In a nutshell: after the people of Israel received, collectively, a revelation of God’s voice, including the Ten Commandments, they signed on the dotted line by famously declaring na’aseh ve-nishma’ (נעשה ונשמע) “We will do and listen” (Exodus 24:7). The midrash takes these words to signify their complete trust, since the word na’aseh, “we will do”, preceded the word nishma’, “we will listen”: they committed themselves to obey the Torah even before they heard it fully.

But when Moses goes up the mountain to receive the word of God for them and stays a while, the following happens:

Aaron yields to the pressure. He collects the golden earrings from everybody and fashions a golden statue of a calf. Almost instantly, the Israelites start worshipping this idol, saying:

אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם:

This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!
(Exodus 32:4)

As a school kid, I found this story incomprehensible. How could they do it? In the four months that have passed since the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites witnessed dozens of miracles, each of which, on its own, should have knocked any doubt even out of the worst cynic: the ten plagues; the parting of the Red Sea for the Israelites and the drowning of the pursuing Egyptian forces; the manna and the quails to feed them and the water from the rock to quench their thirst; the “cosmic GPS”—the pillar of light to guide them by night and the pillar of smoke by day; and to top it all off, the collective experience of the revelation of the Ten Commandments, the first of which is the ban on worshipping any idols.

Over the years, I have come to relate to this story as a metaphor for the perils of the spiritual path that many committed spiritual practitioners are familiar with. Anyone who has had a “peak experience”, a moment of clarity in which the screens that normally veil one’s perception lift from one’s eyes and one gazes directly at Truth face to face, knows how one’s sense of self momentarily changes. One’s existential doubts, anxiety and neurosis dissolve in a moment; trust, love, surrender and freedom take over and one is convinced that life will never be the same.

In very rare cases, such an experience leads to a profound and permanent transformation. In most cases, however, the experience fades, and one finds oneself in a predicament—one has fallen deeply in love, but the object of one’s love is nowhere to be found. And for someone new on the path, this can cause a kind of panic, a strong desire to retrieve the clarity of the initial experience and an almost frantic exploration of ways in which that experience could be stabilized.

I am reminded of the first years of starting to meditate. At first, meditation was its own reward. Soon, within months, we (new meditators) kept our ears opened to see if there was anything that we could do to hasten out “spiritual growth.” Maharishi, we notice, wore coral beads; should we wear coral too? Should we be vegetarians? Should we be celibate? Golden calves come in various shapes and forms. The Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa called this spiritual materialism.

What is the moral of the story? For a spiritual aspirant, it is that of patient commitment. Don’t draw conclusions about the nature of ultimate reality based on your emotional experience, even if it is a peak emotional experience. The ultimate reality is One; it is beyond good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. As long as our interpretation of our closeness to God is based on the quality of our experience, we are still in the land of mitzrayim (מצרים), Egypt, which means the duality of boundaries.

* * *

As I said, this Torah portion continues to deal with the construction of the temple. Readers of the previous two entries of this blog will remember, that I have emphasized the need to understand the tabernacle not as a physical structure outside oneself, but rather as a “structure” that we create within our consciousness for the shekhina (the divine presence) to dwell within us (the Hebrew word lishkon, to dwell, comes from the same root as shekhinah, which is also the root of the word mishkan, the Hebrew name for the tabernacle).

Here is what Rabbi Ephraim of Sudilkov, the grandson of the founder of Hassidism, the Baal Shem Tov, wrote in his in his commentary on this week’s Torah portion, ki tisa:

בודאי לא לחנם נכתב מעשה המשכן וכל כליו בתורתנו הקדושה אלא כדי להורות לנו הדרך האיך הוא בכל אדם שיוכל לבנות משכן וכלים להשראת השכינה בקרבו כי זה היה כל מעשה המשכן כמו שכתוב (שמות כה, ח) ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם. בתוכו לא נאמר, אלא בתוכם ממש.

Surely, the story of the tabernacle and all its tools was not written in our Sacred Torah except for one purpose: to instruct us regarding the way in which every person could build within themselves a tabernacle and tools for inspiring the shekhinah [to dwell] within them. This was the whole story of the tabernacle. As the Torah tells us (in Exodus 25,8): “They will build me a sanctuary, and I will dwell within them.” It does not say “[They will build me a sanctuary, and I will dwell] within it”, but literally “within them.”
(From Degel Machane Ephraim, commentary on ki tisa).

And if we apply this mode of interpretation to the story of the golden calf, we may conclude that under the momentary pressure of doubt, the Israelites regressed to relying on their animal nature as a source of ultimate meaning and happiness.

