Can We Change?

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, January 14, 2006

On January first, millions of Americans woke up with the intention of making some change in their life. But as Margie Freedman explained to us in her recent Temple workshop on Healthy Living, many were not really ready to make the change that they hoped to make. Without that preparation, they were less likely to be successful in not falling into their own existing patterns of behavior.

Working with couples about to get married, we also talk about change. First, we look at the families in which both members of the couple grew up. What was their style? Were they more rigid or more flexible? Were many things done in set ways or improvised on the spot? Was discipline tight or loose? We also look at the style of connection and loyalty in the family. Was togetherness stressed or independence? Was everyone supposed to sacrifice their individual goals to be part of family events or was it more like coming together more loosely when that worked out. Then we talk about how the couple wants things to be in their life together. Often it is somewhere in between the styles of the two families of origin. But what’s really interesting is how strong the pull of what you grew up with is, even when people make a conscious commitment to living in a somewhat different way. What you experienced as a child feels natural, and unless one is very alert, it is what one reverts to automatically.

In the therapeutic community they tell the following story.

A man was walking down the street, didn’t see a big hole and fell in. He was very angry and blamed everyone on the street. He struggled very hard to get out. He refused to ask anyone for help, but he finally climbed his way out, blaming others the whole time for his misfortune.

The next day, he was walking down the same street, saw the same hole, but fell in anyway, still blaming others. He wouldn’t ask for help and struggled to get out.

The next day, he was walking down the same street, saw the same hole, fell in anyway, but realized it was his mistake. He didn’t ask anyone for help and struggled to get out.

The next day, he was walking down the same street, saw the same hole, fell in anyway, realized it was his mistake, asked someone to help him and he got out easily.

The next day, he was walking down the same street, saw the hole and walked around it.

The next day, he took a different street.

In this week’s Torah portion I have always been bothered by Jacob’s death distribution of his property to Joseph and his brothers. Jacob is about to die and turns to Joseph and says: “And now I assign to you, one portion more than to your brothers.”

Jacob has suffered so much because of favoritism, both as a young child, and as a father. Didn’t he see the negative effects of his parent’s favoritism on his relationship with his brother Esau? Wasn’t he aware of the pain he had caused his own family by favoring Joseph?

Some commentators explain that Joseph never told Jacob what his brother’s had done and so Jacob never saw his separation from Joseph all those years as related to this family problem. Others view this double portion as necessary for the inclusion of Ephraim and Menasheh, Joseph’s two son’s born in Egypt, as legitimate Jewish descendents. They note that the problem of favoritism has been overcome in that at least Ephraim and Menasheh are not competitive with each other.

Finally this year I was really pleased to have found some philologists who dispute the translation of this verse. Vindicating Jacob they say that it doesn’t really say one portion, but rather, the city of Shechem, that Jacob gives to Joseph. Ve-ani natati lechah shechem. It was the city taken by Shimon and Levi in a raid, that as our Jacob pointed out, an act that was viewed very negatively by their father. Shechem would later become the capital city of the Joseph tribes land. It is where Joseph is ultimately buried when his bones are brought out of Egypt by the Israelites generations later.

As we conclude the reading of the book of Genesis this week, I am relieved that at least some scholars believe that Jacob didn’t just keep walking into the same hole. For if Jacob can learn to take a different street, so can we, in facing our own challenges and need to change.