Every year
at this time, I just can’t get over it.
I am amazed at the incredible success of Hanukah in American
culture. It’s amazing how many shops and
restaurants and homes proudly display menorahs, dreidles, and blue and white
decorations right alongside Christmas cheer.
And I no longer buy into the Jewish angst about the inauthenticity of
Hanukah—that it’s only hyped up because of Christmas. I have come to see that, while there is
partial truth in this fear, it’s also true that Hanukah has evolved into a
truly American Jewish holiday, one where Jews assert their pride in
being Jewish especially in the face of Christmas. We’re proudly Jewish, and we have nothing to
hide—that’s the brilliant light in the darkness of the American Jewish
experience that Hanukah has become all about, and I’m all for it! I love Hanukah because it works: we American Jews find personal meaning and
significance in a truly Jewish ritual expression!
I love the
subject of what works and what doesn’t work in Judaism. We can all easily point to aspects of Judaism
that have “made it” in American Jewish life:
Hanukah, Passover seders, mezzuzahs, bar mitzvahs. These have all made it because we Jews do
them in large numbers, and many of us find these practices really meaningful. And why is that? It’s because all these ritual actions are
affirmations of Jewish identity, of course.
America is a place that celebrates our cultural tapestry of ethnic and group identities, and being Jewish
is a really meaningful identity to have in this country.
But there’s
a question that lurks behind the American Jewish success story: is being proud of our Jewish identity really
enough? Or is Judaism about something
more than that? Of course, the answer to
this depends on whom you ask. For many
of us, Judaism is certainly more than just identity. It has a sacred core, a cannon of brilliant
teachings, a system of cherished values and ethics. But for vastly greater numbers of American
Jews, Judaism doesn’t need to be more than the rituals that affirm our identity
as Jews, as a medium of proudly asserting our familial heritage of being
Jewish. The deepest question that lurks
for me, then, is: for these vast numbers
of proudly Jewish Americans, ought not Judaism be something more,
something deeper?
In the
Torah today, we read about the extraordinary life’s journey of Yaakov, of
Jacob. In many ways, the drama and
richness of Jacob’s life is in stark contrast to the paucity of information we
have about his father Isaac. Other than
surviving the ultimate drama of Abraham’s near sacrificing of him, we actually
hear very little about Isaac. We learn
mostly that Isaac redug the same wells that his father Abraham had dug years
before. And that’s mostly it. But Jacob!
He has his ladder, he has epic travels, romance, love triangles,
struggles with villains, wrestling with angels!
When Jacob dreams of his ladder to heaven, God even says: “Ani Adonai
Elohei Avraham avicha v’Elohei Yitzhak:”
“I am the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac!” Isaac seems to be chopped liver in this line;
the real father of Jacob is Abraham! Is
that really fair? In a way, yes. The
Torah clearly sets up many parallels between Jacob and Abraham that it doesn’t
set up with Isaac.
Like
Abraham, Jacob also went on an epic journey in his life from his father’s
birthplace. Abraham journeyed from Haran
to the Land of Canaan. Jacob journeyed
from the Land of Canaan to Haran. Isaac,
he never left home. He can’t even leave
home to procure his own bride. Abraham
sends his servant Eliezar to get a bride for Isaac. But Jacob, he goes himself, and finds his
bride all on his own. Abraham had to
muster his own strength and courage, enough to stand up to injustice, even to
argue and struggle with God before the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah. Jacob, too, must muster his own inner
strength and courage. Jacob, too,
wrestles with a Divine Being at a pivotal moment in his life. Nothing like this happens with Isaac. He never struggles or argues with God. So all these comparisons suggest that each
Patriarch had a specific role. Abraham
is the first. Isaac’s role was simply to
maintain the traditions that his father had begun. But Jacob, his role is not just to maintain
traditions, he must be like Abraham his reaffirming the core spiritual
boldness, courage, and innovation that made Abraham great.
Our sages
tells us that Isaac was just like his dad—except for one crucial
difference: he lacked his father’s
originality, his panache, his iconoclasm.
And it’s not just that Jacob had the maverick spiritual boldness that
Isaac lacked. Jacob had the unique and
paradoxic challenge of affirming both Abraham’s traditions together with
Abraham’s innovative spirit. We see this
in another parallel between Jacob and Abraham: they both change their
names—with one crucial difference. When
Avram became Avraham, God tells him that this new name is forever more to
replace his old name. When Yaakov becomes
Yisrael after he wrestles with the angel, God and the Torah keep switching back
and forth between the old name and the new name. The symbolism is clear: whereas Avraham represents a total break
with the past; Yisrael is still
connected to the former Yaakov; he still maintains the traditions of his
forefathers.
But still,
Jacob is an innovator, a chip off grandpa’s old block. The Midrash points out that Jacob was the
first to make a neder, a spiritual vow before God. In making a vow, he is showing us all how we
can take charge of our own personal relationship to God and to holiness, how we
can forge our own commitments, and that kind of relationship to God had not
been seen before Jacob. Whereas Isaac
only walked “yachdav” together with his father Avraham, Jacob ‘vayivater
levado,’ he was left alone on his own path, as Abraham had been as well.
Jacob,
then, is the greatest teacher of what it really means to be Jewish. Being Jewish is not just being like Isaac;
it’s not just about accessing and digging into our fathers’ wells for
commitment to tradition in each generation.
It’s not even just about celebrating Judaism as an intellectual or
ethical tradition. The truest and
deepest way into Judaism is not through Isaac’s identity alone, but through
Jacob’s journey itself. Jacob’s
journey is the journey of finding our own path into the tradition that
we have been given. It’s not just about
affirming customs. It’s not just about
blind imitation of what our fathers and mothers have done. It’s about living out of the core spirit of
originality, of boldness and passion and connection to God and to life—which
was why God chose Abraham in the first place.
Its about a willingness to face our angels or our demons even as we
travel our life-path—that’s what Abraham did, and that’s what Jacob affirmed. Even though Jacob, after it was all said and
done, ended up right back in Hevron where his father and grandfather lived, he
came home understanding why he was in this tradition. And his amazing life-story is all the richer
because of it.
There’s one
more example in our comparison of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that really drives
this message home. Abraham, we are told,
built altars to God, and it says, “vayikra beShem Adonai,” “he invoked the Name
of God.” True to form, Isaac did just exactly the same thing: he built altars
‘vayikra beShem Adonai,” he invoked God’s name.
What this means is that they both publicly called out God’s name even in
the pagan world: they taught that there
was one God for anyone to hear. Rabbi
Yitzhak Twersky points out Jacob built altars, but he didn’t do it like just
like Abraham. Of Jacob, the Torah says, “vayatzev sham mizbeach,” “He built…an
altar,” “vayikra lo El Elohei Yisrael,” “and he called it El, the God of
Israel.” (Genesis 33:20). In the Talmud,
Rabbi Acha in the name of Rabbi Eliezar explains that this new wording is also
a hint in the Torah that it wasn’t just Jacob naming an altar in the way his
fathers had done. Now it was God who
was, in fact, ‘vayikra lo’ who called him, El, the name of God! Yes, you heard right: God called him God, because he took the
covenant, the tradition, the commandments, and expressed them in the deepest,
truest, most original and unique way of himself. And in that bold assertion of his own unique
expression of his relationship with God through the tradition, the Talmud shows
us that he was most truly in the image of God!
In this personally authentic way,
Jacob was truly Yisrael, and he shows us, his descendants, how to be most
authentically Jewish for all time. Jacob also poses a great opportunity for us,
his Jewish descendants in 20th-century America. We truly ‘get’ the idea of personal meaning
and relevance. And as it turns out, we’re most Jewish when we seek this within
our tradition. But we must ask ourselves
some tough questions: Is my Jewish life
a technology through which I express my most authentic self? Am I experiencing the traditions and rituals
and commandments of my ancestors and living them as more than just affirmations
of my Jewish identity? Is my Judaism
just about my identity, or is it the path on which I journey to discover my
most authentic connection to wisdom and spirit, to life itself? Is it just my family tradition, or is it my
gateway to confronting my demons and my angels to guide me to my very best
self? If your answers to any of these
questions indicate that Judaism is not fully what it could be for you, that’s
okay! You have the rest of our life now
reframe Judaism, to live it as a journey to your highest Truth. May we all learn to live not only the courage
and faith of Abraham, the traditions and devotion of Isaac, but most
importantly wisdom and spirit of Jacob, of Yisrael. And may that path help us all to find the
Image of God alive in each of us.
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