Bless or Seek?

[00:00:19] Speaker A: This week's Torah portion is Vayechi. And I really struggled. Rabbi, I gave me about two months, I think, notice something like that. And I wrote this this week because I just had a really hard time finding stuff to put together. But the title is bless or seek with a question mark, the higher purpose of life. So there was a man who was taking a hike. He fell off the edge of the bluff, but on the way down, he was able to grab a hold of a small tree, stopping his fall. Bruised, bloodied, and likely concussed, he called out to God, if you're really up there, answer me. And a voice responded, if you really have faith, let go. Anyone else up there? So it has nothing to do with the lesson, but just thought, hey, why not? So we read in the last portion of Genesis something that if you read it, you're kind of, you know, we have a tendency to call it the blessings that Jacob gives to his sons. But when you read those blessings, some of them are not really so much of a blessing. It sound like a verbal lashing. So we're going to look at a couple of those. So to bless or to seek. So in Genesis 49, beginning in verse two, Jacob says, gather yourselves and listen, o sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel. Your father, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and my initial vigor, foremost in rank and foremost in power. Waterlike impetuosity. It's a good word. You cannot be foremost because you mounted your father's bed, then you desecrated him. Who ascended my couch? Simon and Levi are comrades. Their weaponry is a stolen craft. Into their conspiracy. May my soul not enter with their congregation. I do not join, o my honor, for in their rage, they murdered people, and at their whim, they hamstrung an ox. Accursed is their rage, for it is intense, and their wrath, for it is harsh. I will separate them within Jacob, and I will disperse them in Israel. Judah, you, your brothers, shall acknowledge. Your hand will be at your enemy's nape, and your father's sons will prostrate themselves to you. A lion Cub is Judah. From the prey, my son, you elevated yourself. He crouches, lies down like a lion, and like the awesome lion who dares rouse him, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the scholar from among his descendants until Shiloh shall arrive. And he will be an assemblage of nations. He will tie his donkey on or to the vine, to the vine branch, his donkey's full, and he will launder his garments in wine, and his robe in the blood of grapes, red eyed with wine, and white tooth from milk. So the blessings for men who acted with a higher goal than their own ambitions received a blessing. But the men who acted out of their own ambitions failed to receive a blessing and instead received criticism and their actions, condemnation. Reuben. Unstable as water is one. Translation. So he planned to save. We're just going to take a step back real quick. He planned to save Joseph, but in secret. Instead of exercising his authority that his father says, you have amongst your brothers the power that you have, instead of exercising that power, he chose to do so in secret and thus failed to save his brother because his brother was gone by the time he got there. He also stated to Jacob, if you remember, I think it was last week's Torah portion, he stated to Jacob, essentially, on the lives of my sons, will I guarantee the safety of Benjamin. Now, let's just think about this for a minute. So Jacob has lost his favorite son. He's afraid of losing his second favorite son. And then his oldest son says, hey, if I don't bring Benjamin back, you can kill my two sons. Oh, that's better. I like this. Let's do this. Good plan. Good plan. No, just a wee bit off, I think. I think he was kind of missing the mark. So I was watching a movie recently. I think it was the Godfather, which is actually a really good movie, very well written. But I hadn't watched a really long time. But I was blown away by a statement that was made by somebody that the Corleone family had captured because they did something they weren't supposed to do. And he said, I think it was a Corleone family. Maybe it was the other guy. I can't remember. Anyway, he said, I swear on the life of my children that I didn't do this, that or the other. And he's like, and what better oath can I give you? It's like, I don't know, maybe put your own neck on the line. On my life, I didn't do it. That kind of thing. It's like, I don't understand why you hear so many people say this on the graves of my children. What's that supposed to do on the grave of my mother? Okay, do we get the grave if it doesn't work out? Make bone. Use the bones and make something out of them. I don't know. But it's like, okay, what's the point? And so that was just something that always stuck out to, like, you can kill my boys. Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's not do that. But it also stated that he defiled his father's bed, which is a pretty horrible thing to do. And then we get to Simeon and Levi. Now, obviously, it doesn't tell you exactly in the text, but very strongly hints what the main grievance that he had. And it was over the situation with, because remember that their sister Dina was raped by the prince, if you will, of Shechem. And so they had a pretty brilliant idea, actually. They're like, you know, because I guess he was in love with her, whatever that meant. So he's like, I want to marry her. And they're like, okay, well, how about this? All y'all get circumcised, and then you can marry our daughters, and our daughters will marry your sons. It'll be great. We'd be one big, happy family. And they're like, she's pretty cute. I bet the others are, too. Okay? And then three days later, wipes them out. Why? Because they're at the absolute worst part of it, so I'm told. But not a great plan. Jacob wasn't thrilled with this one, so now he's cursing their anger. And the interesting thing, too, is actually, if you look at when the territories are divided up, when they take the land of Israel, Levi, of course, as you know, doesn't actually have an inheritance. He says, because I am their inheritance. So they're scattered all throughout. They're Levites pretty much in every city. Now, there's some levitic cities. Those are the cities of Refuge, but there's no actual territory. That's the Levites. And then Simeon is right smack dab in the middle of Judah. So it's like, you ain't going anywhere, Budy. You're staying right here, because if you and Levi get together, God knows what's going to happen. Of course, we might be able to make good use of their fury right about now. And then we have Judah. Judah went down before his brothers. You might remember this term. Recently, Rashi talks about this, and he says that this particular term is because it was his idea to sell Joseph into slavery, and then it was his idea to then lie to their dad and know he was killed. Bring the goat, the coat, the whole thing. And so, because it didn't work, because, remember, the text says that he refused to be comforted. And so what the sages say is that essentially Judah was like, we'll be able to comfort, know there's still all of us. And it didn't work. And so what he said is that he fell out of favor, and he fell from his position of authority and influence as well. And then we get the story of Tamar. With Tamar, she's actually his daughter in laW. And through the process of an Ebom, sons die, and she's not able to bear children, and so she's waiting for the next son, and he doesn't want to do it because he's like, listen, there's this track record going here. And so she pretends to be a harlot, lies with him, and then when things get exposed, she exposes him. And it's interesting if you look at the terminology, and this is not the point of the lesson, but it's really cool if you look at the Hebrew, it's the exact same phrase that Judah used when he presented Joseph's coat to his father. Recognize this? She said the exact same words. And what the sages say is that she knows about this situation, and she is essentially telling him, I'm giving you the opportunity to correct this, to move forward in the right way, to accept responsibility for what you've done. And that's when he says, she's more righteous than I am. So you start seeing a change in him. And then with Benjamin, when, you know, I kind of imagine this, brothers. So Judah's standing behind Reuben. Reuben has this idea, and he just walks behind. Go sit down, dad. I'll take care of know. So you can see this major change. And again, it's actually in the blessing that Jacob gives to Judah. So to bless or to seek. What do I mean? And I'm sure Darren is still wanting to know what I meant by that when he asked me what the sermon was about so we could play with a little bit. So bless or seek. So that would. By that statement, they would be dichotomous, right. In opposition to one another. So that's kind of the idea. So what's the opposition? So, I want to look at something real quick. This is from Rabbi Zion, who was a messianic luminary, has a great history. I encourage you to look at it. We don't have time for it today, but. Amazing guy, lover of our master, Yeshua. But this is what he said in one of his letters back in 1938. What is the higher purpose of life? Rabbi talked about happiness. This is about life. What is the higher purpose of life? To put it more broadly, why do we seem to need a mission or a goal in life in the first place? Some achievement toward which we can strive? One who lives aimlessly with no specific purpose in life, who does not strive toward an ideal, toward an achievement of some transcendent or spiritual aim. It is not good to be this kind of person because their thoughts are purely directed toward the physical world. Their thoughts are, as it were, crawling along on the ground. This person's spirit is stifled. He is always troubled by the selfish desires of his physical body. His spiritual life is mediocre at best. If such a person were to become a preacher or a writer, his words would be dangerous and harmful to society. Therefore, if we are to live in harmony with nature and with all else that lives and breathes, we must place an ideal toward which we strive. And this ideal must be, as Aristotle said, the greatest and most exalted ideal possible. Now, obviously, nobody's been living under a rock. And so we've seen some people taking on some so called higher ideals, like black lives, matter, antifa, the Alphabet soup movement. And that's their approach of trying to find a higher ideal. And I think it's where Aristotle's words are important, because he says the highest ideal possible. And what does that mean? It means to seek after Hashem. It means to go after what he says is holy and right. And if we try to fill that void with something else, if we're atheist or whatever, we try to fill that gap with something else, we're going to have a lot of power in that. I mean, look at black lives matter. They're responsible for billions of dollars of destroyed property over the last couple of years. Quite effective. Did they accomplish anything? Absolutely not. Made a bunch of good people mad. A lot of people poor and are actually responsible for death. So would say it's probably not the highest ideal, but that's where they put their energy. And I think that's another example. Not only do you become incredibly selfish, but you also, when you. Because you have to. That's why he says that. Why do we have this need? Because it's the way God created us. We have to have a goal. And if we turn that goal inward, we never find the satisfaction we're looking for. If we turn it outward and it's not towards something godly, something transcendent, beyond the human level of existence, we're just going to be destructive. I mean, yeah, there are some good. You've got these organizations that are feeding the hungry and things like that. But guess what? Almost all of them are religious anyway, the effective ones, anyway. So I think that's good. I think, like he said, if we don't, it is destructive. So I want to give one more example, and this is by Rabbi Ginsburg. And he's actually talking about psychology, which I find fascinating, mainly because I don't understand it. And then I can just know heavy handed words, and then people are like, well, he sounds really, uh. So he says in his book, transforming darkness into light, and this is for you, Ben Gorton. I figured you'd like this. In today's world, people routinely turn to psychologists and psychological self help books in search of ways to deal with their worries and their anxieties. For from being considered a sign of far, rather from being considered a sign of weakness or abnormality, as it might have been in former times, maintaining regular contact with a therapist is seen as a sign of status. It indicates that the person's life is sufficiently complex to warrant analysis by the trained professional and that he or she is concerned enough with the quality of life to be responsible in taking care of it. This development is not a BaD THIng. In fact, it's not at all new. Throughout the history of civilization, all well functioning societies have accorded mentors and consultants a pivotal role in their inherent psychological and social mechanisms for promoting stability and cultural continuity. This seems to stem from a basic human understanding that people cannot and should not attempt to tackle all of life's problems by themselves, and that there is a therapeutic efficacy in seeking help and advice from the right people. Because the fabric of society is less tightly knit than it used to be, we are less likely to develop deep relationships today with traditional spiritual mentors. This vacuum has therefore been filled with professional therapists and other mental health practitioners. So I've always argued that I didn't need a therapist. I have Darren and rabbi, and their alcohol consumption has probably gone up since then. But that was why I always said that, because I knew, well, you would go to your mentors, you would go to those close to you. Why? Because they know you and it's cheaper. So buy them a case of beer and they'll talk all about it. Right? Maybe. Just kidding. So what do we learn from this? What do we learn from what Rabbi Ginsburg said? By choosing to bless and to be vulnerable in our community, by mentoring, being mentored, this actually stabilizes society. Actually, I forgot I have a psychologist here. How am I doing? So I got to think now. But it actually stabilizes society itself because we're willing to be vulnerable with one another. First of all, men. I wouldn't say elder women per se, because you can be very wise and young, but people of wisdom making themselves vulnerable to listen to the nonsense of other people and be able to help them through it. You don't know what you're doing to that world, that family, and that's blessing. But when we seek for ourselves, we actually contribute to society's breakdown. And as I said, therapy becomes more expensive. So Rabbi Dean Steinsaltz, which obviously, I got a lot of rabbis up here, he did a commentary on the Tanya, which I'm reading through. It's very, very fascinating. But there was something that really stuck with me, and I kept going back and rereading it, and what I pulled was this. He essentially teaches that there are some things that we should concentrate on. One is to be aware of the lofty quality of our souls and the talents. Two, always be aware of the gap between our potential and what we've actually done. And we should always measure our worth by that potential and not the success of others. And that's something that I'm really trying to work on, because I do. I look at how other people succeed, and I'm like, see, if you just pull your head out of where the sun don't shine, you could accomplish that, too. Then I just berate myself. It's a great plan. It's working great. So what does that have to do with anything? If you see that you've been seeking instead of blessing or that you see that there's a huge gap between your potential and your work for the kingdom, well, welcome to the club. While our intent and actions determine whether we receive a blessing or correction and also impacts our closeness with Hashem and a fulfillment in this life, let's remember this, when heaven looks at you, he sees potential, not success or failure. So let's choose to be like Judah. Let's learn and let's change our focus. Let's bless, and then blessing will find us. We won't have to seek it. So, as our master said, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you as well. Shabbat Shalom. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Thank you for connecting with Shalom Macon. If you would like a deeper connect action, please visit [email protected]. And if your connection with Shalom Macon has been meaningful and enriched your life, please consider partnering with us to accomplish greater things for the kingdom. Visit shalommaken.org. Give to make either a onetime contribution or set up recurring giving. And thank you for being a builder, not a bystander.