The Torah does not deny our animal nature or advise us to suppress it. Quite the opposite: it seeks to incorporate it into our spiritual life. But just like in the story of Jacob and Esau, the important message is who gets seniority. Jacob, which stands for our spirituality, has to be senior; Esau, the hunter, cannot be the ultimate good. Likewise, the mistake here is taking the golden calf and referring it as the God that “brought you out of the land of Egypt”. There is only one ultimate reality.

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

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)

In last week’s Torah portion, Joseph’s brothers, who had previously sold him to slavery and were not yet aware of his rise to power, came to Egypt to collect grain to save themselves from the great famine that took over the region. They were sent to Egypt by their father, Jacob, who kept the youngest of his sons, Benjamin, with him at Canaan. Still traumatized by the loss of Joseph, whom he thought for dead, Jacob did not want to risk the life of Benjamin.

But Benjamin was precisely whom Joseph was most eager to see. He and Benjamin were the only sons born of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel. Benjamin was still a child when Joseph’s other brothers betrayed him, thus he was not part of the conspiracy. Without revealing his identity, Joseph manipulated the situation so that the brothers had to bring Benjamin down from Canaan to Egypt. He then proceeded to frame Benjamin for a fictitious theft, insisting, to the great distress of the brothers, that Benjamin must become his slave to atone for the crime.

This parashah starts at the dramatic moment when Judah approaches Joseph. Not knowing that he is talking to his own brother, he addresses him as the king’s viceroy, and in a desperate attempt to reason with him, tries to get Benjamin freed in order to bring him back to Jacob, even at the price of his (Judah’s) own freedom.

The parashah opens with the words:

וַיִּגַּשׁ אֵלָיו יְהוּדָה, וַיֹּאמֶר בִּי אֲדֹנִי, יְדַבֶּר-נָא עַבְדְּךָ דָבָר בְּאָזְנֵי אֲדֹנִי, וְאַל-יִחַר אַפְּךָ בְּעַבְדֶּךָ: כִּי כָמוֹךָ, כְּפַרְעֹה.

Then Judah approached him and said, “Please, my lord, let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and do not be angry with your servant; for you are like Pharaoh himself. (Genesis 44:18)

The obvious meaning of the first few words, “Then Judah approached him,” is that Judah approached Joseph. However, a number of Hassidic rabbis, including Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, take the “him” to refer to God. Which means that the words “Then Judah approached him” actually refer to prayer.

In this context, Judah’s first two words are highly significant. He says: bi adoni (בִּי אֲדֹנִי). The idiom is translated as “please, my lord”, but it literally means “my lord is within me.” Significantly, the Hebrew word adoni, “my lord”, is spelled in exactly the same way as the Hebrew word adonay, the most commonly used name of God.

So how does Judah “approach God” (i.e., prays)? He first recognizes that adonay, i.e., God, is bi (בִּי), i.e., within himself. And given that Judah is the progenitor of the tribe of Judah, i.e. the forefather of all the Jews, we are being told something fundamental about Jewish prayer.*

This point is further highlighted in this week’s haftarah** reading. The haftarah ends with the words,

…בִּהְיוֹת מִקְדָּשִׁי בְּתוֹכָם, לְעוֹלָם.

…when my sanctuary is among them forevermore. (Ezekiel 37:28)

The words “among them” are a translation of the Hebrew word betokham (בתוכם), which also means “inside them” or “within them.” It indicates that the house of worship, the temple, is not a structure of bricks and mortar but rather a structure within the self, within one’s awareness, at the deepest level of one’s consciousness.

These two passages together give us a profound message, one that is found in the mystic traditions of all great religions: that the one who prays, the act of praying, the hall of prayer (the sanctuary) and the object of prayer are ultimately all one. The self does the praying, the self is the prayer, the self is the place where the prayer takes place and the self is also the object of the prayer.

* * *

As the saying goes, “the Torah has seventy faces.” That is to say, each passage in the Torah can be interpreted in myriad of ways. We have derived an important lesson from Rabbi Elimelech’s commentary that the word “him” in the expression “Then Judah approached him” refers to God. Another profound lesson can be derived from the text if one assumes that indeed the “him” refers to Joseph, as the literal context would suggest.

Judah approaches Joseph and says, bi adoni, “my lord, you are within me.” Here the Torah teaches us the fundamental lesson of human relationship, i.e., that the highest form of communication is the recognition that one is not separate from the other, that the consciousness of both is one and therefore, fundamentally, the two are one.

