TFTW Archive 2025 January

Dear Members and Friends,

Why does Joseph take so long to disclose his identity to his brothers? Three times the brothers appear before Joseph to buy food during the famine that has decimated the land. On the first visit, Joseph demands they bring Benjamin, holding Simeon in custody as the brothers return to their father in Canaan. Joseph has the money they have handed over for the grain, planted in their sacks, making them look as though they are thieves.  Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go with them until continuing famine forces him to let the brothers return to Joseph. Joseph tests them again, telling the one in charge of his household to return the brothers’ money and to place his own silver goblet in Benjamin’s bag. He sends his men after them, instructing them to accuse the brothers of causing harm? They are brought back to Joseph who demands that only Benjamin remain as his slave.

Distraught, the brothers do not know how to justify themselves: ‘God has found out the iniquity of your servants; here we are, my lord’s slaves – both we and the one who was caught with the goblet in his possession!’ (Genesis 44:16).

It is at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion that Judah approaches Joseph and makes his emotional plea to the man they know only as ‘lord of all the land’. Please listen to us, do not be angry with us. You asked us whether we have a father or brother, and we told you – we have an aged father and a young boy of his old age, whose full brother is dead. We told you how his father loves him, because he is the only brother left of his mother. You told us to bring him down so that you could see him; we said that the boy could not leave his father, for if he leaves his father, he will die. We told our father that we would not be able to return unless our youngest brother was with us. Now if we return without our youngest brother, our father will die, and it will be our fault that our father has died in such anguish. Take me, says Judah, in place of the boy and let the lad go home with his brothers, for I cannot go home to my father without the boy and see the harm that my father will suffer.

Only after this long appeal from Judah does Joseph finally reveal himself to his brothers:

‘Joseph could no longer restrain himself before all who were standing in attendance before him, so he cried, “Send everyone away from me!” so that no one else was there when Joseph made himself known to his brothers’ (Genesis 45:1).

What was his purpose in putting his brothers – and his father – through such a painful and testing process? Rabbi Dr Tzvi Ron in a commentary to these verses explains that Joseph sought to prove that his brothers had shown remorse and contrition for what they had done to him. The midrash suggests that he could have revealed himself much earlier but did not because he wanted them to go through each of the three steps that Maimonides says leads to repentance: i) contrition; ii) confession; and the final stage, iii) of confronting the same situation again but abstaining because repentance is complete.

Only after Joseph sees that his brothers have expressed contrition, confessed their sin – ‘we are guilty’; only after he is convinced that they have turned away from the sin of jealousy of their younger brother who was favoured by Jacob, and only at the point when Judah offers to remain as Joseph’s slave in place of Benjamin, can he no longer restrain himself and he makes himself known to his brothers, weeping loudly.

This is a story about the reconciliation of brothers who have been estranged from each other for twenty years. And we are moved, not just by Joseph’s emotional outburst, but perhaps even more by Judah’s willingness to sacrifice himself in place of Benjamin for the sake of his father and brother. But Joseph’s weeping also connects us with the imagined tears of Rachel weeping for her children, ‘refusing to be comforted for her children who are gone’ (Jeremiah 31:15). Here the prophet sees Rachel as the personification of Israel – Rachel who dies as she gives birth to Benjamin. She weeps not for herself but for her lost children, removed from their land and taken into exile. It is a form of national estrangement, but Rachel’s wailing and bitter weeping connect us with the suffering of all those who are bereaved, who have lost homes and are estranged from their communities.

As we begin a new secular year, we pray for peace, for reconciliation, for an end to weeping and we hold on to Jeremiah’s prayer that ‘there is hope for [our] future’ 31:17).

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright

Dear Members and Friends,

It may seem a little strange to invoke the practices of Yom Kippur in the middle of the winter month of Tevet. But anticipating with nervousness and hope a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the release of the remaining hostages from Gaza, the words that come to mind are from the meditation read by rabbis and readers before the beginning of the Kol Nidre service on the holiest night of the year.

It is a prayer in which those who are about to lead the Kol Nidre service express their inadequacy and unworthiness, asking for God’s compassion and guidance for all those who represent the Jewish people:

‘In our common efforts to reach You, let them not falter on my account, nor I on theirs. Guide the lips of those who represent Your people. Strengthen our faith and purify our thought, and in Your love draw a veil over all our failings. May our prayers ascend this day to the throne of Your glory’ (Machzor Ruach Chadashah, pp. 169-170).

It has been fifteen long, drawn-out months since the massacre of October 7th by Hamas and the capture of the hostages, the devastating Israeli bombardment of Gaza, that has killed more than forty-six thousand, left many more thousands badly wounded, and hasn’t only destroyed the infrastructure of Gazan existence, but wiped out whole families and generations. Even in these hours before the hoped for ceasefire agreement, scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.

I think of Kol Nidre because it is, in one way, the lowest point of the year – that moment before the beginning of the service, standing in our small prayer room, the Rabbi John Rayner Room, with my colleagues, readers and Ark Openers - deeply mindful of the shame of a year that has passed in our personal lives, but also in the life of our people – the Jewish people.

It has been unutterably painful to be a Jew over these past months, knowing that what has been done – and cannot be undone – has been done in the name of the Jewish people. I have asked myself on so many occasions, what does it mean for us to be Jewish, to live Jewish lives here in the diaspora, to connect ourselves to a land promised to Abraham by God, but is also the place others, who are not Jews, call their home?

There have been moments over the past year of deep shame that this war has been a violent travesty of our Judaism. It has drawn horror, tears, even a disconnect for many from Israel. But there have also been moments of pride in being a Liberal Jew, in espousing and living the values of prophetic Judaism. In Israel, at the end of February last year, listening to my colleagues in the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism speak about their work, holding on to a vision of justice and peace. Rabbis for Human Rights who, throughout this war, have continued to work with Palestinians on the West Bank, with their programme

‘Planting Justice’, providing a protective presence for Palestinian farmers, helping to plant olive trees, to harvest the fruit, risking their lives against the violence of settlers. Organisations such as Standing Together, Israelis and Palestinians, continuing to struggle together for peace and independence.

Here we have wrung our hands, and lamented the fate of the hostages, the numbers of those killed in Gaza. But in Israel, there are individuals and organisations who have never ceased to work for an end to the occupation and a peaceful and just dynamic between Israel and Palestine.

These are the individuals who are ‘fit to stand in God’s holy place’ in the words of the meditation. We will all stand to be judged when this war comes to an end. We will be judged on our actions and inactions, our words and our silence by those who come after us. And we will be judged by a God who keeps account of our sins, but allows us to stand, despite them. A forgiving and long-suffering God who welcomes transgressors, and by whose grace and mercy, we are given another chance to be better than we have been.

I quote from that meditation because it expresses our disgrace and pitifulness, but also our hope that something else will emerge from the end of this war. Not simply a ‘ceasefire’, but something more lasting, enduring and hopeful.

May the prayers we have uttered these past fifteen months for an end to the war, for the return of the hostages to their families, for healing, for rebuilding, for the erasure of hatred and revenge, fall not as seeds on concrete, but on damp grass in a field where delicate tendrils may grow from the depths of the dark soil.

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright