THE HEBREW PATRIARCH’ MESSAGE

 

T H E

 

H E B R E W

 

P A T R I A R C H S’

 

M E S S A G E

 

 

by  Professor

 

HENRI BARUK

 

de l’Académie Nationale de Médecine

 

 

in collaboration with

 

Mr Georges and Mrs Jaqueline BENTATA

Mr Alain and Mrs Geneviève D. DESAINT

Mr Gérard TOUITOU

 

 

Translated from French by

 

Geneviève Deborah Desaint

 

 

Original title :

LE MESSAGE DES PATRIARCHES HEBREUX

Editions Colbo 19

 

I                                                    In memory of

Mrs Shoshanah Miriam Baruk

born Sorano

deceased in Paris, 25 Nissan 5748,

my lamented spouse.

 

 

II                  In homage to our dear friend

the great painter Benn,

marvellous illustrater of the Psalms

(in memoriam)

Painting by Benn

 

“Grace an Truth have joigned

Tsedek and Peace Kiss together.”

(Ps 85,11.)

 

III

 

PREFACE

 

 

This  “Message of the Patriarchs” owes its birth to Professor Henri Baruk, a Member of the Académie              Nationale de Médecine. Here is the condensed form of the weekly meditation pursued in common with the           help of the rabbinic commentators and the Midrach. It is focused on the sabbatical sections comprised in              the Book of Genesis which starts, as everyone knows, from the creation of the world to the death of                     Joseph and his contemporaries.

Reading such a book, we cannot help being filled with wonder. By itself it constitutes the most edifying           illustration of the following verses of Psalm 92: “The Righteous flourishes alike the palm-tree, like                       the cedar in Lebanon it never stops growing. Planted in the house of the Eternal, they shall flourish in the           courts of our God… In old age they still bear fruit. Full of sap and vigour they proclaim: the                               Eternal is upright, in the Lord there is no iniquity”. From the very first page indeed we are struck by the            same intact scientific vigour, this fecundity, this dynamism and this fervour Professor Baruk placed                      in the service of the holy cause of man, and that make up the greatness and unity of his works and of his               life entirely dedicated to the reign of Tsedek.

This fight, Professor Baruk has carried it on with his books and with his speeches, everywhere, in Saint             Maurice, at the University, at the Academy, investing all his time and energy, always ready to give his                assistance to the mighty in high society as well as to the most humble people, with total selflessness and a             sense of the humane that has seldom been equalled.

This ideal was the ideal of the prophets of Israel following Moses and the exceptional credit of which               was to make of Abraham’s vocation the whole reason for living of the people of Israel. Alas, nothing was             more distorted than the very message of our first Patriarch.

More than ever, it is necessary to remind that if Abraham was singled out by the Eternal, if he had the            extraordinary privilege of becoming a blessing for all the peoples of the earth, it is essentially – the                       Torah itself says it to us – because he had found out and taught “God’s way (which consists in) putting into         practice Charity and Justice”. These virtues are less of attributes than the very definition of God for us                men. Faith and morality are just the two aspects of a single entity. Both of them are absolutes, each                   making sense in connection with the other only. The God of Israel is doubly universal, because on                       the one hand He alone is God, and on the other hand the way that leads to Him any human nature –                     whatever his language, his colour or even his belief – is morality, the only universal value, the monopoly            of which noone has. So to God’s unity corresponds the unity of mankind nothing could ever prevail                     against. Now if our poor world goes drifting off, if it is unable to make the least plan, if peace subsists                owing to the balance of terror only, it is because for this unlimited universalism and for the meditation of             moral values, quite particular credos have been substituted. These credos no longer concern God Himself,          but human beings who exclude from future bliss anyone refusing to acknowledge them. Hence a flaw in               civilization such as Auschwitz, of which we cannot assert it belongs to a completely bygone past. Either             we shall come back to Abraham’s ethical monotheism, and the unconditional, definite respect for the                    eminent dignity of the human person will possibly be the supreme law of individuals as well as of States,             or we will persist in trying to impose the whole mankind dogmas that speak of themselves neither to reason           nor to conscience, and the present evil will just worsen.

 

Meyer JAIS

Former Chief Rabbi of Paris

 

 

2                                  INTRODUCTION

 

It is the Hebrew Patriarch’s message – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – that had the Divine Spirit’s inspiration              come on earth. Thus came the value of mutual aid and charity, the real signification of the evolution of                human course of events after their result under the influence of justice and injustice; the specific laws of             human societies in what makes them different from animal societies, and finally the components of the                   Science of Peace.

* * *

 

Above all the Hebraic Bible and the Torah(1) warn against idolatry. What is idolatry? It is the deification         of instruments to the detriment of the mind that uses these instruments. For example medical idolatry                   consists of considering the sick as an object and not as a subject. This trend ends up in disregarding his                cries and sufferings to see but a to-be-repaired object that will be rejected into incurability if there is no                know-how.

The distinction between the curable and the incurable originated in Germany in the last century. It was             fought against by Parchappe but it came to nazism and the massacre of people declared incurable. In this              perspective, the doctor assumes God’s role as if he were the master of future.

On the contrary and according to the Patriarchs and the Torah’s message, the doctor is to be considered          as a “neeman verahaman” man, that is to say a reliable, charitable man who has guts. So he must love                  his patient according to the way: “you shall love your neighbour as

yourself”.

Obviously this does not mean renunciating techniques, but these very techniques become mere                          instruments in the service of their using minds.

The doctor’s mind must be able to synthetise the  story of the disease with the results of the exams.                   History constitutes a major factor. Let us remind that the Hebrew Bible above all makes up a history book.            Now, to restore the history of the illness, one must speak to the patient in a spirit of sympathy. Thus we            understand Ibn Ezra’s commentaries on Genesis; so he writes: “the noble part of man, thou will call it the            heart”. This meets Isahia’s proclaiming: “to bring the humble the good news, and to dress the broken                   hearts, here is the aim”!

But this essential sentimental ardour must be fused with close verifi cation of Truth. In a word, Charity is          to be coalesced with Justice, and Faith with impartial Science. The point now is Unity of heart and                      intelligence, which is embodied in the Hebrew precept “hessed ve emet”, or grace with Truth.

This submission to Truth goes along with great modesty, much devotion and great demand for self-                     rigour.

Such an observance must be true doctors’. The history of medicine has been illustrated by the fight of               impartial observers against Pinel’s “doctrinarians”, those he explained who had constructed in advance a               doctrine they would impose through propaganda.

Such is the case with Freud and psychoanalysis. Freud assumed that any kind of neurosis is the result of           an inhibited instinct which has been forced back into the unconscious, from which he started studying                 dreams. Unfortunately Freud only perceived the lower unconscious and ignored the upper one so well                 exemplified in the Hebrew Bible. The higher unconscious was like an emanation of the Divine Spirit                     Creator of the Universe manifesting Himself in the dream, chiefly in prophetical dreams like Joseph’s.

 

 

3        Freud deliberately disregarded all this tradition, resuming all the data of Greek paganism against it, such          as the divinisation of animal instincts and the denial of the moral conscience. He accordingly                                entitled his last book “The man Moses”, and related it to the adepts of the Golden Calf(2).

The revelation of the One God was made to the Patriarchs largely through dreams, and with the                        interpretation of events in the sight of the final restoring of true Justice.

According to Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman), this Revelation occured as the one of an almighty                 God revealing Himself indirectly like through a mirror (asklaparia).

Further revelation to Moses was a direct one followed with the miraculous divine intervention in the              events and the going down of God on earth. This revelation associates might with charity, but on                        condition man follow the divine commandments with the utmost modesty, otherwise sanctions will be                    terrible.

This is why an extensive study of the message of the Hebrew Patriarchs is of so great present-day interest          at a time when humanity dazzled by its mechanical improvements runs the risk of being intoxicated with             pride and of forgetting the teachings of the Divine Morals without which humanity could no longer                       continue to exist.

 

 

Notes

 

1. The Torah, that is to say the five books of Moses called Pentateuch that open the Hebrew Bible.

 

2. Regarding the Golden Calf, see “La Psychanalyse devant la médecine et l’idolâtrie”, 1 vol. pub. Zikaron – Colbo 1978 and Israel Doryon, “Freud et le monothéisme hébreu” translated by H. Baruk and                M. Weisengrun, pub. Zikaron – Colbo, 1972.

 

 

4                      I – Bereshit : in the beginning

 

GENESIS

 

 

The Hebrew Bible’s first book is entitled  “In the beginning”. It refers to the creation of the world.                 Rachi qotes Rabbi Itzhak who wonders why we go back to the creation of the world. He thinks it is in                 response to the nations who would criticize the Jewish people, saying “you are thieves since you con-                  quered the lands of the seven peoples of Palestine.And to this we can reply, following Rabbi Itzhak: God            who created Heaven and Earth distributed the lands in accordance with his will and he assigned this                    land to the Jewish people. Ramban (Rabbi Mosche ben Nachman) reminds us of this commentary but he                goes further and considers that the negation of Creation is the very negation of God.

The one who negates the creation is the denier of Essentiality, of the Iquar, that is to say of God. In                effect the Creation represents the superiority of spirit on matter and the necessity to take into account                  moral conscience that controls peace and the survival of humanity. Did the creation of the world surge ex            nihilo? The text says the earth was void, formless and desolate. It seems as if heaven and earth were                    but some sort of liquid magma engulfed in darkness.

Light was the first creation. Previous to it, the Divine spirit hovered at the surface of the abyss. This              first light however is divine light as the prayer for the benediction of the taleth addresses God: “for with              You is the spring of life and in Your light we see light. Keep Your grace for those who know You and               Your tsedek (justice-charity to the righteous. “So from the outset divine light stands for justice                              charity and heart-righteousness.

Later God was going to create  instruments to give light to the earth: the sun to illuminate the day and            the moon to light up the night these are but instruments God created. Those who adore these instru-                    ments instead of adoring the spirit that originated them areidolaters in Hebrew “ovdei corhavim                           oumazalot”: stars and fortune servants. Indeed the worshipping of stars entails the idea of determination               and fatality, and strips man of the responsability for his actions.Therefore idolatry comes down to  Greek            fatality (ananké)and destroys morals. Here lies an extreme danger with astrology and like supersti-                        tions the Torah very strongly forbids.

Modern times return to brain idolatry. Professor Grassé shows that from Darwin and Malthus it has              reduced man to animal, to an advanced monkey endowed with strength and intelligence but deprived of the          feeling for good and evil since he believes his brain conditions him. Babinski’s famous works ruined this              conception and restored the role of the personality, that is to say the soul. Our researches on biolo-                      gical and experimental catatonia led back to the conception that “the

soul of all flesh is in its blood!” (Leveticus, chapter XIX). The divine light created at the origin of the                 world, then replaced  by God-created instruments (the sun, the moon, the stars), is to come again at the               end of time, at the messianic period when the earth will no longer be lit up by the sun and the moon, but             by the divine light as in the beginning of the world. So we know what the Torah means from its opening.             This signification is stressed right away in Chedal’s Midrach when he writes: “the Torah was not given                only to the wise (harhamim) but to the people as a whole…” “therefore the issue of Creation was not told             in the Torah through philosophers”, adding “the Torah appeals to the intimacy of man’s heart” “bifnimiout            levav bnei adam”.

 

 

5      The Midrach Rabbah emphasizes the Torah represents an education. God is an educator like a father                who brings up his children. Moreover the Midrach Rabbah quotes verses in which we can find the word               “omen”, educator, like Mordechai omen of Esther, the myrtle “hadassah”, and like Moses the educator of           the Jewish people. The Midrach underlines there being two educators: the one who hates his pupil and                 advises him to follow any inclination of his, the other who loves his pupil and prompts him to take great            care over his behaviour. On that subject Abraham Even Chochane and Dov Yarden’s dictionary                           (Jerusalem, kiryat Sepher), defines “Satan” as an “accusing angel who urges men to sin in order to accuse             them in front of God later”.

 

*  *  *

 

The second day, the second stage marks the separation between the upper liquid mass and the under                 liquid mass.  The role of water appears to be very important and when waters and continents had separated          on earth, the continent would no longer be able to survive without the rain coming down from the sky and,           as the Midrach Tanhouma recalls it, “God sails on the wings of wind”.

 

*  *  *

 

Then comes the separation of the continent from the seas, and on the continent  the growth of the                      greenery and of plants that bear grain, each according to its specy. Here again is stressed the notion                     of identity which is essential in the Hebraic Bible 1.

Here is the third day, the third stage.

 

*  *  *

 

After comes the creation of lamps we told about: the sun, the moon  and the stars. Here is the fourth day.         Then arrives the creation of earthly animals and of man (first creation in God’s resemblance). This is the              sixth day.

Last comes the seventh and sacred day, the holy Chabbath, the

day’s rest.

The further text is the expression of the attempt of a covenant between  God and man, as man has already        been endowed with the power of dominating the whole nature. God starts a second creation of man;                     this creation is indicated by the word “vayetser”; it is an artistic creation and God breathes life into man             “Nichmat Haïm”, changing him into a living soul. This double creation of man is of great signifi-                         cance.

It shows that man is constituted of an animal life common to the whole nature , as well as of a divine life         in God’s resemblance  which affects the feeling of good and evil, justice and charity, that is to say the                  tsedek (nechamah).

This divine share Eve partly conquered is to give man his responsability and his covenant with God                thereafter. But God’s perspective of alliance with man is very soon going to be a failure  because of                     man’s revolt and pride.

Placed in the Garden of Eden (Gan Eden), man follows his wife’s advice and takes over good and bad;            therefore he becomes responsible, which finds expression in an immediate feeling of decency. Next God                prevents man from seizing the tree that gives life so that he will not be able to equal his creator fully.

Later Cain kills his brother out of jealousy.Eternal remorse torments him all his life long and it accounts           for divine punishment of crime; in Noah’s law it will be changed for death sentence in accordance with the           law “midah kenegued midah” (measure for measure).

In this way comes to light a capital notion of the Hebraic Bible: conscience rules over matter and                     instincts and remedies their excesses (the yetser hara).

 

 

 

6        Man appears to be distinct from the animal owing to his moral conscience, the divine part that is                    incorporated in him. The whole story of humanity is then open, which consists either of obedience or                  of revolt against conscience. Many generations after, revolt prevails and the rejection of conscience                    provokes violence, terrorism (hamas), immodesty (ervah) and corruption(chihet), as Radak (Rabbi David               Kimhi of Narbonne) showed.

So is brewing the flood generation! Adam  to Noah makes ten generations; Noah to Abraham is going to            make ten too.

Finally man and woman’s nature is made precise. Woman is beside him, by the side of him (ezer                     kenegdo), she helps at his side. Man needs his companion, a part of his flesh. “This is why man leaves his           father and mother and sticks to his wife (dovek-le-ichto) and they become a single flesh! (II-24.) So is                   sealed right away the role of the couple and of conjugal love!

At the term of this study let us remind that here the word “Creation” chiefly concerns the contribution of          the vivifying Spirit to preexisting lifeless matter on the one hand, to the specification of categories and to             the progression of animality towards humanity on the other hand. This is why the Bible constitutes the                  Book of humanity from the very beginning.

In his commentary of the Creation chapter, Ibn Ezra writes about that:”the noble part of man is called              heart”; noble-heartedness, devotion and love, therein lies the significance that man was wrought in God’s             image. This is why in the Song of Songs God’s love for his people is expressed in the form of conjugal                 love which is the representation of the highest signification of humanity.

 

 

To my beloved wife

(Suzanne Myriam in memoriam)

with my profound and eternal

love.

1. Baruk

 

CONJUGAL LOVE

AND THE LOVE OF GOD

 

Love stronger than disease

and greater than death

 

The Hebraic Bible underscores the part Providence plays through the events of life and particularly in              married life. Such is the case with Abraham’s servant who miraculously met Rebecca, Isaac’s wife later.              This is the reason why the Midrach says God rules over the formation of couples.

Wholly fulfilled conjugal love prefigures divine love. In this love the feeling is so deep that it illuminates         the whole life, and even meets the world to come. The Dibbuk episode really shows how eternal and                     indestructible this attachment is. Far from withering this flame, hardships just intensify it.

Human beings are too often judged from their wealth or might in our materialistic world. When someone        is stricken with illness and especially when he gets a disease that is considered as incurable, the                          unfortunate subject is too often sent to a so-called long duration hospital where in some way he is                         eliminated.

In true love on the contrary, the afflicted spouse is even more beloved, for experience has taught us that          behind the means of communication and expression, there remains a deeper personality that feels,                         vibrates and suffers!

 

 

7        Aphasia may be the cause of losing the power of speech. In Broca’s aphasia, the subject is no longer able          to talk but his inner language is preserved . In Wernicke’s aphasia, the inner language is disrupted                       and the subject utters distorted and even incomprehensible terms.

Such subjects look quite impaired for a superficial observer, whereas a living and vibrant personality is           outliving this alteration of the means of expression: we called it “deeper personality”. Indeed it                             represents “the human soul”, the “nechamah”.

Even in apparently profound psychosis such as in paranoid dementia in which thought and language                  seem incoherent and detached from reality, a long experience of psychiatry has taught us that a good                   contact can be established with this deeper personality through patience and sympathy and the patient’s                 state considerably improved.

Painful events enabled us to verify and live all the notions we have just explained. Our dear wife who             had been a physics teacher at the Camille Sée secondary school and had shown wonderful conscience,                  courage and devotion was suddenly struck down with aphasia and paralysis of her right arm. For ten years            and a half she stayed with us.

All through these years she remained quite lively, so happy as could be. She was surrounded with love             and her personality, her soul was left intact, living and vibrant to her last breath. Our love just felt more              fervid in this long trial that enabled us to feel and live the psalms in which God is ” by the broken                        hearts” 3.

This attachment to a suffering beloved wife partakes of divine love and we sense that although death has          bodies disappear, it leaves our love untouched, it simply elates it and our soul then raises  to the                         eternal world of souls. Whereas the loveless human being dies out like the animal the human being filled             with love rises to eternal life where he joins the beloved soul and feels the completeness of divine love.                    So love is stronger than disease and greater than death, but on condition love be subjected to Truth,              and Charity fused with Justice according to the 85 psalm “truth, grace and mercy have met. Tsedek                     (justice-charity have embraced”. This is why the Song of Songs (Chir Hachirim) which is perceived as the            holiest Book in the Bible, makes conjugal love similar to God’s love for his people 4.

