Genesis Cycle 3 Vayeshev 37:1 to 40:23

Vayeshev

This is a third of a series of four teachings based on Genesis 28:14. There, God says to Jacob you shall spread out to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south. Here, in Vayeshev, I feel that the prevailing emanation is binah, and therefore the east (Zohar, Matt, p.321).

The overpowering lesson though (in this parasha) revolves around the necessary concealment of binah. It can even be inferred that concealment of one’s intimacy is the home base of Torah. We witness Moses who covers his face when he descends from Mt Sinai. We witness the priests who cover themselves in linen when they enter the holy of holies. Mystics of kabbalah traditionally do not reveal all. I personally believe that the greatest peak of intimacy with the divine can’t really be expressed. The direct attempt to do so only weakens it. Therefore there is an absolute need for concealment not only to assure our spiritual survival but our ascent into messianic times.

Let’s look at the term binah. Green, in his book The Zohar, explains it as the quarry for human language…the rocky place from which the Hebrew letters are hewn forth…It is the first forming of the articulation of a greater flash of intellect, the shaping and refining of thought at its primal birthing. While yodea emphasizes divine connection man to man and/or God binah is more expansive, the mother of connection. The inter-dependence of these two concepts is experienced in blessing 4 of the morning Amidah where they are used in close relation.

In the case of Jacob and Joseph, their deep intimacy with each other and with God is clear in line 37:2. We read these are the chronicles of Jacob Joseph was 17 years old. There isn’t a pause between the thoughts. The words follow each other as if referring to one person. In Obadiah 1:18 the house of Jacob is likened to a fire and Joseph, to a flame (Rashi).

This very intimacy though is within a greater realm of misunderstanding and trouble. R. Johanon (Bab Talmud Sanhedrin 106a) points out that the words and he abode lead to and Joseph brought to his father an evil report. This evil report is the lifting of not divine sparks, but darkness. Similarly, in Numbers 25:1 we read Israel abode and this leads to and Israel began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. The root-word yoshev therefore, as a beginning, precedes a guttural yearning to respond to intimacy and an inadequate expression of it (probably) brought about by the meaning of the word itself. To settle connotes a pause in forward movement, an acceptance, and possible forgetfulness.

What does Jacob forget? That God was in this place and he didn’t know it. He forgets the great intimacy of not knowing. He openly gives the coat to Joseph…a shield of light (Talmud). The problem though is that his other sons who are not at the same level of reception, who cannot see the singularity of their connections with their father (whatever it might be) therefore cannot view this gift with any equanimity. They can’t recognize their own unique yearning for personal daat with God, and they judge God-expression in Joseph. They judge him for his dreams. They take the same force of daat energy and reflect it to protect themselves. They aren’t evil. They simply respond to the gift presented to them: the non-coat, the non-dream. Of course, if Jacob had never received the coat and Joseph had (symmetrically) never revealed his dreams we never would have had the opportunity to escape from Egypt. But if we want to keep from continually pushing others or being pushed into a pit that leads to Mitzrayim, if we want to get off of that wagon train and step into the world to come, it’s a good idea to know what is best expressed and what is best left hidden like a seed and nurtured.

Look at Joseph and the wife of Potiphar. According to Talmud, Joseph’s self-restraint is so great that sperm is shooting from his fingernails. In Sotah 36b we learn that Joseph was worthy of having 12 tribes just like Jacob but Joseph diminished his procreative abilities given his resistance. It’s clear that each time we cycle back down to Mitzrayim we lose a piece of ourselves, of our fertility, both metaphoric and real. We gain the force propelling us down. But after thousands of years of doing this it might be time to allow this same force to keep propelling us up.

In the end, the peak of intimacy with God is weakened by the gnawing need to share that intimacy through modes of communication that can’t contain it. A bright spark need not say much. Other sparks naturally fly to it.

So, may we work to get closer and closer to God. May we gently and carefully protect the community with our divine intimacy. May we understand that concealment is a sign of God’s love, that true binah is best transmitted beyond our human control, in our dreams, in our hearts, in our silent eyes as they drink in the water of Torah. And may we accept that the revealed truths in this same teaching are only a piece of what I understand gleaned from a much greater understanding way beyond my knowledge, the radiance of Hashem.