Can We Save the Unity of the Jewish People?

The Torah and Haftorah we read for Vayigash present a stark warning for the Jewish people. Vayigash lifts our spirits with its account of the reunification of Jacob’s fractured family, but the Haftorah quickly dashes our spirits by reminding us that the unity did not last. As we comprehend the contradictions within the readings (for December 26), we must apply their lessons to the current fractures within our family — that between Diaspora and Israeli Jewry. We need major communal actions to prevent a repeat of the disaster that resulted from Jewish disunity.

The parshah tells us of the undoing of the crime that had shattered Jacob’s family — Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery. It all started with Jacob’s undisguised preference for Rachel as his wife and for Rachel’s firstborn, Joseph, as his son. Their anger turned into hatred when Joseph boasted of his recurring dream that he would lord over them in the future. The breaking point came when Jacob sent Joseph to visit his brothers, who were away herding the family sheep. The brothers determined to kill him, but at the last minute, Judah — Joseph’s chief rival for leadership of the family — persuaded them to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt instead.

Fortunately, Joseph survived the shocking plunge into the dregs of slavery under a foreign master. He drew upon inner resources to rise within his master’s household and endure sexual harassment and betrayal by his master’s wife. Even after unjust demotion and imprisonment, Joseph was not broken, making himself so useful as to be brought to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams. Joseph not only correctly diagnosed a coming famine but also came up with a plan to prevent starvation. Pharaoh appointed Joseph chief administrator, where he presided over a massive grain collection, successfully enabling the Egyptians to feed their people and all the neighboring nations. 

Despite his successes, Joseph is damaged in only one way: he rejected his family and walled off his past — even his loving father — completely. To me, this iciness is evidenced by the fact that Joseph never sent a message to Canaan or even tried to reconnect with his father — not during the seven years when he was the vizier and second-in-command in Egypt nor during the initial years of the famine. As Joseph said when he named his first son Menashe, “God has made me [helped me] forget all my toil — and all my father’s house.” (Genesis 41:51).

But Vayigash tells us of the surprise happy ending. Joseph meets with his brothers, who came to Egypt to buy food for their hungry households, but does not disclose his identity as their brother. Although Joseph perhaps did want to see his full brother, Benjamin, he has no plan to reconcile with his other brothers, even tormenting them. But to Joseph’s surprise, seeing Benjamin evokes a storm of emotion in him. Maybe this emotion accounts for Joseph’s improvisation — to frame Benjamin for a crime and keep him in Egypt.

But when Judah approaches Joseph and pleads for Benjamin’s release, he finds the one key that unlocks Joseph’s hardened heart. He communicates Jacob’s never-ending heartbreak at his missing beloved son and offers to become a slave in Benjamin’s place. Far from reacting with violence and rejection to Jacob’s possessive love for Rachel’s youngest son, Judah is willing to give up his own life in order not to break his father’s heart again.

Joseph’s emotional wall crumbles. He is flooded with yearning and nostalgia for his father. He even sees that his brothers’ hateful and cruel action to him allowed him to grow up to become a great leader. Joseph, moved to the core, reaches out to his father and family. He brings them down to Egypt and nurtures them lovingly through the famine and its aftermath. This is the inspiring story of the near-miraculous reuniting of Jacob’s broken family.

Some Divides Can’t Be Bridged

The story is almost too good to be true. The Haftorah — the prophetic reading — tells us the sad reality. The competition in Jacob’s family continued below the surface. Jacob’s very mixed blessings and curses on the different sons show that the wholeness is not restored, as does the brothers’ concern that Joseph would take revenge after Jacob’s death (Genesis 49, 50:15-26). And when the children of Israel take possession of Canaan, the various tribal rivalries returned, especially that between the tribes of Ephraim and Judah (Judges, Samuel I and II and I Kings). Under the son of Solomon, Rechavam, who was a rigid and weak ruler, the nation split into two states — the Kingdom of Israel (comprising most of the Ten Tribes) and the Kingdom of Judah (mostly Judah, Benjamin and part of the Levi tribe.)

The Kingdom of Israel was the dominant power in the area for many decades, with Judah as its satellite. This dominance came to a crashing end when Assyria, the new imperial power in the Middle East, invaded and conquered Israel. As was the general Assyrian policy, the conquerors sent the people into exile and brought in other ethnic groups in their place. Tragically, the ten tribes assimilated and were lost to Jewish history.

