Dear Friends,
This week, in Parshat Vayeishev, our ancestors’ family falls apart. Joseph’s brothers, overwhelmed by jealousy and concern for their own selves, choose violence. They throw Joseph into a pit, sit down for a meal while he languishes below, and debate what to do with him. Kill him? Sell him into slavery? They’re stressed about it; a couple of them are quite upset, but they continue to live their lives. They’re not really seeing Joseph as a brother, or even so much as a fellow human; his suffering becomes normalized.
Channukah begins this week, and its story speaks to the parsha, in a way. Even before the Greco-Syrians ransacked the Temple, Jews were fighting bitterly with other Jews. Some wanted to assimilate and take on more and more Greek culture; others wanted to remain fully separate and unique as Jews. The damage these two groups did to each other set the stage for the Greco-Syrians to fully wreak havoc. It is a pattern we recognize too often: when we stop seeing each other as human, we make it easier for cruelty to take root.
About three hundred years later, as depicted in the full Yom Kippur martyrology, Eleh Ezkrah, a Roman official prepares to execute a group of rabbis. He tells them that their deaths are justified because of something their ancestors did long ago, in this week’s parsha: Selling Joseph into slavery. The story becomes a justification for further violence. The official doesn’t see the rabbis as fellow humans, either; just part of an inconvenient group with a usable story.
We’re still living in a world where people get kidnapped, discounted, and seen as inconvenient and therefore expendable. It’s literally impossible for one person to stop it all, and so we inevitably find ourselves in a position where our brothers are in the pit, so to speak, and we have to sit down for a meal and debate what to do with them – that is, if we’re thinking about them at all. It’s hard to cope, but the less we think of these brothers as brothers, as fellow humans, the easier it becomes to live with the suffering.
As we light the Channukah candles this coming week, may the spiritual practice of adding a single candle each night serve as a reminder: The Talmud teaches us that saving a single life is like saving the world. Interrupting a single act of violence is meaningful. Helping a single individual get on their feet is significant. Shifting a neighborhood culture in a way that opens hearts to the sacred value of every neighbor is transformative. One step at a time, one candle at a time. May we inspire and bring light to one another.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Hannah