 

Notes

 

1. It is this notion of “identity” Darwin criticized which is at the root of the present moral crisis according to Professor Grassé.

 

2. The divine Presence (“Cherhinah”) lies on the patient’s face!

 

3. Chir Hashirim Le Cantique des Cantiques. Pub. Colbo 1989 1vol. 247p.

 

4. Le Cantique des Cantiques by S. Sebaagh. The friends of POrat Yossef in Jerusalem in memory of Mrs Benzaquen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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8                                   II – NOAH –

 

 

 

God had made a covenant with the man he had created out of love as

the word “yetser” shows. This artistic creation is different from any

common creation (“baro”) used for all other living beings. Therefore

man was to represent the Divine Spirit on earth since he had been made

in God’s own image. What does God’s own image stand for?

Humanity is the specific character of the divine and it is opposed to

animality of the other living beings. Animality only strives for the

satisfaction of its instincts through force, violence and without any

concern for justice if need be. The weakening subjects are purely and

simply eliminated as we can learn from the works of veterinaries in

animal societies , especially with the poultry1. This way we must not

follow. This way dishonoured nazism. It is nevertheless true that the

Hebrew Bible respects the animal and the whole creation. What is more,

it is written: “God assists those who have fallen”, “God is by the side

of the broken-hearted”, “god cures and heals the sick”, “God delivers

the oppressed”.

Besides, the Divine Spirit is marked by charity as we have just re-

minded, but also by justice. This is tsedek, or justice-charity;

This justice singles out the righteous (the “tsadikim”) inspired by the

Divine Spirit from the wicked (the”rechaim”) moved by this animality

spirit we have just mentioned.

However if the wicked sincerely atones for his bad behaviour and acts

as a righteous man, then he makes”techouva”and God forgives him.

On the other hand, the unconditional forgiveness of the wicked –

ostensibly to placate them – is very dangerous, because it induces them

to persist in their bad behaviour, and to massacre or torture the

righteous, which was confirmed with Hitler and modern terrorists.

Another danger lies in turning one’s loving attention on the evil-

minded not to help them to reform but to allow oneself be contaminated

by them and finally to consecrate them.

We witnessed a woman who had such religious inclination and ended up

deceiving her husband with ex-convicts; she fiercely rejected her hus-

band into sickness, set her children against their father and destroyed

all the family in the most scandalous way. What is unusual in this case

is that the poor innocent husband, a victim overwhelmed with grief, has

become melancholic and just blames himself for what has happened, in-

stead of accusing his wife2. We see how inseperable charity and

justice must be.

This is why the word “hessed” meaning pity, charity, grace in Hebrew,

always goes together with the term “emet”, or truth. In short, charity

must not be blind; it must be enlightened by Truth and Justice. For

human infamy outmatches that of wild animals. A beast pounces on its

prey and goes to sleep appeased. The evildoer who unfairly destroys

his neighbour cannot find inner peace (chalvah) because he is bedeviled

by his conscience, the divine part which is embodied in his personality

As he cannot get rid of this inner accusation, he himself becomes an

accusator in search of new victims: here is the origin of”human

hatreds”.

Then spread slanders and false testimonies (“ed chequer”), evi-

dence of violence (“ed hamas”) that may result in a great amount of

victims. This is the reason why in the Hebraic tradition it is of so

much importance to develop the analysis of evidence (bediquat edim”),

the only basis for true justice; whereas if one lets oneself become

persuaded by a false testimony, one runs the risk of being the

accomplice of the crime.

This is why, as they left Egypt and entered the Holy Land between

mount Garizim and mount Hebal, and among other proclamations, the Jews

had to utter in a loud voice: “Cursed be the one who hits his neighbour

$*$

9      in the dark”.

These facts are still absolutely up-to-date, particularly in our

time of moral crisis. We made them objective with our “tsedek test”

that brings to the fore the part of false evidence. Moreover in the

psychiatric field it proves that real schizophrenia is a too often

wildly made diagnosis because it is based on the inconsistency of

speech that is but an instrument and it ignores the deeper persona-

lity. Real schizophrenia is not linked with the inconsistency of

speech, but with the disappearance of a sense of what is fair or

unfair. This is moral schizophrenia; it is one of the most serious

factors that may affect our society and it must be connected with the

“moral madness” Pritchard described in England.

Therefore we can understand how the first covenant God had made with

men was ruined and humanity could only be saved by Noah “a just and

upright man”, “tsadik ve tamim”, the only remaining just man at that

time. God saved him alone with his family so that he could engender a

new humanity of righteous men.This clearly shows that the divine

design is to generate upright men. Besides we shall see about Abraham’s

discussion that the righteous are those who sustain the life of human

society, whereas if the proportion of righteous is too low, society is

ruined.

It is then destroyed by violence (hamas) and terrorism. Violence

rises and spreads when tsedek is missing; this reads in the verse:

“vatimalè haaretz hamas”: ” the earth was full of violence!”. A second

phenomenom adds further to violence: the liberation of instincts and

the perversion of instincts. For this it is written: “each flesh had

tainted its way” (“hichhit col bassar et darco”). Commentators and

Midrachim have tried to be more specific about that corruption: the

Midrach implicates women who no longer observed the”nidah”laws (sexual

purity), that is to say who had sexual intercourse during their

periods3.The Midrach emphasizes the role of blood and of woman’s

monthly bleeding, a source of impurity.

Still graver is homosexuality the Torah so strenuously condemns that

fire and not water wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah. Experience proved that

the development of homosexuality within a society leads to its

deterioration and death as nazism has set the example. Following the

general present trend of revolt against prohibitions, Freud was instru-

mental in tolerating all instincts, even abnormal ones such as homo-

sexuality. This problem affects our age. The Midrach furthermore

comments that man on earth is a foreigner who owes God respect. He is

God’s “guer” for the earth belongs to God, not to man. If man lets

himself be intoxicated with pride, he thinks he is master on earth to

organize and exploit it as a source of profit and gratify his whims,

but in the end he destroys it. Our age should meditate on this comment.

 

All these problems exemplify a moral crisis, and they come under the

revolt against prohibitions as if there was neither good nor bad,

neither just nor unjust, as if everything was permitted. This is the

spirit of the 1968 rebellion. In this bias is the refusal of a head and

the idea of empowering the masses. We can now witness the aftermath of

this mindset in the university and chiefly in hospitals.

Hospital departments used to be run by a consultant who was strictly

selected through competitive examination. He was the department leading

light who practised what he was preaching, kept a close eye on the

smallest details, and used to train his pupils and his nurses staff.

Nowadays authority is too often exerted by the pupils themselves and

the head just supervises from far.

We now come to the fundamental problem of education which we dealt of

previously; there lies the crux of the Torah. In order to be worthy of

the name, man needs to be educated, so that he can behave according to

the divine principles, the principles of humanity. Or else he is like

 

 

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10      the animal giving free rein to his instincts, setting aside good and

bad and striving towards his pleasure and his advantage4. The result

of it is the collapse of society which, as Radak (Rabbi David  Kimhi of

Narbonne) underscored it, is stigmatized by”hamas”(violence, terrorism)

“ervah”(immodesty), and”chihet”(corruption). Here we meet again all the

characteristics of the flood generation and of all the crises of civi-

lisation.

Necessity of education is opposed to by the doctrine of the goodness

of nature; this doctrine stems from Hellenism and it has been resumed

by Rousseau. Even Socrates who has been idealized by his death

professes one should turn one’s attention to oneself, one should know

oneself to listen to the call of one’s nature. We can note however that

Socrate’s last Plato edited speech ends with the word “The God” to deo..

In his dialogue “The Banquet”, Plato himself seems to rehabilitate

homosexuality that used to be at dessert-time after the banquests. This

is why the Jews, after the Seder meal, do not have any dessert

(“afikomen”) to condemn the Greek tendency.

Plato has been idealized in modern philosophy; at the end of his life

he was closer to certain imperialistic tendencies as Professor Schuhl5

showed in his beautiful works on Plato! With regard to that subject,

let us remark that Freud himself turned towards hellenism and became

influenced by it and by Greek paganism that is reverberated all through

his works. In France, Anatole France partly resumed this paganism in

the “Corinthian Wedding”.

The socratic conception finally leads to obeying one’s nature and

one’s thoughts. Thus we can now see how psychoanalysis has developed.

This would-be therapeutic method ends in the cultivation of neurosis

and in the ruin of familial harmony.

 

***

 

After the flood, Noah and his family must reorganize humanity God

has forgiven, for God has made a covenant with the living beings: its

sign is the rainbow, and God has proclaimed he will never more resort

to the flood. Noah had kept the different species so that humanity

could reproduce. God renounced the infliction of the flood punishment

on man for he acknowledges that ” from the time he is young, the

impulse of man’s heart is evil “, the child not being yet reponsible.

This observation therefore implies we can but admit man’s bad instinct;

consequently education alone can set him to rights and improve him .

In advance God guarantees the continuation of nature, the course of

seasons, and again man who was to represent God on earth is given full

powers over animals and nature. The moahides laws Benhamazeg of Livour-

ne underscored as being minimal laws, recognize man’s right to eat meat

but they forbid him to eat the blood, for blood is the substratum of

life and to eat the blood that comes from an animal is to absorb its

life, that is to say to make one’s life from the one of an animal, to

“animalize oneself”. Murder is a second cardinal prohibition.

Whereas at the beginning with Caïn murder was punished by the immense

bedevilment of the moral conscience and the terrible everlasting

remorse, death is the penalty for murder at Noah’s time: “Whoever

spills man’s blood, his own blood he will have spilled by his fellow-

man.” A new covenant has been established between God and humanity; the

rainbow is its symbol. Human life becomes sacred and murder is fiercely

condemned. The Midrach puts great emphasis on this statute. Mosaic law

however distinguishes between real murder that is committed out of

hatred and “accidental murder” the burden of which is not on the

perpetrator’s soul; yet there has been death of man, and he is

sentenced to living in cities of refuge so as to escape the blood

avengers till the death of the Great Priest.

 

***

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11        What is the result of this new covenant going to be? Men are multi-

plying on earth according to the divine advice.

Noah’s three sons, Sem, Cham and Japhet are populating the earth but

one of the three, Cham, brings discredit on himself through making fun

of his father who has stripped naked under the effect of wine. He will

be punished for this lack of respect whereas both other sons respectu-

ously cover their father without looking at his nudity. Cham’s

offspring will be lowered for it and they will become the forefathers

of the seven peoples of Palestine who demeaned themselves through their

abuses, their immodesty, their corruption , and God handed them over to

the brought out of Egypt Jewish people.Simone Weil the philosopher and

the Arabs have made furious onslaught on this giving over, but they

forget the Holy Land was bestowed on Israel on condition he carry out

the divine commands. Here again we find the root importance of morals.

 

***

 

Alas! God’s second covenant with man turns out to be a failure: the

Tower of Babel. Intoxicated with pride, men want to conquer the sky,

hence deify themselves.

There we meet the worst of idolatries: the deification of man,

considered as the greatest danger of all in the Hebraic tradition.

Let us recall that Moses was refused the entering of the Holy Land just

because he only seemed to have claimed the miracle of the Meriba waters

Let us also remind of the ancient peoples who deified their leaders

such as the Pharaohs and the Emperors. The Jewish people has constantly

had to lead a terrible and uphill fight against the deification of a

man. The Tower of Babel attempt constitutes the most blatant

manifestation of what endangers humanity: pride. God cancelled this

danger out by mixing languages. The term Babel itself means mixture,

that is to say loss of identity. Babel is also the symbol of

destruction and malediction. Babylon, rendered illustrious by

Nebuchadnezar, was ruined and it has never been rebuilt up to now. The

Hebrew term “hitbolelout” comes from the root of Babylon and means loss

of identity,assimilation, mixture, and finally destruction. The

biblical text elaborates on the distribution of Noah’s descendants, not

only of Cham’s but of Japhet’s who gave birth to mighty peoples,

finally and above all of Sem’s which leads to Abraham for God dwells in

Sem’s tents and He will renew his covenant, God’s covenant with the

Jewish people6.

 

 

Notes

 

1. Sociologie des volailles by M. Fontaine (Annales Thérapeutiques

Psychiatriques). Tome III, page 172 and sequ. 1967. Presses Univ. de

France.

2. This melancholic reversal is frequent. The overwhelmed victim tends

to accuse herself, that is to say to give in to his oppressors.

3. It is the dead ovum which causes septicity for seven days after its

loss.

4. This nowadays currently used term “creativity” is unpleasant on the

phonetic level and very dangerous on the moral one: it has a tendency

to glorify the pre-eminence of man who takes away creation from God.

We know that this arrogance ruins morals and brings about the destruc-

tion of humanity everywhere.

5. M.Schuhl. Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque. 1949. Presses

Universitaires de France.

6. This covenant gave rise to considerable duties and aroused terrible

jealousies again demonstrated with the Hitlerian hatred that brought

atrocious repressions. The Jewish people stands for a standard, the

standard of tsedek. The Jewish people must carry on its mission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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12                        III – Lerh-Lerha: Go away!

 

 

ABRAHAM’S DEPARTURE

 

 

At the time he had created the world, God had made a covenant with

the man  he had created in his own image. Unfortunately man became

depraved and did not follow the divine teachings. The Midrach Tanhou-

mah points out the three great violations: to shed blood, to scorn the

homage of the first fruits, to spurn the light of Shabath. These three

mitsvoth that come under woman, build up the framework of the world:

despising the nidah laws leads to the contempt of blood, of murder;

scorning the homage of the first fruits entails the reject of God who

has rain fall so that the earth can be productive; spurning the light

of Shabath which is symbolized through the lightning of candles is

disregarding the divine light of justice-charity or tsedek, the prac-

tice of which is to bring about the messianic period. Then, neither

sunlight nor moonlight will any longer be of use for the world will be

illuminated with divine light, the light of justice, of submission to

truth and of peace when the righteous are sorted out of the wicked,

for, as the Midrach Rabbah recalls, Abraham did show the difference

between the men of evil and the upright, reminding God cannot forgive

both the righteous and the wicked if the latter do not mend their

ways.

Considering the failure of this first covenant with the whole huma-

nity, God turns to Abraham and to Sem’s descendants. As He no more

wants to resort to the destruction of humanity, God has recourse to

a messenger who will be at the origin of a people of priests, the

defenders of the Law,justice-charity, in front of all other peoples.

Abram is chosen and as the Midrach Rabbah writes, the world had no

head. It was like a city lacking a leader, devoid of order and left to

any of its excesses.

Indeed misfortunes are the outcome of the action of leaderless

masses without directives, and given up to their instincts and to an

uncontrolled malice. We saw it later with the revolt against Moses.

We experience it through the present moral crisis, which enhances the

basic role of Abraham.

Abram lived in a not far from Suze town called Ur-Kasdim, the capi-

tal of Persia in the country of the Sumerians.

From a material point of view this Sumerian civilization was quite

developed, whereas on the moral plane it was entirely corrupt.

The following words can be read in the big work dedicated to the

Graphic Art in the Near-East1, p. 1O9: “In Our, the weak and the

mighty starve to death:the old women and the old men who no more leave

their houses are burnt at the stake. Sleeping babies on their mother’s

breast are thrown into the water like fish, et caetera…” According

to Ramban (Ben Nahman) quoting the prophets, Our Kasdim’s girls had a

bad reputation. It is to be noted that Abram’s father had already left

Our Kasdim for Harân. Ramban recalls what is written: “I took your

father Abram from the other side of the river, hence the term Ivri”

(Hebrew). Therefore it is in Harân that Abram takes the order of going

to the land of Canaan. This departure marks the creation of a new

society submitted to the only God. As far back as then Abram and his

wife represent a group since it is written: “with the souls they had

formed at Harân”, which is interpreted as “converted by Abram and his

wife Sarah”.

Rachi writes “because they had them come in under the wings of the

Cherhinah (Divine Presence). Abram “megayer”, that is to say converts

the men, and Sarah the women”. It corresponds to some new formation,

to a new creation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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13        All this sidrah indeed is dominated by the prophecy about the future

generations stemming from the teaching of Abraham: “Abraham will be-

come the father of a great nation”. But the Midrach Tanhoumah points

out that man is entitled to receive the help of God only if he

is modest, only if he puts all the mitzvoth into practise and keeps

himself in the background in front of God.

“Because Abraham obeyed my voice” is written on account of this. It

does not concern posterity according to the flesh, but the conversion

of masses owing to the example of a new attitude. For this it is com-

monly recalled that Abraham is the father of the believers. His name

will be a benediction and his name will be great, so great that God

tells him to look up at the sky and count the stars because his seed

will be as numerous as the stars.

More, he will have a descendant, a son of his own flesh and blood,

Isaac, and he will live on in him. Here come to light two orders of

lineage:

– common lineage according to the flesh,

– vast countless spiritual lineage like the stars.

Here we can grasp the meaning of the expression Olam Haba, or

world to come. The Patriarchs have been living for many centuries yet,

owing to the example their lives has been setting.

Abram became Abraham, that is to say the father of a multitude, but

he became the father of this multitude both on account of the example

he has set and to his teaching; this very example and teaching ensure

the world to come. This example has been compelling recognition to

humanity from century to century.

These exemplary lives are not devoid of trials. This is the trial of

the righteous. We have been talking about an upright man, son of an

upright man. The illustration of Noah and his sons however questions

the notion of heredity. Although Noah was a just and, as the Midrach

says, although he had had great merit of remaining a honest man amidst

general corruption, Noah’s descendance was not able to remedy the

degradation of the flood generation. Chem’s posterity particularly has

led to the Canaanites debasement ; they eventually were destroyed by

divine intervention. Japhet’s branch chiefly achieved material success.

But Sem’s line ensured the taking over of tsedek: among them and ahead

of all was Abraham.

The power of this example lies above all in overcoming the hardships.

We know what numerous trials Abraham suffered, and these trials conti-

nued whith his descendants, up to Job.

Job, Ramban (Rabbi Mosche Ben Nahman2) writes, belonged to

Abraham’s descendants through the sons of Edom. And he adds: “and Jacob

acknowledged his Creator and he served Him by the practise of his

mitzvoth.”

* * *

 

Abraham’s departure with Lot from Harân for the land of Canaan opens

with a new chapter, the one of the Holy Land. This land was still occu-

pied by the Canaanites whose behaviour was outrageous. God’s plans were

already being worked out, and after the Patriarchs and Moses, they were

going to come to dispossessing the Canaanites of their land as a

sanction for their misbehaviour. For this God says to Abraham: “I will

give this land to your descendants”. At that moment Abraham builds up a

sanctuary to God who has appeared to him. From there were erected the

first holy places, in particular Bethel where Abraham constructed a

sanctuary to invoke the name of the Lord. In Bethel too Jacob was to be

inspired about the communication between the earth and the sky through

the angels.

We have to note that Abraham had reached the holy land to-be at Shec

hem where the Hebrews were going to enter after their departure from

Egypt. From there he goes to Negev. Meanwhile Abraham is reasserted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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14      that the land of Canaan will be given to him, when following their

respective herdmen’s strife, Abraham and Loth separate friendly. Loth

chooses the Jordan valley that seems wonderful to him, not expecting

God is going to wipe it out with Sodom and Gomorrah. All this shows

events are prepared by God, in advance. Besides, in the course of the

sacrifice Abraham made to God at dusk while sleep was taking hold of

him and he was overcome with fear, God revealed Abraham what the fo-

llowing events would be up to the departure of Egypt and He told him:

“know that your descendants will be slaves on a foreign land where they

will be tortured for four hundred years”. But God also tells him He

will judge this nation and He will deliver the Jewish people with great

miracles.

God adds He will hold back His wrath against the Amorrheans till the

crimes have been committed. After these divine predictions, the celes-

tial fire descends on the pieces of the animal victims and God then

seals the covenant with Abraham. “To your seed I will give this land

from Egypt to the great river Euphrates as well as all the peoples that

inhabit it”. Ramban comments: He has him know the secret of gueoula

(liberation). We must note too that  with Noah, then Abraham, there

appeared the sacrifices of animals following the extinction of human

sacrifices in idol-worshipping peoples. We shall go back over this

problem later on.

 

* * *

 

Then we see the attitude of Abraham the righteous and the example he

sets through his behaviour. In the war of Kings, he intervenes to deli-

ver his captive nephew Loth, but none of the presents of the Sodom

Kings does he accept, not even a shoe lace. This offers a memorable

example of his integrity. Melchizedek, king of Salem (perhaps Jerusalem

by then) pays a solemn homage to Abraham as the servant of the Most

High God, and the tithe already appears. Abraham’s life even then pre-

figures the future life of the Jewish people  with the passing to Egypt

at the time of the famine, and Pharao threatening to take Abraham’s

wife, Sarah, who was very beautiful.This tradition had been persisting

in Egypt as late as the last of kings, and during a stay  over there in

1946 before we went to Israel, we just heard similar accounts.God’s

covenant with Abraham has been expressed and renewed many a time.In a

prophetic vision of Abraham’s, God announces He will be a shield for

him (magen). Abraham however had not had any children yet. His wife

Sarah brings him together with his bondswoman Hagar, so that she can

“be built up” owing to Hagar. This is the birth of Ishmael, the father

of Arabs. But Hagar despised her mistress who then forced her to run

away. The angel advised her to come back and promised her an abundant

issue. Here we see that fecundity is given by God. Here God gave

Hagar Agar a child because He heard her cries of distress. But Ishmael

was going to be a wild man (Péré adam). Abraham was ninety-six years

when he had Ishmael as son. God’s covenant with Abraham is made precise

once more: “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and do the right and

I will establish my covenant with you”. Here again it is said that

Abraham is going to be the father of a great amount of nations and the

covenant will not only be between God and Abraham, but between God and

all the descendants of Abraham to whom God furthermore promises the

Holy Land as theirs.This is why Abraham who was first named Abram (with

the root “ab” the father) becomes Abraham (that is to say the father of

a multitude) and Saraï (meaning my princess) will be named Sarah, that

is to say the princess.

Then the covenant token will be circumcision which for every baby boy

is going to be fixed at his eighth day. Every child born in Abraham’s

home must be circumcised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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15        This is when God announces hundred year old Abraham the birth of a

son in accordance with flesh even though his wife is ninety years old,

which makes her laugh, hence the name Isaac (he laughed) for there is

true miracle. Abraham also circumcises his son Ishmael who will thus

become the father of a great nation. Now Hahaïmhas has us notice that

Ishmael was then thirteen years old. Each male in the house must be

circumcised.

Let us note that these miraculous events occured when advanced in

years, whereas the present era indeed often scorns old age and

glorifies material strength to the detriment of experience.

Abraham himself was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised on

the same day Ishmael was. So is the admission into Abraham’s covenant,

through circumcision! Ramban recalls Rabbi Eliezer’s words who says the

world was created in Tichri and the Patriarchs were born in Tichri but

Isaac was born at Pesah time. The Midrach Tanhouma remarks (chap. 27)

that circumcision is made where the fruit is to bear other fruit, and

the Midrach further adds that in the world to come, the Holy One,

blessed be He, saves Israel from Gehenna on account of the merit of

circumcision. It is like a tree that is trimmed so that it can produce

fruit.

 

 

Notes

 

1. Pierre Amier, “Art Graphique du Proche-Orient”, pub. Mazenod, 33 r.

de Naples. Paris.

 

2. Ramban, Kitvei rabbenou Moche ben Nahman 1 vol. published by Rav

Kook Center, Jerusalem 57O3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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16                  IV  –  Vayera: He has appeared

 

 

THE REVELATION

 

 

God’s revelation to Abraham did not occur through a vision, but

through what Ramban expresses by the “guilouï hacherhinah” or the fact

that the Divine Presence reveals Itself. Ramban quite emphasizes that

God often communicates with the Prophets by means of night-dream,but

here it is a real non figurative inspiration that has the Divine

Presence be felt. This divine presence is going to find expression in

Charity. The whole attitude of Abraham exemplifies the noblest and most

spontaneous Charity.

Abraham was sitting during the hottest part of the day and he was

probably praying, hence the praise of the prayer in the Midrach Tan-

houma and the Midrach Rabbah*. But what is remarkable here is that

prayer becomes action: Abraham  leaves his prayer to throw himself

in front of three poor souls to help them and because of the heat to

give them a seat in the shade, bring them some water to drink and wash

their feet; then he runs to his wife Sarah so that she can prepare a

meal for them and “comfort their hearts”. Indeed Abraham might have

invited them to his tent and offered them a seat at his sides, which

would have stressed his position as master of the house. But Abraham’s

modesty is so great that he hastens to them to help and fortify them

right there as their servant. This charity and this modesty are

really moving: Chateaubriand praises them and compares Abraham’s

charity to the Odyssey narratives where the traveller is asked

questions. Here no questions but pure and active charity

This charitable action is followed by thegood news. Ramban recalls

each of these three angels has a definite mission: the first one, Raph-

ael, has come to visit Abraham who is ill with circumcision and to cure

him. The sacred prescription to visit the sick (bikour holim)

probably originated with this event and Ramban adds that Raphael who

has come to heal Abraham left the place to deliver Loth.

So, among the three angels, one of them has come to announce Sarah

the good news of her son’s miraculous birth nine months from then, the

second one has come to cure and visit Abraham, the third one at last to

strike Sodom and Gomorrah. The birth in question is a miraculous one by

the fact of age, for Abraham was a hundred years old, but it is a real

birth according to the laws of flesh. This glorification of Charity

is accompanied by the glorification of true justice. God himself is

going to state his principles of charity and law (tsedakah and michpat)

that will be developed in the argueing about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham himself very respectfully does not fear to put God to the

test, asking Him if He is going to strike the righteous along with the

wicked. God replies that if He finds a certain number of just, He will

spare the whole city for their sake. Ten is the minimum number fixed at

the end of the debate, hence the practise of the “minian” or minimum

number of men for religious ceremonies. So radiates the fundamental

principle of the Hebrew monotheism that is exalted in the psalms:

protection of the righteous against the evil-doers!

Two angels then go to Sodom and Gomorrah where Loth is. Like Abraham,

Loth hurries to help them and invites them to his house. But immediate-

ly the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, from young to old, dash to the house

to seize both visitors with the idea of indulging in homosexuality.

God eventually strikes them with blindness. Loth defends the laws of

hospitality with much energy, but he even goes further ahead and offers

the factious both his still virgin daughters to save his guests from

homosexuality. Alas, later on, after Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction

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17      that spared Loth for he was protected, Loth was going to be the victim

of his two daughters: in the cave where they had taken refuge they had

him drink wine and get drunk, so that they could give themselves over

to incestious intercourse with their father, which gave birth to the

Moabites and Ammonites, two peoples the Jewish people had to fight

against in the Holy Land.

Isaac’s birth brings God’s promise to Abraham that he will live on

in Isaac, meaning the birth of the Jewish people. However Abraham’s

other son,Ishmael, who has previously been given to him after he

had gone in unto his Egyptian maidservant Hagar, brings about a

conflict with Sarah who forces her to run away. Nevertheless God

protects her and announces her He will make Ishmael the father of a

great nation. So are fixed the destinies of the Arab and Jewish

peoples. The problems of the relationships between Abraham and

Abimelech once again find expression in the practise of tsedek,

that is to say justice-charity which allows Abraham to emphasize the

responsability of Abimelech’s men in filling the wells Abraham had dug,

and eventually come to a peaceful agreement through the vow the two of

them make at Beer-Chevah.

But after having miraculously given Abraham a son, God tests him as

He commands Abraham to offer Him his only son as a sacrifice. Abraham

obeys without flinching but God halts his arm and substitutes a ram for

Abraham’s son. Here is a considerable event which prohibits any human

sacrifice that has been made hitherto by the pagan peoples, and

replaces them by animal sacrifices. This fundamental event in the

history of mankind not only demands respect for human life, but

converts the slaughtering of animals to eat their flesh into a

sacrifice to be practised at Jerusalem in the Temple which is built

on the very place of Abraham’s sacrifice!

 

 

Note

 

* Regarding this, the Midrach Rabbah insists on the eighteen benedic-

tions that are to be found in psalm 29.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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18                        V – Hayé Sarah: Sarah’s life

 

 

SARAH’S LIFE

 

 

After Abraham had undergone the trial of his only son’s sacrifice and

witnessed the miraculous rescuing of this son Isaac, he suffered

another terrible grief, the death of his wife Sarah.

The Hebraic tradition considers the death of the beloved wife as the

worst of all trials and it compares it with the destruction of the

Temple in Jerusalem. Along with Ramban one has wondered whether the

prospect of the sacrifice of her son had not precipitated Sarah’s death

although she was a “echet haïl”, that is to say a strong woman.

Sarah was one hundred and twenty years old when she died. Rachi

comments upon the fact that she was pure and free of sins. Concerning

her beauty, she had remained as beautiful as a child!

Abraham has come to perform the funeral service and mourn his wife.

The praise and the mourning of the dead are developed at length in the

Hebraic tradition and the Chief Rabbi Benamara of Jerusalem dedicated

two big volumes to the duties which bind us to the dead “from the

moment his soul leaves his body and he goes back to the earth” and for

everything concerning the homage to be paid to him*. The root “safod”

expresses lament and commendation. Precisely all the gravestones of the

famous Rabbi Louria and his pupils are to be found in the Safed area.

These men developed the mystical Jewish tradition in the Middle-Ages

and their tombstones recall the mystical belief of the Cabbala

according to which the body returns to the earth and keeps being

venerated since it was the seat of the soul, whereas the soul, “the

nechama” rises again to God.

Let us come back to Abraham: he must find a tomb to bury Sarah; with

regard to this, let us note Abraham lives in the country of the Hitti-

tes, but these alien populations none the less venerate him as the

delegate of the Most-High God. His faith brings him a great prestige.

This is why the Hittites tell Abraham: “Hear us, my Lord: you are the

prince of God (nassi Elohim), bury your dead into our best sepulchre.”

But Abraham does not want to accept this gift and he insists to pay

the cave cash, and eventually Ephron names him an important sum Abraham

solemnly weighs to Ephron.

So Sarah is buried in the cave of Marhpelah in Ephron. There will

Abraham himself be interred, then Isaac and his wife, Jacob and Leah.

Thus this Patriarchs’ tomb that has been kept intact up to nowadays,

bears witness to the unanimous tribute paid to the Patriarchs who are

the embodiment of Love, of Justice-charity, of tsedek, for the whole

humanity.

The Midrach Tanhouma draws attention to the fact that what remains of

of man’s life is his righteous actions, for as it is said in psalm 13,

” for God blesses the righteous”. From the creation of the world to the

coming of Abraham, the Holy-One -blessed be He- blesses the world. So

He blesssed Adam and Eve, He blessed Noah and his sons, and when Abra-

ham came into being, He made him the father “the father of all crea-

tures.

As it is said “He shall be a blessing” (XII-2), and the Midrach adds,

quoting psalm 5 that recalls God blesses the righteous as with a shield

(maguen). as it is said: “I am a shield for thee.”

Then, psalm 17 “keep me as the apple of the eyein the shade of Thy

wings”.Is not the life of the apple of the eye the sign of life itself?

as we pronounce in the evening prayer:

“God who lights the apple of the eyes” because death marks the extinc

tion of light, of the brightness of the eyeball and God is the God of

life.

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19        The notion of Abraham’s shield is resumed in the prayer of the eigh-

teen benedictions: “King who helps and saves, shield. Blessed be Thou,

Lord, shield of Abraham”.

We have seen how Abraham respects the peoples whose countries he

lives in, but this very respect does not entail assimilation. Although

he is venerated by these peoples as “Prince of God”, Abraham keeps

distinguished because of his faith, and  this is why he does not want

his son Isaac to marry a woman of these peoples. Here we see Abraham

express the identity of the Jewish people as separate by his faith

and loyalty to the Divine Law. It is the question of the  Jewish

identity.

This is the reason why he sends his servant to find a wife for his

son within his relatives at Aram Naharaim towards Nahor.

The servant first addresses God to pray Him help find the wife

Abraham wishes for his son. He asks God to do him grace ( “hessed”)

for this matter. Here again we find the notion of Providence that is

going to be exerted at once with Rebekah entering Abraham’s family.

That is the coming of Rebekah who behaves as he had anticipated it in

his vow, Rebekah the daughter of Bethuel, who himself was Abraham’s

brother’s son. The greeting of Rebekah and the unfolding of events in

accordance with the vow he had done kindles the servant’s faith who

bows down before God and exclaims: ” blessed be the Lord God of my

master Abraham who spared neither mercy nor truth for my master.” The

details of the hospitality are moving, and we already see Laban appear:

Rebekah’s father, Laban, is a somewhat changeable man whose behaviour

towards Jacob we shall see later.

So the true faith in God remains within a close group.

Rebekah’s arrival with the servant in the Negev is touching. Isaac is

having a walk in the fields, at dawn; he lifts up his eyes and sees the

camels coming. Rebekah sees Isaac, lights off the camels and says:

“who is this man?” The servant answers: “he is my master”. Then she

takes her veil and covers herself. The servant told Isaac everything

he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent that was his mother

Sarah’s and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; he loved her and

Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

So man first loves his mother to become attached to his wife. Fur-

thermore we bear witness to the way God organised and realized the

wedding.

Besides, we must note that after the death of his wife, Abraham took

concubines, in particular Quetourah who bore him children. About this

matter, let us notice that in the Hebrew Bible, as in Jacob’s story

too, the master can have concubines and children from these concubines,

whereas the wife must keep herself absolutely pure for her husband.

This difference corresponds to a difference in nature. The role of

woman is distinctively lofty. She is the guardian and the soul of the

home. She must remain strictly pure for she is sacred and we know how

terrible the sanctions against the unfaithful wife are, which are

expounded in the treatise Sotah of the Michnah.

Concerning this, our time has taken the opposite course to the

Hebraic tradition that so well defined the role of the couple. Woman is

supposed to have been raised up equal to man. Instead of elevating her,

she has been led into losing her sacredness, the meaning of home has

been altered and marriage likened to mere cohabitation often followed

by divorce.

In Abraham’s tradition, if the husband can have concubines, these

never were lifted to the level of the wife. Marriage remained sacred.

This is why, whereas Abraham made presents to his concubines’children,

he gave everything he possessed to Isaac.

Abraham died when he was one hundred and seventy-five years old in a

good old age. He was content and replete with days!

*  *  *

$*$

20        In short, already at that time we find with Abraham all the way of

the Hebraic monotheism then developed in the law of Moses. Actually we

find there:

– the tsedek, that-is-to say justice-charity and the distinction be-

tween the righteous and the wicked,

– the indissoluble relation of tsedek and peace,

– the refusal of the chohad, or bribing present,

– the tithe (see Melchisedek) with the bread and the wine,

– Providence and God’s action on events, whether collective or indivi-

dual.

All these widely developed principles in the law of Moses must become

the true law of humanity. Thus Abraham is described as the father of a

multitude.

Waiting for this generalization expected in the messianic times,

Abraham is the father of Jews, of Muslims and the spiritual father of

Christians. The fatherhood of Abraham with the Jewish people is direct

through Isaac, Abraham and his legitimate wife’s Sarah. This paternity

should reserve the Holy land for the Jewish people, but on condition

the Jewish people become a “people of Righteous” as it is said in the

“Pirké Abot”. He has owned the Holy Land for several centuries  but he

was driven out of it because he did not respect the chemitah and imi-

tated the other peoples in their idolatry (destruction of the first

Temple), or because he did not show any consideration for the tsedek

and was divided by “hates for nothing” (“sinat ‘hinam”) (gratuitous

hates) which ended up in the destruction of the second Temple. He then

was subjected to a new trial of about two thousand years, the trial of

almost two thousand years, the trial of the dispersion. In this trial

however the religious Jews have remained persistently faithful to the

tradition of Abraham and Moses; this loyalty is complete down to the

smallest details as they wait for the miraculous return to Sion

foretold by the prophets. The second people and heir to Abraham is the

Arab people, Muslims descending from Abraham and his servant Hagar’s

son Ishmaël. Ishmaël is first described as a “wild man”. Ramban (Nah-

manide) has us notice that he was wicked (“racha”) but later he mended

his ways, made “techouvah” and returned to Abraham.

Indeed Islam deeply bows before the might of God and lets God direct

events.

The second heir, Christianism for its part places emphasis on charity

charity that can exert itself on the righteous as well as on the wicked

Faced with the difficulty ofliving as righteous, Christianism evokes

at the same time the God of justice, God the father, and the God of

forgiveness, of mercy which might lead to forgiving the wicked before

they rectify their behaviour. These latter keep being fearsome if they

are pardonned prior to this reform.

In the Jewish tradition, God is both an almighty God of justice and

a God of mercy. His sphere is that of fear and love, hence the funda-

mental dogma of the divine Unity the Jews pronounced even on the stakes

of the Inquisition. The Jewish people also conjures up the memory of

Samuel and King David who achieved arighteous king for the first time

in Jerusalem, in conformity with tsedk, in accordance with God he ex-

tolled in his immortal psalms that stirred up the whole of humanity.

David was annointed as the son of God (psalm 2), the Messiah (that is

to say the”Machiah”) or the model of the future Messiah who will esta-

blish universal peace and who, according to prophet Isaiah, will not

judge according to “they say” or to hearsay or appearances, but accor-

ding to right, rectitude, tsedek, real truth and he shall smite  the

earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall

he slay the wicked.

Such will be the universal epilogue of Abraham’s historical example!

 

Note

 

*Benamara: “Safod leet metso”, publ. by the author 13/16 r. Rhebroni,

Jerusalem 1988.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

21                  VI – Toledot: the descendants

 

 

ISAAC’S  SEED

 

 

 

This sidrah on the one hand accounts for the events of Isaac’s life

that is modelled after his father Abraham’s, on the other hand it shows

the destiny of both his sons Esau and Jacob.

Isaac’s life occurences are almost copied, at least in their unfol-

ding, on similar events of Abraham’s life. Like Abraham, Isaac lives in

the golah on Abimelech’s territory, and like Abraham he is respected as

someone who is assisted by the Most High God. This is why the strife

over the wells Isaac’s servants had dug and Abimelech’s stopped up,

assumes the same character as the conflict over the wells of Abraham.

The term “toledot” both points to direct seed or children,but also to

spiritual descendants which are deeds and history.

Here the point is Abraham’s descendance with his son Isaac. Several

passages show Isaac will carry on the tradition Abraham will inaugu-

rate. Various texts however are more specific about this seed, in order

to meet objections. Thus Rachi remarked: “it came after God had changed

the name Abram into Abraham (father of a multitude), that Abraham gave

birth to Isaac, which is why the text says “Abraham begot Isaac”.More,

it is written precisely “Isaac, the son of Abraham”.For if malicious

gossip ever suggest Abimelech had intercourse with Sarah, what did the

Holy-One Blessed-be-He do? He gave Isaac’s face the same expression as

Abraham’s so that Isaac looked like Abraham.” Let us notice that the

Hebrew for the expression of the face is “klaster panim” and Ramban

(Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman) recalls three partners take part to create a

child : the father who transmits the white tissues, the mother the red

tissues, and God who gives life and the expression of the soul (klaster

panim).

Ibn Ezra insists on this resemblance between Isaac and Abraham, and

writes: “all those who saw him could bear witness Abraham had engen-

dered him”.

Now Abraham was forty years old when he took Rebecca as his wife,

Rebecca the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Padan-Aran and the sis-

ter of Laban the Aramean. Ramban (Nachmanides) has us notice that this

ancestry also comprised wicked people, but God compensated for genetics

and biology and elevated Jacob the righteous to the detriment of Esau

the evil-minded.

Isaac and his wife pray to God that He gives them a child, which once

more asserts the role of God in creation and fecundity. This is why

in times of revolt men claim the merit of creation and want to steal it

from God, so that in their pride they end up in inhuman and dangerous

engineering. But two opposite children live in Rebecca and struggle

together in her womb, which is explained as the presence oftwo opposite

nations. Who are these two beings and these two nations? Here the

sacred text considers temperament from its very birth. The one who is

going to come out first, Esau, is a subject linked exclusively to

nature: he cares for his body, for hunting, for instinctive gratifica-

tion without showing great concern about principles. Faint, he sells

his birthright for lentiles pottage. He repeats the argument of those

who scorn laws, morals: is it worth making efforts since we are to die?

The Midrach Rabbah reminds that Esau, loved by a father who did not

admonish him, lapsed into misbehaviour (“tarbout raah”) and made five

transgressions within the same day: he had intercourse with a young

fiancée, he commited a murder, he denied the resurrection of the dead,

he looked down his birthright, and more, he hoped for his father’s

death and attempted to slay his brother!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

22        On the contrary, Jacob the second child has a soft, peaceful and

loving temperament; he stays in the tent and according to the midrachim

he already prefigures the love for the Torah.

Such are the origins of these two human groups.

What is quite striking however is that God reverses the logic of

strength.And the outwardly weaker will be dominating the stronger. We

must nevertheless admit that Jacob will be taking the paternal benedic-

tion away from his brother under the influence of his mother Rebekkah,

as he will disguise himself so as to seem like Esau to his blind father

causing Isaac a terrible emotion  when he discovered the truth.

But we are allowed to think that God has prepared those events for

Isaac then foretells Esau: “you will live by thy sword”, a verse that

appears exactly in the middle of the book of Genesis.

We must add that Jacob who had used this stratagem under the influ-

ence of his mother then regretted it because he was a righteous and he

made techouvah when he approached his brother who wanted to slay him,

since he talked to him with much respect and honour, using this charac-

teristic Hebraic expression “arhapra panaï”: I shall do kippour,

which means I shall repent to placate His face! Here shows the modesty

of the righteous who elevates and sheds light on nature. These two

personalities of Esau and Jacob constitute the foreshadowing of the

history of humanity. The first represents nature in its rough state,

that is to say the reign of unfair might; this is why the descendants

of Esau leagued with the Romans to destroy the Temple and put down

the Jews. This brutal hate continued up to Hitler, jealous of the

Jewish people, the people who received the divine revelation; on

account of this, Hitler wanted to destroy this people and substitute

hate, pride and spitefulness in cruelty and inhumanity for it. Indeed

the so essential moral laws stir up the revolt of instincts continually

So it happened even in the midst of the Jewish people, with Jeroboam’s

revolt and Ephraïm’s secession. So it was in the history of the whole

humanity in which this revolt lead to the horrors of nazism. Apart from

brutal revolt, the hedonistic revolt Anatole France expounded in “The

Corinthian wedding” advocates the return to the Greeks’ instinctive and

intellectual rapture as opposed to the prescriptions of the Torah. This

opposition stemming from hellenism has regained strength with Freud,

a disciple of hellenism against the Torah as he adopted Socrate’s

phrase “gnothi seauton” or know yourself which resulted in psychoana-

lysis, that is to say the deification of one’s wishes regardless of

one’s duties and one’s moral conscience!

The rest of Isaac’s life is the replica of the life of Abraham,

except for the fact that he does not go down to Egypt; the same episode

with his wife declared as his sister does not happen here with the

paraoh, but with Abimelech. Similar are the difficulties about

wells, dug then filled again until the discovery of Rehovot and the

agreement of BeerSheva as had been in Abraham’s time. The kibbutz named

Beerot Itzhak, the wells of Isaac, still exists in Israel. Isaac is

often referred to by the name of “Isaac’s awe” “parhad Itzhac” in

memory of the sacrifice episode.

God protects Isaac as he protected Abraham, and grants him wealth

with a hundredfold production (mea shearim), which arouses the jealousy

of the surrounding population, reminding one of antisemitic demonstra-

tions. Eventually Esau takes a Canaanite to wife contrary to his pa-

rents’ wishes, and threatens to kill his brother, which forces Jacob to

flee. The latter also must go to his mother’s family to find a wife as

had happened to Isaac in Abraham’s time.

So from the beginning do we meet the foreshadowing of the people of

God dwelling in the Holy Land!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

23        In conclusion the Midrach Tanhouma enlightens on the significance of

Isaac’s life by quoting in verses of Salomo’s proverbs (chap. 17, v.

5) saying “the crown of the elderly in their grandsons and the beauty

of sons in their fathers”. The Midrach develops this idea by showing

the blooming of Abraham’s glory into Jacob, his grandson who not only

was the father of the Jewish people, but also exemplified the Jewish

faith all through his life*.

Thus Isaac represents the transition between Abraham and Jacob and

he himself is represented by the fact that he went up for the sacrifice

but was not sacrificed. This episode marks the end and the condemna-

tion of human sacrifices and consequently the complete gap between the

countries that kept making these sacrifices and the followers of the

only God who condemned them;still nowadays does this notion remain of

cardinal importance. But the memory of this terrible happening must

have left Isaac a feeling of fear, hence the term “Isaac’s fear” “par-

had itzhac” refers to him and brings to mind this so moving episode!

The role of Isaac assumes another significance, valid for all

centuries. God promised Abraham He would give him the land of Canaan,

the Holy Land, as a possession for his descendants. But who are

Abraham’s descendants? The text states and repeats that Abraham lives

on in his only son Isaac, who is the father of the Jewish people

through Jacob. Therefore the Holy Land falls to the Jewish people by

right, on condition however he should remain faithful to monotheism and

put into practise the divine commands. Indeed it happened all through

the centuries since the Jewish people occupied this sacred land at the

time of Joshua, of the Judges, of the prophet Samuel, under the Kings,

King Saül and above all King David who illustrated it by the creation

of Jerusalem the holy city, by his psalms and by the messianic notion,

then under Solomon covered in glory and success; then the kingdom was

divided and Jerusalem remained in the hands of the kings of Juda till

the first destruction of the Temple, followed by its rebuilding at the

time of Cyrus until the dispersal of the Jewish people because of the

Romans, after the destruction of the second Temple. Therefore the

Jewish people’s historical titles are indisputable. Yet Abraham had a

son with his servant Hagar: Ishmaël, the father of Arabs. Consequently

Ishmaël’s descendants are also entitled to have a certain share in the

inheritance, but after the Jewish people. Therefore the fact that the

Arabic people should have the will to throw the Jewish people out of

his promised land of choice is absolutely unjust and contrary to human

rights. They can only agree with the Jewish people on some sharing in

this inheritance.

 

 

*Besides, Rachi too points to the fact that this sidrah fefore all

concerns Jacob and Esau like the story (“toledot”).

 

 

GRACE

 

In the preceding sidrah, the notion of grace (hessed) constantly

appears, and it is greatly developed. What is meant by “grace”? This

term denotes the acceptance of a request. Abraham’s servant expresses

his vow. This vow comes true exactly the same way it was formulated.

Therefore God has granted acceptance to the expressed vow.

So it goes with the relationships between individuals. Laban himself

does favour to Isaac’s request to give Rebekah as a wife to Jacob.

This grace however is far from being automatic. Indeed, God favours

Abraham with the acceptance of his desire because he is a righteous.

Yet God does not grant him grace to all his wishes: even the just and

their servants undergo trials  so that they should not take pride in

themselves. This notion of grace, the origin of which is to be

found in the Hebraic Bible, was borrowed by jansenism.But it then led

to vehement discussions, chiefly during the development of jansenism.

$*$

24      In this new perspective, the fact that grace is not automatically

guaranteed has been developed as a systematic concept of fatalism, with

the value of actions depending on God’s arbitrary good-will. We know

what violent debates this perspective gave rise to, and how it resulted

in fights and the suppression of jansenism.

The hebraïc “hessed” on the contrary is no theory: it stands for a

concrete notion rooted in experience. The Hebraic Bible constitutes a

historical book and an experimental science.

Let us add that the Hebrew term “hessed” meaning grace or mercy and

the term “hassid” meaning pious have the same root: the pious man who

reveres God can have mercy for those who suffer and waver, yet provi-

ding their cries are examined and justified. This is why grace or mercy

goes with truth, and the term “hessed” is always associated with the

term “emet”.

Psalm 85, magnificently illustrated by the great painter Benn, writes

1. 11:

“Mercy and truth have met together

Tsedek and peace have kissed each other

If truth springs out of the earth

Tsedek appears high in the heavens!”

“And your tsedek is like God’s mountain (Psalm 36, v.7).

The haftarah has Abraham’s life follow King David’s one.

In both cases, the question is to settle the succession.

Here, Abraham’s succession is his legitimate son Isaac, his only son

with his wife Sarah, and Isaac the father of Jacob, himself the father

of the Jewish people.

Yet Abraham’s maid-servant also bore him a son, Ishmael, the Arab

people’s father; his life is elaborated at the end of the sidrah that

writes on the face of his brother he has fallen!

Finally, after his wife’s death, Abraham had children with his concu-

bines too, like Keturah who thus was at the origin of numerous descen-

dants.

Nevertheless Abraham devolved all his possessions upon his son Isaac,

his legitimate descendant, and then died. He expired and died old and

satiated with years!

The aim of the Patriarchs’ message is to avoid making victims and to

develop a just world out of consideration of right and charity, in con-

formity with the message Abraham received.

Our time has mostly abandoned this message, hence making lots of

victims on account of the predominance of strength on right and, if

need be, of the conquest of power by terrorism.

Then has arisen the problem of victims. As the notion of tsedek has

been deserted, some people have wanted to apply a psychoanalytical

interpretation to the victims: each event is the consequence of a

conscious or unconscious desire, and victims become victims because

they unconsciously wish to be victims, and they would even

collaborate with their oppressors. This theory was largely supported by

Mendelsohn in his victimology. All this interpretation is evidence of

the dying out of the just and the unjust, which results in accusing

victims and justifying culprits. Fortunately the great criminologist

Stanciu reopened and developed this question in a much sounder and

deeper way, in his beautiful book “The Rights of the Victim1.

But another problem appeared, the exploitation of the term

“victims” Hitler claimed he was the victim of Europe’s other peoples,

in order to subjugate Europe. Here we not only find the desertion of

morals, but a shameful exploitation of the longing for justice so as to

have force and evil prevail.

$*$

25        Here is a too misunderstood and very fearsome process we have alrea-

dy studied in our work “Moral Psychiatry” in the chapter entitled “The

Exploiters of Morals and Religion. False morals2”. In such cases, ex-

ploiters claim to be victims and call on international morals. The

pseudopacifists -they are legion- think that if we yield to them, we

shall be able to carry out peace. On the contrary indeed, weakness is

the root of the worst of injustices and of the most dreadful tragedies.

Thus we witness artificial organizations without any past or history

claim territories for which they have no right, and pretend to be vic-

tims everywhere so that they can disposess the legitimate heirs by

terrorism backed up demands.

This is the reason why practising charity can only be performed  in

a rigorous spirit of search for truth so as not to yield to blackmail.

So we can really understand why the Hebrew term “hessed” meaning mercy,

charity, grace, is always accompanied by the word “emet” signifying

truth.

Then we can speak of the exploitation in some cases of the role of

victims in order to manage to get unjustified advantages through threat

terrorism or aggression.

This very attitude is characteristic of the special syndrome Falret

and Arnaud described with the term “persecuted persecutors”; this

syndrome has later been regrettably named “paranoïa”.

The term paranoïa is unfortunate indeed because it seems to point as

sick people to all those who demand. Now, if those who demand do it for

a real, grounded and checked injury, then they are not sick and they

must obtain satisfaction.

Real persecuted-persecutors however do not lay claims for a just

cause. They first pretend they are victims and they complain. Sympa-

thetic souls come forward with help. Each assistance is interpreted as

coming from an enemy, which increases the victims’position. Eventually

they become victims everywhere and this mentality is a mixture of pride

and feigned, wild, generalised mistrust. A typical example of it was

the famous “Paranoïac of Charenton”. He introduced himself as a poor

miserable man and out of pity he was hired as a nurse. Once in the

position, his extraordinary pride began showing itself. He knew more

about medicine than the head doctor or the senior registrar. He ought

to have been appointed director of the hospital. He neglected his ser-

vice and organized a club for alcoolics within the establishment,

gathering the staff and the sick. By ministerial offices he had become

the perpetual denouncer.

With the German occupation he became an informer for the Germans and

many personalities were hence arrested, deported or threatened to be

shot. At that time the ministry gave him leave. Then he built up a Fort

Chabrol with machine guns, so that the police had to lay siege to the

place. Eventually he was arrested as collaborator.

We cite this case because we want to show quite clearly that the

really sick must not be confused with the other subjects and that one

must be careful not to make wildly erroneous diagnoses when one has no

thorough knowledge of medecine and of true psychiatry. For we must

beware of misrepresentations, of abuses and sometimes of what has been

named dangerous pities. Having a generous heart is extremely important

indeed, but the heart must be supported by great lucidity.

 

 

1. Vasile V. Stanciu, “les Droits de la Victime”, 1 vol. Presses

Universitaires de France, 1985.

 

2. Psychiatrie morale expérimentale individuelle et sociale”: haines et

réactions de culpabilité, tsedek et volonté, psychosociologie de la

paix et de la guerre. Presses Univ. de France, 195O, p. 242 à 257.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

26                      VII –  Vayetsé: He went out

 

 

JACOB’S DEPERTURE

 

 

Jacob’s departure from Beer-Shevah is considerable event. As Rachi

writes, a righteous departure makes great impression and this is why the

text says”Jacob went out”. It does not merely states Jacob went toward

Haran for as long as the just remains in the town, it makes great impre-

ssion and lends lustre and glamour (“ziv”) to the town. When he goes away,

this lustre and glamour fall away.

God’s revelation to Jacob takes on formidable splendour and reminds us

with God’s revelation to Abraham. This revelation occurs after sunset as

had been the case for Abraham with the revelation on pieces (chap XV).

(In front of the sacrifice of a number of animals, God disclosed Abraham

the future of his descendants and even the going out of Egypt). Let us note

that sunfall is very quick in Israel as Rachi remarks. Here divine revela-

tion occurs through dream. Ramban studies these different revelations

through dream, inspiration or discovery of the “Cherhina”, that is to say

the divine presence as happened to Abraham at the time of the three angels’

visit. Now for Jacob, it is a matter of descending and ascending again of

angels.

Ramban comments upon it: God reveals Himself through prophetic dreams

for everything that is done on earth is realized by the agency of angels

and all the divine decisions are carried out by angels; neither small nor

big things happen on earth without the intervention of the angels God sends

on earth, and then they ascend back to the Lord of the earth (“Malakhe

Elohim”).

Divine prediction to Jacob looks like divine prediction to Abraham.

God announces Jacob He will give this Holy Land to his descendants and

concerning that commentators have us remark that Esau had taken a Canaanite

to wife, which had strongly displeased his parents, whereas Jacob went to

find a wife in the family environment, at Haran, just like his father Isaac

had done. Jacob like Abraham is announced that he will be a blessing for

all the nations of the earth and that God will not cease protecting Jacob

until he returns to the Holy Land.

Here again Bethel is consecrated, a place to which Abraham had already

come. Bethel, or “God’s home”, for God resided where Jacob had fallen

asleep1. As concerns the top of the ladder, Ramban makes us remember that

commentators point out to the fact that the ladder reaches to the Temple

at the very place where angels go up. And God is above.

This is the reason why it is believed that Beer-Shevah, illustrious for

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, stands for the gate of Heavens. From there we go

up towards the Temple (beth hamikdach), or God’s home, and for that Ramban

writes “Rabbi Yossi, the son of Zimra, wrote in the Berechit Rabbah that

Jacob’s ladder stretches out from Beer-Shevah up to the Temple as was

said “Jacob went out of Beer-Shevahand he said this place was full of awe”.

And above all Rabbi Yossi says Bethel, which is Louz, represents Jerusalem.

So Jacob’s itinerary from Beer-Shevah to Bethel embodies all the future

of the Jewish people, from the Patriarchs and Moses up to King David, and

it comprises the notion of Messiah and the creation of Salomo’s Temple, that

is to say God’s descent upon the earth!

Jacob’s arrival at Haran reminds us of Abraham’s servant as he was

coming in order to find a wife for Isaac. The same happens then. Jacob comes

there when herds are being watered by Haran’s shepherds who know Laban. Then

appears Rachel the shepherdess, the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother.

Jacob is gripped with strong emotion as he sees Rachel. He lifts up his

voice and weeps, his love for Rachel is quite moving.

$*$

27        Laban however, even though he looks enthusiastic, has a deceitful

mind. He promises Jacob to grant him Rachel as his wife and he gives

him Leah because she is the elder… Jacob had to labour for sezven

years to get Rachel and all the seven years were just a few days in his

eyes, so great was his love for her! And Leah is the one given to

him. “What have you done to me?” Jacob asks Laban. The latter then

accepts , after a lecture, to give him Rachel, provided he pledges to

toil seven years more. We must remark that Leah felt Jacob loved her

sister more than her and she might feel turned down.

But here we can bear witness to the manifestation of God’s spirit,

who raises those who have been humiliated. At that time Leah was the

first to bear a son for “God looked upon her affliction”, hence the

name Reuben (saw) Then she had a second son for God heard she was in

agony, hence the name Simeon (God heard). Lastly she bore a third son

and she hoped he would join her husband unto her, hence his name Levi

(attached). Once more she had a son, a fourth son, and said”now I

praise the Lord”, and she named him Judah (to thank). Then Rachel felt

disgraced that she had no children and she complained to Jacob who

reminded her it was God’s affair. Just like Sarah had done with her

maid-servant Hagar, she uses a servant “to be built” through her; and

Bilhah bore Jacob a son: Rachel named him Dan (God judged), then she

had a second son through Bilhah; he was named Nephtali (wrestling

Zilpah the other maid-servant bore Jacob a son: Gad (a group). Again

Zilpah conceived: her second son was called Asher (happiness).   After

the episode of the mandrakes, Leah had a fifth son, Issachar (reward).

Then a sixth son named Zabulon (zeved or present). After that, God

rewarded Rachel who had been humiliated . She conceived and bore Yossef

(Joseph) (God has taken off my disgrace and He has added a son). Next

she was to give birth to Benjamin and this delivery caused her death.

The twelve tribes of Israel were then born.

Then the conflict grew between Jacob and Laban. It was a metaphysical

conflict. Laban remained an idolworshipper and Jacob was supported by

The Only God. The issue there was the fight of the false gods against

the real God as it was to happen in Mose’s time; That is how God made

Jacob a wealthy man, giving him all the streaked and speckled animals.

Rachel stole Laban’s false gods and concealed them in her saddle.

Jacob and his family enterred he Holy Land. They had separated from

Laban had made peace with him. Jacob was accompanied by the Lord’s

messengers and cried out “this is the Lord’s camp”, hence the name

“Mahanaïm”!

 

 

*       *      *

 

 

Jacob, the Jewish people and the Prophets

 

 

If Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, he is also,

like Abraham and Isaac, the father of Prophets. Jacob’s life particu-

larly exemplifies the significance of Hebrew prophetism. The term

“navi” (prophet) literally means “who has God come on earth”. This is

the case of Jacob in Bethel as he saw angels coming down from the sky

and ascending to it in his prophetical dream (the Hebrew for this

is “halom hanevouah”). At the summit God solemnly announces Jacob -as

He had done with Abraham, that He will give this Holy Land to Jacob and

his descendants and that “he will be a benediction for all the peoples

of the earth.” This solemn gift of the Holy Land to the Jewish people

$*$

28      has in fact come true through the long history of the Jewish people for

centuries up to David, Solomon and the kingdom of Juda. This long

history following if the prophecy constitutes therefore for the Jewish

people indisputable historic entitlements to this Land. Of course other

peoples havetried to substitute themselves for it. In past centuries

and consecutively to the crusades, Christians endeavoured to conquer

this land but they did not succeed. Moslems for their part -the Arab

peoples who occupied this land after the Romans had driven the Jews

away) now consider that this fact entitles them to be the legal owners,

but here again it is not a question of historical entitlement. The

historical right of the Jewish people is nevertheless subject to

duties. If God promises Jacob to back him up during his flight and to

bring him back to the Sacred Land, this promise is supported by Jacob’s

solemn vow to God. Jacob will be faithful to God in the face of all

difficulties, even in the midst of the worst trials, and he absolutely

kept his word (the trial of the Righteous).

All the same, the Jewish people is allowed to subsist on this land

only if he remains totally faithful and stands away from any kind of

idolatry. Prophet Oseah signified this situation very clearly. He

compared God’s love for his people with the love of a man for a faith-

ful woman. If the woman becomes unfaithful however, he comes to loathe

her, deprives her of His support and sends her away, naked and deserted

as in the first day. This theme is also expressed in the”Song of Songs”

Prophet Oseah laments over the serious crisis that burst out as a

result of Ephraim’s revolt and the separation of the State of Israel

under the influence of Jeroboam.

He alludes to the day of Jezreel, or the events that occured in the

great plain that is limited in the South by mount Guilboah, in the

North by mount Thabor, and in the West by the river Jordan, where Jacob

met his brother Esau and where Jezabel’s horrors, Naboth’s false

evidence and Jehu’s massacre had dishonoured the country and brought

about the ruin of this immense condemned valley for centuries, till the

day God plants -hence the name Yiezriel (Izra El – will plant), an area

that an international committee had declared definitively unfit for

human living conditions because of its swamps. Only since sionism,

after two thousand years, has this malediction been lift, and now this

immense valley is covered with kibbutzim. And more, since 1967, that is

to say since the Six Day War, mount Guilboa that was cursed by king

David following king Saul’s death, has has risen of its ashes. The

plain is rebuilt and is being cultivated!

However the successive destruction of the Kingdom of Israel first,

then of the kingdom of Juda by the Romans and the great dispersal of

the Jewish people during two thousand years brought about mourning in

the Golah, but the hope for resurrection has remained vivid and as

Prophet Joel writes it: “There will come a day when the multitude of

the children of Israel will be as great as the grains of sand that can

be neither measured nor counted and instead of hearing say:”you are not

my people”, they will be named the sons of The Living God. And Juda’s

and Israel’s sons together reunited will choose  the same leader; also

anew this will be a day when Yezriel will no more worship calves to

sacrifice men!”

He also alludes to the episode of Sichem and the Amorrheans and the

Midrach Luzzato remarks that later, Ephraïm and Manasse’s tribes were

to occupy the Amorrhean  territory, namely that of king Og of Basan.

Finally we can always note Jacob is always concerned about supporting

the weaker against the apparently stronger, as he himself had been

supported in front of Esau. This is the reason why he crosses his hands

so as to bless Ephraïm first, then Manasse who is the older, and

perhaps “his younger brother shall be  greater than he!”. Lastly let us

recall Jacob did not forget his beloved wife Rachel either, and he

$*$

29      evokes with emotion how, on his way back from Padan, “Rachel died by me

in the land of Canaan on the way where the roads of Padan and Ephrat

cross, and I buried her in the way of Ephrat, at Beth-Lehem.” This so

moving remembrance gave rise to commentaries in order to know why Jacob

did not bury his beloved wife at Hebron, in Marhpela where he would

then rest with Leah. The Midrach Luzzato quotes the different interpre-

tations without attaching too much importance to them. We just remark

that the persons who are the objects of his greatest love are not

buried with him. His beloved wife was interred in Bethleem. In her

grave she wept during the tragedy of Nebuchadnezzar, and this grave has

ever since been the seat of an extreme veneration for many people still

come and cry there as they remember Rachel.

As for Joseph he was buried in Sichem2, the place Abraham then the

Jews came to when Abraham reached the Holy Land for the first time and

the Jews entered it after their going out of Egypt.

 

 

*        *         *

 

 

 

After these events and before his death, Jacob prophetisied about all

the tribes of Israel and on the future of mankind at the end of time.

So Jacob is a prophet and a very big prophet. If it is written “Law and

the Prophets”, attention has often been drawn to the fact that prophe-

tism begun with the Patriarchs and went on till the destruction of the

first Temple and the return from Babylon. Thus prophetism illuminates

the Hebraic Bible from the beginning, up to the moment the Jews leave

Babylon and build the Temple again. What is prophetism? The prophet is

the one who has God come down on earth, the one who is inspired with

the divine Spirit. This is really the case of Jacob, already in Bethel

where Jacob’s ladder allows to give a sign of communication between the

sky and the earth through the angels. Ramban did show the different

forms of prophetism, nocturnal inspirations (maré hanevouah), direct

inspirations, confrontation with the divinity as happened in Jacob’s

fight with the angel, a confrontation that already prefigures that of

Moses on mount Sinai. Above all prophetism marks a communication with

God, and so not only an inspiration, but also a protection.

Jacob always refers to this protection that was exerted first in his

conflict with Laban, then in the miraculous peace with his enemy Esau

and lastly but above all in the miracle of Joseph who was believed dead

and was cast from jail to the governing of Egypt, to take in and save

his brothers who, out of jealousy, had wanted to kill him!

These events throw light on the divine action: for many people, faith

lies in the belief that man on earth is entitled to happiness, and that

the role of God is to ensure this happiness, whatever man does. This is

a great error. Man belongs both to the animal kingdom and to the divine

kingdom. Through the animal kingdom, man is exposed to all the suffer-

ings of nature, to dangers, bad weather, natural disasters, diseases

and death. God does not take these dangers away from him, but He can

support man in course of action. Jacob’s life is marked by love and

Providence. He is hounded through his brother Esau’s hate, but already

in Bethel has he been granted a sign of divine Providence (what is

named hachga’ ha pratit in Hebrew), personal providence distinct from

collective providence. As he comes in search of Laban, he finds Laban’s

emissaries near the well straight away, then he sees Rachel coming, the

only woman for him that he will love so much. Love dictates Jacob’s

behaviour. Seven years does he work at Laban’s to get Rachel. Laban

$*$

30      cheats him shamefully and gives him Leah. Seven years more does he work

to obtain Rachel he loves. What patience, what modesty, what devotion!

To fix his salary before leaving Laban whose temperament he knows is

deceitful, he chooses a wide range of flocks that God eventually gives

him. In this manner, Providence guides him through his life!

 

 

Notes

 

1. Unfortunately, Jeroboam later defiled it with idolatry, which

brought about the split in the two tribes that had lapsed into idola-

try.

Bethel is in Cisjordania (the West Bank of Jordania) and now Israel is

contested the possession of this era by the Palestinians.

 

2. Named Naplouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

31                       VIII – Vayichlach: He sent

 

 

THE APPROACH TO THE “RIGHTEOUS”

 

 

Jacob and Esau: The trials of the Upright

 

 

This sidrah is marked by Jacob’s efforts to pacify the conflict with

Esau: instead of matching strength with strength, violence with

violence, Jacob for his part definitely acknowledges the wrongs he had

as he stole the fatherly benediction from his brother Esau, following

his mother’s advice. Therefore he wants to erase this fault so as to

achieve understanding and peace with his brother. This way he first

sent Esau messengers on mount Seir. He entrusts them with a message of

modesty and conciliation: so speaks your servant Jacob. Then he

presents him with gifts to “find grace in his eyes”. What was Esau’s

response? He marched into battle against his brother with four hundred

armed men allowing him to massacre everybody. How does Jacob react

then, when faced with so extreme a danger? He too could have

formed an army and engaged war. He just divides his personnel into

two camps so that if Esau hits the former, the latter will have the ca-

pacity to resist. But above all, Jaco addresses God who has already

protected him and promised to support him. He knows Esau can strike

both mothers and children! And to the camp which is to move forward to

Esau, he gives the mission to offer presents. What is the meaning of

those presents? This is no manoeuvre for calming down for the Hebrew

word “lepaïes” signifying to calm down does not appear here. Here it is

no question of placating through gifts , but to be granted forgiveness

for a fault, hence the word”harhaprah”which evokes the meaning of

kippour. Jacob himself is to move unarmed, in order to see his

brother’s face: “Perhaps he will bear my face?” This very night he had

his women, his family pass over the ford Jabbok (down Yezriel valley)

that can still be seen. This same night took place Jacob’s struggle

with the angel, as Jacob was alone. The midrachim stress on the fact

that God mobilized the angels to defend Jacob and call to mind prophet

Obadia’s anathema against Esau’s wickedness:

The vision of Obadia

“So speaks the Lord God Concerning Edom:

We have heard a message of God

And an ambassador has been sent among the nations

Let us rise up and fight him in battle

And here you are, I have made you small among the nations

You are extremely despicable

The pride of your heart has led you astray

You reside in the clefts of a rock

My habitation is in the heights, he says in his heart,

Who will bring me to the ground?

If you set your nest as the eagle, and if you fixed it

between the stars, from there I would bring you down, word of the Lord

For your cruelty towards your brother Jacob, shame will be on you

and you will be wiped out forever!”

We must acknowledge these predictions have come true, though later

Esau’s descendants allied themselves with the Romans to destroy

Jerusalem, but the future has brought the extinction of the Edomites

and the disappearance of the Romans. Jacob, he, lives for eternity. He

has earned his place in the olam haba, the world to come! How is the

fight with the angel to be understood, then?

$*$

32      Before all we must realize Jacob had to engage in a heroic struggle

against himself. He would have had the possibility to take revenge on

Esau. He silenced his pride in order to be forgiven for a fault he had

done in his youth. There can’t be more heroic an act than this struggle

against his self-esteem and against his pride. This attitude of the

noble-hearted and modest just stands out all the more against the

wickedness of Esau who will eventually be so dumbfounded that he will

be moved and fall, at least momentarily, on the neck of his brother.

So, Jacob won a superhuman victory, the victory against the pride and

spitefulness of men! It is this miracle which represents the descent

of the”cherhina”(God’s presence) on earth.

From this he kept a wound at his hip and limped. This injury is gene-

rally interpreted as an aggression of the sciatica, which, from the

medical point of view, is an error. The symptoms that are described are

those of a hip luxation, a very rare syndrom resulting from considera-

ble trauma. Besides, the Hebrew term “guid hanaché” designates the ten-

don that joins the femur to the coxal bone, that is to say the round

ligament.

Whatever may be, here Jacob’s meeting with the divine already evokes

that of Moses. For that reason he gave this place the name of Peniel,

the face of God. And he said “I have seen God face to face and my soul

is saved.” This is why the name Jacob changed into Israel (who fought

with God and prevailed). Jacob represents faith in action, the one that

does not consist in searching an immediate success, but in always

acting as a righteous , and from this action of a just comes the mira-

cle of peace, with great courage, without the least weakness of com-

promise.

Jacob and Esau’s encounter with the following miraculous pacification

evokes divine miracle, thus Jacob expresses himself by saying the sight

of his pacified enemy is like the divine sight. But Jacob was not only

to suffer the hate of his brother Esau, the hate between brothers

Salomo’s proverbs compare to a locked fortress, but he also was to get

into trouble with his own children. Dina, his own daughter, was to be

courted then raped by Sichem the Hivite who wanted to marry her. Jacob

kept silent, therefore he did not approve of the fusion of the two

peoples. But Jacob’s two sons, Simon and Levi, swooped down on the

people by guile after having deceited them, slew Shechem and Hamor,

took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and plundered the city!

Jacob disapproved of their behaviour and in his last discourse he

further cried out: “Simon and Levi, instruments of violence with their

subterfuges – into their secret let my soul not go, let my honour not

be identified with their assembly for in their anger they slew a man

and in their self-will they pulled up a bull. Cursed be their anger,

their strength, their transgressions for they were baleful. I will

divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49, 5-6-7).

Moreover, after that event, God counselled Jacob to go to Beth-el and

invoke the God who had appeared unto him there. Jacob then decided to

purify his household, change clothes, go to Beth-el and there erect an

altar to God who had supported him while he was fleeing from the face

of Esau. There Jacob built an altar and called to the God of his fa-

thers who still confirmed this support and what the future of his

descendants would be.

Besides, Deborah, Rebekah’s nanny was to be struck by death, but

above all Rachel’s death occured while she was giving birth to Benjamin

between Ephrat and Bethleem.

Poor Rachel who had said “if I have no children I will die”, expired

while travailing; she was buried in the very place where she died, and

not with Jacob. But if one could say Jacob’s immense love for Rachel

ended with a disappointment, one can also say Jacob and Rachel remain

united in eternal life as an example of the Righteous prevailing over

the wicked. This is so true that Rachel’s tomb has been visited for

$*$

33      centuries, deeply venerated, that prophet Jeremiah at the time of the

ruining of Jerusalem by Nabuchadnesar evokes Rachel weeping in her

grave, and that still now those who mourn for Rachel succeed one ano-

ther on this sepulchre.

So Jacob, Rachel and their son Joseph whose sons Jacob adopted,

exemplify to all eternity the backing of the righteous in the face of

the wicked, purification through right and tsedek, and for all eternity

they bear witness to divine pacification in the messianic perspective.

The sidrah ends with the descendants of the evil-minded Esau. Concer-

ning this, in his marvellous study of the book of Job*, Ramban

(Nahmanide) shows that Job who was a descendant of Abraham’s, belonged

to Idumea.

The book of Job opens with the mention: :”there was a man in the land

of Uz”. Ramban recalls prophet Jeremiah’s reference to the kings ofUz,

and also the allusion to the girl of Edom who dwelt in the land of Uz

as a synonym for all the depravities that brought about the downfall of

Jerusalem. Ramban also recalls that Outz and Aran are mentioned among

the descendants of Esau. Esau’s older son was Eliphas, and Eliphas’son

was Teman and out of Teman was to come Amalek. Therefore Job was Idume-

an, a righteous fearing God and far away from all evil.

So the great figure of Jacob, Israel, stands as the figure ofthe

Righteous who saw God and fought against evil until pacification and

the miraculous reunion with his son Joseph came, Joseph whose persona-

lity is linked to his and to his mother Rachel’s.

 

Conclusion

This sidrah and this passage about Jacob’s life have considerable sig-

nificance. They illustrate the problem of the two possible attitudes in

man: pride and the pursuit of success with aggressivity and wickedness

as embodied in Esau, modesty and continuous endeavours to observe

justice, compassion and peace as incarnate in Jacob, which demands

still more courage and great strength of character, of will…

This attitude Jacob has guides him to the divine presence. The wrest-

ling with the angel stands for the triumph of justice and modesty over

pride; this triumph leads to God. The whole history of humanity rests

on this duality.

A striking example of our times lies in the history of music. On the

one hand let us consider the great Bach, the real father of music: he

was deeply inspired by the Bible and his music generates harmony, peace

and serenity. On the other hand we witness an ambitious and jealous

Wagner making tremendous efforts to revive the violent forces of the

Valkyries, seized by the grips of both this temptation of pride and

the biblical message he discerned in “Parsifal”, and yet representing

this revolt of man and this conquest of success.

What was the result? Wagner, ungrateful to Meyerber, jealous and

anti-semitic, was glorified by the nazis, but his music that was so

praised in the past is on the decline, whereas Bach the modest is more

and more on top and venerated. Wagner wanted to conquer the”olam hazé”,

Bach, he, gained the world to come, the”olam haba”!

Esau’s hatred towards Jacob exemplifies the whole story of humanity

marked by the detestation of the just, by pride and jealousy intended

to destroy innocence.

This perpetual struggle lasting from Esau to the Romans that Esau’s

descendants have supported till the capture of Jerusalem and which then

continued up to Hitler is stigmatized by prophet Obadia. God punishes

crime, but only late after the event. Israel and Jerusalem will be re-

established one day, after the longest and most terrible trials, whe-

reas the persecutors will be smitten.

$*$

34        So Esau represents the very symbol of evil on earth, and the vision

of Obadiah is true to God’s revelation to Moses when He said: “God su-

ffers crime and fault for a long time but He does not absolve them” and

also, as psalm 92,verse 7 writes, “a simple man does not know, and nei-

ther can a fool understand this: the wicked proliferate as the grass

and the workers of iniquity flourish to be eventually ruined…”

All these quotations show that if God punishes crime, He only pena-

lizes it belatedly for it, so as to let crime manifest itself for a

certain time.

The prophets, Obadia among others, apply these notions to the future

of Israel and Jerusalem which, after the longest and most formidable

ordeals, will be re-established, whereas the oppressors will be doomed.

Concerning this, the prophet says: “the sinful nations will be a fire

and the nations of Joseph a flame, whereas the house of Esau will just

be stubble to be kindled and devoured!” “And nothing will survive of

the house of Esau.”

 

 

Note

 

*PUB. Rav Kook. Jerusalem, 5642.

 

 

 

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35                      IX – Vayecheb: He dwelt

 

 

JOSEPH’s TRAGEDY

 

 

God kept His word, for Jacob returned to Hebron as God had promised

him; there he found his father Isaac who died soon after,”old and sa-

tisfied with years”like his father Abraham. He was buried by his two

sons Esau and Jacob.

Back in the land of his father, what became of Jacob’s life and de-

scendants according to the Toledot phrase? “These are the generations

of Jacob”, the text says:”It is Joseph.” Previously however the twelve

sons of Jacob had been numbered. And here Jacob’s seed is limited to

Joseph. Why is it so? Maybe because he is the son of Rachel the belo-

ved wife, but we think that he was to reveal himself totally upright

as his father was, and as such he is the continuation of his father

Jacob!

What kind of trial however was to befall the so beloved son? Jacob

must have believed him dead after terrible happenings, till the day

when, by a miracle, he found him as the governor of Egypt. In regard to

this we cannot help comparing this event with Abraham’s sacrifice,

Isaac’s “Aqueda”. Abraham too had believed he was to lose his only son,

who fortunately was safeguarded. Jacob also thought for a long time his

son was dead, till he found him again.

So one blow after the other, Jacob was stricken in his dearest affec-

tions. His beloved wife Rachel died, then he believed he had lost his

cherished elder son. In this cruel trial, his only support was the

divine one that he cherished with unwavering faith till the day when

he miraculously found his son, mighty and glorious.

In this trial, Jacob the righteous is once more exposed to wickedness

It is no longer that of his brother Esau, but the instruments of this

new drama are Jacob’s sons with Rachel’s and Leah’s maid-servants,

Bilha and Zilpa.

Here once more we witness jealousy, “sinat rhinam”. Joseph is loved

by Jacob more than any of his brothers, perhaps because he is the son

of his old age , but the reason may also be that he is Rachel’s son.

So Jacob gave him a beautiful striped tunic. The others conceived a

terrible feeling of jealousy and hated him.

But already we can see the divine action exerting itself in the pro-

phetic dream; in his dreams Joseph sees his sheaves rise above the

sheaves of his brothers as they bow in front of him and in a second

dream the sun, the moon and eleven stars bear obedience to him. Such

dreams, which Joseph told naïvely,surprised even his father who could

not know that later on, events would be such that Joseph’s brothers

would have to kneel down in front of him, imploring Joseph then all-

mighty and the ruler of Egypt. So the divine action appears when it is

prepared and announced in the dream.

Here the dream manifests the revelation from above.There are other

dreams which are but the revelation of instincts from below. Here come

to light two unconscious: The unconscious from above issued from God in

in the prophetic dream, the study of which was taken up again in our

time by Vaschide and Vurpas, and the unconscious from below, or the

expression of inferior dreams which inspired the Freudian dream!*

Then, through the interpretation of the prophetic dreams, Joseph was to

gain Pharaoh’s admiration, rescue Egypt from the dearth and govern all

Egypt Then as he went to join with his brothers in the fields, the

latter cried out as they saw Joseph: “There comes the worker of

dreams”. And they immediately plot to kill him, then to throw him into

 

 

$*$

36       a pit, and tell Jacob that a wild beast has devoured him. It is Ruben

who saved him, when he exclaimed they could not slay him, but it would

be enough to cast him into the pit (the aim of these words was to save

Joseph and deliver him to his father again).

This episode leads us to considering how difficult it is to face the

wicked. Had Ruben flatly opposed their scheme straightaway, he may

have been the killed one. This is why he chose this middle-range way

in order to save Joseph.

As soon as Joseph came to them, they fell upon him, stripped him of

his beautiful striped tunic and threw him into the well void of water.

Then Juda interfered to try and at least spare the life of Joseph by

selling him to an Ishmeelite caravan with the camels bearing precious

plants to Egypt. Juda even reminded them with Joseph being their

brother and their flesh!

However, as Ruben returns to the pit to save his brother, he sees

him no more and this throws him into a panic. The others have taken

Joseph’s coat, smeared it with blood so that the bloody coat might

tell their father that a wild beast had eaten his son Joseph.

Jacob’s sorrow was pathetic: he rent his clothes, put sackcloth

upon his loins and remained in appalling mourning, replying to all

who tried to comfort him: “I will go down into the grave unto my son

mourning”.

*     *     *

 

 

Meanwhile occurs a story about Judah which illustrates the problem of

onanism and levirat. Having diverged from his brothers, Judah has an

affair with a Canaanite named Shuah: she bore him two sons: Er and

Onan. Er takes Tamar as his wife, but dies. So Judah advises his second

son Onan to replace his brother by the latter’s wife, which means to

have intercourse with her so that he might in some way prolong the

memory of his deceased brother. So he was to marry his dead brother’s

wife, hence the term “Iboum” (levirat); Rachi notices that in doing so,

Onan continues the name of his brother Er, and Ramban (Nahmanide)

underlines the charitable and sacred nature of supporting the bereaved

woman , for her husband lives on in his brother who perpetuates his

name. Now, Onan refuses to give his semen to his late brother, which,

Ramban says, is considered a want of heart, and wickedness. So we can

see that the current word “onanism” often used to label masturbation,

is wrong. Onan’s act is an act of egoism, it is not a sexual

perversion. This is why the text says that God has punished Onan who

dies. Concerning this subject it is useful to remark that the Hebrew

Bible is rather broad-minded about men’s sexual relationships, for we

can note that Abraham himself had intercourse with his maid-servant

Hagar, but with Sarah’s agreement  certainly, and after Sarah’s death

he had several concubines .It was the same for Jacob who had sexual

intercourse with his wife Leah’s maid-servant, then with his wife’s

Rachel. On the other hand, relating to woman, the wedding is sacred,

even if prostitutes exist. The young bride must not be unfaithful to

her husband on pain of the worst sanction. Then the husband rejects her

through the “guet” (divorce).

So at first sight woman might seem to be given a lower status, at

least on the level of her material power. On the other hand she is

particularly elevated and exalted on the moral level: she is the soul

of the home, and the valiant woman is illustrated to the utmost degree;

woman represents love, beauty, tenderness, the highest human qualities.

She is in some way the mainspring of the family. Her purity must remain

spotless.

Our time has taken the opposite course to this biblical situation,

under the pretext of raising woman on just the same level as man. Woman

$*$

37      now has the same rights as man but actually she has lost a great deal

through it, and she has been lowered. From this result the ruin of

homes, the indefinite spreading of divorces with the moral wreckage of

children. The liberated woman often tends to reduce a union to a mere

contract, and not only does she demean herself but she very often comes

to a moral crisis, to despair, discouragement and disgust. The whole

society is threatened. Our times can be characterized by the release of

instincts and the sacrifice of moral values through an exclusively

materialistic attitude.

Instead of being considered as an act of love, a sentimental act, the

rapprochement of sexes is now seen as a mere act of reproduction that

can even be transformed into material engineering: use of sperm, embryo

manipulation, etc. We only see the material making of human children

just as the material production of animals. We have forgotten the great

biblical principle that creation belongs to God, and God creates out of

love. When he substitutes himself for God, man transforms everything

into a dry, cold, inhuman industrial organisation, thus taking off all

its meaning to humanity and constituting a real desecration.

Freud supposedly liberated the sexual instinct but he only liberated

genital erotism, separating it from sentiment. This is why Professor

Grassé wrote that Freud killed love! Moreover sexual erotism may also

lead to the development of homosexuality which has always sounded the

knell of human societies, from Sodom and Gomorrah to the third Reich.

Recently a psychoanalyzed patient came to see us. We asked about the

results of this long psychoanalysis. It was, as he tols us, the loss of

his position, the loss of his taste for work, and chiefly the loss of

his attraction to women and the withdrawal into himself, being atten-

tive to all his feelings of general ill-being.

In short we must come back to love as it is glorified in the Bible.

The remarks we have just made also apply to the episode concerning Ju-

dah and Tamar, the widow of Er and Onan, who had intercourse with Judah

and then bore him two twins, Peretz and Zerah, after she had disguised

herself as a prostitute.

Let us come back to Joseph who is taken into Egypt by the Ishmaelites

and bought as a servant by a ennuch of Pharaoh’s named Putiphar, a mi-

nister of butchery and an Egyptian. God supports Joseph who is success-

ful and highly regarded by his superior. The latter entrusts Joseph

with all the administration of his house and God blesses the hand of

Putiphar because of Joseph.

But Joseph is of impressive stature and his master Putiphar’s wife

falls in love with him and tells him bluntly “go to bed with me”.

Still, Joseph, a true righteous, refuses and he does not want to

deceive his master to whom he is very grateful. How could he perform

such an act and commit a great sin? On an other day, when noone is in

the house, the woman starts up again, she grasps Joseph’s garment and

again says “sleep with me”. But Joseph leaves his garment into her hand

and escapes. Then the woman lies as she shouts to the servants of her

house that this young Hebrew wanted to have a good time with her

(letsahek), and go to bed with her. She repeats that to her husband.

The result is that Joseph is put in prison.

Here again we witness the trial of the Righteous, but this trial

has been designed by God and it will lead to the triumph of Joseph, a

resounding triumph! Even in jail, Joseph is appreciated by the head of

the jail who confides all the taks to him. Nothing escapes Joseph.

And there, in this prison, come the cupbearer and the breadbearer of

Pharaoh. At that time Joseph draws attention to himself because of his

interpreting dreams. Again we meet the prophetic dream foretelling

the events God has prepared.

The Midrach Tanhouma writes: “Joseph had three qualities: he was the

son of the Torah, he was a prophet, he fed his brothers”.

$*$

38        Why was he the son of the Torah? Because it is written as the Midrach

Tanhouma says quoting prophet Obadia: “Jacob’s house will be a fire

whereas Joseph’s will be a flame that will devour Esau’s house which

will be a straw”. So Jacob and Joseph make a whole. Joseph is a

righteous , son of a righteous.

Why is he a prophet? He was a prophet because he had seen the future

in his dreams, he had told it to his father, and his dreams came true.

And why did he provide for his brothers? It is written:” Now do not

fear anything, I will provide for food”. And to characterize the trials

of the Righteous, like Joseph, the Midrach Rabbah writes:”At the time

the Upright rest in inner peace and try to leave in peace in this world

the “Satan” comes and accuses them”.

Also the text adds it is difficult to have peace both in the world to

come (“Olam haba”) and in this world (“Olam hazé”). Pharaoh’s two

employees, the cupbearer and the breadbearer have a dream during the

night. We must remark that in that time, men attached much importance

to dreams since the text says they looked distressed because they had

not been able to find any explanation for their dreams.

Joseph is going to find the explanation and says: “Does the explana-

tion not come from God?”

The cupbearer sees a vineyard with three branches , and it thickens

showing its buds, its flowers rising, its buds are opening, and the

clusters are ripening. The Mdrach interprets the vision in relation to

Israel, and says the three branches are Moshe, Aaron and Myriam, the

buds rise and mean Israel’s deliverance and the Midrach still comments

“when we say Pharaoh hold the glass”, therefrom comes the custom of the

four glasses of wine at the Seder of Passover to celebrate the four de-

liveries from Egypt as it is said:” I saved you, I delivered you, I

liberated you and I took you with me”! And the Midrach Rabbah still

comments the fact that the cupbearer whose salvation Joseph had fore-

told, no longer remembered Joseph, and it reminds us how great saving

events are too often forgotten and howw benefactors sink into oblivion.

In his interpretation of dreams Joseph explains the symbolics of num-

bers. The three branches of the vineyard represent three days, the

three breads of the breadbearer who was to die also stand for three

days. Important events such as diseases also occur on the third day, an

important figure as the seven-figure is. The three-figure recurs in

propheties, particularly in chapter II of Amos which constitutes the

haftarah of this sidrah: “Because of the triple sin of Moab, I will not

change my decision, because of triple sin of Judah I will not go back

over it. They sold a Righteous for money (the selling of Joseph), a

poor for a pair of sandals, they covet so far as the dust of the earth

on the head of the poor wretches, they turn off the path of the humble,

father and son frequent the prostitute, outraging the name of my

holiness nd with disgusting clothes they come to my altar, and as for

the wine from the fines, they drink it in the temples of their gods,

their idols”. Therefore after the wicked seem to have prevailed, always

does God stand up for the Righteous: they are sanctioned and the

upright released from their trials!

 

 

Note

 

*Freud’s work is supposed to have inspired the Goering Institute of

nazism, so as to destroy the Torah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$*$

39                        Miquets: at the end of the two years

 

 

 

THE END OF MISFORTUNES

 

 

 

Ending two years, will follow years of deliverance, and deliverance,

“gueoula” completes the year. There again Joseph is to be miraculously

saved owing to his interpretation of prophetic dreams. This means that

God prepares and guides events, and His intententions can be revealed

through dreams. Luzzato comments this, writing: “two complete years had

elapsed since the winebearer’s leaving the prison, and Pharaoh’s dream

occurred the day he learnt that and so he was impressed and thought it

came from heaven”. The Midrach Tanhoumah underlines that all darkness

comes to an end. It quotes Job (XXVIII, 3) :

“There is always an end to darkness and for any programme there is a

miner against the stone of darkness and against the stone of death”. He

compares this situation to the miner’s who goes to fetch the ore into

the depths of abyss, where death has its place.

And the Midrach also adds another quotation from the Proverbs:

“To all sadness there is deliverance”. The Midrach Rabbah writes: “it

is the end of darkness. What does “the end of darkness” mean?”

For as long as the instinct for evil prevails, darkness and death

override the world as it is said in Job: the stone of darkness and the

shadow of death. Let us eradicate the impulse towards evil, neither

darkness nor evil can have a hold over the world. But darkness requires

powerful faith, waiting for salvation. And such powerful faith Joseph

had. Pharaoh’s dream: the river, here means the Nile as Ramban and

Rachi have us notice. There we find the prophetic dream and Joseph’s

entire salvation emanates from his ability to interpret theprophetic

dream. This ability originates in the faith he has in God who prepares

and guides for the future, with finite trials corrected by the

salvation of justice. Those whose personality is not enlightened by

this faith consider events just as results from the kingdom of hazard

(the Greek ananké) or as false and inferior gods, wicked and void of

meaning. Here is manifesting itself the light of the Hebrew monoteism.

This is why the seers of Egypt cannot find the significance of

Pharaoh’s dream and why Joseph only is able to explain it, thanks to

his faith: hence the ensuing miracle of his own deliverance and the

miraculous fulfilment of his first dreams as a child  which had seemed

so strange and even amazing to his father Jacob. Then only does the

cupbearer remember Joseph who had foretold him the restoring of his

posiion, and thus, as he is telling Pharaoh about it, he attracts his

attention unto Joseph. So this sidrah brings prominence to several

essential facts:

1 – the value of the prophetic dream which lets us know about God’s

plans to direct events. It is the manifestation of Providence which

takes action belatedly in order to redress apparently insoluble

situations. Indeed, dreams are not all prophetic. Beside dreams from

high are dreams from below, expressing inferior desires, the sole

dreams Freud studied, instinctual dreams conveying dim and non explicit

impressions that formed themselves within the unconscious of man. Here

we witness the great importance of dreams in the Hebrew tradition,

which was so much underlined by our late lamented friend Gotfarstheim

and our mentor Vurpas.

2 – The divine rectification of events is marked by the restoration

of justice, the raising of victims and the penalty for the guilty.

$*$

40      So Joseph whose brothers (some especially) were jealous and wanted to

kill him, Joseph who was believed dead and missing was miraculously

elevated and raised at the head of Egypt by Pharaoh. His brothers had

to come and implore him on their knees. At the beginning they did not

recognise him but Joseph did, and subjected them to suspicions and

trials. We must notice that these trials do not constitute some low

vengeance but a real moral treatment so as to awaken their moral

conscience and the feeling of their responsability. Then Reuben reminds

his brothers of the fact that God will ask account for the blood of

their brother and each of them, facing the misfortune that overwhelmed

them, for the first time said to one another “we have been guilty

concerning our brother we saw in the agony of his soul and we couldn’t

hear him. Therefore this distress has befallen us”. (chap. 42, v. 21)

There we can grasp the role of the trial to awaken the moral consci-

ence. However let us note that the trial imposed by Joseph was kept

moderate and that afterwards not only did he take them into his house,

but he also nourished them. So here we find charity and justice

witin one unity, merged with divine unity. On the contrary, if we

proclaim forgiveness automatic for the upright as well as for the

guilty, we do but favour the guilty, terrorism and crime, unless they

renounce their bad designs.

This is partly a come back to the human sacrifices of paganism, with

an innocent sacrificing himself in order to pay for the faults of the

guilty! In the Hebrew Bible, God finally supports the upright, raises

the victims out of the hand of the wicked but belatedly, which means

that the righteous must bear their trial with patience and not lose

their faith till the miraculous restoring that happens only in the

end. Hence the title of this sidrah “in the end”!

3 -The third remark comprises the union and special value of the two

sons of the beloved wife, Rachel: here behold Joseph and Benjamin

united by a special affection since Joseph asks for the return of Ben-

jamin and on the other hand imprisons Simeon, waiting for this return;

this Simeon who proved so brutal during the Shechem episode, was stig-

matised by Jacob himself in his last speech, and unmentioned in Moses’s

last speech.

We must remark that when Joseph invited his brothers to have lunch

with him, he had Benjamin be given five times as much as the others!

These facts show us the role of brotherly love. Jacob had sons from

three categories of women: a) Leah, the first official wife he loved

little or not at all, b) Rachel, the wife he loved among all others,

1. c) his two wives’servants who in some way were his concubines.

Now Joseph is the son of the beloved wife and it is written “Jacob’s

descendants: Joseph!” Jacob had twelve sons according to the flesh but

with his beloved wife he gave birth to a Righteous like him, to Joseph.

So Joseph is a Righteous, son of a Righteous! This is why, as Ramban

has us remark, Joseph’s brothers said to Joseph they had not recognized

“we are all one father’s sons”. Here we can see the importance of the

father in the descendance. We can make the same remarks about Joseph

himself Pharaoh married to an Epyptian of whom he had two sons, Ephraïm

and Menasee Jacob recognized as the heads of two tribes of Israel.

The role of the father appears of capital importance in the Bible, as

shown by the works of Ben Zeev in Jerusalem and of Richard Haddad in

France. However the rabbinical tradition considers as a Jewish the one

whose mother is a Jewish woman. Some made us cosider that the exclusive

maternal identity corresponds to the Athenian law. Who had an Athenian

mother was Athenian. Those whose mother was not Athenian were metics.

Some authors remarked it is to be underlined that Isaac had Sarah as

mother, whereas Muslims determine the identity with the father, Ishmael

being Abraham’s son.

$*$

41        Anyway, as far as the patriarchs are concerned, the role of the fa-

ther is fundamental. From a biological point of view, the Greeks

thought the child originated in the blood of the mother only, the fa-

ther bringing just the shaking, the momentum, the houlé (youliin He-

brew).

This conception is criticized by Ramban (Nahmanide) who writes that

three sources operate in the creation of the child: the mother gives

half of the tissues, the red tissues, the father gives half of the ti-

ssues (the white tissues) and God gives life  ansd the “klaster panim”

that is to say He gives the faces their expressions, which means the

expression with the soul’s life! Anyway for some people, Joseph’s wife

was a descendant of Dina who was quoted in the Schrem events. Dhorme

writes: “the Hebrew Sapenath-Panah vaguely reproduces the Egytian ds-p-

nt paneh: the god said. This one saw senath corresponds to the Egyptian

ns-nt, goddess Nath”. Abrech in Hebrew means on one’s knees. According

to Dhorme we can see the same Egyptian term meaning “heart to you”, “to

your heart”.

Owing to his prophetic knowledge of dreams, Joseph saves Egypt from

dearth. He saves the surrounding countries that come to buy provisions

in Egypt too. But we must note that Judah, in the name of his brothers,

bows down and confesses his faults to Joseph to implore the latter to

let him take Benjamin back to his father, because if Benjamin was mis-

sing, it would be fatal to Jacob. Here the intimacy of the fatherly*

and motherly love is illustrated in Solomo’s sentence, which consti-

tutes the haftarah of this sidrah!

Finally let us recall that the Midrach Tanhouma relates the events

concerning the three patriarchs to the three daily prayers, and writes:

the morning one, the afternoon one, and the evening prayer.

The Midrach Tanhouma also insists on the fact that Joseph’s brothers

had not recognised him but he, had recognised them, and understood what

they were saying. This is why he spoke harshly to them, and raised the

question of Benjamin. Also, Judah uttered this memorable sentence:

“Jacob’s soul is bound up in the life of his son Benjamin; and speaking

of Benjamin: “his life is bound up in his life”.

This is the extremely moving plea of Judah who says “how shall I go

up to my father and Benjamin be not with us”?” At that moment Joseph is

gripped by emotion and cannot refrain himself!

 

*   *   *

 

“God kills and makes us live again. He brings down and brings up.”

Hannah’s prayer. Samuel I (chap.II, v.6): pure logic glorifies strength

and success, and encourages man to gain this success whatever whatever

the means, even to the detriment of other men, without worrying about

what is fair or unfair, about good or evil. Human reality is different.

After the apparent success of strength, intrigue and wickedness, comes

the reversal of situations. The victim is raised and the oppressor

lowered and confounded. It is written, when God revealed himself to

Moses: “Long suffering, gracious and abundant in truth, bearing trans-

gression and sin but clearing him, no, he does not clear the guilty.”

The experience of medicine and psychiatry has been bearing witness to

the truth of these words, and bringing us the proofs. So often did we

meet across subjects who were wrongly labelled incurable schizophrenics

rejected by their families as a weight and a burden. And yet they were

easily cured once they were free from the cultivation of incapacity,

and they then supported their families and cured their relatives who

were in turn stricken by disease!

$*$

42        But we must note that in this sidrah Joseph gives a fright to his

brothers who do not recognize him and the trial he has them undergo

makes them become conscious of their fault and regret it; also there is

this interesting word when Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies

who have come to find the country’s weak point. Weak point in Hebrew is

“ervah”. In its literal sense this word designates the male sexual

organ and in the figurative sense, the weak point. In fact man makes

transgressions because of too much liberation or deviation of his

sexuality. Here is man’s weak point that Freud rehabilitated through

psychoanalysis. The other weak point is the belief in stars and fata-

lity which leads man to being unable to control himself in front of

good and evil; this inclination is called “ovdé corhavim oumazalot”in

Hebrew, which means “servant of stars and lots”(Akoum). Indeed, here is

true idolatry the Hebrew Bible  constantly rises up against and which

can destroy modern societies because it has come back into actuality.

 

Note

* chap.42, v.38: When his sons ask him that Benjamin should go with

them, Jacob answers: “my son shall not go down with you because his

brother is dead and only him do I have. If mischief befell him on his

way, you shall bring down my old age with sorrow to the grave”. In this

verse, Jacob speaks as if he had only two sons, the ones his beloved

wife Rachel had born him.

$*$

43                       XI – Vayigach: He has intervened

THE ROLE OF THE HEART

IN PACFICATION

This capital sidrah shows the extraordinary action of feelings of

humanity in pacification, and the apotheosis that crowns the practice

of these feelings: darkness gives way to light, heartbreaks to peace,

worrying to opening up, anxiety to peace of the soul, and moral torture

to bliss.

Had Judah approached Joseph with reasoning and talks, he would not

have gained anything, but as he evoked the excruciating agony of his

father deprived of his son Benjamin, after he had suffered so much from

the death of his son Joseph, , as he conjured up his father being

brought down with sorrow to the grave, then Joseph was moved to tears

he could not hold back, he proved he was alive and Pharaoh’s entire

house heard him and they all were deeply affected. This is a dramatic

turn of events which unexpectedly has dazzling light follow darkness,

a feeling of love and devotion replace hatred and manoeuvres, so an

extraordinary blossoming which already prefigures the messianic time.

Then happens the resounding divine miracle, showing the brilliant and

uplifting solution to hardships and trials that appeared insoluble.

The Midrach Tanhouma quotes a passage from Solomo’s Ecclesiastes and

underlines the fact that a noble-hearted and modest man can save an

entire town. The following words can embody Judah’s action: “there was

a little town with few men living in it and there came a great king

against it who besieged it and built a redoubt; now there was found in

it a wise man, and he, by his wisdom, saved the town.” So is it with

Judah.

It is so great a miracle that Judah himself, on hearing his beloved

son he thought dead is alive and is ruling Egypt, is bewildered and

cannot believe it. Faced with evidence he bows to facts, finds his dear

son the ruler of Egypt and even Pharaoh and his servants take part in

this brotherly surge of affection and greet Jacob warmly.

Therefore the miracle of Joseph represents a sort of a second birth

of the Jewish people, and moreover Jacob places Joseph like him, taking

up as tribes the two sons of Joseph. So we may say that through this

miacle the Jewish people has two fathers, Jacob and Joseph, and one

mother, Rachel, who is still lamented in front of her tomb.In the haf-

tarah, Prophet Ezekiel celebrates the final union between the Jewish

people and Jacob, Joseph and Judah who will form but one and united

people. Actually these three names are the symbol of love prevailing

over hatred, justice and right over brutal strength, mutual aid over

selfish interest, good over evil. Already this is the prefiguration of

the messianic time when humanity is composed of Righteous and the

wicked have disappeared! This glorious restoring is real redressing in

the world of the living. It is an historical restoring where the perse-

cuted Righteous whose death had been premeditated is saved and reesta-

blished, but also raised by God to the utmost authority and his oppre-

ssors are compelled to solicit him and plead for mercy.

Here is living miracle on earth.

Later they devised a persecuted Righteous who through death would

save humanity. So the Right one would be sacrificed and his sacrifice

extolled by forgiving the guilty. Therefore justice itself is sacri-

ficed and the issue put off to the beyond. This is mystical escapism

which has superseded active faith. Faith is no longer true faith

carried out in earthly life, but a mere heavenly ideal. God, instead of

acting on earth, remains in heaven.

In such a mitigated form, moral dictates are more easily performed,

but they lose a great part of efficacy.

 

$*$

44        The reason is that the human being rebels against moral laws yet so

vital to the safeguard of humanity. Indeed these laws demand to make

an effort, but man does not refuse to make this effort, and still a

greater one to satisfy his pride or his interests. He is not afraid of

agonizing to  fly into the air, indeed even hurl himself into the

cosmos in conquest of the sky like the builders of the Babel Tower;

however he refuses to make even smaller an effort to save his neighbour

and to “love him as himself”. Here is the tragedy. Faith in man, so

widespread nowadays, generates a world of competition, violence, oppre-

ssion and merciless fights, and transforms the world into a war and

revenge theater. On the contrary Jacob and Joseph’s example give rise

to a world of opening up, mutual aid and love. For that reason, thanks

to Moses, the Jewish people was granted the particularized divine law

so that it might put it into practice on earth, and this law represents

a true covenant.

However this covenant was sealed in memory of the Patriarchs and of

Moses. The people must respect it in order to stand as an example for

the other peoples, and bring the messianic era. As it is written in the

Pirké Abot (Maxims of the Forefathers) “all Israel has a part in the

future world”; as it is said (Isaiah chap.6O v.21) “your people shall

be all righteous; for eternity they shall inherit the land, the fruit

of my planting, the works of my hands, to glorify me.”

So the Jewish people must become a people of Righteous to set the

example to all the other peoples. This is hard test. Indeed religious

practices, prayers, Torah obligations were minutely established to that

end. These obligations took into account the basic role of habits and

automatisms. It is the purpose of practices but we must not forget that

these practices must be the expression of the spirit. It is the spirit

of the Torah that we must put into practice with loving care under all

circumstances and in all our actions. For example the putting on of the

taleth among other meanings embodies the praise of”rectitude of heart”,

mezouzah on doors means love for the Torah. All these acts must not be

separated from the spirit that inspired them, otherwise they would fall

into superstitions. In the same way, the Jewish faith is active faith,

it demands courage, patience, righteousness, it must not stand aside

from life in a separate, protected and isolated world. On the contrary

it implies great courage, even in a hostile world, and regarding this

let us remind that the Torah did not forget military life and fights

facing the enemy.

This very revitalization of the Torah is imperative, as well as its

repractice upon the Holy Land. Indeed the Jewish people is not diffe-

rent from the other peoples, and it has been mixed with other peoples,

first in Egypt, then amidst all the other peoples of the earth, but it

has extricated itself to find again and practise his faith and its

proper civilization. This resurrection will take place when Israel puts

again into practice the Hebrew medicine, the Hebrew farming, the Hebrew

civilization, the Hebrew economy and the principles of the Torah where

moral authority replaces constraint, tax is no longer the expression of

a deified State, but alike the shekel, a trivial tax, it represents the

buying back of life in remembrance of Esther and Mordecai and the rest

of taxes is bound to the “nevidim” (donator’s) moral obligation whereas

in the call to fight against the enemy the newly-wed is exempted, while

the one who is scared is sent back home so that he might not transmit

his fear to his companions. So are moral laws substituted for the

oppressiove materialism of modern States.

For the very notion of “State” which stems from Spinoza* and Hegel

already constitutes a profanation of faith in the only God, as it turns

a fair and human obligation into a bondage in the hands of often unfair

men. Therefore we are expecting the resurrection of the Torah, and

only this resurrection will ensure the redemption of the Jewish people

as well as the redemption of humanity as a whole.

 

* This is the reason why the Synagogue excommunicated Spinoza.

 

*          *          *

 

 

 

$*$

45        Waiting for this resurrection, we have preciously kept the Torah and

studied it minutely for centuries with a view to the time when it is

put into practice. This is the role of the Talmud, the Mishna and the

Guemara. It is just this trust that has maintained the vitality of the

Jewish people for so many centuries and that, at the beginning of

sionism, has inspired the prayer Hatikvah (hope) created by Nafhtali

Herz Imber who came from Galicia and was one of the first pioneers of

the Jewish colonies in Palestine, as Elmaleh* reminds us. The Hatikvah

became the national anthem of the State of Israel; it was translated in

French by Moshe Catane. “So long as deep into the heart of the Jew the

soul is vibrant and toward the borders of East an eye fastens on to

Sion, our hope is not lost, the ancient confidence that we will come

back to the land of our fathers, the town where David dwelt…”

 

 

*           *          *

 

 

As Ramban has it remark in his comment upon the portion Trouma, that

is to say the offering, the portable sanctuary where God was to reside

and speak to Moses between the cherubins to explain the Torah to him,

was to be brought to Shilo and placed by Solomo in the Temple he made

built in Jerusalem. This divine Presence on earth is essential. Of this

Presence remained the divine Law, the Pentateuch, unique and essential

statute of humanity.

The divine Presence went back to the sky again after the ruin of the

Temple; however the communication between man and God has not been

broken off. This communication takes place through prayer and actions.

The accomplishment of tsedek can achieve miraculous pacification and

then make the “Cherhinah”, the divine Presence, descend upon earth.

Such concrete examples we reported, when Charenton was pacified, also

when the Morrocans were pacified, and at the end of the war.

Therefore study, ardent study, faith and practice for the sake of

example must go together. Basic study must not be split off from life,

opposing a religious world to a secular world for the Torah is the law

of the whole life. Practice and example only make study worth while.

Study is justified through practice and example, otherwise it would

risk falling apart into isolation or into opposing the religious world

to the non religious world or into the pride of clericalism. As in the

Torah, thought and action are only one; spirit and practice are domina-

ted by the basic notion of Unity!

Finally what characterizes the Torah is that efforts and offerings

are not made out of constraint, but with fervour in the heart. Gifts,

“trouma”while raising one’s present to God can be made only by those

whose heart urges them to give, this intimate fusion of love and its

acts, fervour and moral obligation, spirit and material facts confer

the whole of history an elevation and a fervour which endow man with

the sense of hope and faith in action!

 

* Marc Cohen, Nouveau dictionnaire hébreu-français, Larousse-Ahiassaf

Tel-Aviv 1979.

 

JACOB AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE: PACIFICATION

 

The term House of Jacob currently designates the Jewish people.

Indeed Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes, but also the spiritual

father of all the Jewish faith, which is embodied in the acts of the

Righteous. Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman) largely comments upon the

fact that Jacob, on hearing that his son Joseph was alive, ruling Egypt

and sending for him, fainted out of emotion, then came back to Beer

Shevah to pray and sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac, and in

short ask Him what he must do, for God had forbidden Isaac to go down

to Egypt: He had enjoined him to stay in Canaan which then was still a

 

$*$

46      foreign country since the Hebrew word “gour” God used, means living on

foreign land.

As for Jacob, God advises him to go down to Egypt with all his

household, which is already the early stage of the whole Jewish people.

God even announces Jacob that He will accompany him to Egypt. Here we

find again the implementation of the divine scheme that had already

been revealed to Abraham. The twelve fathers of the twelve tribes of

Israel are going to go down to Egypt with Jacob till the day when God

makes the multiplied Jewish people get out of Egypt to subsequently

conquer the Holy Land and introduce monotheism there.

Ramban studies this problem largely, reponding Rachi and Maimonides.

He particularly stresses the importance of the divine revelation to

Jacob, through the prophetic dream. God can manifest Himself through

dream as it happened so many times in Jacob’s story, but Ramban also

reminds that like Moses fighting with the angel, he saw God face to

face. Furthermore the prophetic character of Jacob’s life is incarnated

in his last speech where her forebodes the Messiah and the end of time,

and when he passes judgement  on each of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The story of the Jewish people on the Holy Land, from the Judges, the

Kings of Judea with David, Solomo then the Kings of Judah, materializes

the significance of the Jewish history which must be dedicated to the

practice of the Torah on its predestined land.

The story of Jacob and Joseph teaches us something else as concerns

right and evil. We can note that Jacob did not take revenge on Esau.

And Joseph did not take revenge on his brothers who yet had done him so

much harm. God gave them the lesson they deserved since the course of

events was such that they were dying of hunger and had to come and

implore on their knees their brother they had so ill-treated. But the

latter left it to God and did not take his vengeance.

And yet this generosity is no excuse for wickedness, on the contrary.

Jacob who is so generous, so magnanimous, utters very sharp words

against Simon and Levi, reminding the acts of Dina’s brothers who

massacred Shechem inhabitants after having deluded them! Jacob, so

generous, does not compromise with crime, but dismisses vengeance, and

so does Joseph.

In so doing, they act in accordance with God, who (though a God of

justice to be respected through the sentence He passes on events), is

a God of grace (“hesses”). However they do not sacrifice truth (“hessed

veemet”), which King David illustrated later on in his immortal psalms.

Now we understand why the logic of revenge is forbidden, as made

precise in chapter XIX of Leviticus which states that if we reproach

our neighbour for something, we must not fear to reproach him strongly

so as not to harbour a grudge against him and take vengeance, which

would be a sin.

Therefore, through these examples we come straight to the divine Law

which is so different from human logic Charles Peguy described as

“rigid immoral”.

Instead of acting as the dispensers of justice without any judgment,

better prevent evil and rise vigorouly to denounce it before it is

carried out. We could never read too often, meditate on and fulfil the

exhortations of Prophet Isaiah chapter 42, to perform and defend

Righteousness in front of nations with a view to the federation of

peoples!

Had these pieces of advice been followed, Hitler would have been pre-

vented to achieve his abominations, these abominations which weigh

heavy on humanity they disgraced, whatever we may do, and the evolution

of which they have impeded. Now we must fight with unwearied energy all

the manifest and lurked residue of nazism that brought humanity lower

than humanity!

 

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47        This fight must mark the significance of the Jewish people which

represents Jacob’s heir and standard-bearer of humanism!

Superficial logic with no insight into deep things can think that

uprooting evil would be sufficient for the world to be at peace and

right to reign. Now like right cannot exist without evil, so cannot

light exist without any darkness. Proper balance however lies in the

supremacy of good upon evil and in the supremacy of light upon dark-

ness. This will happen in the messianic time. This light will abide in

consideration for Righteousness and Tsedek, and this will determine

universal peace for the living world. Otherwise after death the soul of

the Righteous  goes back in absolute purity to the garden of Eden out

of the living world until the resurrection of bodies.

Such is the doctrine rising from the message of the Patriarchs and

the Torah of Moses.

These considerations lead us to recall the rules of pacification.

This notion of pacification can be grasped only if we understand the

difference between prophets and revolutionaries*.

Prophets who have God descend on earth fight against evil with force-

ful energy, recall without flagging and proclaim the necessity of

tsedek and humanism, to convince  and reverberate through the example

they set the greatness and beauty of the divine Law.

Revolutionaries them, rise up as dispensers of justice and avengers.

They punish abuses by perpetrating abuses in their turn. This way they

prevent any grace and reconciliation. We saw this in the Russian Revo-

lution for example, when those who wanted to suppress the abuses of

tsarism were prevented from doing so by the violence of revolutionaries

who then quelled the establishment of a fair society and in their turn

st up a dictatorship. Regarding that we could not read and read again

too often David’s psalm 1O3.

 

Psalm 1O3 of David

” Bless the Eternal, my soul, may all my being bless his Holy Name.

Bless God o my soul, and never forget his benefits. For He knows how to

forgive your faults. He heals all the wounds, rescues life from chasms

crowning you with grace and charity, He who favours with happiness the

youth He renews like the eagle’s, by divine tsedek, and defends Righte-

ousness for all the oppressed, He who has made known his ways to Moses

and his deeds to the children of Israel. God is merciful, gracious,

long-suffering and does not prolong his resentment. He does not deal

with us according to our sins and does not reward us after our faults.

For like heavens lay high above the earth, so stands divine grace above

those who fear Him.

As far as the East is from the west, so far does He move our trans-

gressions away from us.

Like a father who pities his children, so does God pity those that

fear Him because He knows our inclinations and He remembers we are

dust.

As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the fields so

does he bloom, but let a puff pass onto him and he is gone. But the

Lord’s grace is eternal for those who keep His covenant and remember

His commandments to fulfil them”.

 

 

Note

 

* This is why Freud is a revolutionary and not a prophet. In the

presence of someone suffering from neurosis or complaining about pater-

nal or maternal authority, instead of bringing together the members of

the family by means of appeasement and pacification, Freud, by psycho-

analysis, fosters the accusation against parents, and the hatred for

them.

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48                  XII – Vayehi: He lived

 

 

LIFE AND FUTURE

 

 

This sidrah is dedicated on the one hand to the end of Jacob’s life,

on the other hand to his prophecy about future times.

The end of a life, of so rich and moving a life as Jacob’s, always

evokes great sadness and great emotion.

Rachi comments upon this event, saying the sidrah is closed because

Jacob must have had forebodings about the oppression of the Jewish

people that was to outlive him; also he was worrying about the future

he tried to anticipate.

The Midrach Tanhouma makes us remark that for Jacob as well as for

David, it is written: and the days of his death drew nearfor him. The

Midrach Tanhouma reminds us that we are but like strangers and God’s

tenants on earth, like a shadow. And this passage cannot even be com-

pared with the shadow of a passing bird, as said “as a shadow that

passes away” (psalm 144) and there is no hope to keep oneself from

that. Noone thinks he won’t die. Everyone knows death is at the end of

the future. Abraham said “I walk childless”, Isaac said “before I die”,

and Jacob said “I am to rest with my fathers”, and the quote from

Ecclesiastes (chap. VII, v.8): “there is no power on the day of death”.

The Midrach makes us note among other things that Jacob feeling his

death was drawing nearer, sent for Joseph: “Why did he not call for

Ruben or Judah? Ruben was the eldest and Judah was king, he did not

send for them and sent for Joseph? To teach you he honours the one that

rescued him, and he told him “IF I have found grace in your sight, be

gracious and true to me, for what would grace be if it rested on the

the untrue?”, and this is why it is said “grace and truth”… and this

grace and this truth are that after death his body will not lie in

Egypt…

And why, the Midrach adds, did he not want to be buried in Egypt?

Because Egypt was the seat of “avodah zarah”, idolatry. This is why

Egypt has always been considered as the centre of idolatry, where they

deify birds and slaughter men. At the time of Moses, God judged the

false gods of Egypt, that is to say he recalled humanity it should not

lapse into animality. Much later on, as Nebuchadnesar was threatening

Israel, prophet Jeremiah rose pathetically against those who were

seeking support from Nebuchadnesar. They did not listen to him. The

Egyptian alliance failed, Nebuchadnezar conquered Jerusalem and depor-

ted the Jewish people. However, the extraordinary thing was that this

same Nebuchadnezar was struck by a dream he had had, the meaning of

which the seers of his country were unable to explain, whereas Daniel,

a Hebrew slave, lifted the veil from this dream and from the downfall

of the empires: Nebuchadnezar himself was beddazled by the interpreter

of God who controls history, while his seers were dazzled because of

their false gods. And Daniel was uplifted by Nebuchadnezar like Joseph

was by Pharaoh!

Another reason inspired Jacob to call for Joseph. Not only was he the

son of his prefered wife Rachel, but he also was a Righteous like his

father, fearing God, and Jacob had not forgotten the wickedness of his

brothers and he wanted to give Joseph the most illustrious place in his

descendance too. The Midrach Luzzato (Chedal) writes about it that

Jacob may have wanted to give Joseph some superiority; besides Joseph

gave birth to two tribes Jacob adopted: Ephraim and Manasseh, and they

were superior in number to the two tribes of Simon and Judah. The term

“cherhem” meaning shoulder or “a portion”, perhaps alludes to the town

Shechem whence Joseph’s brothers had sold him; moreover he was buried

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49      there. This gift of Jacob’s follows the divine will who raised up Jo-

seph of misfortune and uplifted him to the highest degree, thus exem-

plifying the famous verse of Hannah in Shiloh “God kills and restores

to life”. And therewith the text mentions that Jacob gives Joseph a

portion above his brothers. Regarding this, we must recall that the

danger and hardships man can suffer from nature are considerably in-

creased with men’s wickedness”. It is what Jacob’s and Joseph’s histo-

ry point to; but what God desires is that instead of behaving as

wicked, men should behave as righteous, hence the major distinction

between the Righteous and the wicked in the Hebrew Bible. The Righteous

them, serve truth, uphold those who fall and love their neighbours as

themselves, but numerous trials are threatening them unceasingly.

However their rightness and faith can gain them divine help which can

rescue them from these tests sometimes miraculously, as Jacob’s and

Joseph’s story show it. But for this miracle to happen, courage must

not fail the Righteous in his trials, and he must keep his faith

intact. This is why prophet Habakkuk said: “The Righteous shall live by

his faith”. Such is Jacob’s faith and for this we say Jacob’s God too.

Here is true definition of the Hebrew monotheism, definition by history

and by reality. In Jacob’s view God acts not only directly, but also

through the intervention of his messengers, the “malarhim”, the angels.

For this reason, when Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Mana-

sseh, he says “may the angel who redeemed me from all evil bless these

young lads and upon them be named my name and the name of my fathers

Abraham and Isaac; and may they have many descendants on earth”! This

is why we are used to saying “blessed be he like Ephraim and Manasseh!”

 

 

*         *        *

 

 

As a prophet, Jacob is to prophesy upon each of his children, a fa-

ther of the Jewish people’s tribes. He goes through their character,

their defects and their qualities. He recalls Reuben’s indecorous

action. He has not forgotten Simon and Levi’s acts of violence and de-

ception when they slaughtered the inhabitants of Shechem after having

deluded them. Jacob’s indignation remains extreme: instruments of vio-

lence their machinations are, and Jacob disowns them: “let my soul not

come into their secret, let my honour not be identified with them…

cursed be their anger… I will tear them away from Jacob and scatter

them in Israel”. However later on, the tribe of Judah was going to make

amends after the Golden Calf and was entrusted with the task of guar-

ding the sanctuary. This shows transgressions can be atoned for and

techouva or return is always possible. Here there is no definitive sin.

Just like the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who had a brilliant story

then parted from Solomo, but their return has been hoped by the pro-

phets. Each son, the origin of a tribe, is characterized by his tempera

ment sometimes compared to an animal, or described according to his

drives.

Two personalities however stand out in this enumeration:Judahs and

Joseph’s. Judah is compared to a lion (gour arié). He will be the king.

The sceptre shall not depart Judah till Shilo which will reign over an

assembly of peoples.

This portion raised numerous interpretations, the Midrach Luzzato in

particular, as regards the term Shilo.

In effect Shilo is a town north Jerusalem whre Josuah had the Holy

Ark laid down when the Jews came into the Holy Land, as Luzzato

recalls. With his interpretetion one may think that of Shilo emerged

the whole government of Israel. In fact it is in Shilo that Hannah

lived and uttered her famous prayer illustrating the God of Jacob:

Hannah, prophet’s Samuel’s mother. Now prophet Samuel governed all the

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50      tribes of Israel, sacred king Saul who succeeded king David and made

the Holy Ark be carried from Shilo to Jerusalem. We visited Shilo in

1967 after the six days war. The town hasdisappeared but the grand

setting remains, Ramataim Tsophim Valley of the two mountains facing

each other, where major events took place.

Other interpretations of the term Shilo relate it to the Messiah and

the messianic period at the end of times. But in fact, as the Messiah

must be descended from David, himself descended from Judah, Jacob’s

prophecy clears up and contrary to some commentators, we can assume

that Jacob’s vision about the end of days has cleared up and has not

been closed. It is this vision which then inspired the great prophets

from Isaiah to Ezekiel, as well as the twelve small prophets and

Daniel’s prophecies on the history of humanity.

 

 

*         *         *

 

 

So the great figure of Jacob, after Abraham and Isaac, throws light

on all the Hebrew Bible, the summit of it David reached with the psalms

and Solomo in worldly glory, an evolution which then stirred up the

prophets against failings and desertions, up to the ruin of the first

Temple, then the return from Babylon which marks the end of the prophe-

tic period. During this prophetic period, God came down on earth, then

spoke to Moses, gave the Jewish people the Torah, dwelt in the Holy Ark

which was carried into the desert, then to Shilo, next into the Temple

in Jerusalem, and after the Torah disappeared into the ground when

Nebuchadnezar desecrated and destroyed the Temple. Afterwaards with the

second Temple, it is the beginning of the study of the Holy Writ and

the prayer replacing sacrifices, the reactions of the other peoples to

these revelations made to the Jewish people.

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51                                   CONCLUSION

 

 

 

The moral crisis of our time prompted us to find out the origin of

civilization and the significance of the different periods in humanity.

The time of Antiquity and the Greek civilization brought about the

development of intelligence, logic, natural science and mathematics,

which allowed the development of the present science.

The Jewish civilization, it, brought a sense of right, of justice

and of mutual aid as a source of peace, a civilization created by the

Patriarchs and developed in the Law of Moses fighting against the

Egyptian civilization.

The second period, our present era, is characterized by the use of

the two trends of Antiquity, which first caused considerable scientific

development and furthermore the substitution for faith through a

spiritual ideal, of an antique paganism submitted to a materialistic

nature. This spirituality however was still marked by the notion of

ideal and faith, hence its particular religious form which seemed to

be in opposition to science, thus leading to the present conflict

between science and faitha, the expansion of a fierce materialism and

an unprecedentedbmoral crisis.

According to us the solution to this crisis is to be found in the

Patriarchs’teaching. Here it is not a question of pure ideal and pure

spirituality in apparent conflict with science. On the contrary it all

concerns historical discoveries about individuals and societies which

proved that if we consider the facts superficially, strength and injus-

tice may seem to prevail, but deeper examination can let us observe

that unfair force collapses and justice is restored according to a

superior Power that is “long-suffering, endures crime for a long time

but does not absolve it”.

Such is the origin of the Hebrew monotheism which, far from being

mere ideal or mere aspiration, as a matter of fact constitutes an

experimental science and a teaching of this wisdom so much estolled

by king Solomo, a wisdom which alone can make up true humanism. This

science is in no way opposed to modern sciences which develop the power

of man, however these modern sciences are but instruments in the ser-

vice of a more elevated science, the science of justice, of charity, of

right and of peace without which no society can survive. For a society

which even exploits neurosis and psychosis to cultivate sometimes un-

resolved difficulties, is a society which, according to Professor

Grassé, indicts man in order to reduce him to the animal and if it so

continues, is to create a body without a soul!*

For this reason we have been immersing ourselves for years into the

Hebrew texts which, after the time of idolatry of material equipments

presently rampant, will give humanity its true sense and will prepare

the messianic period of universal peace.

 

* The notion of “soul” our era questions, is fundamental. Thhrough

all our researches we insisted on the deeper personality that can

persist even with apparently serious mental desorders. Let us recall

that the Hebrew Bible depicts God as “the God of the soul in all

flesh!” and that the ceremony of “the laying on of hands” Moses per-

formed to consecrate Josuah was destined to transmit the life of the

soul.

 

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52      a. Yves Coppens’recent book “Pré-Ambules, les premiers pas de l’homme”

(1 vol. 247 p. édit. Odile Jacob. Paris 1988) inspired for the greater

part by Teilhard de Chardin stands for the reject of biblical disco-

veries considered as mere religious faith in order to reduce man to

instinct only, like the animal. So Coppens quotes Teilhard de Chardin

page 83: “when for the first time of a living the instinct became aware

of itself in its own mirror, it is the whole world which took a big

step forward. Man came in noiselessly”. Freud takes the same stand. It

ends up with the animalization of man. Detailed paleontologic resear-

ches Coppens expounded merely reproduce the stages of creation, of

nature, of animals… of the Hebrew Bible but man’s specific role is

ignored. Regarding this one of us asked Mr Coppens if in his researches

on animals had ever allow him to observe that there was a court in an

animal society. He answered us that of course he had not. The specific

nature of the human being comprises animal instincts but also the

feeling for the fair and the unfair, for right and evil, and this is

sole guarantee of the survival of human societies.

 

Page 83: “when for the first time of a living the instinct became aware

of itself in its own mirror, it is the whole world which took a big

step forward. Man came in noiselessly”. Freud takes the same stand. It

ends up with the animalization of man. Detailed paleontologic resear-

ches Coppens expounded merely reproduce the stages of creation, of

nature, of animals… of the Hebrew Bible but man’s specific role is

ignored. Regarding this one of us asked Mr Coppens if in his researches

on animals had ever allow him to observe that there was a court in an

animal society. He answered us that of course he had not. The specific

nature of the human being comprises animal instincts but also the

feeling for the fair and the unfair, for right and evil, and this is

sole guarantee of the survival of human societies.

So, far from separating science and faith, we consider science and

faith are one and that the specific science of humanity lies in the

Hebrew Bible.

 

b- We must recall that the ancient Egyptian civilization built up an

animalized humanity as we can see in the Cairo museum, with a deifica-

tion of the body, in particular in its lower limbs. It is known that

the Egyptian civilization which inaugurated the cult of the body that

gave rise to sado-masochism Freud studied, and this sado-masochism is

one of the roots of the present crisis. On the other hand, respect for

the body was long observed by medicine, to such an extent thet Laennec

himself invented the stethoscope so as to avoid pressing his ear on

woman’s chest. This is how classic medicine detected diseases through

indirect examination. This respect comes from Christianity, itself

originating in Judaism. However itis demolished by our present era.

For direct examination, medicine introduces instruments in every cavi-

ty -This can be useful in some cases, but it must not be generalized-,

whereas classic medicine explored respectfully and by means of indirect

signs (auscultation, percussion, etc…).

 

 

 

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