Vayiggash 5786 - Jewish Joy
When I was a kid, and all the way into my twenties, we would gather at my grandmother’s house on the Saturday night on which Hanukkah fell for latkes and brisket and presents as a family - my mom and sisters, my uncles, and their kids. And we would of course light the hanukkah candles. But at some point, I think when I was maybe 14 or 15, it was like the 3rd night, and my grandmother seemed unimpressed with the number of candles on the hanukkiah, and so she yelled out ‘light em all!’ Which is already a funny thing to say until you add in the fact that she had kind of a high voice, and an accent from growing up in a village in Poland so it sounded like ‘light em all!’ And of course, because she was matriarch of the family, and because it was fun, we indeed lit them all.
And this was really her whole philosophy of life. Maximize joy. Laugh easily. Surround yourself with family. Maybe it’s because she was my grandmother - the elder of our tribe - that we always looked to her as something of a guide to life. Her wisdom and approach to doing things always seemed to carry more weight than anybody elses. It could also be that as a Holocaust survivor, we all understood that we lacked the kind of profound life experience to fully grasp what was truly important in the world. Or maybe it was just that she seemed to have a life that was fulfilled and contented that her example and her advice carried more weight than most other people.
We live today, in 2025, in a post-post-modern era in which I think much of American society doesn’t seem to who it is or where things are going. You certainly can’t get a sense of moral direction from the speeches of major politicians anymore, or their actions. Between instagram and tik tok and the president recently renaming a venerable American institution after himself among other egregious acts, we’ve normalized narcissism and selfishness. American historians used to call the 1980s the ‘me’ generation, but I think the 80’s have got nothing on the 20’s.
Judaism, too, is in a bit of crisis, and has been for quite some time. The dominant narrative of the American Jewish community, particularly if you read it through the lens of the way the news covers us, is antisemitism. Last year when universities were battlegrounds for students protesting the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, there were some ugly moments and some ugly slogans. And we spent an inordinate amount of time locked in a discussion of the definition of the thin line between antisemitism and antizionism. About two years ago we had Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, create a foundation called ‘Stop Jewish Hate’ and spend $10 million to run a super bowl ad announcing that they shouldn’t be antisemitic. And with it came a foundation that spent $60 million dollars in 2024 on, among other things, little blue square pins to send out all over the world to make people become aware of antisemitism. And a few months ago, many of my colleagues joined together on a joint letter to condemn the vituperative and divisive language that New York presidential candidate Zohran Mamdani has used in condemning Israel. If you just read the newspapers or listen to NPR, this is Judaism in the 2020s.
To be clear, Zohran Mamdani has said some dumb things, and public figures get held to account for the things that they say - that’s the way it works. And all of things I mentioned above cannot be removed from the context in which they exist, and that context is a bitter, bloody war in Gaza that we will spend the next decades trying to make sense of. And with that war came a rise in antisemitic acts that was very troubling. And here in Pittsburgh we have good reason to be vigilant towards hatred of Jews.
But, overall, there is a significant rise in an effort to refocus the bulk of discussion, time, and money on something called ‘combatting antisemitism’.
And all of it – ALL OF IT – has made me profoundly uncomfortable.
Simply put, I think we’re doing it wrong - or maybe more accurately, the elites and those with the resources in Jewish community are doing it wrong. The Jewish community has either accidentally or intentionally absorbed the me-me-me instagram generation’s obsessive narcissism to center the narrative about themselves, and feels the need to tell the world that the narrative they’ve formed about us is wrong.
Superbowl ads against antisemitism? Why is anyone spending money on that? Why spend money on telling people what they should think? And what kind of message is it to say to most Americans ‘hey, I know some of you folks out in rural Nebraska have never met a Jew and you don’t know anything about and you don’t really know much about Jews - but here’s the main thing you need to know about us - don’t hate us.’ If you gave me $10 million dollars, I’d send every kid in Pittsburgh to Jewish day school or EKC. I’d make Hebrew school almost free. I’d pay an army of Jewish kids to stand in front of giant eagle every week handing out shabbat candles and asking Jews to put on tefillin. I’d underwrite the cost of Pittsburgh’s Intro to Judaism class to make it more affordable and larger.
In other words, instead of painting an ‘oh woe is me’ narrative of the Jewish community, the Jewish community should invest the bulk of its time and energy not on combatting antisemitism, but instead on three key words: promoting Jewish Joy. Promoting Jewish Joy. The best way to change the narrative about the Jewish people is for us to focus and invest heavily on doing what we do best, which is living meaningful, joyful, rich Jewish lives. Invest in community! Promote how much fun we’re having flipping latkes and baking challah! Talk about how calming and inspiring and refreshing going to synagogue and recharging and recentering our selves on shabbat after a busy chaotic week engaged in the clatter of the marketplace and the stress of our working lives! My PR branding narrative for the world is to redouble our efforts to convince everybody on earth ‘hey, these are nice people that like singing and dancing and praying, and every december we make candy canes and they make very oil hash browns, and that’s ok with me’.
Why did we need a blue square pin when a little mogen david necklace was there all along? In other words, you can’t change the perception of who we are in the gentile world by telling everybody ‘no, no, you’ve got the wrong idea about us.’ You have to change the narrative - and you do that by showing who we are, day after day, every day, with joy.
By the way, this is on some level about as preaching to the choir a dvar torah as I could give. I know you all here agree with me, because you’re here! You are the shock troops in the war for Jewish joy. You are all combatting antisemitism the right way. You think this place matters, and our prayer and song and community and family matters. And everyone you interact with every day sees that about you and thinks ‘huh, David or Shoshanna or Rich or Aviva is a really nice person, and they make really good Jewish hash browns. Why would anyone hate them?’ I am convinced that if we have more Jews we have, living with more joy and purpose, and if the rest of the world sees that as our dominant virtue in the world, in addition to being generous and believing in helping our neighbors and making the world a better place through mitzvot, we could eliminate antisemitism in my lifetime. Is that hyperbolic? Maybe. I don’t think so though.
It’s not like we haven’t already seen expensive campaigns from the Jewish community to fix what ails us before. In the 90s there was something of a panic over Jewish intermarriage rates, and a survey revealed that the three greatest determinants of raising a Jewish family were three things - attending a Jewish summer camp, attending a Jewish day school, and going on a trip to Israel. So billionaire Michael Steinhardt and the North American Jewish Federations and the Israeli government funded a program to bring Jewish young people to Israel, which they called Birthright. Maybe it was effective? Maybe not? I would surmise that for some people it was effective and for others it wasn’t, partially it was built off of a two-week moonshot idea - go to Israel for two weeks, and you’ll decide to spend the rest of your life being more Jewish.
The concept of cultivating Jewish Joy - by the way, not my idea, it’s in the zeitgeist right now among Jewish millennials and non profits around reinventing our PR and our mission - the concept of Jewish joy is taking the kernel of the idea from Birthright and saying ‘ok, that was a good start, but it needs to be sustained and habituated in zillion different ways and different events.’ Birthright was almost a revolutionary idea in Jewish history. But maybe it becomes the spark that begins a permanent revolution in Jewish Joy that really does change things for the better.
Four weeks ago, we met Joseph, a brash, obnoxious, narcissistic young man who thought he was smarter than his brothers. His father gave him a coat of many colors and he showed it off to everyone - me-me-me . His brothers hated him for being so self-absorbed, and I think for most of us when we read that narrative back in Vayeshev, we are torn, as we think ‘Joseph’s brothers were wrong for what they did, but Joseph is also an annoying little twerp.’ And thus, we feel conflicted. We just don’t love this guy.
In this week’s parsha, Joseph’s big reveal to his brothers of who he is begins with these words ‘I am your brother Joseph. Is my father well?’ We see Joseph has matured. It’s not all about him - his first act is to ask after the welfare of someone else, his father. He reconciles with his brothers. He cares for them generously. He recommits to family. And that term he uses - is my father well? The hebrew is od avi chai. We borrow that phrase and tweak it a little when we sing perhaps the central song in the modern era sung as an expression of Jewish Joy - Am Yisrael Chai - for which the second part is ‘od avinu chai’ - we the Jewish people go on with life - we are busy with the business of living joyfully as our central act of resistance against those who wished for our downfall. We’re still here, lighting our candles and making our hashbrowns and living with joy. And this for me is the secret for Jewish surviving and thriving - that we lived with Jewish joy for 4000 years, and we need to lean into Jewish Joy for the next 4000 years. Shabbat shalom.
