The great Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer, composer of “Jerusalem of Gold”, penned the following lyrics to another song entitled “Al Kol Eleh (For All of These Things)”. I offer a non-literal English translation: “…Every bee that brings the honey / Needs a sting to be complete / And we all must learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.”

Written after the glow of 1967 and the melancholy of the Yom Kippur War, Shemer understood the mood of the Israel people. In song, as only she could, she exhorted her nation to believe that life’s true goodness can only be found in the mixing of the good and the bad, the bitter and the sweet.

At first blush, this is a rather odd sentiment. You would expect her to focus just on the sweet, on the good things in life. Why does Shemer embrace the bitter as well?

A brief incident in the second half of our Torah portion provides the answer. The people of Israel have just been redeemed through the parted waters of the Yam Suf, the Red Sea. After traveling three days without water, they come to a place called Marah where there is water but it is bitter. The people of Israel do what they always do… they grumble. Moses cries out to God and God responds by showing Moses a stick. Moses takes the stick and throws it into the water and the water becomes sweet. (Exodus 15:22-25)

This wondrous trick, this act of suspending nature, becomes for the Rabbis an opportunity to share an insight into human nature and a chance to reflect on our purpose here on earth. A Midrash has Moses calling out to God, “Why did You create brackish water in Your world, a liquid which serves no purpose?” God replies, “Instead of asking philosophical questions, do something to make the bitter waters sweet.” This retort by God is consistent with God’s words to Moses when he cries out at the sea, “Why cry to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward…” (Exodus 14:15).

Moses for the Rabbis is not a particular man. He is everyman, every person. “Why the bitter?” we ask when difficulty strikes and pain arises. And God answers, “My dear creation, you are asking the wrong question. The right question is, “What can I do to make the bitter sweet?”.

This is the Jewish way. Mar v’hamatok, the bitter and the sweet, are always a pair. Happiness and tears, maror and charoset, always go together. Each has its place in our world. We can ponder why tragedy strikes, why bitterness comes our way, but our job is to act. Our job is to sweeten the bitter, to make the bitter more palatable.

How do we do this? The answer to this question comes in next week’s parasha Yitro when God gives us the Torah. The mitzvot are God’s remedy for the bitterness in life. When sickness strikes, we visit the sick. When death comes, we comfort the mourner and surround her with love. When financial failure looms, we help our neighbor with an outstretched hand. When our fellow Jews are threatened by violence and hatred, we stand together with them boldly as one. When the songs of sadness embitter our hearts, we sing songs of hope and faith to get us through.

Over the past several weeks our community has tasted a great deal of bitterness. Synagogues have been defaced and Jewish lives have been threatened. Now is the time to sweeten the bitter, to cast our stick into the brackish water, just as Moses did. Hava nashira, come let us sing together and learn together and schmooze together as one community this Saturday night, motzei Shabbat, at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center for Sweet Tastes of Torah. Let us make the statement this Saturday night that our task is not merely to question the hatred but to answer… to answer with love and support and learning.

As the parasha begins, the Egyptians have had it. They can’t stand the suffering anymore. They demand of their leader to let the Israelites go free. “And the servants of Pharaoh said to him: ‘Until when will this one be a stumbling block to us? Send out these people that they may worship Adonai their God. Don’t you know yet that Egypt is lost?’”

Pharoah calls Moses and Aaron in to the palace to tell them of his decision — he will finally let them go. But even as he prepares to liberate them, he asks, “Who will be going?”

And now, as Rabbi Shimon Felix has written, with his answer to the king of Egypt, Moses lays the groundwork for universal suffrage and the French and American Revolutions: “With our young people and our old people we will go, with our sons and our daughters...we will go, for it is a holiday to God for us.”

Pharaoh’s answer makes it clear that he still doesn’t get it; he still has no intention of truly liberating the Israelites. “...Not so, let the male adults go and worship Adonai, for this is what you ask.” For Pharoah, the meeting is over: “And he drove them out from before him.” The deal is off, and the locusts arrive the next day.

We Jews know this story all too well, and it burns in our kishkes, in our guts. We retell this story not once, but twice each year—once in the weekly Torah portion cycle—and once again on Passover. It’s a story that drives people of faith to remember, as Frederick Douglas wrote, “Until we are all free, we are none free.”

This week, as we Jews hear once again the call of Parashat Bo, a large number of New Jersey clergy — Jews, Christians, and Muslims — went to Trenton to lobby for marriage equality. We went because there are people in our midst — gays and lesbians in our congregations — who are still denied the basic rights that so many of us take for granted.

We went to speak to our legislators who have the power to grant freedom to marry to all of New Jersey’s citizens, because we understand that, until we are all free, we are none free.

This is a tough issue for Jews, as my colleague Rabbi Yoel Kahn has written:

“Many rabbis and communal leaders would prefer to avoid the topic completely…. To these leaders, the homosexual is welcome within the organized Jewish community only so long as she or he remains invisible and refrains from asking for recognition and legitimacy.”

The status quo, then, for our Jewish community and for the State of New Jersey has been the equivalent of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” We must do better.

If you don’t understand the relationships of gays and lesbians; this still is not the issue. There are things, however, that you do understand: love, devotion, faithfulness, the desire to know that you are never alone in the struggles and triumphs of life. Those things you do understand.

Here we have Jews who love each other, who are committed to each other and to raising Jewish families. Will we or will we not allow them the freedom to thank God for what they share, in the sanctuary of our synagogues? Will we or will we not allow our congregation to rejoice with them at this moment of their joy? Will we allow them the civil rights and responsibilities of all married couples? These are the most important questions.

I was honored to be numbered among the many clergy this week who answered those questions in the affirmative. We said, as Moses and Aaron did, “With our young people and our old people we will go, with our sons and our daughters....” We said: we will go, all together. And, as with the Israelites of old, freedom is coming.

Parshat Va’era includes the first seven of the ten plagues. And while I rejoice at the Israelites’ eventual exodus from a life of slavery in Egypt, I wonder about the extent of the damage to Egyptian society needed in order for them to finally do so. Wouldn’t one or two plagues have been enough? Why ten?

Our major characters are Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, God, and the Israelites. God has heard the cries of the Israelites and has decided (finally) to take them out of Egypt. Moses is God’s choice to lead them out of slavery, even though he insists he doesn’t speak well enough to lead the people. God doesn’t accept his efforts to withdraw, and appoints his brother Aaron to speak for him. Together they beseech Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt in order to offer sacrifices to God in the wilderness. Pharaoh refuses, and is punished with a plague, then begs Moses to call off the plague and agrees to let the Israelites go, only to change his mind as soon as the plague is called off. Ten times this cycle is repeated, until finally Pharaoh can’t bear the devastation of his country any longer, and he allows them to finally leave Egypt (and even then he tries to recapture them afterward).

Why did it take so long for Pharaoh to let them go? Why did it take so much destruction for him to give the Israelites their freedom? The Torah gives us a few answers. First, Pharaoh’s heart is mentioned 20 times in the Torah. Pharaoh stiffens his heart, sometimes God even stiffens Pharaoh’s heart, and Pharaoh’s heart becomes heavier and heavier. What was Pharaoh afraid of? Why was he so insistent? One might argue that he wanted the Israelites to continue as slaves. One could also argue that he was afraid of change. I think his problem goes beyond that. I think his heart was closed to God’s presence. His heart was too full of arrogance and ego for him to even recognize the suffering of the Israelites. He thought he was in control of everything — there was no power greater than him. In order to really open his heart to God, he’d have to break his heart open and shatter his ego.

I think the same is true for us. All too often we hide behind our own masks, our illusions of control. When confronted with our misdeeds, we rush to fix the problem and make it go away. We make a half-hearted apology and move on. We’re holding on so tightly to our own masks, we can’t bear to see our own flaws before us. And yet, if we want to come close to God, we must let go of our defenses. If our heart is full of pride and self-importance, there is no room for God. Psalm 34 teaches that God is near to the broken-hearted, and uplifts those whose spirits are crushed. Do we dare let go of our ego, our arrogance, our stories, and our pain? It takes a great courage to surrender into God’s loving embrace. Pharaoh couldn’t do it. Can we?

The Torah teaches that God heard the cries of the Israelites. Some commentators imply that it was only when they cried out to God that God decided to rescue them. Even in the midst of the slavery, they thought they could save themselves. Or they simply gave up all hope of freedom. But when they finally called out, God heard their cries and liberated them from slavery and took them on a journey of hope and healing.

May we be willing today to cry out to God from our own narrow places. May we be brave enough to admit our own weaknesses and ask God for help. May we find holy companions to support us on our journeys of healing. May God take us out of our own narrow places into the promised land of freedom, joy, love, and infinite possibilities. Shabbat Shalom.

When Moshe leaves the palace of Pharaoh and sees the Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew to death, he kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. The following day Moshe sees two Jews fighting with one another. When he attempts to break up the fight they ask him, “are you going to kill us as you killed the Egyptian?” The Torah then tells us what Moshe was feeling: “Moshe was afraid and said ‘Indeed, the matter has become known.’” Normally, the Torah tells us a person’s actions, not his feelings. What difference does it make that Moshe was afraid? Why is that important in the context of the story? Why is his utterance of “Indeed the matter has become known” relevant as well?

There are many aspects of the lives of biblical figures that are not spoken about in the Torah. So why include this here in our parsha?

The answer lies in a story told about the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitcher rebbe. When someone came to him asking for a blessing for an urgent matter, the rebbe responded: “Think positive and it will be positive.”

The rebbe wasn’t simply giving him some psychological advice about thinking good thoughts. He was relating a powerful and profound spiritual truth. The power to think originates from our souls. Our souls are connected on high so what we think and speak has a very real and purposeful effect on the loftier spiritual realms. In other words, our positive thoughts have the potential to change reality, indeed to create a new reality, to obliterate negative decrees, and to bring about real salvation. Does it always mean that it works in a way that we understand? Does it mean we don’t have to have our deeds match our thoughts? Of course not. However, the potential is there and it’s real.

This is in fact what the Torah is teaching us in this episode with Moshe Rabbainu. The reason why the Torah tells us his inner feelings is because there is an important lesson for us. What’s the next verse? “Pharoh heard of this incident and he attempted to kill Moshe...” The juxtaposition of the negative response to Moshe’s negative thoughts are not coincidence. What the Torah is teaching us is, perhaps, had Moshe never thought negatively, had he remained positive that his actions were pure, correct, and proper, and therefore nothing bad would result from them, maybe, just maybe, the entire event would have gone unnoticed by Pharaoh.

Recent developments in cognitive psychology back up this idea of the power of a positive outlook. Dr. Martin Seligman is one of the founders of the field of cognitive psychology, which states that it is our thoughts and our cognition that are responsible for our feelings.

In his book, “Learned Optimism,” Seligman describes a remarkable experimental observation about the power of optimism. Recognizing that out of all professional disciplines, the field of sales requires an extraordinary degree of willingness to overcome rejection, Seligman met with the executives of Metropolitan Life, one of the leading insurance companies in America.

At the time, Metropolitan Life administered a standardized test to anyone who applied for sales jobs. The test focused on intelligence and inherent aptitude for salesmanship, and rejected those applicants with low scores.

Seligman suggested, however, that a second series of tests be administered, one geared toward people’s attitudes about rejection; this test was not about intellectual ability, but rather whether one approached rejection as permanent, or temporary and limited.

He further proposed that a team of salesmen who failed the original intelligence tests but registered as being optimistic in nature be formed in parallel with the group hired based on the conventional method.

The results were striking.

The optimists who had initially been rejected outsold the pessimists in the regular force by 21 percent during the first year. And in the second year by 57 percent!

You see, not only were the optimists better salesmen, their performance kept improving over the wiser pessimists. The reason, Seligman explains, is that while intelligence should initially be at least as important as persistence and optimism, over time, as the mountain of nos accumulated, persistence becomes the decisive factor. Optimism works. In life’s journey, the mountains of nos accumulate, so it becomes increasingly vital to think positively.