Judah alludes to this truth of relationship a few verses down, as he continues his plea for the release of Benjamin, offering himself as a slave in his stead. The reason? Their old father, says Judah, loves his youngest son very deeply and the separation from him would be unbearable. The expression that Judah uses is “his soul is bound with his soul”, venafsho kshurah benafsho (וְנַפְשׁוֹ קְשׁוּרָה בְנַפְשׁוֹ:) (Genesis 44:30). Another way of translating it is “their souls are intertwined.” That is the most profound form of relationship: the connection is so deep that the two see their souls as one soul.

This is a fundamental lesson in Judaism, one what will be encountered later in the Torah in the famous dictum “Love your neighbor as yourself”, veahavta lere’akha kamocha (וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ) (Leviticus 19:18). One must love one’s neighbor as oneself because the neighbor is oneself. In the 20^th century, the Jewish German philosopher and noted Hassidic scholar Martin Buber applied this principle in his teaching about the highest form of communication and dialogue, which he referred to as the principle of “I-Thou.”

Buber observed that normally our communication with each other is what he called an “I-it” communication: I am the subject, while the other is an object, an “it”, whose “role” is to fulfill a need of mine. By its very nature, this mode of communication is based on separation and is confrontational, however civilized. But in “I-Thou” communication, there is no such separation because both parties are grounded in the realization that nafsho ksuhrah benafsho, their souls are intertwined and it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. This higher form of communication is inherently free from conflict: when there is unity, there is no conflict. Communication then becomes a sacred act.

This may be the highest contribution of the Torah to life in the 21^st century: inspiring a different mode human interaction where the act of communication itself is the highest form of worship, of “approaching God” in the other. This theme will surely be visited in future posts on this blog.

—————————————

* As in the commentary on vayetze, here too one could show that this point can be found in all major traditions: from “The Kingdom of God is within you” in the New Testament (Luke 17:21) to the declaration of immediate closeness of God in the Qur’an “We are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein” (Surah 50:16), through the Confucian quote”what the undeveloped man seeks is outside, what the advanced man seeks is within himself.”

** The recitation of scripture at the synagogue on Shabbat morning includes not only a parashah, a weekly Torah portion, but also a haftarah, a portion from the prophets section of the Hebrew Bible, generally one which has some thematic resemblance to that of the parashah.

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

The parashah (weekly Torah portion) of vayeshev (Genesis 37:1 to 40:23) starts the dramatic story of Joseph, Jacob’s beloved son, whose betrayal by his brothers initiates a chain of events that ended with his becoming Pharaoh’s viceroy and saving his family from hunger.

The Torah tells us that Israel (i.e., Jacob—see the commentary on last week’s parashah) “loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son… [born to him in] his old age” (Genesis 37:3). Jacob also gave Joseph a fancy robe which symbolized the degree to which he favored him. Naturally, this made his brothers jealous. To make things worse, Joseph was in the habit of sharing with them his dreams, in which he appeared to be superior to them and was ruling over them.

For example:

וַיַּחֲלֹם יוֹסֵף חֲלוֹם וַיַּגֵּד לְאֶחָיו וַיּוֹסִפוּ עוֹד שְׂנֹא אֹתוֹ: וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם שִׁמְעוּ נָא הַחֲלוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר חָלָמְתִּי: וְהִנֵּה אֲנַחְנוּ מְאַלְּמִים אֲלֻמִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַשָּׂדֶה וְהִנֵּה קָמָה אֲלֻמָּתִי וְגַם נִצָּבָה וְהִנֵּה תְסֻבֶּינָה אֲלֻמֹּתֵיכֶם וַתִּשְׁתַּחֲוֶיןָ לַאֲלֻמָּתִי: וַיֹּאמְרוּ לוֹ אֶחָיו הֲמָלֹךְ תִּמְלֹךְ עָלֵינוּ אִם מָשׁוֹל תִּמְשֹׁל בָּנוּ וַיּוֹסִפוּ עוֹד שְׂנֹא אֹתוֹ עַל חֲלֹמֹתָיו וְעַל דְּבָרָיו:

Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.” His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words. (Genesis 37:5-8)

Jacob always kept Joseph by his side, even as he sent his other sons out to pasture with his flock. Once, however, when his sons were out, Jacob sent Joseph to find out how they were, and told him to come back and report to him. The Torah tells us that as he was approaching his brothers,

וַיִּרְאוּ אֹתוֹ מֵרָחֹק וּבְטֶרֶם יִקְרַב אֲלֵיהֶם וַיִּתְנַכְּלוּ אֹתוֹ לַהֲמִיתוֹ:

They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. (Genesis 37:18)