When I was a kid, and all the way into my twenties, we would gather at my grandmother’s house on the Saturday night on which Hanukkah fell for latkes and brisket and presents as a family - my mom and sisters, my uncles, and their kids. And we would of course light the hanukkah candles. But at some point, I think when I was maybe 14 or 15, it was like the 3rd night, and my grandmother seemed unimpressed with the number of candles on the hanukkiah, and so she yelled out ‘light em all!’ Which is already a funny thing to say until you add in the fact that she had kind of a high voice, and an accent from growing up in a village in Poland so it sounded like ‘light em all!’ And of course, because she was matriarch of the family, and because it was fun, we indeed lit them all.
And this was really her whole philosophy of life. Maximize joy. Laugh easily. Surround yourself with family. Maybe it’s because she was my grandmother - the elder of our tribe - that we always looked to her as something of a guide to life. Her wisdom and approach to doing things always seemed to carry more weight than anybody elses. It could also be that as a Holocaust survivor, we all understood that we lacked the kind of profound life experience to fully grasp what was truly important in the world. Or maybe it was just that she seemed to have a life that was fulfilled and contented that her example and her advice carried more weight than most other people.
We live today, in 2025, in a post-post-modern era in which I think much of American society doesn’t seem to who it is or where things are going. You certainly can’t get a sense of moral direction from the speeches of major politicians anymore, or their actions. Between instagram and tik tok and the president recently renaming a venerable American institution after himself among other egregious acts, we’ve normalized narcissism and selfishness. American historians used to call the 1980s the ‘me’ generation, but I think the 80’s have got nothing on the 20’s.
Judaism, too, is in a bit of crisis, and has been for quite some time. The dominant narrative of the American Jewish community, particularly if you read it through the lens of the way the news covers us, is antisemitism. Last year when universities were battlegrounds for students protesting the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, there were some ugly moments and some ugly slogans. And we spent an inordinate amount of time locked in a discussion of the definition of the thin line between antisemitism and antizionism. About two years ago we had Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, create a foundation called ‘Stop Jewish Hate’ and spend $10 million to run a super bowl ad announcing that they shouldn’t be antisemitic. And with it came a foundation that spent $60 million dollars in 2024 on, among other things, little blue square pins to send out all over the world to make people become aware of antisemitism. And a few months ago, many of my colleagues joined together on a joint letter to condemn the vituperative and divisive language that New York presidential candidate Zohran Mamdani has used in condemning Israel. If you just read the newspapers or listen to NPR, this is Judaism in the 2020s.
To be clear, Zohran Mamdani has said some dumb things, and public figures get held to account for the things that they say - that’s the way it works. And all of things I mentioned above cannot be removed from the context in which they exist, and that context is a bitter, bloody war in Gaza that we will spend the next decades trying to make sense of. And with that war came a rise in antisemitic acts that was very troubling. And here in Pittsburgh we have good reason to be vigilant towards hatred of Jews.
But, overall, there is a significant rise in an effort to refocus the bulk of discussion, time, and money on something called ‘combatting antisemitism’.
And all of it – ALL OF IT – has made me profoundly uncomfortable.
Simply put, I think we’re doing it wrong - or maybe more accurately, the elites and those with the resources in Jewish community are doing it wrong. The Jewish community has either accidentally or intentionally absorbed the me-me-me instagram generation’s obsessive narcissism to center the narrative about themselves, and feels the need to tell the world that the narrative they’ve formed about us is wrong.
Superbowl ads against antisemitism? Why is anyone spending money on that? Why spend money on telling people what they should think? And what kind of message is it to say to most Americans ‘hey, I know some of you folks out in rural Nebraska have never met a Jew and you don’t know anything about and you don’t really know much about Jews - but here’s the main thing you need to know about us - don’t hate us.’ If you gave me $10 million dollars, I’d send every kid in Pittsburgh to Jewish day school or EKC. I’d make Hebrew school almost free. I’d pay an army of Jewish kids to stand in front of giant eagle every week handing out shabbat candles and asking Jews to put on tefillin. I’d underwrite the cost of Pittsburgh’s Intro to Judaism class to make it more affordable and larger.
In other words, instead of painting an ‘oh woe is me’ narrative of the Jewish community, the Jewish community should invest the bulk of its time and energy not on combatting antisemitism, but instead on three key words: promoting Jewish Joy. Promoting Jewish Joy. The best way to change the narrative about the Jewish people is for us to focus and invest heavily on doing what we do best, which is living meaningful, joyful, rich Jewish lives. Invest in community! Promote how much fun we’re having flipping latkes and baking challah! Talk about how calming and inspiring and refreshing going to synagogue and recharging and recentering our selves on shabbat after a busy chaotic week engaged in the clatter of the marketplace and the stress of our working lives! My PR branding narrative for the world is to redouble our efforts to convince everybody on earth ‘hey, these are nice people that like singing and dancing and praying, and every december we make candy canes and they make very oil hash browns, and that’s ok with me’.
Why did we need a blue square pin when a little mogen david necklace was there all along? In other words, you can’t change the perception of who we are in the gentile world by telling everybody ‘no, no, you’ve got the wrong idea about us.’ You have to change the narrative - and you do that by showing who we are, day after day, every day, with joy.
By the way, this is on some level about as preaching to the choir a dvar torah as I could give. I know you all here agree with me, because you’re here! You are the shock troops in the war for Jewish joy. You are all combatting antisemitism the right way. You think this place matters, and our prayer and song and community and family matters. And everyone you interact with every day sees that about you and thinks ‘huh, David or Shoshanna or Rich or Aviva is a really nice person, and they make really good Jewish hash browns. Why would anyone hate them?’ I am convinced that if we have more Jews we have, living with more joy and purpose, and if the rest of the world sees that as our dominant virtue in the world, in addition to being generous and believing in helping our neighbors and making the world a better place through mitzvot, we could eliminate antisemitism in my lifetime. Is that hyperbolic? Maybe. I don’t think so though.
It’s not like we haven’t already seen expensive campaigns from the Jewish community to fix what ails us before. In the 90s there was something of a panic over Jewish intermarriage rates, and a survey revealed that the three greatest determinants of raising a Jewish family were three things - attending a Jewish summer camp, attending a Jewish day school, and going on a trip to Israel. So billionaire Michael Steinhardt and the North American Jewish Federations and the Israeli government funded a program to bring Jewish young people to Israel, which they called Birthright. Maybe it was effective? Maybe not? I would surmise that for some people it was effective and for others it wasn’t, partially it was built off of a two-week moonshot idea - go to Israel for two weeks, and you’ll decide to spend the rest of your life being more Jewish.
The concept of cultivating Jewish Joy - by the way, not my idea, it’s in the zeitgeist right now among Jewish millennials and non profits around reinventing our PR and our mission - the concept of Jewish joy is taking the kernel of the idea from Birthright and saying ‘ok, that was a good start, but it needs to be sustained and habituated in zillion different ways and different events.’ Birthright was almost a revolutionary idea in Jewish history. But maybe it becomes the spark that begins a permanent revolution in Jewish Joy that really does change things for the better.
Four weeks ago, we met Joseph, a brash, obnoxious, narcissistic young man who thought he was smarter than his brothers. His father gave him a coat of many colors and he showed it off to everyone - me-me-me . His brothers hated him for being so self-absorbed, and I think for most of us when we read that narrative back in Vayeshev, we are torn, as we think ‘Joseph’s brothers were wrong for what they did, but Joseph is also an annoying little twerp.’ And thus, we feel conflicted. We just don’t love this guy.
In this week’s parsha, Joseph’s big reveal to his brothers of who he is begins with these words ‘I am your brother Joseph. Is my father well?’ We see Joseph has matured. It’s not all about him - his first act is to ask after the welfare of someone else, his father. He reconciles with his brothers. He cares for them generously. He recommits to family. And that term he uses - is my father well? The hebrew is od avi chai. We borrow that phrase and tweak it a little when we sing perhaps the central song in the modern era sung as an expression of Jewish Joy - Am Yisrael Chai - for which the second part is ‘od avinu chai’ - we the Jewish people go on with life - we are busy with the business of living joyfully as our central act of resistance against those who wished for our downfall. We’re still here, lighting our candles and making our hashbrowns and living with joy. And this for me is the secret for Jewish surviving and thriving - that we lived with Jewish joy for 4000 years, and we need to lean into Jewish Joy for the next 4000 years. Shabbat shalom.
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