And everyone can. Seligman’s crucial finding was that optimism and pessimism were not genetically determined. It’s up to each of us how to view reality. And indeed, today cognitive therapy is one of the most successful of therapeutic methods.

What makes this approach refreshing is that since the time of Freud, psychotherapy has focused on the negative aspects of the human psyche, on the power of the irrational feelings and subconscious demons that drive us. Cognitive therapy is refreshing because it restores power to the individual. It says you are in control of your action. No circumstance outside of us, no drive within us can deprive us of our sovereign power to determine how to think. Let’s put it another way. What determines the direction of a ship at sea? Is it the direction of the wind, or the set of the sails?

The sails determine the direction. No matter what direction the wind is blowing, you can sail in the direction you wish. The wind carries one ship east and another west according to the way that the sails are set.

The sea is your life and you are the captain. The sails are your thoughts. Your thoughts, positive or negative, really do change the direction of your life. You are the captain of your own destiny.

Good thoughts affect our reality much more then we realize. You may not believe this is true, and even if you do, it’s easy to forget, especially when life throws its worst curve balls. It’s hard to stay positive when the world appears to be coming apart at the seams. But this is when optimism is most vital.

So when we face obstacles in life, particularly obstacles that prevent us from fulfilling our purpose here in creation, it’s incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to remove them and simultaneously think positive that indeed, God will help, and they will be removed. Think positive and it will be positive!

Every night, as I tuck my children into bed, we look forward to singing the bedtime Sh’ma. The music — combined with the powerful words — help the children transition from their day into sleep.

One of the prayers we recite, colloquially referred to as “Hamalach,” has its roots in this week’s parashah. Though often thought of as a prayer for children, I believe it has profound and relevant messages for all of us. 

The words are from the blessing that Jacob offers to his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh in 48:16: “May the angel who redeems me from all harm bless the youths, and in them may my name be recalled, the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac. And may they multiply like fish in the land.” Among the many questions this text raises, one stands out for me: What’s with the angel? 

Angels are peppered throughout biblical and apocryphal texts, including psalms, the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah, and the Book of Daniel. The concept of angels as guardians — for us as individuals and as a nation — was well developed by talmudic times. The Rabbis believed that it is through angels that we experience divine providence on a daily basis. There are even hierarchies of different types of angels, carrying out God’s will and acting on the world.  

The term used in our parashah for angel, as elsewhere in the Torah, is “malach,” often translated as “messenger,” implying “divine messenger.”  It is a malach who stays Abraham’s hand as he is about to slay his son Isaac, and a malach who speaks to Moses from the burning bush. Why did God speak with us through an intermediary in these situations? Why does Jacob seem to ask an angel to watch over his grandchildren, versus appealing directly to God? 

To most modern Jews, the concept of angels seems foreign. Angels are the stuff of Renaissance Christian art, or the subject of pop-culture creation (remember the show “Touched by an Angel?”) Yet in fact, Judaism has a rich tradition of belief in angels. Whether you subscribe to this belief or not, it begs a larger, deeply relevant question: How can we relate to a transcendent God who so often feels distant from us? 

In our verse, it is clear that Jacob is referring to a specific angel who was sent by God to protect him throughout his life, as Rashi explains. Another commentator, Radak, expands on this idea: “The actions of God are through intermediaries, and ‘malachim’ are sent from God to serve God, to protect people...”  But why do we need an intermediary? And why would Jacob ask an angel to carry out his blessing, and not God?

Sforno (Italian, late 15th -16th centuries) was also troubled by this question, and resolves it by saying in fact that it is a prayer asking God to command the angel to bless his grandchildren, not a prayer directly to the malach. Yet the alternative is also possible, that Jacob was in fact addressing the angel.  

To me, the trope of angels throughout our tradition reflects the fact that it often feels difficult, if not impossible, to connect with a transcendent God. It is significant that the verb “save” (Hebrew “goel”) in our verse is in the present tense. Clearly, Jacob felt the divine presence in his life, and wanted to pass on that sense of God’s imminence to his grandchildren. By reciting this blessing, we too affirm, or at least express the hope, that God truly is a constant presence in our lives.  

When I fall into bed at night, I try to remember to say these words again for myself. While we adults may no longer be scared of monsters in the closet, there are plenty of demons that plague us in the night — our worries, regrets, uncertainties. Reciting the blessing that Jacob recited can help us all start each night with a clean slate. Whether we believe in actual angels or not, it reassures us, adults and children alike, that we are not alone.

On Shabbat we read the finale of the Joseph story in Parashat Vayigash. The story culminates in a wonderful moment of family reconciliation which underscores why we must never forget the importance of family harmony (shalom bayit) in these relationships. And we must always remember the fragility of these relationships, too.

These are very important issues, and I know many rabbis will want to speak about them this Shabbat and I think they should.

However, I wish to share with you the religious significance of a very strange comment Jacob utters at the end of the parasha, a remark blurted out in such dramatic fashion it literally renders Pharaoh and Joseph speechless.

When Joseph’s family finally moves to Egypt and the brothers are introduced to Pharaoh, Joseph brings Jacob in for a private audience with Pharaoh. In an effort to be polite and show deference for Jacob’s years, Pharaoh asks Jacob his age, which in Egyptian culture is a sign of respect.

“The years of my life are 130” Jacob replies. A simple answer to a simple question — Jacob could have stopped there. But Jacob continues: “Few and miserable have been the years of my life, nor do they compare to the years of my fathers (Abraham and Isaac).” What a bizarre thing to say — not just to a stranger, but a stranger who happens to be the most powerful person in the land! Not only does Jacob complain about his life, but he offers a second complaint — his horrible life hasn’t even lasted as long as that of his father and grandfather!

What is going on here? I sense that as Jacob’s life comes to a close, Pharaoh’s seemingly innocuous question strikes a raw nerve and reminds Jacob that as death approaches he will have to account for his life — what he has done and not done. While he may not have intended to offer this “confession” to Pharaoh, it may be that once he arrived in Egypt he began to think about his impending death and when the opportunity to comment on his life arose the words just flowed out of him.

Some Rabbinic commentators argue there is a great irony in Jacob’s statement. He has accumulated so much in his life — the blessing of his father, two wives, many children, great wealth, but at what price? Maybe his answer to Pharaoh acknowledges that he never imagined that achieving so much would require such a heavy price and exact such a heavy human tax. Jacob has paid a heavy price in all of his “accumulations” — he cut himself off from Esau, became estranged from Leah, and created the horrific sibling rivalry that resulted in Joseph’s exile to Egypt from Jacob and the family for many years.

Perhaps, as Jacob reviewed his life, his days were “few and miserable.” If so, his impulsive yet heartfelt words are a powerful reminder to all of us to think — not just of our “accumulations,” but what we may have sacrificed in order to achieve them.

In our process of “accumulating” we tend to forget that as we “accumulate” it is possible that we have to “sacrifice” other things. May we be wise enough to insure that we don’t lose those things that cannot be replaced by our “accumulations.”

Chanukah is rooted in what is believed to be the first recorded struggle for religious freedom. Whereas the military defeat of the Syrian Greeks is liturgically noted, it is the miracle of the small cruse of oil that captures our ritual focus, as seen in the Talmud’s account in Tractate Shabbat 21b. And while the Talmud and the later codes allow a chanukiah to be kindled in the privacy of one’s home, especially at times of persecution, central to the mitzvah is the matter of “pirsumei nisa,” the publicizing of the miracle by sharing the Chanukah menorah’s light and glow with a viewing public. In this manner of observance, we might light the chanukiah in our homes yet still seek to share its light with world. Here the two elements of the “clal” and “prat,” the public and private, seem to merge in leveraging its light as a tool for religious tolerance.

Some argue that Chanukah today remains a largely private Jewish matter, as seen in the very retreat of the mitzvah over time to the security of our homes. But aspects of Jewish ritual law as they pertain to the lighting of the menorah in its original form, which have been reclaimed in our more tolerant time, suggest a more worldly and public engagement with this particular mitzvah.

