CBI Blogs

Dear Ones,

There is a lovely, old Yiddish expression that translates into English as, "You cannot dance at two weddings at the same time." This is a colorful way of saying, "You can't be in two places at once.”

But Dr. Leonard Kravitz, a seminary professor of mine, used the expression in a more metaphorical vein. "All of Jewish life in the diaspora," he would quip, "is precisely the attempt to dance at two weddings at the same time."

In saying this, he was calling attention to the fact that wherever we have lived outside the Land of Israel, we Jews have found ourselves culturally running back and forth in an attempt to dance simultaneously at two different weddings: to remain true to our Jewish practices, culture and values, while also doing the dance of our host cultures. The tension between particularism and universalism, between living in alignment with Jewish identity and fitting in with the surrounding culture, has defined so much of Jewish experience in the diaspora for the past two millennia.

This tension is even hinted at in Mikketz, this week's Torah portion.

Pharaoh has had a couple of ominous, troubling nightmares, and none of his advisors can give him a credible interpretation of the dreams. When Pharaoh learns that there is a Hebrew kid in prison who is an expert dream interpreter, he calls for Joseph, who not only interprets Pharaoh's dreams, but gives him wise advice on how to handle the challenges that Egypt will face in an impending famine.

So impressed is Pharaoh, that he makes Joseph his second-in-command. And then, the "wedding dancing" begins. 
Pharaoh gives Joseph an Egyptian name, marries him to a member of the Egyptian aristocracy, and dresses him in Egyptian royal finery. The transformation is complete. To all outward appearances, Joseph is now an Egyptian aristocrat. To emphasize what Joseph sees in the moment as a repudiation of his roots, he names his first child Manasseh, meaning, "God has helped me to completely forget the hardship of my family home,” while he names his second child Efraim, meaning, “God has made me prosperous in the land of my affliction.”

We live in a time when many of our people find themselves in a situation that we never thought we would face here in America: we are reticent to publicly identify our homes or ourselves as Jews. Perhaps it is safer and wiser to ”wear the garb of Egypt, to blend in to the surrounding crowd.”

In this respect we can draw inspiration from the Hanukkah festival that concluded just a couple of days ago. The Hasmonean leaders (better known to us as the Maccabees) stubbornly resisted the social and political pressures placed upon them to abandon Judaism and adopt the ways of the tempting and sophisticated Greek culture that surrounded them. Indeed, the Maccabees went to the opposite extreme, battling not only their Syrian Greek overlords, but their fellow, assimilationist Jews who welcomed the adoption of Greek culture. (Even some of the Maccabean heroes, such as Judah's father, Mattathias, had been given Greek names by their parents).

So the dance is never an easy one, especially when blending in seems to offer not only safety, but reward, as well. Ultimately, doing the complicated dance between Jewish identity and secularism may come down to a matter of how each of us understands self-respect.

In the words of Prof. Henry Slonimsky, of blessed memory, “Indeed, the question arises for the reflective mood – why the suffering? What is it for?… Even on the most elementary and un-pretending plane, without much knowledge and emotion as to the values involved, is an act of decency. Not to be a slacker, not to welch, not to cringe; it is an act of decency to brighten the corner where you are, to stick it out where ineluctable fate has put you… Running away does not help you with the outside world, and it inoculates you with the worst of all poisons – secret self-contempt."

Let us therefore walk through the world as Jews with our heads held high, not haughty or arrogant, but confident in and proud of our spiritual practices, our rich, ancient and ever expanding culture, our love of learning, and our imperfect but determined efforts to help mend what is shattered in our broken world.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Steve Folberg