The Midrash, the allegorical level of interpretation of the Torah, adds some revealing details about Joseph’s action in his short visit to the land of his birth. According to Midrash Tanhuma, at the conclusion of the burial ceremonies, Joseph goes to Shekhem to visit the pit into which he was thrown by his brothers before they sold him as a slave to the Ishmaelite merchants.

Imagine what must have come up in his mind when he saw the pit. This is the location where an act of great injustice—a major betrayal—was performed against him by his own flesh and blood, his older brothers who were supposed to care for him and protect him. They threw him into the pit with the intention of eventually killing him. Think of the shock, fear, despair, helplessness and anger that Joseph must have felt at the time of the event, and how all these emotions would have flooded him upon visiting the site of the atrocity.

We would expect that the midrash would report how Joseph expressed some of those emotions at the site. But Joseph was no ordinary man. He is the archetype of the ideal tzaddik, the perfectly righteous man. His response was as big-hearted as can be. The midrash tells us, that upon reaching the pit, Joseph recited a blessing, the one that one is supposed to recite when a miracle occurs: “Blessed is He who has caused a miracle to occur for me in this location.”

How could he do this? How could he have avoided all those floods of memories and emotions? Was he disconnected from his feelings, a kind of a robot? Hardly so. The Torah tells us of a few instances where Joseph could not hold his tears back while speaking with his brothers. He was a softy, when it came to his emotions. Yet as a tzaddik, he did not respond to his emotions blindly. He took the whole situation into account.

For starters, he was aware of how nervous and anxious his brothers were. As the Torah tells us, after Jacob’s death they were afraid that in the absence of their father, Joseph would take revenge. Furthermore, as he had already told them when he first revealed his identity to them, had it not been for their betrayal, he would not have become Pharaoh’s viceroy, his family would not have been saved and the race of the People of Israel, promised by God, would not have become a reality. Being thrown into the pit enabled something miraculous to happen; hence he uttered the blessings.

There is a fantastic lesson here: the midrash tells us that a true tzaddik, someone who is truly connected to God, always strives to maintain the most positive outlook, the most big-hearted perspective, even when overcome by enormous challenges and difficulties. Said differently: a tzaddik is someone whose consciousness is very wide, who maintains the highest perspective without contracting.

As the book of proverbs says:

כִּי שֶׁבַע יִפּוֹל צַדִּיק וָקָם וּרְשָׁעִים יִכָּשְׁלוּ בְרָעָה.

The tzaddik, though he fall seven times, will rise again; but the wicked are overthrown by calamity. (Proverbs 24:16)

* * *

Almost everyone is familiar with the picture of the three monkeys: one covers his mouth, the second covers his eyes, the third covers his ears. In Buddhism they are referred to as “The Three Sage Monkeys”, because they speak no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil. For the spiritual aspirant, this is an ideal to strive for and a spiritual practice to apply. Only beings with a very high level of attainment can actually display it in their lives, and in their example inspire others.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the famous guru who founded Transcendental Meditation, used to tell a story in this regard. One Indian saint was known for his insistence on only seeing the positive in every situation. Some youngsters decided to test him by asking him to accompany them thorough a street where a dead corpse of a cat who has just been run over by a car lay on the road: a gory and highly unpleasant site.

“Look at that cat!” said one of the boys. “What a ghastly sight!”

“Look at the beautiful, pearly white teeth of the cat” responded the saint.

Indeed, as Shakespeare pointed out:

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

* * *

“Evolution shaped the human brain to be acutely aware of all potential dangers,” says Abundance authors Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. In addition, in the process of our cultural evolution and the increase individuation, we have also become acutely aware of all the wrong that has been done to us as well as to others.

But Joseph’s generosity and magnanimity towards his brothers, and his wide, saintly perspective expressed in the Midrash story, is giving us a powerful message: that part of our spiritual striving, which includes our commitment to tikkun olam, the repair of the world, is the commitment to favor that part of ourselves that sees beyond those biologically and culturally conditioned modes of perception and interpretation. It is enjoined upon us to strive to cultivate a vision that sees everything, good or bad, coming from God, or, indeed, as God in action. As the Breslov Hassids put it—

הכל מכל עצם זיו חיות אלוקותו יתברך ממש

Anything and everything is, in actuality, the very essence of the radiance of the liveliness of Him, the Holy Blessed One.

————–

Note: in this regard, here are a few questions that are often asked:

1. Is it possible?
2. Is it practical?
3. Is it desirable?

It is definitely possible. In every generation there are saintly people of all cultures who have demonstrated this ability to focus on the highest, “keep their eyes on the prize”, and ignore the enormous suffering that they have to undergo in order to get there. Nelson Mandela is one obvious example. Like Joseph, he had to undergo tremendous suffering, including being incarcerated under severe conditions. And when he emerged, he maintained the highest possible perspective and harbored no bitterness.

It’s definitely practical. It does mean transcending narcissism and victimization—a tall order in a post-modern, self-absorbed culture of me that we all live in. It is not easy, but it’s definitely achievable.

As the great Indian teacher Paramahansa Yogananda, speaking about the difference between a saint and a sinner, said: “A saint is a sinner who never gave up.” It’s not about being perfect, it’s about persistence and commitment.

One of the most effective means of cultivating some distance from, and perspective over, one’s emotional experience is meditation. In meditation we assume no relationship to the content of our consciousness—thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. A regular practice of meditation allows one to have more objectivity in moments of great turmoil and upheaval. But meditation is most effective in this regard if one also couples it with a commitment to a cause higher than oneself. In fact, that in itself is a kind of meditation, because it remove the focus from one’s petty concerns and self-absorption to a goal much larger than oneself.

As for whether or not it is desirable, one can only look at history and realize, that every great advancement in the history of our civilization occurred because of people who had a vision that transcended their difficulties, even if those included intense personal suffering on their behalf.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

This week’s Torah portion, lekh lakha (Genesis 12:1 – 17:27), is the first portion that addresses the Jewish story. Previous portions, bereshit and noach, dealt with humanity as a whole; from this point on, however, the Torah deals exclusively with the Jewish people. Just as the sprouting of an acorn contains within it the entire oak tree in condensed form, and just like the first verse of the Torah is said to include the entire Torah in it, so one may expect that the opening words of this parashah express Judaism in condensed form.

Here is the first pasuk, the first verse:

לֶךְ לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ.

Go from your country and your birthplace
and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.
(Genesis 12:1)

On the face of it, this is a straightforward travel instruction: Abraham, go from where you are now, which has been your family home for decades, and move to the land that I will show you. But if this is really the first sprouting of what we now call Judaism, there would have to be a lot more in it than that.

The first two words, lekh lekha, contain the clue. The words are a command and are often translated as “go thee”, “get thee,” or simply “go”. The Zohar, however, asks us to understand these words literally. The first word, lekh, means “go”; the second world, lekha, means “to you.” The words lekh lekha literally mean “go to you.” Go to yourself, says the Zohar, to the inside of your innermost part, to your interiority. What for? In order to find out who you really are.

The Kabbalistic interpretation of the rest of the pasuk makes it clear that this search for identity is not an attempt to locate oneself through any relative, changing notions or ideas. In fact, in order to find out who you really are, you have to do away with any such notions. This becomes clear in the next few words.

The first is me-artzekha (מֵאַרְצְךָ), from your country. Your true identity is not “an American”, “an Israeli”, “a New Yorker.” Your true self is beyond any notion of belonging to a location.

The second is mimoladetekha (מִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ), which means “your birth.” And the Zohar understands it to mean “your astrology”—i.e., all the planetary influences that you experience in your life as a result of your time and place of birth, and all the particular ways in which these influences expressed themselves in your life. Because those notions are changing, they, too, don’t define who you really are.

The third is mibeit avikha (מִבֵּית אָבִיךָ), from your father’s house. None of the notions of self that result from you being born to a particular family or race, with all the consequences of being part of a certain family or race, define who you really are. And, yes, that includes being Jewish. Your Self transcends causality and/or genetics.

