Sermon for Parshat Vayeshev: Humility in Unexpected Places

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Rabbi Julie’s sermon for Parshat Vayeshev, December 21, 2024

I once heard a story about a freshman at the University of Colorado, Boulder who was struggling with her intro to chemistry class.  The story probably stuck with me because I struggled with my intro to chemistry class in college.  In fact, for many, many years afterwards I would have anxiety dreams involving the periodic table.  This young woman, named Libby, was in the chemistry lab late one night, trying to follow the instructions of the experiment, but struggling to get it right.

The hour was growing late, it was past 11 pm at night, and after hearing her shouting at and cursing her lab equipment, a passerby stuck his head in and said, ‘is there anything I can do to help?’  She asked him, do you know anything about chemistry?  “A little”, he responded.  And for the next twenty or thirty minutes he helped her tinker with the equipment until she got the lab experiment right.

Then another passerby popped in and said, professor, congratulations on your Nobel Prize!  The student took another look at her helper and realized it was none other than Professor Thomas Robert Cech (Czech), who that morning had been announced to be the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  You know ‘a little’ about chemistry, she said astonished.  And he responded, yes, I guess so, and helped her clean up the lab.[1]

In the Jewish tradition, greatness and humility are not incompatible.  In fact, they are often inextricably linked.  One of our greatest leaders of all time, Moses, was praised for being the humblest person to ever walk on the face of the earth.[2]

In English, the word humility and the word humiliation are linked.  And the dictionary defines humility as one who has either a modest or a low view of oneself.  But in Hebrew, there are two different words for modesty (anava) and self-effacement (shiflut) because they are not the same quality.   They are so different in fact, that Maimonides defines humility as the middle path between belittling oneself and being arrogant.   In Judaism, according to an article with a great title – proudly humble – “The truly humble person recognizes the whole of who they are, including their abilities and achievements, not just their shortcomings. However, they don’t take credit for their qualities and accomplishments.”[3]  Ultimately, they attribute their greatness, not to themselves, but to God.

In this week’s Torah portion, vayeshev, we see right away that humility is not one of Joseph’s finest qualities.  Yes, Jacob, his father, fed Joseph’s ego by loving him “best of all his sons” and making him that extra special, fancy coat of many colors.[4]  And yes, God seemed to have extraordinary plans for Joseph, foretold to him in not one but two dreams that Joseph had the special gifts to interpret.  But the Torah teaches that Joseph’s brothers only hated him somewhat when they saw “that their father loved him more than any of his brothers.”[5]   After all, that wasn’t really his fault, his doing, it was more on account of his mother, Rachel.  But when Joseph dreamed that dream about all those sheaves bowing down to his sheaf, he made the mistake of telling his brothers. And then the Torah says explicitly, “they hated him even more.”[6]  It was one thing to have that dream – maybe a manifestation of Joseph’s subconscious, a window into his lack of humility.   And it was another thing for Joseph to tell that dream to his brothers.

Now I know some of you are thinking, it was all part of God’s plans for Joseph to end up in Egypt as a slave, and then to be in jail to interpret the dreams of the chief baker and the chief cupbearer so (spoiler alert) next week he could interpret Pharoah’s dreams and eventually save the entire region from famine, but there was a lot of suffering along the way.  Not only Joseph’s suffering from the trauma of his brother’s cruelty and abandonment, but also his trials as a slave in Potiphar’s house and as a prisoner in jail.  And that’s not to mention the suffering of our ancestors in Egypt for hundreds of years.  And then there’s also the heartbreaking suffering of Jacob, who thinks for most of the last years of his life that his beloved son Joseph has been killed.  Even if Joseph’s arrogance is a necessary part of the plotline, his lack of humility is a tragic flaw that leads to great suffering.

There is another story of humility and arrogance in this week’s Torah portion, less obvious than Joseph.  If you look closely at the story of Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, we see a woman who has enough sense of self to take the initiative needed to dig herself out her own pit, so to speak.  Tamar’s first husband dies before they have a child and as was customary in the ancient near east, a childless woman marries her dead husband’s brother.  Levirate marriage, as this custom is called, was created to protect the widow by providing her with an heir,

in the same family line, to ensure not only the continuity of her husband’s family, but also to protect her financial security.   When Tamar’s second husband tragically dies, her father-in-law Judah is reluctant to allow her to marry his third son.  We can empathize with Judah’s grief and his fear that maybe Tamar is cursed in some way and he will lose his third son as well.

What Tamar does next is bold and daring.  She pretends to be a prostitute and in disguise has relations with Judah and becomes pregnant with his child.  Imagine the courage and self-confidence it would take to do such a thing.  If Tamar had low self-regard, if she doubted herself, either her right to an heir or her ability to do something about her situation, if Tamar had felt helpless, she would not have not produced a child.  And if she had gone to Judah in arrogance and demanded to marry his third child, without any empathy for his position, she probably wouldn’t have succeeded.  Instead, she finds a middle path, and takes the initiative to find a way out of her predicament.

I know, our first instinct is not to think about bold and daring action as being connected to humility.  And maybe I’m stretching the case a little here.  But because anava, humility, in Judaism is a middle path, between no sense of self, no sense of agency, and arrogance and an outsized sense of one’s power, Tamar’s actions strike me as an example of humility as Judaism defines it.  The English word humiliy, which comes from the Latin, humilis, means meekness or lowliness.  In contrast, the Hebrew word, anavah, stems from the word, anu, which means to respond.  Embedded in the Hebrew word for humility, is a sense of agency.

In both Joseph and Tamar’s cases, there are circumstances that happen to them that put them in precarious positions.  But they each have the choice of how to respond to their situations.  Joseph responds by flaunting his superior position and by antagonizing his brothers.  In contrast, Tamar responds by finding a solution and taking the initiative to teach her father-in-law Judah a lesson in a way that he can hear it and respond favorably.

In the words of the authors of the article, ‘proudly humble’, anavah or humility in Judaism is not about thinking less of yourself.  It’s about thinking of yourself less.   A humble person knows that all our “creativity, [our] ingenuity, and [our] insight” come through us, not from us.  That’s why seeing oneself as worthless is not humility, it’s ingratitude for the gifts we’ve been given. And it’s also why we can only be truly humble when we realize our self-worth.  Then, and only then we can ask ourselves, “how am I using the Divine gifts that have been given to me? [and] am I reaching my own potential for greatness?”[7]  And if we have the quality of humility mixed with kindness, as we saw with the Professor Tom Cech from the University of Boulder, we will also ask the question, how can I help?

 

[1] https://www.lifelords.com/story/humility-stories/

[2] Numbers 12:3.

[3] www.chabad.org/proudly-humility

[4] Genesis 37:3

[5] Genesis 37:4

[6] Genesis 37:8

[7]www.chabad.org/proudly-humble

 

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One thought on “Sermon for Parshat Vayeshev: Humility in Unexpected Places”

  1. Yasher koach Rabbi Julie. That was my parshah at TJC 27 years ago. The humility connection never connected with me. Thank you for the new insight.

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