One hundred and thirty years later, Babylonia, the new imperial power, conquered Judah and exiled many of its people. But the Judeans were able to survive exile and maintain their religious identities due to repeated religious renewals and a prophetic deepening of its religious culture. After Babylonia was overthrown by the Persians and Medes, the Judeans returned to their homeland. But the lack of religious interaction with Judah over the course of centuries left the Israelites weaker in religion and covenantal identity. This led to their assimilation and disappearance.

The Haftorah of Vayigash is a vision of Ezekiel, prophesying in Babylon more than a century after the disappearance of the Kingdom of Israel (37:15-28). He is instructed to take one stick and write on it “for Judah — and the tribe’s companions.” On another stick, he writes, “for Ephraim and the tribes of Israel.” The Lord promises to unite the sticks into one, representing the reunited and restored people of Israel.

But the Haftorah is heartbreaking because you realize the nostalgia and yearning behind the Rabbis’ choice of this portion. Unlike Judah in our parshah, there was no political leader or prophet over the centuries to unify the two kingdoms and produce the reconciliation that could have saved Israel (or, at least, assured the survival of its people in exile). Ezekiel articulates the longing for reunion and profound regret at all the missed opportunities to unite the two main centers of Jewry.

It’s Not Too Late to Mend the Modern Divide

Much like the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, today there are two major centers of Jewry in the world: Israel and the Diaspora. After a century of solidarity and mutual aid, the two centers have started to splinter due to political differences, geographic distance and religious/cultural divergence. Many say fatalistically that the sociological and cultural trends will run their course and there is nothing we can do.

But the parshah and Haftorah constitute a warning not to repeat the errors of the past. We need to mount a major effort to link Israel and Diaspora Jews in a new consciousness of our deeper unity. This includes more learning with and from each other.

One such effort to link our two communities is Our Common Destiny, a project launched last year by the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs under the auspices of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. This initiative is dedicated to bringing Jewish communities together by focusing on the values we hold in common. The guiding text of the project is the Declaration of Our Common Destiny, an eloquent document that sets forth the core principles that have connected the Jewish people for millennia. Our Common Destiny crowdsourced the completion of the Declaration, a global effort that garnered the participation of more than 130,000 Jews from all over the world. It’s not too late to go to the website, read the document, offer your own input and join in the process. On December 17, there will be an online celebration of the Declaration in the presence of President Rivlin in a program called “Illuminate: A Global Jewish Unity Event.”

I believe that we need to build on the Declaration and add communal structures to link Israel and the Diaspora. Some standing structure or official channel of exchange and policy deliberation is needed to assure that Israel’s government has a real understanding and responsiveness to Diaspora Jewry and their needs.

We must also expand programs of direct contact between Diaspora Jews and Israelis. The classic programs are Taglit/Birthright Israel, which brings 50,000 young Jews annually to Israel for a free, ten-day intensive educational trip, and MASA, which enables a more extended stay and study program in Israel. There are important internships that bring Diaspora Jews to Israel, too, such as Onward and Tamid. These programs are building a reservoir of Jews who have encountered Israel firsthand. Studies show that Diaspora participants in these programs develop relationships with Israelis so that they can process the divergence between the two centers of Jewry but remain deeply attached.

One exciting new program is Enter: The Jewish Peoplehood Alliance, announced by Charles Bronfman and Irina Nevzlin. This program will focus more on digital connections between our two communities. We have learned from the pandemic and the explosion of Zoom that digital connections can be deep — and easier and less expensive than exclusively in-person engagements. Enter will also emphasize  engaging Israelis and raising the salience of Jewish peoplehood in Israeli education.

My primary recommendation for checking the drift to separation is for Israel to make its decision-making more inclusive. The Haredim have been given free rein to set the government’s religious policies. This leads to policies that alienate many Diaspora Jews, specifically not recognizing the conversions and marriages of the liberal religious movements and torpedoing the compromise presence of liberal prayers at the Kotel. Some people justify the ultra-Orthodox monopoly by claiming it is needed to preserve the unity of the Jewish people and uphold one official standard. But there can be no unity without true recognition of the pluralism and diversity which is dominant in Diaspora Jewry.  One way for Israel to do so is to make a new major investment in liberal, open Orthodoxy — the one force that can challenge Haredim on their halachic turf and open the door to pluralist Israeli government policies.

The famous dictum is that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relive it. We need to make a massive investment in connecting Israel and Diaspora Jewry, lest we end up losing one Jewish center, which would profoundly weaken the other. We need our Judah leadership to speak the right words and focus on the right projects to keep Jewry — in both of its centers — as one people, bound by fate, choice and sustaining each other.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg is president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, which soon will become a division of the Hadar Institute.