This past Saturday, synagogues around the world read the story of Joseph and his brothers. You are probably familiar with it – Jacob, who comes from a family of much dysfunction and pain, perpetuates the abuse by showing blatant favouritism to Joseph, the son of his late favourite wife, Rachel. He makes him a coat of many colours, he listens to his crazy dreams of dominating over his elder brothers, and generally foments discord in the family. Then he has the bad judgement to send Joseph alone to check out the situation with his elder brothers and the sheep. The brothers almost kill Joseph, but then decide to sell him into slavery instead. They hate him so much, the Torah says, they could not speak words of peace to him. That’s some hatred.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has written some great things about our founding family – from the abuse Abraham inflicted on Sarah by allowing her to be taken by Pharaoh and Avimelech, the way she turned around and abused Hagar – first by forcing her to be her surrogate, then kicking her and her child out into the desert to die once she had her own baby. We can continue through the binding of Isaac, the duplicity of Rebecca and Jacob, and so on and so forth. Intergenerational trauma – we come by it honestly. 

But then we have Judah who breaks the cycle, by offering words of peace and love. He is willing to sacrifice his own liberty to protect his little half-brother and his aging father. Joseph, who is poised to exact revenge on the brothers, breaks down and weeps, and we go from there.

We live in a time of unprecedented free expression online, at the same time that so many of us are tucked away in information silos of our own making. Say anything beyond the utmost vanilla online, and you will find yourself dealing with haters. Many of them are bots, but some of them are human, and you have to ask yourself what kind of pain must lie behind that kind of viciousness. How can we find our human connection with people, even when we vehemently disagree with them?

I’m not suggesting that we lie down and allow fascists to take over the world. If we believe that our society is worth fighting for, we should do that. But let’s not forget that humans are still humans. Dehumanising each other and denying each other’s pain and fear is not going to get us to a society that any of us wants to live in.

With gratitude to Rabbi Kliel Rose for the amazing Dvar Torah this past Shabbat. Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate!