Friends - This week we begin to come under the colorful hashpa’a (guidance) of Yosef. Yosef is often called “ha’tzaddik” – “the Righteous” – primarily because he withstood the seductions of his Egyptian master’s wife.
A tzaddik, interestingly, is not just someone who does the right thing. He does do the right thing – but that thing is not necessarily something which is and always has been clearly the “right thing”. In many ways, the tzaddik breaks into entirely new territory. He does the right thing in a thing that we might not have even known was a thing until he came along and showed us it was a thing. And that, he does right.
How do we know this? The gemara in Moed Katan brings a verse from Shmuel (Shmuel II 23:3) which says, in part, “he-who-rules-man-rightly (tzaddik) rules (moshel) (in) awe of G-d”. The gemara explains this difficult verse as follows: Hashem says, “I rule over man; who rules over Me? the tzaddik!”. The tzaddik is not just doing what “G-d says” is right. In some ways, he is ruling over G-d, so to speak, setting new standards and creating new ways to serve
G-d.
The Izhbitzer writes on this week’s parsha that Ya’akov learned a lot from his dream of the ladder and the angels going up and coming down. In fact, he used to think about it a lot, and even shared his dream and some of what he learned from it with his sons. And they too would think about it and discuss it and have new insights from it. So when Yosef came along and told them his dreams and thought them worthy of being interpreted, they considered him to be a chutzpan – the nerve! How could he compare himself to their father? Their father, who was so perfect in his awe of G-d and in his humility, his dreams should be interpreted. But Yosef’s ? (Didn’t they know, though, that when Ya’akov dreamt, he also wasn’t yet who he would eventually become?)
The brothers had their standards as to what the right thing to do is, what the right character traits to work on are – namely, those such as awe and humility. And they could not bear that Yosef, who seemed to be operating by a different standard, should presume that his dreams could have the same importance as their father’s, when Yosef didn’t display those same character prerequisites!
It is hard to imagine a world, especially a religious world, without rules. It is much easier to think in terms of keeping track of “points”. For instance, if you dip in the ritual bath enough times, learn enough gemara, help enough old ladies cross the street, then you are a tzaddik. But there is yet another other element – an intangible, seemingly unattainable piece – the capacity to dream…
To dream, this is chutzpa. Whether it’s in the sense of imagining something different, having a vision, or whether it’s simply closing one’s eyes and allowing the mind to roam freely – dreaming is chutzpa. Dreams break the standards which we have accepted for our daily lives. Your dream tells you that even though you go about your day and do everything you think you should do, you are not satisfied. Your visions, your fantasies, tell you that the reality you have created for yourself is not enough.
The tzaddik is always imagining– he is creating new languages to discuss what is important to him, to discuss what moves him in his soul, because the old language cannot express what he needs to express. (Rav Kook, for example, did this in almost all his writings.) Because of this, there is no limit to what he can say – as deep as his soul is, as strong as his urges are to express, as far as his mind can go – that is only the limit.
This is what happens in Torah she’be’al peh – The Oral Torah – meaning everything of the Torah that is not written in the Bible. The Bible is written down – we can’t add any more letters or words or books. But the Oral Torah – it is really without limit. This is the beauty of it – there is no “right answer” as to what the law is in any given situation. The greater the mind of the genius who learns, the more unpredictable the outcome. It is said about Rebbe Meir that he could argue 150 reasons on each side of an argument. If a genius the likes of Rabbi Akiva Eiger can come along and show you how the kashrut of a spoon is intimately related to, say, the price of tea in China, and he can prove it convincingly, then it is done, and the attitude toward that spoon is irrevocably changed. The Oral Torah is open and waiting for great spirits and minds to plumb its depths.
We are used to functioning in a mindset where there is a right way to learn, to live, to understand, to pray. But it’s all just educated guesses. We don’t “know” G-d, we don’t “know” what He wants. We don’t know He is a He. We just know what we know and we move from that, based what tzaddikim tell us. We take their advice because they are brilliant, but they don’t “know” G-d either, in that absolute, closed and final sense. The difference: we stay with what we’ve got, but they must move on.
It is hard for us to accept this new way, because we want something to stand on - and he wants to fly. This is why the brothers had such a hard time with Yosef and his dreams. They thought they had everything they needed in their father’s dream. And along comes Yosef with a whole new paradigm.
R’ Zilberberg (ShLiTA) writes that Hanukah is the holiday of the Oral Torah. All the other holidays, including Purim, are written in the Bible but Hanukah is the one which was instituted purely by the Rabbis. For this reason, he says, it has more of the infinite to it. With all of the holidays, the spiritual benefit available is boundless – but the way to attain that benefit may be very specific. But on Hanukah, the ways we can bring light down, and what we can do with that light, are still wide open. Hanukah’s ceremony is doing something they used to do in the Temple – in our very own houses! The very celebration of the holiday is a decentralization – the Temple is moved to your house. Unlike the 3 major holidays when we go to the Temple, now, the Temple comes to you. It is in our hands to do with it what we can.
It is as if we are given a candle, a spirit-candle, and told we may use its special light to explore wherever we wish – in ourselves, in others, in the Torah. It will shed light wherever it is shone. Only we must not be limited in our vision of what it may be used for. Take a risk – G-d will follow.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |