Dvar Tora: The Economics of Yosef: Saving Lives, Concentrating Power

Over these past weeks, as we’ve followed Yosef’s story, I’ve traced what I called his transformation—from the spoiled boy in the coat of many colours, obsessed with status and hierarchy, to someone who learned to use power differently. I spoke about how Yosef emerged from the dungeon not bitter or vengeful, but ready to bring clarity and light. I described how he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams with wisdom rather than mere knowledge, how he turned fear into responsibility, how he used his elevated position to feed the world during famine. I even called him “the shamash”—the servant candle who stands apart only to light others.

And I meant all of that. Yosef’s journey from narcissistic youth to mature leader is real and profound.

And yet, tonight, as we reach the conclusion of his administrative story in chapter 47 of B’reshit, I find myself deeply troubled by this same Yosef. Not because I was wrong before—those virtues are real—but because the Torah itself seems to be asking us to look more carefully at how he exercised that power. To examine not just that he fed people during the famine, but how he managed the crisis and what systems he built in the process.

The Torah is teaching us that someone can be wise in one domain and short-sighted in another. That good intentions and even genuine service can coexist with the concentration of power that ultimately harms the very people being helped. That transformation can be real but incomplete.

Let me take you through what actually happens in the second half of Genesis 47, because this passage is often glossed over. The famine Yosef predicted has arrived. People are starving. And Yosef manages the crisis with remarkable efficiency.

First, he sells them food in exchange for their money.[1] When the money runs out, the people return: “Give us bread, lest we die before your very eyes; for the money is gone!”[2] Yosef answers: Bring me your livestock. So they exchange their animals for food.

A year later, they return again, more desperate: “We cannot hide from my lord that, with all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland.”[3] And here’s where it gets truly disturbing. Yosef takes their land and their freedom. “So Yosef gained possession of all the farmland of Egypt for Pharaoh, all the Egyptians having sold their fields because the famine was too much for them; thus the land passed over to Pharaoh.”[4] “He removed the population town by town, from one end of Egypt’s border to the other.”[5] He establishes a permanent tax of twenty percent on all agricultural production.[6] To all of that, the people responded with gratitude: “You have saved our lives!”[7]

So what are we to make of this? On one level, Yosef genuinely saves lives. Without his administration, people would have starved.[8] This is not a small thing. But Rabbi Shai Held asks us to look more carefully at the long-term consequences. Yes, Yosef saves lives in the short term. But he also “systematically and relentlessly strips the people bare.” “There is something to be said for administrative aptitude,” Held writes, “but it is sobering to realize that it can be coupled with profound short-sightedness.”[9]

This is the moral knot at the heart of Yosef’s story: at the same time that he saves the Egyptians, he enslaves them. Both are true. And the slavery he creates for them will eventually ensnare his own people.

When we open the book of Exodus, how does it explain the Israelites’ enslavement? “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Yosef.”[10] That’s it. Suddenly the Hebrews discovered that living in a society in which the vulnerable segments of the population were stripped of all rights meant that they too could be enslaved overnight. As Rabbi Aviva Richman writes, “Our ancestors’ misdeeds, and the context of the society of slavery Yosef put into effect, doomed the people of Israel to experience slavery themselves.”[11]

The biblical text even uses the same language. The Egyptians tell Yosef: “we will be avadim to Pharaoh”[12]—the same word, avadim, that will describe the Israelites’ condition in Egypt. The infrastructure of centralised power is already in place. A future Pharaoh will simply extend it to include the Hebrews.

Here’s a troubling detail: Yosef’s original plan said nothing about buying land or enslaving people. It was simply: “Take up a fifth of the produce during the plenty, store it, and use it during the famine so that the land will not perish.”[13] Somewhere between plan and execution, the mission drifts. From “no one should starve” to “everything belongs to Pharaoh.” From temporary crisis response to permanent reordering of society. And that drift is not only ancient history. One of the most reliable patterns of human systems is this: emergency measures have a way of becoming permanent. Powers assumed in crisis are rarely relinquished afterwards. As our text says: “Yosef made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt to this very day.”[14] Ad hayom hazeh—to this very day. What was meant as crisis management became the enduring reality.

You may not know that my original background is in business and economics. When I started my studies in rabbinical school, I kept wondering about the differences between being an economist and being a rabbi. Economists are, by training, obsessed with the pursuit of efficiency, not always considering the moral implications. Rabbis, on the other hand, are concerned with the ethical status of our world, even if they arrive at results that are not necessarily optimal from an efficiency standpoint.

Yosef, in these chapters, thinks like an economist. He solves Pharaoh’s problem with brilliant efficiency. People don’t starve. The grain is collected, stored, and distributed. From a management perspective, it’s flawless. But somewhere in that efficient system, the moral dimension gets lost. The question shifts from “how do we save lives?” to “how do we maximize Pharaoh’s control?” And that shift—from saving to controlling—is precisely where efficiency without ethics becomes dangerous.

