Parashat Miketz 5785 – 12/28/2024
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.
Bereshit 41:1-44:17
I want to go on and consider another aspect of the issue of teaching the deeper values of Torah from one generation to the next. Rambam writes:
… For the only thing it is permitted to divulge to all people are the texts of the books. You already know that even the legalistic science of law was not put down in writing in the olden times because of the precept, which is widely known in the nation: Words that I have communicated to you orally, you are not allowed to put down in writing. This precept shows extreme wisdom with regard to the Law. For it was meant to prevent what has ultimately come about in this respect: I mean the multiplicity of opinions, the variety of schools, the confusions occurring in the expression of what is put down in writing, the negligence that accompanies what is written down, the confusion with regard to actions.
Traditionally, other than the Torah text and the other books canonized in the Bible, Judaism has been an oral tradition. The great mass of Talmudic literature was actually passed on orally for a long time until, under political pressure threatened to kill all the containers of that literature, the Sages were forced to commit it to writing. The Mishnah was redacted in the second century of the Common Era, with collections of baraitot (“external” Mishanaiot that were excluded from the “official” Mishnah) offering alternative perspectives on the issues discussed in the Mishnah. The Midrashim are also from this period and were redacted in the schools of various Sages. The Gemara, the record of discussions in the Babylonian academies and those of the Land of Israel, that elucidate, amplify and extend the statements of the Mishnah, was redacted about 4 centuries later.
Now each method of transmission, written and oral, has its advantages and disadvantages. In the case of written transmission, the advantage is that the text is fixed, “written in stone,” to coin a phrase. One can always check a copy of the text against the original – the Torah scroll that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote and was kept next to the Ark with the stone tablets (the original written text), could be used to check all subsequent texts. This guarded against both scribal error and deliberate falsification. In fact, when Muslims claimed that we had perverted our Scripture and Yishmael (their ancestor) was supposed to be Avraham’s spiritual heir rather than Yitzchak, Rambam himself pointed out how difficult it would have been to change every Torah scroll from Spain to Yemen, had the original been purposely altered. Of course, by Rambam’s time the original scroll in the Holy of Holies was no longer available.
On the downside, scribal errors do creep into written texts, as the multiple versions of the texts of the New Testament can attest. This is a problem in some areas of the Talmud as well. Further, if there are variant traditions of what the original text was in various communities, then establishing a canonical version can be a difficult task, and likely won’t reconstruct the “original” text, if there even was one.
There is another, more important downside to a written text. A written text is fixed, unchangeable, especially in our day where character-by-character comparisons with a standard can be made on a computer in seconds, and the copies disseminated in the thousands or millions virtually at the push of a button. That is good as far as the words go (and, incidentally, in a Torah scroll there are no vowel marks, cantillation marks, or punctuation), but as far as the meanings of the words go, we are thrown back to an oral tradition.
There is a famous story about someone who comes to Hillel to convert (different story!) and says that he only wants to accept the written scriptures, but not the oral tradition. Hillel says fine, let’s start with the alphabet. He teaches him aleph, bet, gimel, dalet (the first 4 letters of the Hebrew alphabet). The next day he comes back for his second lesson. This time Hillel teaches him dalet, gimel, bet, aleph. The man protests that yesterday Hillel taught him the reverse. Hillel responds that if he depends on him for something as simple as knowing the letters, maybe he should trust him when it comes to deeper levels of interpretation.
The moral of the story is that any written text, especially scriptural texts, must have a tradition of interpretation in order to be understood properly, and this tradition cannot itself be written. The reasons are numerous. First, language changes – if you look at any good translation of Torah or the prophets / writings, or even the Talmud, there are many places where the translator will note that the meaning of a certain word is unclear. More seriously, the text itself may be ambiguous, lending itself to several interpretations, sometimes contradictory interpretations. It may be that the text itself lends itself to various interpretation at various levels, which means that the meaning of the text is actually different from different levels of consciousness.
In fact, as I was composing this paragraph I was listening to a lecture in which the famous Talmudic dictum, Elu v’elu divrei Elokim chayim / Both these and these are the words of the living Gd was being discussed, and the lecturer simply said that Gd leaves the interpretation of the verses open so that the whole Truth can eventually be uncovered by approaching it from all angles.
The upshot of this discussion is that there is an inherent inflexibility in any written text, and the only way out of this problem is to have an associated oral tradition of interpretation which is passed on from one consciousness (the teacher’s) to another consciousness (the student’s). As Maharishi put it (in a slightly different context), “Knowledge in the books remains in the books – it’s never there when you need it.” The purpose of Scripture is to raise life to the level where faith morphs into knowledge based on the direct experience of higher states of consciousness. If all we have is a written text, it cannot convey the full value of the wholeness that is the experience of higher consciousness. Nor can a text teach anyone the techniques to rise to higher states of consciousness, especially when the first instruction is “close the eyes”! All this must be done from teacher to student, orally, from one consciousness to another. The oral tradition is what completes the written tradition and brings it to fulfillment.
Chag Chanukah Same’ach!
Happy New Year!
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Miketz
We have two sayings that help inform this parshah:
“God is in the details”;
“The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts.”
In this parshah, Joseph, an unwilling representative to Egypt-Mitzraim, the Land of Restrictions, from Canaan, the Land of Synchronicity, of Harmony, success-fully interprets two dreams of Mitzraim’s ruler, Pharoah, and is given de facto control of Mitzraim.
This is Harmony bringing the parts together so they can make a Whole.
Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams of seven fat cows devoured by seven lean cows and of seven healthy stalks of wheat devoured by seven lean stalks to mean that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine and therefore, Mitzrayim should store up during the fat years so it would have enough to last through the lean years.
Joseph’s Harmony was so great that Pharoah recognized the validity of Joseph’s interpretation and Joseph’s integrity was so great that Pharoah gave him control of organizing the stocking up, organizing which gave him de facto control of the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Harmony in Canaan had already been disturbed by Jacob’s failure to raise his children so that all felt equally loved – even though each might have different skills, some might be wiser, some more skilled in battle, some more skilled in leadership, in peace….
Jacob has failed to completely attend to detail and to reveal Gd in the details of everyday life and relationships in Canaan: Canaan was only partially Canaan, only partially and superficially, The Land of Synchronicity.
And the Harmony was broken further by the sons not learning to flow with Jacob’s behavior and to give love from their side to raise themselves and him to the level where they could feel Full Love, no matter what the surface appearance.
This resulted in betrayal of Jacob’s trust, selling Joseph into slavery, lying to their father, and, eventually famine in Canaan – a solid breakdown of the Plenty that exists when Canaan is Whole, functioning to bring all details into synchronicity, into harmony, and to Reveal Gd as the Wholeness, the Totality, which brings Complete Synchronicity, The Wholeness that is Oneness, of which all the parts are Expressions.
With the famine in Canaan, in Synchronicity, Jacob’s sons had to go to Mitzrayim, raised by Gd through Joseph, to a land of Synchronicity, Fullness.
And they will abandon the land Canaan to settle in Raised Up Mitzrayim, until eventually Wholeness breaks down there and several hundred years later, they need to escape restrictions, return to Canaan within themselves and to the physical land of Canaan. Of this we will learn more in the next Parshah.
This Parshah teaches us, that even in the midst of the ups and downs of life, we can maintain our purity, our Joyful and Reverent Daily Routine, so that we can Love Gd with all our Heart and Soul, Love our Neighbor as Our Self, and fill the fragments, the details, with Harmony, fill limits with Wholeness.
Of course, there are deeper levels of interpretation: All is Gd’s Plan as Joseph later tells his brothers. There are no mistakes in Torah, no villains, no heroes, only Gd telling stories to teach us how to integrate the fragments of life into Wholeness– and at the deepest level, Torah is Gd Humming Torah within Himself, within The Self, our Self, the Only Self.
To this we in our community are rising: Joy and Love, which we have a lot of, radiate a lot of, share a lot of are signs of the return to Wholeness, Teshuvah. Gd, the Self, Is Joy, Is Love.
Baruch HaShem