Friends For Life (Toledot 5775)

Friendships that are authentic, nurturing, and encouraging are exactly what we need to sustain life’s challenges and setbacks -- to move forward with strength and joy.  Friendship is also a powerful framework for individual learning and growth.  

Friendships not only sustain us as individuals but also authentic friendship -- being in relationship with another whose interests we put on par with our own -- is the essential building block of community.  

The Torah portion this week features a number of negative models of friendship or fractured relationships.  And it’s not just the conflict between the twin brothers Jacob and Esau.  There also is the provisional, utilitarian (and, ultimately, false) friendship between Isaac and the king Avimelech.


When Isaac faces a famine in his homeland he relocates to the kingdom of Avimelech who seems at first to befriend Isaac. Avimelech provides nourishment and shelter for Isaac.  He even protects his new friend Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, from the lust of strangers.

Isaac settles-in and prospers gaining great wealth, a large household, and lots of herds.  Apparently, Avimelech is threatened by Isaac’s prosperity. Avimelech shatters the friendship demanding, “Get away from us, you have gotten way too big for us." (Genesis 26:16) As Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson suggests maybe Avimelech could be friends only with someone dependent on him.  

The Jewish tradition contrasts this negative model of friendship with one that idealizes caring regard and mutual support.  Ecclesiastes wrote, "Two are better than one . . . because if they fall, the one will lift up the other; but woe to one that is alone when falling because there is not another one to help lift him up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.)  

Loners, Unite! (Chayei Sarah 5775)

The first mention of romantic love in the Torah occurs this week in Chayei Sarah.  As the Torah narrative transitions from Sarah and Abraham to Rebecca and Issac, we are told that when Rebecca and Isaac encounter each other for the first time, their first reaction is one of humility and mutual respect.

Then after a rapid courtship that involves only a single deep encounter they marry.  And only after they marry, in an order that seems inverted, are we told Isaac loves Rebecca. (Genesis 24:65-67).  The ancient lesson seems to be that authentic love blossoms from a real encounter, an authentic relationship between partners. Not the other way around. Love at first sight is for fairy tales.  But real love more often is the product of mutual respect, shared encounter, and authentic relationship. 

In that spirit, a story about the power of loners uniting.  Once upon a time there were two strangers living on opposite sides of the same village.  Isaac was a peddler whose wagon traversed the west side of the village; Rebecca was the peddler on the east side.  They knew of each other but never really met.  One day each Rebecca decided to take her wagon to the neighboring village to expand her sales.  She loaded up her wagon with fabrics and pots and tools of all sorts.  That same day Isaac decided to to the same thing.  He loaded up his wagon with fabrics and pots and tools of all sorts.  

Loners, Unite!

There's Something Bigger Than Phil: A Patriarch's Lesson in Pluralism (Vayeira 5775)

Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner
©Robert Trachtenberg

If you grew up listening to recordings of the fictional Two-Thousand Year Old Man (TYOM), as I did, then you already know the story that sets-up the punchline, "There's something bigger than Phil!"  

The TYOM is the invention of comedians Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.  They imagined what it would be like to interview someone who was over 2,000 years old.  One part of their sketch involves the start of religion.  Reiner playing the interviewer asks Brooks playing the TYOM whether he was alive before people believed in God. "Oh, yeah, a few years before," answered TYOM.  

"Did you believe in anything?  Did you believe in any Superior Being?"  "Yes!  A guy named Phil!" replied TYOM  

"Who was Phil?" "Phillip.  The leader.  The leader of our tribe.  He was very big. Very strong.  A big beard, big chest, big arms.  I mean, he could kill you.  So, we did everything he asked.  He could just walk on you and you could die."

"And you revered him?"  TYOM answered, "We prayed to him.  Would you like to hear one of our prayers to Phillip?" "Yes, we would."

TYOM then recited one of the "ancient" prayers, "Ohhhh, Phillip.  Ohhhh Phillip. Please don't take our eyes out and don't pinch us and don't hurt us.  Ohhh Phillip, don't step on us.  Leave us alone.  Ohhhhhh Phillip.  Aaaaaaamen!" 

"How long was his reign?"  "Oh, not too long.  Because one day Phillip was hit by lightning.  And we looked up, we said . . . 'There's something bigger than Phil!'"