One of the most original commentaries on this line comes from the 18^th-Century Hassidic Rabbi Yossef Ben Avraham Bloch, the author of Ginzey Yossef. He focused on the words “they conspired to kill him.” The Hebrew is vayitnaklu oto lehamito, in which the word “oto” (אתו) means “him.” However, because the Hebrew script does not include vowels, that same word can also be read and pronounced as “ito”, which means “with him.” The meaning of the verse is thereby changed: instead of “they conspired to kill him” it reads “they conspired with him to kill him,” making Joseph part of the conspiracy.*

Rabbi Yossef explained:

The ancients have taught us that if you arouse love in your heart and send forth arrows of love to your fellow person, that one will come to feel love for you as well. This is because of the essential oneness of Israel. Such a sending forth of love can nullify any hatred that person might have felt toward you. Hence “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19: 18)— as you awaken love, your neighbor will do as you do.

Rabbi Yossef points out that the brothers “saw him from a distance” and conspired to kill him, as the text says, “before he came near to them.” That is, before he had a chance to invoke love in them. Had he done so, he would have negated their animosity. They would still be jealous of him, but not hateful. He is therefore partially responsible for their hatred and for its consequences.

The learned editors of “Speaking Torah”**, the compilation of Hassidic teachings in which this radical commentary can be found in English, add a few daring thoughts of their own:

The limiting phrase “because of the essential oneness of Israel” makes this possibility apply only to relations among Jews. But imagine if the Jewish people could have historically applied this same lesson in our relationships with non-Jews, “because of the essential oneness” of humanity. Might it have made a difference? Might we have “drawn near to them” before “they plotted to kill us”?

Of course, we have to take cultural context into account. In the 18^th Century, racial, religious, gender and other forms of discrimination were not just acceptable and unquestioned but even vehemently defended and justified. And, besides, “What if” musings of this kind cannot alter the past, however, they are important as a way of calling into question beliefs that we hold in the present, as well inspiring new beliefs which have the potential to create a better future. What if, for example, we Israelis, accepted responsibility for all the ways in which we raise the ire and envy of our neighbors? What if we make it our responsibility to project love, respect and humanity towards them? Might the Middle East look very different now?

We exist, after all, in the 21^st century, with easy access to vast amounts of information about the vast accumulation of  human knowledge and experience. We know, by now, that human beings are fundamentally the same. As Albert Einstein famously put it:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Much of the teachings of Torah and Judaism can provide a template for such a transformation in our consciousness and culture, if only the old idea of the specialness, uniqueness and separateness of the Jewish people could be given up. For a religion that is based on this specialness, uniqueness and separateness, this is a tall order. But it may be the only hope for this precious culture to once again be a formative force in the lives of so many people in the world today who have stopped seeing Judaism as a viable answer to the existential questions facing humans in the 21^st century.

Will it happen? In a lecture by Rabbi Michael Lerner, he explained that in Judaism, the definition of sin is to conclude what is possible based on what has happened in the past. This means being cynical about the emergence of the new and the miraculous which has not yet happened. Big changes often occur as a result ceaseless striving for such new possibilities, against all odds.

“You can say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” –John Lennon.

————————————————————————

Note: The idea that one should dissolve enmity through sending love is, of course, prevalent in all major traditions. Below are a few examples.

Buddhism:

Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world; through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law.

–Dhammapada 3-5

Sikhism:

Says Nanak, True lovers are those who are forever absorbed in the Beloved. Whoever discriminates between treatment held good or bad, Is not a true lover–he rather is caught in calculations.  –Adi Granth, Asa-ki-Var, M.2, p. 474

Taoism:

I treat those who are good with goodness,

And I also treat those who are not good with goodness.

Thus goodness is attained.            –Tao Te Ching 49

Judaism:

Aid an enemy before you aid a friend, to subdue hatred.

–Tosefta, Baba Metzia 2.26

Christianity:

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

–Romans 12.21

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

–Matthew 5.43

Islam:

The good deed and the evil deed are not alike. Repel the evil deed with one which is better, then lo!, he between whom and you there was enmity shall become as though he were a bosom friend.

Qur’an 41.34

————————————————————————

* This peculiar mode of reading this word was advocated by no less an authority than the medieval commentator Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki). Rashi points out, that in the phrase vayitnaklu oto lehamito the word oto is superfluous. Given the assumption that the Torah never wastes words, he concludes that the reading is meant to be ito rather than oto. Rabbi Yossef embraces this interpretation and explains it.

** Green, Arthur; Leader, Ebn; Mayse, Ariel Evan; Rose, Or N. (2013-07-09). Speaking Torah, Vol. 1: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table. Jewish Lights Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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