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Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Miketz - Hannukah Genesis 41:1-44:17
By Shlomo Riskin
Efrat, Israel - Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, celebrates not only the
victory of the Judeans over the Greek- Syrians, but even more fundamentally,
the victory of Judaism over Hellenism. But what is there about Hellenistic
Greek culture which caused Judaism to fight against it with such Strength?
After all, the Greek Civilization gave us the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle, the mathematics of Pythagoras, the theater of Sophocles and
Aeschylus and the epic poetry of Homer, and the sculpture of Praxitatles.
Our great sage Maimonides sights Aristotle with great respect, and his work
Shmoneh Perakim (an introduction to Mishna Avot) is almost a precise
translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. So what is there about
Greek culture which was so antithetical to Torah thought?
Even those who are not necessarily conversant with the Oedipus Trilogy of
Sophocles, know the great riddle of the Sphinx: who walks on all four in the
morning, on two in the afternoon and on three in the evening? The answer is:
Man, who crawls on all four as a child, who walks upright as an adult and
who requires the addition of a cane in old age. As C.M. Bowra in his
classical work The Greek Mind notes, for the Greeks, man was not only the
answer for the riddle of the Sphinx; man is the answer to every human
question.
The Greeks believed that man was the center of the Universe, that man
represented perfection. The human form displayed the loftiest expression of
art, and human attributes such as power, speed and beauty were idealized in
the gods of Mount Olympus. The chorus of the Antigone sings out again and
again, “Many are the awesome and the awful creations of the universe, but
there is nothing as awesome and awful as man”. Indeed, the sum total of
Greek philosophy cried out, “Man is the measure of all things”.
Judaism has a very different notion to bequeath to the world. G-d - and not
man - is the measure of all things, this center of the universe. Yes, the
human being may be but “A little lower than G-d, adorned with glory and
majesty” as the psalmist declares. But that little bit of difference
between G-d and man makes all the difference in the world. If the Greeks
created gods in mans image, Judaism holds out to man the possibility of
greatness since he - the human being - is created in G-ds image! And since
G-d is spirit and not physical matter, the Jewish ideals towards which we
must strive are spiritual characteristics of compassion, freely given love,
patience, loving kindness and truth. These are the attributes of G-d
revealed to Moses (exodus 34:6-7) which human beings must strive to emulate.
On the basis of this understanding, it becomes clear why Hellenism
considered circumcision an abomination and forbad the Judeans from
circumcising their children: if the human form represents perfection, then
tampering with an organ of the human body is nothing less than sacrilegious.
But since for the Torah we must sanctify and perfect our imperfect,
incomplete beings through the Divine commandments, circumcision expresses
the very essence of our philosophy. Furthermore, the Greeks saw the
different and varied human shapes and species, and therefore in their
pantheon created in man’s image, they posit different and varied ideals,
values, and morals. In effect, the Greek mind pre-dated our present day
post- modernism, in which everything is relative since there are no absolute
values, and everyone is right according to his/her point of view. In such a
world, a suicide bomber who targets innocent children can be justified as a
freedom fighter. It is only a Judaism of one G-d which can possibly insist
on an absolute moral structure which is based upon “I am the Lord your G-d
who took you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage”, and “Thou
shalt not murder”. It is the very relativistic ethical outlook fostered by
Polytheism which makes idolatry such an anathema to Judaism.
From this perspective, we can well understand the first transgression of the
Bible having been Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit of knowledge of
good and evil. The serpent (Gen. 3) declares at the moment they eat of the
fruit, “you shall be like G-d”. What’s wrong with being like G-d? What
could possibly be wrong with eating a fruit which gives knowledge? And Eve
herself describes the fruit as being “Good for food (which I take to mean
without calories or cholesterol), lustful for the eyes (which I take to mean
that it had a good presentation and an attractive packaging) and pleasing
for the mind (which I take to mean, beneficial for the synapsis of the
brain)”. So why not eat it?
The struggle within Adam and Eve is the very struggle between Judaism and
Hellenism. Who is to decide what is good and what is bad, what is right and
what is wrong? In eating the fruit Adam and Eve said they want to decide,
because after all it is their lives. G-d however says (as Sigmund Freud
taught many generations later) that every individual is a genius when it
comes to justifying what he/she wants to do. The Bible is therefore teaching
that there must be an external ethical and moral guide - beyond the
individual himself - to declare what is right and what is wrong. G-d is the
center of the universe.
From all that we have said, it becomes clear why the stories of Joseph are
read during the period of Chanukah. Joseph was hated by his brothers because
of his dreams - and the source of the hatred was far deeper than jealousy
alone. Joseph dreamt two dreams, the first of Sheaves of grain and the
second of the orbs of the heavens; father Jacob also dreamt of a ladder
rooted in the earth and extended to the heavens. But despite the similarity
of the elements of difference: In Jacobs dream, G-d stood over and above the
ladder, at the very center; in Joseph’s dreams, Joseph himself was at the
center. Jacobs dream was a Jewish dream whereas Joseph’s dream was a Greek
dream. It is only many years later, after Joseph is forced to wander to
Egypt and to suffer many setbacks, that he realizes that G-d is truly at the
center of the world. Hence in this weeks Torah reading, as Joseph stands
before Pharaoh to interpret the dreams of the most powerful individual in
Egypt, the much wiser hero of our stories declares as the introduction to
his interpretations: “That is beyond me; it is G-d who will respond in
accordance with pharaoh’s welfare” (Gen 41:16).
Shabbat Shalom
Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone
Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel
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