1.
These are not mere stories or Hebrew mythology. We may think that every Shabbat we read from an ancient book whose events occurred at the beginning of history. A mistake. The nation writes itself weekly in our people's book of life. From this perspective, when reading the Book of Books, we are not just learning the chronicles of our people but meta-history: historical patterns containing the wisdom of generations that taught us how to survive in the valley of nations' shadows, through war, destruction, and redemption.
Psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, tells of a young woman in the concentration camp whose death he witnessed. She knew she would die within days. Yet Frankl noticed that despite this final knowledge, her mood was good. "I am grateful to fate for dealing me such heavy blows," she told him. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." She pointed outside and said: "This tree here is my only friend in my loneliness." Through the barracks window, she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree with two buds. "I often talk to this tree," she told Frankl, who anxiously asked if the tree replied. "Yes," she answered. And what did the tree say, he asked, and she responded: "It said, 'I am here, I am here, I am life, eternal life.'"
This is a consciousness-changing story. In the heart of a reality that produced only death, the woman facing death found meaning and hope in nature's cycle, in the seasonal blooming of the tree after a winter sleep, when it shed its leaves and appeared dead. She believed there was hope for her future, even if her flesh would perish and she would die.
2.
I remembered this story this week when I heard the shocking testimony of captivity survivor Sapir Cohen on the "Patriots" program on Channel 14, who was kidnapped into Hamas tunnels on Oct. 7. Without preparation, she underwent a similar process to the woman Frankl described, finding meaning in her existence there:
"In the first hours I thought 'Why do I deserve this?' and constantly 'If I had done this or that differently, I could have been saved.' My head was exploding. Then I told myself I needed to think differently, and I am a believer. If God sent me here, it's because I'm supposed to be here. The question is why. I saw a captive who closed his eyes to avoid being part of the reality he was thrown into, and a captive who cried constantly because she didn't know what happened to her family in the kibbutz, and then I remembered my last wish, and I said: 'God, give me one last chance to do something meaningful in life.' And I understand that I'm in hell, but I understand that I've been given an opportunity to help the captives who were with me, and nothing is more important than that. From that moment, I put aside my problems and decide to take this responsibility, and suddenly I felt like a different person, feeling strong, having confidence, and I didn't understand how such a fearful person could feel this way." Do yourself a favor and watch the full interview.
3.
Already on Oct. 8, I wrote to myself that we are in a biblical event. As time passed and the war expanded, I wondered, if a new chapter in the Bible is being written before our eyes, where are our prophets who will interpret reality for us, who will lift our gaze from the bleeding present to eternity, and give meta-historical depth meaning to the mighty storm that swept us and the region – and in many ways the world – to places we didn't believe we would reach so quickly.
And then I heard. I heard mothers and fathers at their sons' graves comforting the people and calling them to rise from the dust and triumph, because we are eternal; I read the wills of twenty-year-old warriors with a two-thousand-year-old spirit, who carried the heavy burden like dust on their backs and looked death in the eye knowing they were saving their people; we were exposed to IDF commanders' battle orders that seemed to continue the battle orders of Joshua son of Nun, Gideon son of Joash, and Judah the Maccabee. And I understood. I understood that God has His own ways of speaking to us, and if in those days He sent Isaiah and Ezekiel, Deborah and Elijah, in this time He sent us exemplary figures that no one knew until a moment ago, and behold they rose from within the congregation and lifted us from our small-mindedness to a different level of meaning and life, hope and faith.
4.
I listened to Sapir describing her existential thoughts in the Hamas pit, how she found strength within herself to rise from her life's pit and help others there, and I thought of Joseph. Twice in his life he was thrown into a pit, and could have despaired and lost hope. And behold, at the moment of Joseph's revelation to his astonished brothers, he changes one word in his life story that changes the entire meaning of what happened:
"And he said: I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you for preservation... And God sent me before you to establish for you a remnant in the land and to keep you alive for a great deliverance. Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God..." (Genesis 45:3-8). Within a few words, the sale was replaced with a mission ("God sent me"). If at the moment of the event we thought it was the sale of a brother into slavery, then in depth perspective, after what we went through, we understand that it was a mission. Joseph could have despaired and wallowed in his sale and thoughts like "If I had returned home from Shechem (after not finding the brothers), I wouldn't have been sold as a slave," but he believed there must be a reason why all this happened to him. Therefore he chose to give meaning to his suffering and read his life's reality in the pit as a mission, which he still didn't know what it was, but later, things would become clear.
5.
Towards the end of Genesis, after Jacob is buried in the Cave of Machpelah, the brothers fear that now Joseph will punish them for all they did to him. But he again teaches them, and through them us: "Fear not! For am I in the place of God? You intended evil against me, but God meant it for good! To bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Genesis 50:19-20). Even if troubles befall you, fear not. Don't burden your shoulders with the weight of all troubles. Even if what is happening seems evil, let us remember that this evil is perceived in our terms. But in the constitutive terms of the depth current pushing history – which in Genesis is expressed in the many dreams its heroes dream – what now seems evil may later be revealed as intended for good. The pains of pregnancy and labor are not the endpoint, but part of a broad and comprehensive process; at its end comes birth. The crisis ("Mashber") is not just a breaking point but also the place where women of old would kneel to give birth. It is in our hands to decide how to read our lives: as breakage or birth, as a mortal blow or an opportunity, and Joseph "was the provider (Mashbir") to all the people of the land."
This is the vision that Genesis educates towards: not to be satisfied with the revealed side of life – to think that current events are everything – but to listen to life's hidden current, to the voices speaking to us, to our dreams. Be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another.
