Parashat Vayigash 5781 — 12/26/2020
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Bereishit 44:18-47:27
Last week we began to consider Rambam’s sources and the thinkers who influenced him. The principle influence of course is Jewish thought, Scripture and the Rabbinic literature. This includes both exoteric and esoteric knowledge. The latter, according to Rabbinic teaching, carries some danger with it, as it can be both personally overwhelming and can be misused to the detriment of both the individual and society. Today we continue those considerations.
I believe that according to Rambam, philosophy and Kabbalah are similar in that both involve both intellectual understanding and direct experience of the transcendent and the way it manifests into physical creation. As we noted earlier, this is what he calls natural science and Divine science. I think it is unfortunate that in the West, the direct experience aspect of philosophy has been lost, and philosophy has devolved into a purely intellectual exercise, a game played by “professional thinkers.” In the East, the same friend of mine commented, “a philosopher is a wise man.” Wisdom comes from the transcendent, from vision that encompasses wholeness of life, as we shall discuss shortly. It is the lack of experience of the transcendent that is truly dangerous for the individual and society. If the method of experiencing the transcendent is taught properly and understood properly, the dangers noted in the Talmud can be overcome, but if the experience of the transcendent is missing in the life of the individual and society, that lack cannot be overcome.
The point here is that for philosophy to be useful to life, and not a purely academic exercise, it must be transformative. The same thing can be said for Torah, and our Sages, in Talmudic times and earlier, recognized that true Torah study is indeed transformative. Unfortunately, in both cases, study has indeed become very academic, and fails to be very useful to life. (The same, of course, is true for other religions as well, as the often luridly publicized disconnects between what the preacher says and how he or she lives so glaringly shows. Think Jim and Tammy Bakker or Jerry Falwell, Jr., or the ongoing child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, to name just the headline-makers.)
In a lecture he gave at Duke University in 2009, R. Lord Dr. Jonathan Sacks, formerly Chief Rabbi of the UK and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of London, briefly reviewed the history of political philosophy in Europe, and asked, “How is it that all the philosophy that we have couldn’t prevent a Holocaust?” Avraham came to the same conclusion when he felt forced to have Sarah claim to be his sister when they lived among the Philistines. When Avimelech, king of the Philistines, asked why he felt it necessary to resort to such a ruse in a civilized society, Avraham answered, “Because I saw there is no fear of Gd in this place.”
A purely intellectual understanding cannot give us fear / awe of Gd. We need to have some direct experience of Gd, of the transcendent reality that underlies all life, in order for the awe of Gd to grow in our hearts. The Hebrew word that we translate as “fear” (“awe” is probably better) is yirah and the root is close to the root r-a-h, which means, “to see.” In order to fear Gd, we must see Gd, know Gd intimately. Gd must be as real to us as the hand in front of our face; otherwise, we are just making a mood, a fragile web of conceptions that will not stand up to storms of time or criticism.
In another video (talk given 5/11/2017, at about 7:00 into the 13 minute talk), R. Sacks quotes the great American historian, Will Durant, to give an idea what happens when a society or a civilization loses its connection to the transcendent:
Every civilization eventually goes through a conflict between religion and society, or more specifically between religion and science. And then it reaches the following point when the intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and after some hesitation, the moral code allied with it. Literature and philosophy become anti-clerical, the movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious support, deteriorates into an epicurean chaos and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end, a society and its religion tend to fall together like body and soul into a harmonious death.
The trouble is, R. Sacks and Durant describe the problem, but treat it as if it were a law of nature, as something that inevitably takes place after a civilization reaches its peak, and starts to shift down a long decline. I believe that the reason for this shift is that the society becomes dependent on human reason and human resources. Human reason, as we understand the term, can only deal with the finite, because it is by nature analytical. It takes things apart, and focuses on partial values, trying to reconstruct wholeness out of parts and their interactions. This is like dissecting a newly dead body, and trying to figure out what animated it a minute ago, but is no longer there. But it is precisely the holistic value of life that animates it, and makes it something more than just a collection of atoms and molecules!
Focusing on partial values alone means that while we may be able to handle a limited range of creation, our actions will inevitably have side effects in other areas of creation, side effects which are often negative and rebound back upon us negatively. Climate change is an example that comes to mind. In order to act properly – that is, in a way that is life supporting for both oneself and one’s environment, one must maintain awareness of the underlying wholeness while engaged with the parts. Remaining on the level of the intellect alone will not accomplish this. The physical universe is too vast and interconnected for the intellect to calculate the effect of every action.
Next week we will conclude this section by offering a safe way, through Vedic Science, that the aim of both Kabbalah and philosophy may be realized.
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I have started reading R. Jonathan Sack’s z’l essays on the weekly parashah. On occasion I’ll share one that I particularly like, just so we don’t stray too far from the weekly cycle.
In his Essays on Ethics, for parashat Miketz (last week’s parashah — sorry, didn’t read it in time to include it), R. Sacks points out that the Jacob-Joseph stories include 5 incidents in which clothes play a significant role:
- Jacob dresses in Esau’s clothes to deceive his father when getting the blessing.
- Jacob gives Joseph the “coat of many colors” as a sign of favoritism, provoking the brothers’ hatred. They dip the coat in goat’s blood to deceive Jacob about Joseph’s disappearance.
- Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute to get Yehudah to perform yibum with her.
- Joseph leaves his garment in the hands of Mrs. Potiphar, who then uses it to frame Joseph for rape.
- When Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt they don’t recognize him, because he is dressed in the garments of a high Egyptian official.
In each case, the clothes are used to represent some reality other than as it really is. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for clothes: beged, has the same root as the word for “to betray”: b-g-d. When discussing this during Shabbat a friend pointed out that the word beged is spelled beit-gimel-dalet — the 2nd, 3rd and 4th letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order. What is missing (or hidden) is aleph — the first letter, which represents Unity (achdut) and Gd (Anochi = I = Self). What we learn from this is that “clothing” is that which conceals reality and projects a false picture to the senses. Clothes don’t really make the man, but they surely affect our perception of the man.
We can also hark back to the first chapters of Bereishit, where Gd expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. He makes them “garments of skin,” which can be (purposely mis-)understood as “garments of light.” Gd cloaks our inner spiritual nature with a physical body. In fact, the entire creation, physical and non-physical, in all its layers, is a finely woven cloak obscuring the underlying unity of Pure Consciousness that has given rise to all this diversity. Our challenge is to pierce the veil and live in Unity while acting in diversity.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayigash (“he drew near”)
Previously, the famine in Canaan caused Jacob to send ten of his sons to Mitzrayim (Egypt) to draw near the food supply Mitzrayim had stored up during years of abundance. Mitzrayim had stored up food because Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams about seven sickly cows swallowing seven healthy ones and seven shriveled heads of wheat swallowing seven healthy ones as meaning that seven good years would be followed by seven years of famine. He suggests to Pharaoh that they store up food during the good years so they will remain healthy during the famine years. Recognizing Joseph’s ability and liking this idea, Pharaoh puts him in charge of this project and Joseph becomes de facto ruler of Mitzrayim.
When Joseph’s ten brothers draw near, Joseph plays tricks on them, in order to get his youngest brother, Benjamin, and his father Jacob also to draw near. This so the whole family will be re-united as a family not as a collection of individuals lost in their own desires. When a family is drawn together in this way, this is a taste of the reunion of isolated streams of life so they are brought together to experience the Wholeness that is greater than any of Its expressions, a taste of the reunion of the diversity of creation with the Unity that is Gd, the Wholeness within which all individuals exist as expressions of Wholeness.
It is a taste of teshuvah, a taste of what life is like when the isolation of individuality is graced by the Wholeness of Gd and all limitations dissolve in the Unlimitedness of Gd.
One of the tricks is to hide a silver goblet in his brother Benjamin’s bag and then to discover it and claim that Benjamin, most dear to his father Jacob since Joseph was no longer with him, was a thief and must serve as Joseph’s slave.
The reunion begins when Judah draws near to Joseph, appealing to him that he will serve as slave to Joseph, instead of his brother Benjamin, child of his father Jacob’s old age.
Joseph is moved by Judah’s loyalty to his father and reveals that he is their brother Joseph, saying for them not to regret their selling him into slavery because it was all ordained by Gd to save the family in time of famine.
In our own lives, we can look at our own faults and those we see in others as being ordained by Gd in order to cause us and others to let go the limited level of awareness we have and move to a greater wholeness and to Wholeness. It is a good lesson in letting go regrets and resentments and living in gratitude and forgiveness.
“Drawing near” is a means to get a taste of the reunification not only of Joseph’s family but also of all individuals with Gd. Torah gives a hint of this greater unification by sometimes calling Jacob, “Jacob” and sometimes “Israel.” “Jacob” means “heel,” spirituality clinging to the heel of materialism to infuse spirituality into materialism. “Israel” means something like “in the Splendor of Gd,” “embracing Gd,” “prevailing over Gd.” This is spirituality opening itself to the One Spirit, the Wholeness that is Gd.
When given the news that Joseph is alive and functional master of Egypt, as Jacob he is mistrustful but when he sees the wealth Joseph gave to his brothers, “his spirit is revived” and now that he believes Joseph is still alive, his trust in Gd is restored – he is called “Israel” and as Israel he sets out for Egypt, making offerings to God at Beersheba (“well of the oath”, and “well of seven”) where Abraham and Abimelech swore an oath that recognized Abraham’s right to the well and to the land around it and Abraham has some evidence that the land Gd promised to give him and his descendants is being fulfilled.
When our lives are pure, then the signs that we are living in harmony with Gd’s Will become apparent to others and our right to the fruits of our labor is honored.
At the highest level, the land we want is the Land of Wholeness, One without a Second; the well we dig is out spiritual practices that open our awareness to Inexhaustible Water that is Gd.; and the fruits of our labor are Full Restoration of our Awareness to the reality that we are One without a Second playing the role of us and of all.
When we trust that all happens according to Gd’s Will, that everything is done with the purpose of restoring us to Oneness, then we are no longer Jacob, spirituality clinging to the heel of materiality, but Israel, raised by the perception of Wholeness as the Essence of materiality, to awareness of our own Wholeness, our own Oneness.
Gd gives Israel a vision in the night, yet he calls to him “Jacob, Jacob,” – though Gd may refer to us in our limited aspect it is to wake us up to our Unlimitedness.
Gd tells him not to be afraid of going to Egypt because Gd will protect him, make him a great nation, take him into Egypt and raise him from there.
chabad.org suggests that Jacob and Israel refer to qualities of the human being: as Jacob we are innocent, but toil; but as Israel we are children of God, and enjoy the tranquil, non-toiling relationship beyond struggle.
Loyalty (“Love thy neighbor as thyself”) is a means to reunification with the Jacob aspect of ourself, the human servant aspect. “Offering” to Gd is a means to unfold more of the Israel aspect of ourself, the divine aspect. Through love of our neighbors/family/allhumans/all diversity, we raise the toiling aspect of ourself to the higher level of our self — non-toiling, delighting as children of Gd, delighting in the Oneness that is our Self, the Only Self, Pure Delight, Free from Toil.
Today, in Judaism, we give prayers instead of animals as our offerings.
Through love and prayer, love in our hearts and our action and prayer in our hearts and our words we reunite ourselves and all and rise to All-in-All, to One, Pure Love, Pure Joy, Pure Delight.
Baruch HaShem.