Parshat Vayeshev  25 Kislev 5763, 30 November 2002

Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Vayeshev - Hanukkah    Genesis 37:1- 40:23

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - Tell me your dreams, and I'll tell you who you are; tell me who stands at the center of your dreams, and I'll tell you who stands at the center of your life! The Bible - as well as the Talmudic Sages (B.T. Berakhot, Ninth Chapter), William Shakespeare, (l'havdil) and Sigmund Freud - recognize the fact that one's dreams are the clue to understanding one's personality. And so it is with Father Jacob, and so it is with his son Joseph; indeed, if we desire an insight into the tragically bitter sibling conflict between Joseph and his brothers, we'd best search for the reason by analyzing Joseph's dreams, the focus of their enmity.

Joseph dreams two dreams: in one he sees his brothers' sheaves of grain bowing down to his sheaves of grain, and in the second he dreams of the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down to him. There are two distinct elements in each of these two dreams: the first is earth, agriculture oriented, and the second is heaven, cosmic oriented. These are precisely the two elements which previously informed father Jacob's dream when he left his ancestral home: a ladder standing on the earth whose top reached to the heavens. Superficially the dreams of father and son appear similar - but the differences speak volumes providing the key to the brother's hatred.

Father Jacob dreamed one dream: a ladder uniting heaven and earth, with ascending descending angels creating the bridge between the spiritual and material realms. The Almighty stands upon the ladder, promising to give Israel to Jacob and his descendants - as well as to return the patriarch to his homeland. The obvious message of the dream is that the Land of Israel is the connective point between heaven and earth, and that G-d is the "central being" who guarantees the land of Israel to the children of Israel. (Genesis 28:12-16).

This dream or vision of Jacob is the fundamental mission of the Israelites, his children. The Rabbinic Sages cite a fascinating difference of opinion in which the Academy of Shammai argues that the heavens were created first (Genesis 1:1), the Academy of Hillel argues that the earth was created first (Genesis 1:2), but Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai declares, "Let them both stand together!" The task of Torah, by sanctifying the physical, is to unite heaven and earth, to bring the spiritual dimension of the Divine into the kitchen by means of the laws of Kashrut, into the bedroom by means of the laws of family ritual purity and into the market place by means of the laws of business relationships (Hoshen Mishpat).

And the land of Israel is the most obvious unifier of the heavenly and earthly domains. After all, the laws of tithing of agricultural produce (t'rumot and maasrot), the Sabbatical year when the land must lie fallow and whatever grows on it must be permitted to anyone who takes it, the Jubilee year when the land returns to their original owners literally sanctify the very land of Israel and express the spiritual Divinity within the soil of the material earth. Even more to the point, the Almighty will actually dwell on earth when the Holy Temple of Jerusalem fulfills its function of serving as a beacon to all the nations of the world and teaching them at least the seven Torah laws of morality; at that time, when "from Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem, nation shall not lift up sword against nation and humanity will not learn war anymore... The Knowledge of G-d will fill the earth as the waters cover the seas (Isaiah 2:3,4; Isaiah 11:9). This will truly be a fulfillment of the Biblical challenge, "Let them build for Me a Temple so that I may dwell in their midst" (Exodus 25:8).

Joseph, on the other hand, has an entirely different dream, despite the apparent similarity of the earth and the heavens appearing in his vision as well. Joseph dreams not one but rather two distinct dreams: the first is clearly agriculturally oriented, dealing as it does with sheaves of grain; when we remember that, while Israel may have been a good source of grazing land for shepherds, it was the more advanced Gift-of-the-Nile Egypt which served as the center of farming activities and crop production, we realize that Joseph is apparently dreaming of leaving his ancestral Israel for the greener and more sophisticated pastures of Egypt! Joseph's second dream takes him even farther away than Egypt, catapulting him onto the arena of the entire cosmos. And in both of Joseph's dreams, it is not G-d who stands center-stage but rather Joseph; it is Joseph, not G-d, who is venerated and worshipped by both earthly produce and heavenly luminaries! Is it any wonder that "his brothers hate him even more because of his dreams" (Genesis 37:9) and his father "lashes out at him" (Genesis 37:10)?!

Fascinatingly enough, the clash between Hebraism and Hellenism - which plays out in the Festival of Hanukkah which we begin to celebrate on the Sabbath of Vayeshev - parallels this very contrast between the visions of Jacob and young Joseph. Whereas Hebraism demands that G-d the creator formed the human being in his image and that we "must walk in G-d's ways" of compassion, loving kindness and truth- that G-d must stand at the center of our universe - Hellenism with its pantheon on Mount Olympus formed the gods in the image of human beings and declared "man as the measure of all things" (Heraditus). The sculptor Praxitatles saw the human image as ultimate perfection as it was, and the chorus of Sophocles' play Antigone sings out that "although many are the wonders of the universe, (deina, the Greek for our Hebrew nora), nothing is as wondrous as the human being!" G-d is the center of the Hebraic universe, while man is the center of the Greek cosmos.

And happily, an older and wiser Joseph corrects his earlier misconceptions. When standing before Pharoah, Joseph insists that it is G-d who is responsible for all of his dream interpretations, "It has nothing to do with me: G-d will answer in accordance with Pharoah's welfare" (Genesis 41:16). And at the end of his life, realizing that the land of Israel is the eternal home of his people, Joseph's final request of his family is that "when G-d will surely remember you, and brings you from this land (of Egypt) to the land He has sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob..., you shall bring back my bones from this place." (Genesis 50: 24, 25).

Shabbat Shalom.

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