(Delivered January 4, 2025)
Shabbat shalom!
Years ago, before I had children, I used to spend a lot of time hanging around in my local independent bookstore. For those of you familiar with Newton, it was the old Newtonville Books, back when it was actually in Newtonville. It was the kind of place where the booksellers chatted with the customers and so the eavesdropping was usually pretty good.
One winter morning, as I was browsing the shelves, I overheard the store owner shooting the breeze with another customer, a man wearing a woolen ski cap pulled low over his ears. They were talking about the then-recent David Mamet movie State and Main, which I had also seen. Their comments ranged from enthusiastic to rapturous. Truth is, I had a dissenting opinion, but despite the bookstore’s general approval of banter, I didn’t speak up. This might have been a stroke of luck for me. A few moments later, someone else entered the store and joined the conversation. The owner introduced the new person to the man in the woolen hat he’d been talking to. You guessed it: David Mamet.
Mamet has been on my mind ever since I read his op-ed in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In it, he likens the Jews to the world’s foster children: at times flourishing, when in the context of a healthy “family”—and at times abused and persecuted, when not. In either paradigm there is a sense of wariness due to the rupture of having been displaced to begin with. The Jew is likely to, as Mamet puts it, “accept any indignity rather than risk a tenuous momentary acceptance. He has no voice at the kitchen table.” Whether or not one agrees with everything in his essay, I think Mamet’s metaphor of complicated family dynamics raises a good point about the realities of our being a minority in a majority culture. The pressure to assimilate in order to survive is always there, and we all make our choices as to whether and how much to do so. Sadly, history teaches us repeatedly about the limits of assimilation as a survival strategy.
With this in mind, it’s interesting to look closely at the scene in Parshat Vayigash where Josef’s family joins him in Egypt. Once father and son are reunited, Josef immediately goes into practical mode. He shares his plan to settle his family in Goshen, instructs his brothers on how to introduce themselves, and sets out to go speak with the Pharaoh, bringing a few of the brothers along with him.
In Chapter 47 Verse 2 we read:
וּמִקְצֵה אֶחָיו לָקַח חֲמִשָּׁה אֲנָשִׁים וַיַּצִּגֵם לִפְנֵי פַרְעֹה׃
He chose five from among his brothers and set them before the Pharaoh.
Many translations interpolate the word carefully, as in he carefully chose five from among his brothers, and indeed Rashi reads this ambiguous pasuk to suggest that Josef purposely chose the brothers who looked the weakest, wanting to make the newcomers appear as non-threatening as possible. Perhaps to reinforce the message that they are mere shepherds as opposed to conquerors, or perhaps to ensure that they would not appear strapping enough to risk being conscripted as soldiers. Whatever the reason may be, it’s clear that as an insider, Josef knows his way around the Pharaoh’s inclinations and is working the system to advantage his long-lost family. Josef, with his Egyptian wife and his high government position, has a foot in two worlds. Although he is not fully Egyptian, he has a voice at the kitchen table, so to say, and he uses it to help his birth family settle in Goshen in order to survive the famine.
Jacob, on the other hand, understands that he is an outsider, and when Josef brings his father to meet the Pharaoh, Jacob knows his place. The Jacob who manipulated his brother and father to serve his own purposes, the Jacob who stood up to Lavan demanding his rightful wages, the Jacob who wrestled with the divine and prevailed—this same Jacob behaves quite differently upon encountering the Pharaoh. In their short first meeting, Jacob only speaks three times. Two of these times are to bless the king, or to genuflect. And in the third, when the Pharaoh asks how old he is, here is his response:
וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל־פַּרְעֹה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי מְגוּרַי שְׁלֹשִׁים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה
מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי וְלֹא הִשִּׂיגוּ אֶת־יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי אֲבֹתַי בִּימֵי מְגוּרֵיהֶם׃
And Jacob said to the Pharaoh: the years of my sojourn are 130. The days of my life have been short and difficult, and I have not achieved the lifespan of my ancestors in the days of their sojourns.
When asked a simple question, Jacob responds awkwardly, essentially making apologies for the length and quality of his life. Formerly fiery Jacob, in this unfamiliar context, has become deferential to the point of indignity. He is painfully aware in this conversation that he does not, in Mamet’s metaphor, have a voice at the kitchen table.
As the story continues, the assimilated Josef rises to ever greater status in the Egyptian hierarchy. In my friend Matthew Schultz’s phrase, over and over Josef plays Pharaoh like a harmonica. This works out well for Josef and his brothers, but not so much for the rest of the Egyptian population as Josef amasses all the wealth in Egypt and forces the local residents into servitude.
And in just a few short weeks, we will see what happens when there arises a Pharaoh who knows not Josef.
With this episode, I believe the Torah is asking us to think long and hard about assimilation and its limits. Is there such a thing as the right amount of assimilation? Is there a way to be in the minority and not compromise our integrity? Where are we at home, and where are we visitors? In a time when antisemitism is on the upswing, these are not idle questions. In a moment that finds the Jewish people—both within and outside the Land of Israel—increasingly the subject of cynical scrutiny, harsh rhetoric, and sometimes outright violence, what does having a voice at the kitchen table sound like?
I don’t presume to answer for all places and all times, but what I have experienced in my role thus far, as Gloucester’s sole pulpit rabbi, is that knowing when and how to speak up is essential. My experience with the interfaith Thanksgiving service is a case in point. As you might remember, the folks planning the service made sincere efforts to be inclusive, but did so at first without consulting me. The result was a first draft that missed the mark of being authentically interfaith, for a host of innocent reasons. Until I articulated for them why that original service plan was not fully inclusive, they had no way of knowing. I’d even go further, to say they had no reason to know. But once they did, all kinds of doors opened, and relationships amongst the group deepened. A bit of open-hearted education changed the tenor of the discussion and brought the service much closer to the standard we all held for ourselves.
And now, with the flap over the City Council’s antisemitism resolution and concerns about its inclusiveness, the same principles apply. The general public—and even the activists calling for rescinding the original resolution—may have no way of knowing the role antisemitism has played in the sweep of Jewish history. Our task in this moment is to educate: calmly, clearly, and with an approach that takes to heart the teaching from Pirkei Avot Chapter 1, Mishnah 6.
הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת
Judge every person on the side of their merits
I was recently invited to speak with the folks down the street at St John’s Episcopal Church. In the course of the conversation it became clear to me that most of the parishioners there had never thought about antisemitism as a repeating pattern in Jewish history. Tears formed in their eyes as I shared what the world looks and feels like to the Jewish community right now, and the sense of trauma that seems to lurk in every corner. Hearing their sincere offers of allyship and support taught me the value of speaking up, and showed me that between assimilation and isolation there is a middle path.
Building authentic relationships with people of other cultures expands our perspectives and gives us a platform for helping others to see things they don’t even know to look for. This work is more important than ever in this complicated and scary time.
Ultimately it is not the Jews’ job to solve the problem of antisemitism, any more than it’s the responsibility of the Black community to end racism. We can, however, play a role in educating others. With trust, good will, and thoughtful communication, we can—and must—fortify our relationships in this community.
May we go from strength to strength, and from isolation to integration. And over time, with gentle candor and open hearts, may we build up our courage to find our collective voice at the kitchen table.
Shabbat shalom!
Jewish Themes: A Blog by Rabbi Naomi Gurt Lind 