Thus, when you obey lekh lekha, when you go to yourself—beyond space, beyond time, beyond culture and causality—then you get to “the land that I will show you.” But it should be emphasized that this is not a mental, intellectual exercise. As Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes:

Even though the question of the self is one that has since the beginning of time been contemplated by many profound minds, it is not really a philosophical problem.

Any notion that can be created by the mind is, by its nature, relative and, therefore, changeable. It may be true, it may be useful, it may even be holy, but when it comes to the question of who we really are, all such notions are excess ballast that needs to be shed. Even the notion of being Jewish is not who we ultimately are. And when we shed the whole thing, then we reach the Promised Land: not a land that can be defined by longitude and latitude, not one that can be grasped by the mind, but a completely transcendental one, residing in a “region” of our consciousness that transcends space and time as well as our mental capacities.

In the Passover Hagaddah, the sages of old instructed us that in each and every generation we must see ourselves as if we personally have come out of Egypt and made the journey to the Holy Land. This is not about creatively visualizing ourselves as wading in the sands of the Sinai desert. The Hebrew word for Egypt is mitzrayim (מצרים), which literally means “duality of boundaries”. Leaving mitzrayim, leaving the duality of boundaries, we shed any notions of self that are relative and changeable, that limit us to particular boundaries. Beyond those notions is who we are. We discover our divine root, the divine spark within us

The Prophet Jeremiah echoed this radical notion of self-transformation:

נָתַתִּי אֶת-תּוֹרָתִי בְּקִרְבָּם, וְעַל-לִבָּם אֶכְתְּבֶנָּה; וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים, וְהֵמָּה יִהְיוּ-לִי לְעָם. וְלֹא יְלַמְּדוּ עוֹד, אִישׁ אֶת-רֵעֵהוּ וְאִישׁ אֶת-אָחִיו לֵאמֹר, דְּעוּ, אֶת-יְהוָה: כִּי-כוּלָּם יֵדְעוּ אוֹתִי לְמִקְּטַנָּם וְעַד-גְּדוֹלָם, נְאֻם-יְהוָה–כִּי אֶסְלַח לַעֲו‍ֹנָם, וּלְחַטָּאתָם לֹא אֶזְכָּר-עוֹד.

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know Y-H-V-H’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Y-H-V-H; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:33-34)

Once one discovers who one really is, once one discovers the divine spark as the essence of one’s consciousness, the Torah, the divine law, ceases to be a book or a scroll that is outside oneself, but is rather realized as a spontaneous living presence that one embodies. And then one’s relationship with God is redefined.

This is the life of lekh lekha, of recognizing who one really is. The transformation that is brought about through such a journey is not only individual but collective. As the text of the parashah tells us, one of the results of Abraham’s journey to the Promised Land will be—

וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ, כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה.

and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Indeed, lekh lekha, “going” to oneself, is a way to affect tikkun olam, the repair of the world. And as such, lekh lekha is the essence of Jewish life.

* * *

Judaism is not unique in asserting that ultimate knowledge of self is the way to know and reach union with the Divine. Muhammad proclaimed in the Hadith Qudsi, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” In the Qur’an, God declares, “We are closer to [man] than his jugular vein.” Jesus stated, “I and the Father are one” and “The kingdom of God is within you.” A Shinto scripture, the Shao Yung, commands—“Do not search in distant skies for God. In man’s own heart is He found.” Confucius said: “What the undeveloped man seeks is outside; what the advanced man seeks is himself.” And in the Parinirvana Sutra, Buddha said: “It is only when all outward appearances are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all external phenomena.”

* * *

One does not need to be a kabbalist in order to realize that the Jewish relationship to the “Promised Land” is not about a physical territory. Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994), an intellectual giant who was one of Israel’s foremost scientist, humanitarian, philosopher, religious thinker and political/social enfant terrible, had (for all appearances) no mystical bone in his body, yet he wrote the following:

Just as the realization of God by Abraham, which forms the beginning of the history of the People of Israel, occurred outside the physical boundaries of Eretz Yisrael, so also the Torah was given outside Eretz Yisrael. There is no doubt that this is a very rich point, and is aimed at telling us that the acceptance of the yoke of the Heavenly Kingdom as well as the yoke of Torah and mitsvot is not a territorial issue.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)