Last week, synagogues worldwide finished reading Genesis, the first book of the Torah. Those Synagogues will start the second book, Exodus, this week. The two have many differences, but one may be something unexpected. I am not a Torah scholar, nor have I ever played one on TV, but in my humble opinion, Much of Genesis is about a dysfunctional family whose only real accomplishment is increasing the number of Abraham’s descendants.
Think about it, Isaac’s half-brother, Ishmael, and Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, were thrown out of Abrahams’ house. Abe was Ismael’s father; he slept with Hagar at his wife’s instance. Twins Jacob and Esau started fighting when they were still in their mother’s womb. As Esau was the oldest child, he should have become the leader of Isaac’s “tribe.” But with the help of his mother, Jacob fooled his now-blind father to get his blessing and became the next leader of the nascent Jewish nation. Esau seethed and threatened to kill his brother. While the two brothers eventually reconciled, Esau moved away and became the Patriarch of his own tribe, which eventually became the county of Edom, which constantly went to war with Israel.
Jacob had twelve sons. He favored the 11th-born Joseph, leading the older ten to get so jealous they sold Joseph into slavery. Thanks to his skill at interpreting dreams, Joseph became Pharoh’s viceroy. Years later, when ten of his brothers went to Egypt to purchase food. It was standard practice to ask the viceroy. When they went to ask, they did not recognize Joseph. But he recognized them. Joseph treated them cleverly, playing tricks on them, hiding expensive items in their bags, and then having them searched to make them look like thieves.
After they finally reconciled, Joseph invited them to bring his father and younger brother to live with everyone in Egypt, but after a few generations, they all became slaves,
Exodus starts with a new Pharoah over Egypt, who knew not Joseph (I don’t know why, -it was in all the papers). That Pharoah turned the Jews in Egypt into slaves. With the help of G-d, and by working together two brothers Moses and Aaron freed the slaves. Moses had an awful speech impediment. Therefore, Aaron became his spokesman. G-d helped the two brothers punish Egypt and its leader (the Pharoah) with ten plagues. Released from slavery, the Hebrews began to travel back to where they came from, the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses took the role of ruler of the slaves and Aaron, the high priest. Each had their own role; neither was envious of the other. But by working together, they changed the world. When they reached the Red Sea, their older sister, Miriam the Prophetess, joined the two brothers. When they reached Sinai the, the entire nation got to hear G-d’s voice, and it was live, not because they all had iPhones. The tradition is that the Hebrews traveled through the desert; they were followed by a rolling rock that poured enough water to sate the Hebrews and their livestock. The water poured out of the rock in honor of Miriam. In fact, it stopped the day she died.
Modern Jews also need to change the world because the outside is getting nasty.
A worldwide study of Antisemitism was released by the ADL on January 14. The results were frightening:
“The survey shows that anti-Jewish sentiments are at an all-time high globally, revealing areas where governments must take action to tackle antisemitic hate.
New York, NY, January 14, 2025 … Nearly half of all people worldwide hold elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes, according to the latest Global 100 survey conducted by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) and coordinated with Ipsos and other research partners. The survey found that 46 percent of the world’s adult population – an estimated 2.2 billion people – harbor deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes, more than double compared to ADL’s first worldwide survey a decade ago and the highest level on record since ADL started tracking these trends globally.”
The people of the Jewish nation are a family. We are all descendants of Abraham’s dysfunctional clan. Today, however, things in the family are quite different. Now there is a cornucopia of Jewish types. Some Jews are Sephardic, and some are Ashkenazi. Some congregations read the Torah in one year, and others do it in three. There are Jews by birth and Jews by choice. There is an entire range from Orthodox to Conservative, to Reform, and even secular. There are Jews of all kinds.
But to survive, we must accept and respect our many differences. To fight and defeat the scourge of Antisemitism, the nation of Jews must act like the family of the second book of the Torah Exodus not the family of the first.
{Reposted from The Lid}
