Integration

Written by Jonathan

Upon my first day of work this week my friend Aryeh told me a story which relates to the meaning of the Bracha which Yaakov gave to his grandchildren (the children of Yosef) Ephraim and Menasheh. Yaakov blessed them with the words which we utter every night before going to bed. He said "veyidgu larov bekerev haaretz" that they should "increase in the land like fish (bereishit 48:16). There are so many animals above ground that we can emulate, why did Yaakov choose the fish? Aryeh said that there was once this man Moishe from a poor village in Russia who was invited as a guest to a family's house for Shabbat. Moishe went along with his host to the market in order to help him prepare for Shabbat. Being that this man came from such a poor village he never had the experience of going to the market before and most definitely never saw a fish in his life. He had only heard about these animals that live in the water. So the man at the market took the fish out of the water in order to slice it up into pieces and give it to his customer for Shabbat. At this point Moishe noticed that the fish was jumping around all over the place. He had never seen such a thing before and turned to his host in amazement and told him how excited he was to see the fish so happy. Not only had he not seen a fish before but a happy fish just before it was about to be served at the shabbos table was so amazing.

Obviously the fish was not experiencing any excitement, on the contrary it was gulping for its last few breaths of air before it was about to die. The message that Aryeh was trying to remind me of is pretty self explanatory, very appropriate, and one which on the one hand we can never here enough of, and 100% accurate. On the other hand after having thought about this message which we here so very often I felt as if Judaism is perhaps trying to put limitations on personal growth in society.


This reminded me of the bracha which Yitzchak gave to his son Yaakov. He said ויתן־לך האלהים מטל השמים ומשמני הארץ ורב דגן ותירש "may god give you of the dew of the heavens and of the fatness of the land, and abundant grain and wine…(Genesis 27). We would think that the bracha that Yaakov is giving to his children would be a continuation of the one which he received from his father. Or at least something similar. Not the complete opposite. Yaakov is being told that he should not only not stay in his tent (Yaakov Ish tam yoshev ohalim) but rather that he should go out into the world and that god should provide him with the fat of the land! He then turns around and tells his grandchildren to stay in Eretz Goshen (the area which the Jews were to reside in while in Egypt). To be careful not to interact to much with the goyim, to be like a fish and stay in the water, because if you go out for just one second there might not be any turning back.

I believe that if we look at the context of the two blessing we will really see that they actually complement each other. The Netziv of Volozhin explains that the first act of anti-Semitism wasn't when a new king was appointed over Egypt who didn't know Joseph. Rather it begun the pasuk just before. ובני ישראל פרו וישרצו וירבו ויעצמו במאד מאד ותמלא הארץ אתם And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them (shmot 1:7). The torah tells us that the Jewish people were so fruitful that they filled the land. So much so that with them the land was full, seemingly without them the land would have been empty. These are the same Jewish people who in sefer bereishit god spoke of to Avraham and said "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs" (Genesis 15:13). We can see that the purpose of Egypt was to be in a land that was not ours. Not to multiply to such a point that without us there would be no land! I don't think that if we were in Pharos shoes we would have acted any different. How can we blame him for being concerned with the future and well being of his country? After all isn't that the purpose of a king? It's one thing to have Yosef help him run the country and let seventy of his family members join him. It's another to allow them to take over the entire country.

In parshat shmot when Moshe killed the Egyptian for attacking his fellow Jew, he was later called an "Ish Mitzri" (an Egyptian, because he was brought up in the house of Pharaoh). Meanwhile the jewish people continued to be enslaved and cry out to hashem. A short while after he had his first child and called him Gershon. The torah says And she bore a son, and he called his name Gershom; for he said: 'I have been a stranger in a strange land" (Shmot 2:22). After hundreds of years of slavery, the very next pasuk the torah tells us "And God heard their screams, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob ". Only after Moshe and the rest of the jewish people realized that they were not there for good, rather only as visitors did hashem hear their cries and take them out.

Unfortunately the only way to ensure a future for the Jewish people here in the Diaspora is to realize that we are here temporarily. Unfortunately the normal urge to want fit in with the rest of society is a recipe for disaster. Maybe not today but certainly tomorrow. We don't need me to say this, all we have to do is look back on our history.

Hopefully we will all live to merit the blessing that was meant for the children of Yaakov and " ויתן־לך האלהים מטל השמים ומשמני הארץ ורב דגן ותירש "may god give to us from "the dew of the heavens and of the fatness of the land"…