{"id":3124,"date":"2018-11-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/?p=3124"},"modified":"2020-01-17T10:20:38","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T15:20:38","slug":"veyeshev-5779","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/veyeshev-5779\/","title":{"rendered":"Veyeshev 5779"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekly D\u2019var Torah Parashat Vayeshev 5779<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s ideological climate, in which people\u2019s sympathies are\nbased far less on objective analysis of facts and much more on group\naffiliation, either with the right-wing camp or the left-wing camp, Parashat\nVayeshev is a healthy antidote to the danger that such polarization poses to\nour moral consciousness. This is precisely because it contains two incidents in\nwhich a person\u2019s gender makes them vulnerable. In one instance, the vulnerable\nperson is a woman, and in the other, a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one instance, it is Yehudah\u2019s daughter-in-law, Tamar, who is\nleft widowed, and without the security of a household to fully belong to. When\nGod punishes her husband, Er, his younger brother, Onan, is likewise punished\nwith death for refusing to fulfill the mitzvah of yibum<\/em>, or levirate\nmarriage; he refused to give Tamar children and to continue his older brother\u2019s\nfamily. Yehudah promised Tamar his youngest son as a groom, but when that\npromise was not kept, Tamar ensured her own security and the continuity of her\nhusband\u2019s line by disguising herself and seducing Yehudah. Yehudah finds her\npregnant, and orders that she be burned to death. When he realizes that he is\nthe father, he relents, and praises Tamar. From this child, King David is\ndescended. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the other instance, it is Yosef. When his master, Potifar, was\naway, his master\u2019s wife attempted to seduce him. When Yosef refused, she lied,\nsaying that he tried to force himself upon her. She produced his torn garment\nas evidence to support her lie. Yosef was imprisoned as a result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What each victim\/hero has in common is obviously not their\ngender. While it is because Tamar\u2019s womanhood that makes her situation\npossible, and Yosef\u2019s manhood that enticed Potifar\u2019s wife to abuse him as she\ndid, we need to look at what Yosef and Tamar each had in common in under to\nunderstand the simple, plain truth behind their respective abuses: they were\nboth subordinates<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yosef could be the target of Potifar\u2019s wife\u2019s attempted seduction\nand subsequent life-wrecking slander because she was a noble, and he was a\nservant. Tamar\u2019s only legitimate defense against poverty and loss of home was\nmarriage, which she was not free to seek out herself. When she made an attempt\nto do so, even within the family that she was bound to by her marriage to Er,\nshe almost paid with her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the Torah mean to do by telling us these stories? We,\nas readers and students of Torah, understand the circumstances around Yosef\u2019s\nfalse imprisonment and Tamar\u2019s desperation. We see these incidents not from the\nviewpoint of characters in the story, who would have no way of knowing that\nYosef, the servant, was falsely accused, or that Tamar was forced by\ncircumstance to seduce her father-in-law. Without that knowledge provided to us\nby the Omniscient Narrator, we would likely have sided with the noblewoman and\nwith the head of household. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, in a way that is subtle, but illustrative, we are commanded\nto hear the story of the disadvantaged. We are told to love the stranger, to\nseek justice for the widow and the orphan, all of whom are disadvantaged. We\nare taught that no society on Earth has ever been fair, but we must, as\nchildren and servants of the all-knowing Creator, strive to be fair ourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shabbat Shalom! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rabbi Aaron Shub<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekly D\u2019var Torah Parashat Vayeshev 5779 In today\u2019s ideological climate, in which people\u2019s sympathies are based far less on objective analysis of facts and much more on group affiliation, either with the right-wing camp or the left-wing camp, Parashat Vayeshev is a healthy antidote to the danger that such polarization poses to our moral consciousness. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,43],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rabbi_blog","category-weekly-drasha","tag-44"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3125,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions\/3125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainesynagogue.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}