“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.” For the Israelites, enslaved by the people who years before had welcomed, even honoured, them, one might adapt this nursery rhyme to: “Brick making may be back breaking , but our names will help preserve us.” “V’eileh shemot, these are the names of Israel’s sons who came to Egypt with Jacob…” This reiteration of their identities opens the Book of Names, just as the last word of the Book of Genesis is “b’mitzraim, in Egypt”. The first book of the Torah emerges from the divine, unknown vastness, as God fashions the world, which is also vast in its own way for us much more limited humans. It ends in a specific place, Egypt, which by the beginning of Exodus has enslaved the family of Jacob. The naming of this family preserves a dignity which would otherwise be destroyed and reminds us of other preceding names: Leah and Rachel, Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah. Thus, the promises made by God to the patriarchs and matriarchs are preserved,

Bereshit ends, in one way, on a good note. The brothers are reconciled with Joseph, who is Viceroy in Egypt. The family has been given choice land to live in and seems safe. Yet it also ends with two deaths, first Jacob’s and then Joseph’s. Shemot starts with the family’s descendants oppressed and miserable, but it also starts with a birth of a baby who will grow up and be given a task to lead the people out of slavery. There is a sort of model of Jewish history in the few pages which cover these events. Settlement and security are followed by persecution and apparent hopelessness, but a glimmer of hope, of courage and of righteous behaviour point to a better future. We will not be beaten down. After all, we have names, memory and promise.

Our next service promises to be an excellent opportunity to share some memories and embark on an amazing journey together, all the more so as we will be led by Harvey Kurzfield. Come along at 10.30 to be part of this.

In his recent commentary on the parsha of Mikkeitz, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs, argues that Joseph was the world’s first economist. Confronted with the prospect of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, Joseph plans and executes an efficient economic strategy which saves both Egypt and Canaan from the famine. Almost in passing, Rabbi Sachs mentions how Joseph effectively turned the whole population of Egypt into serfs. First he has them use all their money to buy grain. Then he has them sell their livestock. Finally, he tells them to sell their land. From then on, they will own nothing, and 20 percent of their labour will be Pharaoh’s. Eventually, a new Pharaoh will impose a more severe version of such serfdom on the Israelites. The following two parshiyot – Va-yiggash and Va-y’chi – present Joseph and, by extension, his family as at the pinnacle of Egyptian society. Joseph is the Viceroy and respected by everyone. When Jacob dies, he is given a state funeral. The Canaanites in the area say to each other, “Egypt is in deep mourning here.” Yet we know that the end of Bereshit is close and that when the story reopens in Shemot, the Israelites have become miserable slaves. It seem that Joseph’s economic strategy, in the long run, resulted in evil. Or did it?

The story, or stories, of the Torah may seem to follow a simple sequence, one event after another with corresponding moral parallels. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, so they are expelled from Eden. Cain murders his brother, so he becomes a wanderer. Overreaching humans build Babel, which is bad, and are scattered, which is just. Joseph is sold into slavery, which is bad. He rises to the top of Egyptian society and saves his family from famine, which is good. There is, though, a constantly shifting counterpoint, which raises many questions. What if Adam and Eve had not eaten the forbidden fruit? Where would we all be? Would it have been better for the world or not? Cain, the first murderer, is marked by God with a sign of guilt, but it is also a sign of mercy. The destruction of Babel leads to a multiplicity of languages with worlds of meaning. Joseph saves his family, yes, but their descendants end up as slaves. Is this good or bad? Could we exist as Jews if it were not for the story of our slavery, our rescue and the hard, oh so hard, lessons in how to be free?

And it goes on in Tanach. Solomon is the wisest of kings. He builds the Temple. Yet he ends up amassing wealth, horses and women and dies feared by his people. Before the era of kings, the Judge Jephthah swears to God that he will sacrifice whatever comes first out of his house on his return from battle if God will grant him victory over the Ammonites. He is victorious and returns home, but it is his daughter who emerges first to greet him. “Alas, my daughter,” cries Jephthah in agony, “I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” It is easy to read this like some tragic Greek story of obligatory human sacrifice, but it isn’t. Jephthah, although not an evil man, has forgotten, surrounded as he is by idolatry and barbarous practices, the Akeidah. God does not want human sacrifices and so does not want anyone to make a vow that would oblige them to make one. Things are not as simple as they may seem.

This week we have two special visitors, Mike Frankl and Fiona Karet, who have come down from Cambridge and will lead the service on Saturday, starting at 10:30. Come along to listen, pray, sing and share.

Va-yishlach features one of the iconic episodes of the Jewish story, i.e. Jacob’s wrestling match with the stranger, which leaves him lame in body but strengthened in spirit. According to one tradition, this stranger is Sameal, the guardian angel of Esau and the incarnation of Evil. According to others, however, it is a holy angel. It would certainly be strange for an angel of Jacob’s enemy and an incarnation of Evil to bless Jacob and to give him the name Israel. Consider, too, that when Jacob finally meets Esau, the older brother he had deceived and who had threatened to kill him in return, Esau is all kindness and forgiveness. Jacob says something extraordinary: “For seeing your face is like seeing the face of the Divine, you have received me so favourably.” Does the divine dwell in the face of an evil man? Surely, Esau’s actions and Jacob’s words demonstrate that hatred can turn to love and that other people, whom so often we fear, can hold within themselves their own imprint of the divine.

It is important to bear the story of Jacob and Esau in mind when we come to Va-yeishev, another version of sibling rivalry and the beginning of Israel’s encounter with Egypt. This week’s parsha starts badly. A precocious and rather vain younger brother, perhaps not sufficiently controlled by his doting father, irritates his bothers so much that, driven by jealousy and resentment, they sell him into slavery. Yet already by the end of the parsha, despite the dire circumstances in which it ends, with Joseph in prison for a crime he had not committed, there is a ray of light, and that is Joseph’s growing wisdom and his moral uprightness. He could have curried favour with his mistress by sleeping with her, but he refuses to betray his master.

Before I end, allow me a little addendum. Joseph has been unjustly treated, but he has not been killed. Neither Potiphar, in a fit of jealousy, nor his wife, in her fit of pique has taken a dagger to him. At the risk of stating the obvious, this shows that there was a legal system and a concept of justice in Egypt. This is very important and gives us a moral context in which to place many of the laws which are given to the Israelites after the Exodus. What is important about these laws is not so much that they regulate our social and legal behaviour, but that they must be justly and fairly administered. The law is a ragged and dirty instrument when it favours wealth and power over impartiality. Israel’s mission will not be to follow a mass of laws and rulings but to use them as the foundations of a just society.

To hear the story of the sons of Jacob and to share in prayer, song and conversation, come to the service this Saturday at 10:30. Liz Berg will lead us in tune.

Jacob is a trickster. He comes into the world grasping his brother’s heel, as though trying to push past him into the light. Years later, he persuades his bother to sell him his birthright for some lentil soup. When his father is ill and filled with thoughts of death, Jacob dresses up as his brother, lies to his father and steals the blessing Isaac meant for his elder son. Twenty years on, he fools his uncle by saying that he would be happy to have only the new lambs born with markings and then working some magic so that, against the law of probability, the majority of lambs are indeed born with markings. Tricksters are not uncommon in legend and myth. Here in Britain, we have Beanstalk Jack, who fools first a giant and then his wife in order to steal a bag of money, a singing harp and, finally, a golden egg laying goose. The Greek hero Odysseus comes up with the ruse of the wooden horse to trick the Trojans into believing that the besiegers have abandoned their ten year old siege. The ruse works, when the Greek soldiers hiding in the horse emerge in the night and open the city gates, thus enabling the whole army to enter and destroy the city, its people and a whole civilisation. Both North and South American indigenous people also had stories with tricksters getting the better of demons, nature or, after the conquest by Europeans, of foreign invaders and their gods.  

So what is different about Jacob? Why should we care about him? Why does he become Israel, one who wrestles with the divine? Well, there are several, related reasons. First of all, he is so human. He is not a superhuman hero like Odysseus, nor a divine creature like the native American heroes, nor a fantasy figure like Jack. We care about Jacob and follow his life with intense interest, noting how he grows with time in maturity, wisdom and moral sense. We feel for him as he humbles himself before Esau. It all starts with the dream he has on the way to his uncle’s house of angels ascending and descending a ladder. He is enhanced in spirit and understanding. On the return journey, many years later, he strives with the eternal and grows even more, notwithstanding that for the rest of his life he remains human and prey to human weaknesses. 

Second, the reference points of the story are moral and spiritual. Jacob is chosen to take the covenant forward, precisely because he understands what the covenant entails: a commitment to following God and understanding His ways. 

Third, Jacob’s story does not occur in isolation from the past or future, a mythical, self-contained bubble. Jacob is the son of Isaac and Rebecca, the grandson of Abraham and Sarah and the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Moses is his child, as is Ruth, as is David, as is Elijah, as are we. God’s experiment to ask a people to be His people can only happen because Jacob becomes fit to take forward the achievements of his parents and grandparents. 

For these reasons, and others, we honour Jacob. For these reasons we are Israel. 

And there I must leave it, but you we can all grow in wisdom and understanding by coming this Saturday at 10.00, when Pat Lipert will take us further on Jacob’s journey.

Usually, when God speaks to Abraham, Abraham responds, argues, even laughs at God’s words. Whenever he is told to do something, however, he simply gets on with it. He leaves his father’s land, circumcises himself and his household, and takes his son Isaac up the mountain for sacrifice. He is the supreme example of faith. Why doesn’t he question God about sacrificing his son? ”It would be sacrilege even to ascribe such an act to you – to kill the innocent with the guilty… Shall the whole world’s Judge not act justly?” are the words he doesn’t say. Abraham, the man who has himself acted justly throughout his life, who has given his nephew Lot the first choice of land when they separate their households and flocks, who has refused to take the spoils of war, who makes treaties of friendship with his neighbours, knows surely that God cannot be less just than him, but he does not question God’s command. Perhaps he senses that Isaac’s sacrifice is a logical impossibility. He has two choices: either he sacrifices Isaac or he doesn’t. If he chooses the latter option, Isaac lives. If he chooses the former, God will stop the sacrifice, as indeed He does.

The Akedah comes near the end of Va-yeira, but we are now come to Chayyei Sarah, in which Abraham buys the only land he will ever own, i.e. a burial place for his wife and, later, for himself. The overall spirit of this parsha is one of beauty and generous feeling set against a weaker, if disturbing, mercenary intent. Abraham willingly pays grasping Ephron over the odds for a burial plot. This transaction between honour and deceit is reflected later on when Abraham’s steward, thought to be Eliezer, meets Rebecca. She is all kindness, not only giving water to Eliezer, but also to his camels and in offering food and shelter to him, his men and their animals. Contrast this behaviour with the hint of greed shown by her brother Laban, who treats the visitors with hospitality, but notices first and foremost the gold ring and bracelets given to Rebecca.

It is, though, the minor character, Eliezer, who perhaps distinguishes himself most, for he is so overcome with joy at meeting Rebecca that he prostrates himself and exclaims, “Blessed be God, Lord of my master Abraham, who has not withdrawn the kindness and truth that He grants to my master.”

Blessed indeed be God, and to take part in blessings, prayers, songs and readings, come to this Shabbat service at 10:30. Harvey Kurzfield of melodious blessings will guide us.