This Shabbat Message is dually dedicated.
First, it is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Aimee Irshay Gerace, z”l, my friend and classmate, who passed fifteen months ago at the age of 40 after a valiant battle with breast cancer.
It is also dedicated to the residents of Greater Los Angeles, who are preparing to spend this Shabbat in peril from a multitude of wildfires. In particular, we hold in our hearts those who call Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center their spiritual home. The building of PJTC was destroyed by the Eaton fire earlier this week. As a sad coincidence, Rabbi Gerace served PJTC for six years as their education director before her passing.
May the memory of those who have passed bless us, and may those in need of strength and hope find it in these difficult times.
“zl” of blessed memory
The book of Genesis is a book of generations. We count ten generations from Creation and the stories of Adam and Eve to the generation of Noah. We count ten generations from Noah, a man righteous in his generation, and the flood to the birth of Abraham. Then the book slows down, and tells us the story of each generation, and how they interact with each other.
We read about Abraham and Sarah, and Hagar, and Ishmael and Isaac. We learned how the animus and jealousy that Sarah felt toward Hagar prompted her to implore Abraham to send them off, rupturing his relationship with his son.
Then Abraham ruptured his relationship with his other son, Isaac, and his wife Sarah, when he demonstrated his willingness to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God on Mount Moriah. Despite his acts of generosity, graciousness, and kindness done before and after this episode, neither Sarah nor Isaac spoke to Abraham again.
Abraham did fulfill his responsibility and find a wife for Isaac, and soon after he and Rebekah were wed, Abraham died. In a final act of honor and grace, Isaac and Ishmael joined one another to bury their father.
Soon after Isaac and Rebekah welcomed twin boys, Jacob and Esau. They quarreled so badly in Rebekah’s womb, bringing her so much pain, that she wondered to God if her life was worth it. Thus began their life of wrangling and strife. First, Jacob convinced a famished Esau to trade his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, and then he conspired with their mother Rebekah to hoodwink their father Isaac into giving Jacob, Esau’s blessing of the firstborn. For decades Jacob lived in fear for his life that Esau would exact his revenge.
One might think that this fear would set Jacob on a path of seeking to cultivate strong, healthy relationships among his sons, but alas. He was blessed with many, many opportunities- being the father of twelve sons- but instead Jacob made it clear to eleven that the oldest of his favorite wife, Joseph the son of Rachel, was his favorite. He indulged Joseph’s proclamations of supremacy, and rewarded him with a beautiful, striped coat, celebrating his elevated status among his brothers.
Joseph’s brothers seized on an opportunity to rid themselves of his haughtiness and their father’s preference, resolving first to kill but relenting to merely sell Joseph into servitude. They deceived their father, bringing that precious coat dipped in blood, telling him that Joseph had been eaten by a savage beast.
When we think about these generations of increasing paternal, filial, and fraternal strife laid out end to end like this, is really is staggering. How they were able to survive – as a small family in a world that had no reason to treat them with any care or concern, is really astounding. The Torah reminds us that in each generation God offered the blessing that they would become the progenitures of a great nation, and without that blessing they probably would not have survived, because for our biblical ancestors, generational trauma was just a family thing.
My friend, Rabbi Aimee Irshay Gerace, z”l, studied the stories of these generations, and added to them an interesting observation from the field of family therapy and family systems. Families can often be wonderful places to learn how to love, to support, to grow together, and pursue joy and happiness in relationships with those closest to us. But, in other circumstances, we can learn from our parents, or our siblings, or our extended relations, wonderful lessons of how not to behave, how not to cultivate meaningful, lasting relationships. In her teaching, she often would credit the stories of the Book of Genesis and wonderful lessons of what not to do, and there is value in that too.
What makes the Book of Genesis, and the story of our ancestors, so beautiful, despite all the pain, is what happens at the very end, in the next generation. Joseph and his brothers were reunited in Egypt, and then Jacob journeyed down to be with them too. They kissed and made up, and in the portion this week, Vayechi, Joseph and his brothers prepare for Jacob to pass away.
In his final scene, Jacob has his son Joseph with him, and with them Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Menasseh. While Genesis has made father-son scenes, this grandfather-son/father-son/grandson scene is unique. As Jacob offers a blessing to the lads, he offers his right hand to the younger, Ephraim. Joseph objects, fearful that this privileging of the younger brother might perpetuate another generation of brotherly jealousy. Jacob insists, but Menasseh, the older brother, demonstrated a magnanimity that he may have learned from Rabbi Gerace; he learned not to do what his father, and his father, and his father before him, had done. Instead, Menasseh was satisfied with the blessing from his grandfather, that he too would become a great people, even if his brother’s would be greater.
Menasseh taught us a beautiful lesson that lives on in our tradition. In Pirkei Avot we learn, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with their portion.” Rather than live a life of jealousy, of wanting what others have, of measuring ourselves against the success of others, Menasseh taught us that our validation comes only from ourselves. We can choose to be rich, when we can be satisfied when we have plenty.
As we look across the nation at the thousands of households who lost everything this week, my prayer for them is that in the coming days, weeks, and months, they can find the strength to rebuild their lives, and be able to find the wealth that comes from contentment that they had at Shabbat.
My prayer for us is that we feel and acknowledge the riches we already have.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Greg Weisman
