Jewish educational and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster ponders the which means of the Joseph story.
On the finish of the 12 months, encapsulated within the title of our newest Parsha Miketz (Genesis 41-44:17), the dreamer Joseph finds himself in a gap.
What are you doing within the gap? Settle for your destiny; or, as in Joseph's case, use your skills to interrupt free and create a brand new future?
Pharaoh has a well-known dream of seven fats cows adopted by seven skinny cows that swallow the fats cows. This dream is adopted by seven ears of corn in the same mode.
Joseph, often known as an interpreter of goals, known as to interpret the dream and advises Pharaoh to nominate an economist to assist Egypt save throughout the time of a lot for the time of famine that can are available seven years.
Joseph is chosen and appointed to the function of economist. He additionally marries the Pharaoh's daughter, so he’s now associated to the Pharaoh himself, the identical Pharaoh who had him imprisoned on trumped-up fees.
Why is Miketz (“On the Finish…”), the story of Joseph, learn close to the tip of the pagan 12 months and across the time of Hanukkah, the eight-day vacation we’re at present celebrating?
Each the story of Joseph and the story of Hanukkah are about Jews who thrive within the diaspora, solely to search out that the diaspora rejects the Jews.
Hanukkah commemorates the heroism of the Maccabees of Modiin, Israel. They nearly single-handedly opposed the Syrian Greek rulers who succeeded in Hellenizing a lot of Israel. Within the years 168-167 BC AD Syrian Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Jerusalem temple and most Jews at greatest stood by and let it occur.
The Maccabees defeated the Syrian Greeks and a miracle occurred within the Temple. They discovered sufficient oil for someday. However the oil lasted for eight days, and that’s what we commemorate on our annual Hanukkah vacation. We gentle candles day-after-day for eight days, beginning with one and rising their quantity every day.
If not for the heroic angle of the Maccabees, the miracle of oil wouldn’t have occurred.
Right now, Jews within the Diaspora discover themselves in the identical scenario as Joseph in Egypt and the Hellenized Jews of 168 BC. AD
Not like Purim, which takes place in Persia a number of centuries earlier, the Hellenized Greeks didn’t wish to bodily exterminate the Jews; they merely needed to de-Judaize them and power them to undertake their very own customs.
Joseph has the pharaoh change his title and outwardly turns into an Egyptian. In the long term, nevertheless, this whole assimilation doesn’t bode effectively for the Jews, as we discover out when a brand new Pharaoh rises up who “doesn’t know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8).
This 12 months, in uncommon instances, Hanukkah started on Christmas and ends on New Yr's. However the two festivals couldn't be extra completely different.
Hanukkah celebrates a nation rescued from nearly sure loss of life and oblivion by way of assimilation. And it was human beings who induced it, human beings who went towards the grain and have been unpopular with their folks. Consequently, the Jews saved the idea in a single God for the world.
The rabbinical rationalization states how the cup of oil within the temple truly break up in two, the numerical worth of the letters of the Hebrew “pach” being 88. Due to this fact, at this time we gentle a complete of 44 candles.
Nevertheless, we additionally sing concerning the phrase “odor” in our music “Maoz Tsur” that accompanies the lighting of the candles at evening. The music, whose title was integrated into Israel's Could 1948 declaration of independence, accommodates a reference to those that want to destroy the Jewish folks. These destroyers will finally be hoisted on their very own petard and the technique of execution would be the 'pach', right here not the cross, however the 'snare'.
To return to Joseph's 'gap'. Is that this gap a snare, a entice that can entice him for all times? Or will the oil of life be opened and revealed, illuminating him in his appointed function because the savior of the Egyptian folks of their time of want?
That is the story of the Jewish folks, a few of whom are nonetheless imprisoned in Gaza at this time by the forces of evil. The Jews have all the time been referred to as upon to assist the world, however too usually they’ve been pressured to pay for the envy and greed of others as punishment for his or her good deeds.
Could the approaching 12 months, paralleling the onset of longer days, illuminate the world with new gentle as our final eight candles are lit on the brand new month of Tevet within the Jewish calendar. This 12 months, the Jewish new moon of Tevet, which all the time happens on the eighth and final evening of Hanukkah, coincides with January 1, 2025.
Hanukkah is devotion. Could we rededicate ourselves each to the duties that await us and to the brand new duties that await us sooner or later.
