Tamar. He is now offering himself in lieu of their youngest brother.

One can understand the next verse clearly:

Genesis 45:

(1) Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” so there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

Yehudah, the predecessor of King David and the Davidic Line, the man whose descendant would be the Messiah, demonstrated why he deserved this honour. It is not easy to admit your mistakes and to learn the hard lessons that life throws at you, sometimes ceaselessly. It takes someone of a unique character to effect such a change in his personality. This week's hero, Yehudah Leib, Judah the Lionheart was such a man.

His namesake, my friend Lenny, Yehudah Leib would have done anything to help and protect other people in the same way that Yehudah stepped forward to shield young Benjamin and by extension, his elderly father back in Canaan.

May we all be blessed with the memories of both men, and may we be witness to the coming of the Messiah, may he arrive bimhera beyameinu - speedily in our days.

This is for you, Lenny - with all my love.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parshat Miketz (Shabbat Chanukah): The Dreidel

Isn't Chanukah wonderful?

We light our Chanukiyot to remind us of the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days.

We eat latkes and donuts to remind us of the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days (and wonder if the real miracle of Chanukah is the fact that after 2000 years of lining our arteries with cholesterol, we are still around as a living, breathing nation)!

We give presents to kids because of that other festival and that's partly why some people give Chanukah gelt, to differentiate it from its gentile neighbour.

And we spin a dreidel because?...now that's a very good question!

Why do we spin the dreidel?

Tradition tells us that the Jews used dreidels when they were suffering under the harsh rule of the Selucids in Ancient Syria led by the evil Antiochus IV known as Epiphanes (which means 'the illustrious one', a complete misnomer).  As they were forbidden from studying Torah Shel Baal Peh (the Oral Law) they used to keep these spinning tops handy in case one the guards raided their learning sessions.  If this happened, they quickly started spinning their dreidels.  This custom has been refined to the present day when your boss walks into the room and you hide the eBay page you've been watching over the last two hours with a complicated spreadsheet) - although you can't do that in teaching!

However, there is a school of thought that claims dreidels were in fact developed from spinning tops called Teetotums that were found in the Greek and Roman Empires and brought to England by the Romans.  They eventually found their way into Germany where the Jews adopted them as a Chanukah toy.

The Latin letters:

·        A for aufer (take from the pot);

·        D for depone (put into the pot),

·        N for nihil (nothing) and

·        T for totum (take all)

were Judaized with the letters Nun, Gimmel, Hay and Shin from the verse (Nes Gadol Haya Sham – A great miracle happened there) into Yiddish for:

·        Nun (Nisht or  you get nothing or put into the pot;

·        Gimmel - Gantz: the winner takes it all;

·        Hay, you only get halp/half

·        and Shin, stel ein - you need to put into the pot.

This was then developed into the more modern Israeli version where the Shin which represents Sham meaning ‘there’ was replaced 'Pay' to represent 'Po' meaning ‘here’ as the miracle took place in situ, ie ‘A great miracle happened here.’

However, I would like to add another dimension to the story by considering the dreidel as a very Jewish toy.  In fact, it is quite relevant to Chanukah and possibly to our history as a whole.

Look at the shape of the dreidel.  It is small and is operated by spinning on a point.  Round and round it goes appearing as though it is steady but as we know, it eventually loses its balance and lands on one side.  Is that not our story?  Look at how we have been spun throughout history, cast from country to country, made to lose our stability and yet still we continue spinning in the hope that if we fall, we will pick ourselves up and restart our journey.

Sometimes, we have become giddy from all the turning and shaking.  We feel as though we have lost our bearings but nevertheless, each generation starts again, faces an uncertain environment and moves on merrily, sticking to our ground, like a dreidel that spins and spins on the same point.  It might skip to another part of the table, but it still spins.

The Seleucids had no desire to physically wipe us out.  Instead, they tried to remove our spiritual centre, to Hellenize our culture and form us in their own beautiful Greek moulds.  They spun us around and around, trying to force us to assimilate into their culture by sullying our beloved Temple and removing the deep spirituality that kept us grounded.  They were our dreidel-meisters.

The Maccabees came along and stopped the 'dreidel', helped us to stabilize ourselves and remind us that for a while, we didn't need to spin any more.  We were in our own home, under our own leaders, reclaiming our Jewish heritage and consigning the spinning top from the receptacle that we had been imprisoned inside, to a child's toy.  Instead of being spun, we were now in charge of our own destiny.

The miracle of Chanukah, which means 'dedication' was our opportunity to transform ourselves from being the victims to dedicating ourselves to shining our light to the other nations.  That is why today, Chanukah is one of the most beloved festivals not only amongst Jews but throughout the world.

It is far more than the Jewish equivalent of Christmas.  In many ways, it is one of THE key festivals, certainly with regard to how our neighbours view our culture.

The latkes and donuts are tasty.  The gifts are delightful and the dreidel is still fun to play.  After we've stored them away for the year, it is the menorah, the symbol of our Temple and our worship of Gd and our oldest Jewish symbol which shines brightly - not only for these eight days but for the other 357 days of the year for it represents the very best of what is means to be Jewish.

Happy Chanukah, Rosh Chodesh and Shabbat Shalom!