Miketz (Chanukah): Searching for the Best of Both Worlds

I was recently reading an interesting commentary on this week's Torah portion, which drew parallels between the stories we read in the Bible and the holiday of Chanukah. Coincidentally (or perhaps not...), we almost always read this particular Torah portion during the week of Chanukah. Our Torah reading talks about Joseph, who interprets Pharaoh's dreams and rises to great power in Egypt. One dream saw scrawny cows consuming fat ones, and the other featured wilted ears of grain devouring healthy ones. Sure enough, the message in both dreams was one and the same, namely that years of plenty were ahead, but followed by years of severe famine. So where is the Chanukah connection?

Well, each of the stories in the parasha (Torah portion) depicts an underdog story, whether it's Joseph going from captive to captain or the dreams of the scraggly defeating the sturdy. This too is the story of Chanukah, where the lowly Jews are able to fend off the mighty Greek empire. Surely, the Maccabees looked to the stories in the Torah for inspiration during their campaign, and perhaps Joseph's story of dominance over the Egyptians emboldened them to fight on.

But I also see another connection between the Maccabees and Joseph. In a recent article in the New York Times, David Brooks writes about the controversial Maccabees, and how they were more like "moderate fanatics... [who] had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice." It is true that we often romanticize the story of the Maccabees, and leave out their disconcerting beliefs about Jewish practice and observance. But in my opinion, that is the central theme of the Chanukah story - the challenge of living in two worlds, the secular and the religious. At that time, the Seleucid Greeks were taking things to one extreme, pushing secularism and logic over all else, and oppressing those who were religiously observant. The Maccabees, however, went to the other extreme, emphasizing religious values to the exclusion of Greek culture.

Nevertheless, Brooks admits that the Maccabees "were not in total revolt against Greek culture," and they DID bring some aspects of secularism into their practice. It's all about balance, people! Neither extreme is ideal, and life is about pursuing harmony, equilibrium. The former Chancellor of my Alma Mater, The Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, coined a term that I love: "Polarities in Balance." That is what it's all about.

So what's the connection to the Joseph story? Our Torah portion introduces Joseph's two sons, Menashe and Ephraim. And to this day, we bless our sons (usually at the Shabbat dinner table on Friday night) that they should be like Ephraim and Menashe. Why? Why don't we bless them to be like our patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? We bless the girls to be like the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, so why go a different route with the boys? One reason is because they are a model to us of living as Jews in a secular society. They maintained a connection to their heritage and became two of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, even though they were raised in the Egyptian court, and probably learned a great deal about Egyptian culture and religion.

They were able to strike a balance. Their father, Joseph, created a sense of harmony in their lives. He continued to live as an Egyptian, and one with great power and influence, no less! Yet he was always a Jew at heart, and raised his sons with a strong connection to their heritage. And this is a major lesson for all of us today. As we read about the Maccabees and praise their victory over the Greeks, let us not forget that life is not about extremes or about fundamentalism. We should instead focus on the model of Joseph and his two sons. They truly taught us how to live with our Polarities in Balance.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah!