We didn’t give it a nickname. I never even referred to it as “she”, as was once the fashion with vehicles of all sorts. Nevertheless, I felt that same strange bond with our 1993 Subaru “Station” (as that sort of is called in Israel, dropping the “wagon”) that develops between people and their possessions over time. It was the only car we’d owned since making Aliyah, bought for us by my parents, one of their many munificent acts on our behalf over the years. Keeping its provenance in mind, I tried to use it for mitzvot whenever possible – given “trempistim” (hitchhikers in Israeli parlance) rides as the default option, lending the car to friends in need, trying not fret and worry when our son our daughter took it somewhere. We were careful to keep it up as directed, and it was dependable in return, perhaps sensing how dependant we had become on it.
Oh, there I go again, anthropomorphizing. Well, you can hardly blame me, as I have moved from denial to mourning. You see, our car was stolen last night. I had brought it to local garage for a repair, and, as I had to go into Jerusalem, and couldn’t wait for the tire to be changed, left it to be picked up in the evening. Thousands have done the same over the last ten years, Elad the garage owner and mechanic told me, as we hunched over his close-circuit computer-based security camera system, watching helplessly as the car backed out two hours after closing and about an hour before I returned from Jerusalem to fetch it. Was it miffed that I had refrained from taking it to Jerusalem, such that it succumbed to the blandishments and practiced hands of the thief?
Probably reduced to parts in the surrounding villages by now, I said to Elad. No, they don’t take apart old Subarus, they just drive them. And the police detective agreed, asking for unique identifying signs, holding out hope against the statistics that the car might be spotted and returned. I want to believe him, but, like I said, I’m already dealing with the likelihood that I’ve seen that last of our old Subaru.
And it’s not easy. It’s not the money. Elad tried to console me – a car like that can’t bring even its Blue Book price, he told me. You don’t know what we’ve done, what we’ve been through with that car, I told him, as he nodded, obviously not the first time he’d hears such word.
A few years ago, not long after I began the Pshat, I wrote about my accident. I won’t reproduce the whole account, but I can’t help but recall – feel, more like – how we skidded together off the road, out of the path of the onrushing semi, into the ditch. How we rolled together, as time came to a standstill, twisting, turning, almost flipping over to crush me, but no, coming to rest on its side, as though to protect its soft, fleshy driver. I assumed it was totaled, but the tow-truck driver encouraged me to look into fixing it. And indeed, the motor was untouched, and while the body work cost a pretty penny, when finished we had a pretty, new Subaru that got back on its wheels and picked up where we had left off. Until last night.
But, with all of that, I feel strangely accepting. How much emotion can I lavish on a contraption of steel and plastic when our boys (collectively and not immediately personally intended – until you see the faces) are in Gaza fighting the most viciously hatred-filled anti-Semites on earth to protect the entire enterprise of Am Yisrael). So it’s perhaps a good deal easier than it might be in better times to say, “it’s just a car”. It’s just an object, and who knows what might have happened had this not happened. A kapparah, it’s all for the best, as the folk expression goes.
But it’s more than a folk expression. It’s the very heart of faith, as we see in this week’s parashah. After Ya’acov dies, the brothers come to Yosef to beg that he not take vengeance upon them in the manner that Esav had intended to do to Ya’acov once THEIR father would be no more. Yosef responds to his brothers with the following words: “Don’t fear – am I then in G-d’s place? You planned against me for evil; Hashem planned if for good…”.
The brothers can’t imagine that Yosef bears no grudge, but Yosef can’t imagine that anything happens outside of Hashem’s purvey. Your planning, Yosef tells his brothers, is really a tiny part, a subroutine, of Hashem’s planning, on a scale incomprehensibly huge, so enormous and intricate that it reaches beyond complexity, beyond multiplicity, to simple oneness.
Ya’acov blessing to Yosef is precisely reflected here, since he has blessed his favorite son that he should be beyond the impact of our bifocal, manifold vision. “Ben porat ali ayin” – Floweringly productive son, above the eye! And Moshe, in his blessing to the tribes of Yosef, says, “his horns are the horns of a Re’em, with those he shall impale the ends (literally, the “zeros”) of the earth.
And what is a Re’em? According to the midrash, the Re’em is a one-horned kosher animal which was offered by Adam in thanks for the return of light after surviving his first night, and the descent of enveloping darkness. Some wish to identify the Re’em with the unicorn, but that animal, being equestrian, wouldn’t’ be kosher – no split hooves. Rather, some researchers posit, the Biblical Re’im is the scimitar-horned oryx, a beautiful white antelope with wickedly long, slim horns. When viewed in profile, the two horns merge, and the animal appears to bear but a single horn. And the name Re’em? Hebrew for “see ‘em”, or perhaps, “see – if”.
We constantly impale reality with the horns of our analytical assessments. Being wishes to flow, and we parcel it out in sensible quanta, consumables for our theories and our consciences. But if G-d is One, it’s all one. We don’t see this “if” on a daily basis, we go rampaging through the china shop of our precious time dancing on this earth with our two horns swinging, back and forth, slicing our experience into bad and good, up and down, agony and ecstasy, and so on.
Yosef lived in captivity, in uncertainty and dependency, in suffering and deprevation for years, all because of his brothers’ envy. Yet every step of the way, he tries to bring his two horns into alignment. You intended it for bad; Hashem intended it for good. It’s not a truism, it’s not a theological proposition – it’s a constant practice of seeing life as aligned with Hashem’s will, and living in accordance with that vision.
There was a wobble somewhere inside, it had to been the wheels, the steering, no? But each time I brought the car to Elad, he drove it and didn’t hear it. Since he took my report seriously, he checked the steering, the axles, everything. He found no problem, told me I could drive with confidence, so I set forth, and tried to ignore the telltale beat-beat I was everyone could hear. I’m going to miss that wobble sound, you know. Perhaps I’ve just been given that long-awaited wheel alignment that only the great Mechanic knows how to diagnose. In the meantime, I start looking for a new car. I’m not looking for much: just a reliable, sturdy workhorse – with one horn.
Oh, there I go again, anthropomorphizing. Well, you can hardly blame me, as I have moved from denial to mourning. You see, our car was stolen last night. I had brought it to local garage for a repair, and, as I had to go into Jerusalem, and couldn’t wait for the tire to be changed, left it to be picked up in the evening. Thousands have done the same over the last ten years, Elad the garage owner and mechanic told me, as we hunched over his close-circuit computer-based security camera system, watching helplessly as the car backed out two hours after closing and about an hour before I returned from Jerusalem to fetch it. Was it miffed that I had refrained from taking it to Jerusalem, such that it succumbed to the blandishments and practiced hands of the thief?
Probably reduced to parts in the surrounding villages by now, I said to Elad. No, they don’t take apart old Subarus, they just drive them. And the police detective agreed, asking for unique identifying signs, holding out hope against the statistics that the car might be spotted and returned. I want to believe him, but, like I said, I’m already dealing with the likelihood that I’ve seen that last of our old Subaru.
And it’s not easy. It’s not the money. Elad tried to console me – a car like that can’t bring even its Blue Book price, he told me. You don’t know what we’ve done, what we’ve been through with that car, I told him, as he nodded, obviously not the first time he’d hears such word.
A few years ago, not long after I began the Pshat, I wrote about my accident. I won’t reproduce the whole account, but I can’t help but recall – feel, more like – how we skidded together off the road, out of the path of the onrushing semi, into the ditch. How we rolled together, as time came to a standstill, twisting, turning, almost flipping over to crush me, but no, coming to rest on its side, as though to protect its soft, fleshy driver. I assumed it was totaled, but the tow-truck driver encouraged me to look into fixing it. And indeed, the motor was untouched, and while the body work cost a pretty penny, when finished we had a pretty, new Subaru that got back on its wheels and picked up where we had left off. Until last night.
But, with all of that, I feel strangely accepting. How much emotion can I lavish on a contraption of steel and plastic when our boys (collectively and not immediately personally intended – until you see the faces) are in Gaza fighting the most viciously hatred-filled anti-Semites on earth to protect the entire enterprise of Am Yisrael). So it’s perhaps a good deal easier than it might be in better times to say, “it’s just a car”. It’s just an object, and who knows what might have happened had this not happened. A kapparah, it’s all for the best, as the folk expression goes.
But it’s more than a folk expression. It’s the very heart of faith, as we see in this week’s parashah. After Ya’acov dies, the brothers come to Yosef to beg that he not take vengeance upon them in the manner that Esav had intended to do to Ya’acov once THEIR father would be no more. Yosef responds to his brothers with the following words: “Don’t fear – am I then in G-d’s place? You planned against me for evil; Hashem planned if for good…”.
The brothers can’t imagine that Yosef bears no grudge, but Yosef can’t imagine that anything happens outside of Hashem’s purvey. Your planning, Yosef tells his brothers, is really a tiny part, a subroutine, of Hashem’s planning, on a scale incomprehensibly huge, so enormous and intricate that it reaches beyond complexity, beyond multiplicity, to simple oneness.
Ya’acov blessing to Yosef is precisely reflected here, since he has blessed his favorite son that he should be beyond the impact of our bifocal, manifold vision. “Ben porat ali ayin” – Floweringly productive son, above the eye! And Moshe, in his blessing to the tribes of Yosef, says, “his horns are the horns of a Re’em, with those he shall impale the ends (literally, the “zeros”) of the earth.
And what is a Re’em? According to the midrash, the Re’em is a one-horned kosher animal which was offered by Adam in thanks for the return of light after surviving his first night, and the descent of enveloping darkness. Some wish to identify the Re’em with the unicorn, but that animal, being equestrian, wouldn’t’ be kosher – no split hooves. Rather, some researchers posit, the Biblical Re’im is the scimitar-horned oryx, a beautiful white antelope with wickedly long, slim horns. When viewed in profile, the two horns merge, and the animal appears to bear but a single horn. And the name Re’em? Hebrew for “see ‘em”, or perhaps, “see – if”.
We constantly impale reality with the horns of our analytical assessments. Being wishes to flow, and we parcel it out in sensible quanta, consumables for our theories and our consciences. But if G-d is One, it’s all one. We don’t see this “if” on a daily basis, we go rampaging through the china shop of our precious time dancing on this earth with our two horns swinging, back and forth, slicing our experience into bad and good, up and down, agony and ecstasy, and so on.
Yosef lived in captivity, in uncertainty and dependency, in suffering and deprevation for years, all because of his brothers’ envy. Yet every step of the way, he tries to bring his two horns into alignment. You intended it for bad; Hashem intended it for good. It’s not a truism, it’s not a theological proposition – it’s a constant practice of seeing life as aligned with Hashem’s will, and living in accordance with that vision.
There was a wobble somewhere inside, it had to been the wheels, the steering, no? But each time I brought the car to Elad, he drove it and didn’t hear it. Since he took my report seriously, he checked the steering, the axles, everything. He found no problem, told me I could drive with confidence, so I set forth, and tried to ignore the telltale beat-beat I was everyone could hear. I’m going to miss that wobble sound, you know. Perhaps I’ve just been given that long-awaited wheel alignment that only the great Mechanic knows how to diagnose. In the meantime, I start looking for a new car. I’m not looking for much: just a reliable, sturdy workhorse – with one horn.
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