To this end, we find an interesting ruling in the Shulchan Arukh, the Code of Jewish Law, noting that in a situation where one has a doorway to one’s home on more than one side, a chanukiah must be kindled in each. This ruling illustrates a central concern in our optimal fulfillment of “pirsumei nisa”: that we need not hold back in our sharing of this message concerning religious freedom. As my teacher, the noted rosh yeshiva Rabbi Dr. Moshe David Tendler explains, “When it comes to the mitzvah of ‘pirsumei nisa,’ a half-page ad is not enough.”

Moreover, we are taught that a chanukiah cannot be placed in a place that is higher than 20 cubits, as the eye cannot reasonably see that far. This physical limitation on the viewing eye finds support in last week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev. Joseph’s peril at the hands of his jealous brothers was further aggravated by the indication, noted in the first chapter of Tractate Tamid, that the pit into which they threw him was deeper than 20 cubits, placing him fully out of sight.

In addition to creating proper sight lines with regard to the Chanukah lights, however, there is a further consideration related to the window of opportunity for the would-be viewing public; and so the Shulchan Arukh stipulates that we light the chanukiah after nightfall and no later than the time when the last person would have left the marketplace (“ad shetichleh regel min ha-shuk”).

Modern conveniences that have extended our shopping time and urban engagement late into the evening lend a fluid element to this halachic time boundary, which has clearly been extended beyond its original window of a half hour for the fulfillment of this mitzvah. It is even claimed that the famous Rabbi Chaim of Brisk (late 19th century, grandfather of Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik), who lived across from the town’s theater, waited until late at night to light his menorah, just as the last show was letting out, thus guaranteeing him a sizable viewing audience for his “publishing of the miracle.”

These details, in sum, inform and inspire the mitzvah in a special way. They remind us that we need to be with and a part of the ritual. Given the timeless lessons of the Chanukah experience as it relates to Jewish identity, pride, awareness, and involvement, its central symbol and ceremony must occur within reasonable proximity of its intended audience. It is best served through a present, viewing public.

The minutiae of the chanukiah mandate our involvement in efforts to promote religious and cultural respect. One might still argue and maintain the uniqueness of the Chanukah experience to our particularistic Jewish lifestyle. It is a ritual that is distinctly Jewish even while being ubiquitous.

Ignorance grows from what we do not know and might never see. All faith communities, therefore, are enriched by what they observe being experienced and celebrated by others. So we find an unavoidable — if still manageable — tension in the Chanukah of our day, which has taken on an even more prominent role than is required by tradition. To what degree and exactly where and how we choose to radiate the glow of the Chanukah menorah’s light is a discussion and even debate that seems never to be extinguished.

We approach biblical figures with a sense of reverence and awe. However, at times we can learn from their challenges and human shortcomings.

In Parshat Vayeshev 37:2, Joseph brings a scathing report regarding his brothers to their father, Jacob. Rashi comments that Joseph’s testimony was not limited to one or two topics but rather “Whatever bad he saw in them, he reported.”

In Sechel Tov on Genesis 44:17, the compilation of midrashim by Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo of Italy (12th century), this incident is identified as the beginning of a cycle of events that leads to a long exile of pain and suffering in Egypt for the Jewish nation. In his classic work Meshech Chachama, commenting on Leviticus 16:30, Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk suggests that every contemporary conflict between Jews contains a remnant of this early act of sibling conflict within it. He viewed this contentious relationship as having eternal ramifications.

The Talmud, in Masechet Megillah 16b, attributes the cycle of events that led to Jewish bondage to an act of unintended favoritism displayed by Jacob to Joseph. In fact, Maimonides — in his Mishneh Torah, Laws of Inheritance (6:13), warns that favoring one child over another could lead to similar consequences for a Jewish family. This theme is expanded upon in the Pesikta Zutra, commenting on Genesis 39, which describes the prophet Hoshea as linking the infighting between the two Jewish kingdoms to the impact of Jacob’s favoritism, leading to the brothers’ jealousy and eventually to the descent into Egypt.

It is clear that our great rabbinic commentaries are asking us to consider the impact of disunity. Beyond looking at specific acts or arguments, we are presented with scenarios of great people who did not consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Much of the latter sections of the Book of Genesis are attempts by the siblings to repair their past missteps. In fact, Avraham Ibn Ezra, in his commentary on Exodus 13:19, sees the attempt at family reconciliation continuing during the time of the exodus from Egypt. Moses was determined to take the remains of Joseph out of Egypt not only to fulfill a promise made to this great man, but to bring to a close the tragic story that started with the brothers throwing Joseph into the pit.

At this time of year, many families are privileged to gather for family reunions during Chanukah. While family members may grow apart and live at great distances from each other, the positive bonds of family unity bring a sense of closeness and peace of mind. It is important to point out that, to an extent, we are emulating the Hasmonean brothers, who formed a powerful partnership with their father to lead the Jewish people to victory. In the following generations this unity frayed, and these internal conflicts ended the Hasmonean dynasty — with negative consequences to the nation. It would serve us well to preserve the harmony of the modern Jewish family. While not every relationship is perfect, repair and reconciliation are always possible. In the Avot of Rabbi Natan (26), we are reminded that all interpersonal mitzvot apply to the way we interact with our own family members. Just as one act of discord or dissonance could begin a cycle of doom, one step toward repair can generate unity and greatness.We approach biblical figures with a sense of reverence and awe. However, at times we can learn from their challenges and human shortcomings.

In Parshat Vayeshev 37:2, Joseph brings a scathing report regarding his brothers to their father, Jacob. Rashi comments that Joseph’s testimony was not limited to one or two topics but rather “Whatever bad he saw in them, he reported.”

In Sechel Tov on Genesis 44:17, the compilation of midrashim by Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo of Italy (12th century), this incident is identified as the beginning of a cycle of events that leads to a long exile of pain and suffering in Egypt for the Jewish nation. In his classic work Meshech Chachama, commenting on Leviticus 16:30, Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk suggests that every contemporary conflict between Jews contains a remnant of this early act of sibling conflict within it. He viewed this contentious relationship as having eternal ramifications.

The Talmud, in Masechet Megillah 16b, attributes the cycle of events that led to Jewish bondage to an act of unintended favoritism displayed by Jacob to Joseph. In fact, Maimonides — in his Mishneh Torah, Laws of Inheritance (6:13), warns that favoring one child over another could lead to similar consequences for a Jewish family. This theme is expanded upon in the Pesikta Zutra, commenting on Genesis 39, which describes the prophet Hoshea as linking the infighting between the two Jewish kingdoms to the impact of Jacob’s favoritism, leading to the brothers’ jealousy and eventually to the descent into Egypt.

It is clear that our great rabbinic commentaries are asking us to consider the impact of disunity. Beyond looking at specific acts or arguments, we are presented with scenarios of great people who did not consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Much of the latter sections of the Book of Genesis are attempts by the siblings to repair their past missteps. In fact, Avraham Ibn Ezra, in his commentary on Exodus 13:19, sees the attempt at family reconciliation continuing during the time of the exodus from Egypt. Moses was determined to take the remains of Joseph out of Egypt not only to fulfill a promise made to this great man, but to bring to a close the tragic story that started with the brothers throwing Joseph into the pit.

At this time of year, many families are privileged to gather for family reunions during Chanukah. While family members may grow apart and live at great distances from each other, the positive bonds of family unity bring a sense of closeness and peace of mind. It is important to point out that, to an extent, we are emulating the Hasmonean brothers, who formed a powerful partnership with their father to lead the Jewish people to victory. In the following generations this unity frayed, and these internal conflicts ended the Hasmonean dynasty — with negative consequences to the nation. It would serve us well to preserve the harmony of the modern Jewish family. While not every relationship is perfect, repair and reconciliation are always possible. In the Avot of Rabbi Natan (26), we are reminded that all interpersonal mitzvot apply to the way we interact with our own family members. Just as one act of discord or dissonance could begin a cycle of doom, one step toward repair can generate unity and greatness.