Weekly Torah Commentary Miketz
Dr. Philip Bliss
Miketz
Genesis 41:1 – 44:17
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pages 264 - 277
Revised Edition, pages 268 – 279
Haftarah Second Shabbat in Chanukah
First Kings 7:40 — 50
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pages 1646 – 1647
Revised Edition, pages 1449 – 1450
Saturday 19 December 2009, Shabbat Tevet 2 5770
Rabbi Dr John Levi, Emeritus Rabbi, Temple Beth Israel, St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Chag Sameach!
Sadly, Chanukah is conflated with the experience of battling with crowds of shoppers amidst the tinsel remnants of religious belief.
Yet Chanukah confronts Jewish tradition. The story of Chanukah was omitted from our Bible because, in the days of the Roman Empire, its inclusion was too dangerous. A war for Jewish independence with its victorious conclusion despite the Seleucid’s power was too close to the bone to be told. The early Christians had no such inhibitions and therefore the books that tell about our famous rebellion were preserved in Greek. Hundreds of years after the event the rabbis of the Talmud begin its famous section explaining our festival with the blunt question “What is Chanukah?” This question teaches us that, by the Third and Fourth centuries, the story had become mysteriously muddled and almost forgotten.
In our own day, confronted by rampant commercialism which has so little to do with religion, we are forced to ask “What is religion?”
An answer to this basic query may come from a highly unlikely source. In a recent issue of the British weekly The Spectator there is an article by Matthew Parris entitled “Religion is like a jigsaw: it makes a picture out of chaos.”
We are asked to imagine a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that comes with no assurance that the sections would ever add up to any sort of a design and whose pieces may never fit together. And yet every infant, as consciousness first dawns, automatically attempts to make a coherent picture out of the pieces that he or she perceives.
We understand, as seekers after religious truth, that the finished product will not be supplied with the jigsaw package because each one of us is finite. However, so often, we are fortunate. The festivals (including Shabbat) provide us with a frame into which we fit the pieces of the completed puzzle. For Jews the divine is seen through history and human experience and truth is celebrated by stories, traditions, prayer and song.
The Shabbat during Chanukah deals with dreams and with siblings! We are kept in suspense. How will the newly powerful Joseph dressed “in robes of fine linen and a gold chain about his neck” resolve the problem of his brothers’ treachery? Will he eventually tell them the truth about his identity? He has obviously been deeply wounded emotionally by their jealousy and yet he obviously cares about them. We know that Joseph will burst into tears and tell them who he really is.
This dramatic story which we read from the Torah during Chanukah echoes the extraordinary saga of the Maccabean brothers and their sustained battle to rescue the sanctuary in Jerusalem from pagan domination. That battle would take decades but, in the process, rabbinic Judaism would emerge. Sadly, the traditional priesthood had sold out to the rulers of the Seleucid Empire while, from their rural base in Modi’in a family of brothers refused to accept the destruction of their own, ancient religious identity.
One thousand years separate the two sets of brothers. But the link between them is to be found in today’s Haftarah (First Kings 7:40-50) where the Menorah is described in some detail. The inner court of the Temple shines with light. We do not find God in the darkness. We need light to read, to study, to learn. Joseph’s brothers only find out the truth when they are permitted the Egyptian ruler and see who he really is. The Temple in Jerusalem is only seen to be rededicated to God when, once again, the Menorah is allowed to shine.
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