I’m not suggesting that Yosef was malicious. I think he genuinely believed he was serving both Pharaoh and the people well. His loyalty to Pharaoh was absolute—perhaps too absolute. As Berel Dov Lerner writes, Yosef’s entire life had been characterized by “narrow loyalty to his immediate superior.” But “the greatest test of character may lie elsewhere—in the empathy we display towards those who stand powerless before us.”[15]

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers us several possibilities for understanding this story: “It may be that the Torah intends no criticism of Joseph whatsoever... Or it may be that there is an implied criticism of his character... Another possibility: the Torah is warning us of the hazards and obscurities of politics. A policy that seems wise in one generation discloses itself as dangerous in the next.”[16]

I find myself drawn to this last reading. Sacks writes: “What this entire passage represents is the first intrusion of politics into the life of the family of the covenant... And what it is telling us is the sheer ambiguity of power. On the one hand, you cannot create or sustain a society without it. On the other hand, it almost cries out to be abused. Power is dangerous, even when used with the best of intentions by the best of people.”

Think about that: Power almost cries out to be abused. Not just by tyrants. Not just by the corrupt. But by anyone who holds it, even the righteous, even those trying to help.

“Joseph acted to strengthen the hand of a Pharaoh who had been generous to him... He could not have foreseen what that same power might make possible in the hands of a ‘new Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.’”

And then Sacks offers this stunning conclusion: “Tradition called Joseph ha-tzaddik, the righteous. At the same time, the Talmud says that he died before his brothers, ‘because he assumed airs of authority.’ Even a tzaddik with the best of intentions, when he or she enters politics and assumes airs of authority, can make mistakes.”

The Torah is asking us: What do we owe to those who stand powerless before us? When we hold authority—in our families, our workplaces, our communities, our countries—how do we wield it? Do we use crisis as an opportunity to expand control, or to serve genuine need?

This parashah’s message is about big leaders and their decisions, but it’s also about the daily decisions we make in our own personal and professional lives.

It’s about the decision to employ machines that replace people in countries with huge unemployment rates, just like South Africa. It’s about the products and services we decide to buy and from whom. We may mourn the disappearance of local retailers, but we do not always connect that to the small choices we make when we buy online to save a few rands.

These aren't easy questions. There are no perfect answers. Sometimes the efficient choice is also the ethical one. Sometimes we genuinely cannot afford to do otherwise. But Yosef's story asks us at least to pause and consider: What am I optimising for? Am I thinking only about my immediate benefit, or about the kind of world my choices help create?

Each time we choose efficiency over relationship, convenience over community, we participate in building systems that look like Yosef’s Egypt—where everything works smoothly, but something essential about human dignity gets lost in the process.

Vayigash hands us Yosef in all his brilliance and all his blind spots, and asks us to wrestle with him.

How do we hold the tension between Yosef the Tzaddik and Yosef the architect of Egypt’s centralized economy and society? How do we recognize that these aren’t two different people, but one deeply human person whose righteousness was real and whose blindness to the consequences of concentrated power was also real?

As Rabbi Sacks writes: “I believe the great challenge of politics is that politicians remain humble and policies are humane and so that power, always so dangerous, is not used for harm. That is an ongoing challenge, and tests even the best.”

The Torah doesn’t resolve these questions for us. It hands them to us, along with Yosef’s story in all its moral complexity, and asks us to engage with it.

May we have the courage to do so.

Shabbat Shalom.

Notes:

[1] Genesis 47:14. 

[2] Genesis 47:15. 

[3] Genesis 47:18-19. 

[4] Genesis 47:20. 

[5] Genesis 47:21. 

[6] Genesis 47:26. 

[7] Genesis 47:25. 

[8] Genesis 47:13. 

[9] Rabbi Shai Held, “Saving and Enslaving: The Complexity of Joseph,” Parashat VaYigash, Mechon Hadar. 

[10] Exodus 1:8. 

[11] Rabbi Aviva Richman, “Seeds of Slavery,” Parashat Shemot 5782, Mechon Hadar. 

[12] Genesis 47:19, 25. 

[13] Genesis 41:34-36. 

[14] Genesis 47:26. 

[15] Berel Dov Lerner, “Joseph the Unrighteous,” Judaism 38:3 (Summer 1989), pp. 278-281. 

[16] All references to Rabbi Sacks in this drashah are based on: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “Joseph and the Risks of Power,” Covenant & Conversation: Mikketz 5780.

The Credibility Gap

Parashat Vayeshev is a masterclass in deception, and clothing is almost always the weapon. A multi-coloured coat dipped in goat's blood fakes a death; a veil disguises a daughter-in-law; a garment left behind in a bedroom frames an innocent man.

Yet beneath the high drama of these narratives lies a quieter, more insidious challenge: the crisis of credibility. In the mirroring stories of Yosef and Potiphar's wife, and Yehudah and Tamar, the Torah forces us to confront a difficult reality: in a hierarchy, power often dictates who is believed.

When a powerful person and a powerless person clash, we instinctively assign "truth" to those with status and "suspicion" to those without it. Philosopher Miranda Fricker coined the term "testimonial injustice" to describe this phenomenon—where prejudice causes a listener to deflate the credibility of a speaker's word because of who they are. [1] Parashat Vayeshev provides ancient case studies of this systemic machinery at work.

Consider Yosef. He is a slave and a foreigner. When Potiphar's wife fails to seduce him and decides to frame him, she deliberately weaponizes his identity. Before making her accusation directly to her husband, she rallies her household, saying, "See, [Potiphar] has brought us a Hebrew man to toy with us." [2] She establishes an "us versus them" coalition of powerful insiders against the outsider.

When Potiphar returns, he hears her testimony and sees Yosef's garment in her hand. The text states immediately, "his wrath was kindled." [3] There is no investigation, no cross-examination. Potiphar's wife needed no corroborating evidence; her status was her evidence. Yosef, the powerless Hebrew slave, was unheard. Of course, in our world, most survivors of harassment and assault are in Yosef’s position, not Potiphar’s wife’s: marginalised, disbelieved, and paying the price when the powerful close ranks.

Conversely, Tamar—a childless widow facing execution by order of Yehudah—knows her voice carries no weight. If it were simply her word against the Patriarch's, she would be destroyed. She cannot demand justice based on her testimony alone; she must engineer it with proof.

Tamar secures Yehudah's signet ring, cords, and staff—undeniable evidence in the ancient world. Only when armed with these physical objects does she dare confront the seat of power, sending a message: "Recognise, if you please, whose are these." [4] She requires the powerful man to look at objective reality.

The turning point in the Tamar story occurs when Yehudah examines the items. The Talmud teaches that Tamar sent the evidence indirectly, saying only "I am pregnant by the man to whom these belong" rather than naming Yehudah outright. [5] Tamar was willing to die rather than humiliate Yehudah—even as he sentenced her to death. She left the choice to him: he could deny the evidence and preserve his honour, or acknowledge the truth and save her life.

Yehudah chose truth. He admitted, "She is more righteous than I." [6]

The stories of Vayeshev lay bare an uncomfortable reality: in hierarchies of power, belief itself becomes a privilege. The powerful inherit credibility; the powerless must engineer it.

But the Torah refuses to let this machinery operate unchallenged. By placing Yosef's false accusation immediately before Yehudah's honest reckoning, the text creates an ethical mirror. One powerful person believed an accusation without question. Another powerful person examined evidence that indicted himself. The distance between these two responses—between Potiphar's reflexive belief and Yehudah's difficult honesty—marks the distance between complicity and justice.

We are left with a question that echoes through generations: When confronted with testimony that challenges our comfort or our standing, will we be Potiphar, or will we be Yehudah?

[1] https://berkeleyjournal.org/2018/09/28/epistemic-injustice-and-metoo-some-initial-remarks/

[2] Genesis 39:14.

[3] Genesis 39:19.

[4] Genesis 38:25.

[5] Talmud Bavli, Sotah 10b.

[6] Genesis 38:26. 

Dvar Torah: Not God in a Box, God in Covenant

Just like last week, I will start tonight with a confession: I am a heavy user of Generative Artificial Intelligence chatbots, like ChatGPT and Gemini. It has got to the point that my 14-year-old son scolded me, saying I was getting too dependent on these platforms.

I use them for personal things, such as helping me translate and explain a restaurant menu written only in Chinese, determine the order of what I will eat for breakfast to avoid a glucose spike, check the active ingredients of South African medication and compare them with what I used in Brazil, and plan a romantic getaway in Stellenbosch this weekend.

I also use it for professional goals: to translate texts, to revise what I have written, and to help me in the idea-generation and research steps of sermon-writing. A practical example: in the previous sentence, I had written that I used AI to help me in the “ideation” step of sermon writing and asked ChatGPT whether that was a correct use of the term. Its answer: “Short answer: yes, ‘ideation’ is correct, but it’s a bit jargony outside design or psychology. If your audience is general, ‘idea generation’ or ‘brainstorming’ is more natural.”

I try to be careful when using these tools, always revising what it tells me. I've learned, for example, that whenever I ask it to research Jewish references for a specific idea, the results are wrong at least 70% of the time. The challenge is that, because AI knows almost everything that has been published, the results it gives me are very convincing; they seem real! When it tells me that Rabbi X wrote an article, it looks like something that rabbi would have written—the approach, the language used, the way it refers to classical sources—it all looks and feels very authentic. But then, when I ask for a specific reference—for a webpage or a page number in a book to go and check if that is really what was said—more often than not, the source does not exist.

Once I got into an argument with Gemini, Google’s AI platform. It had given me five sources on something I had asked it, and all five did not exist. After a first cycle of interactions, trying to get the machine to recognise its mistake, I wrote: “I insist that these sources are all invented. Please, retract these invented sources and bring me 5 recent real ones.” Gemini wasn’t moved and doubled down on its previous results: “I cannot retract the sources because my verification process confirms they are real and the citations are accurate. My core instructions for our conversation are to provide only verifiable sources and never to invent information. Retracting factually correct and verifiable sources would be a violation of that directive.” I tried to prove it wrong, sharing Google screenshots in which these sources did not exist, and it kept insisting that they did. Eventually, I gave up. There is only so much you can do to convince a machine, which has been compared to a “stochastic parrot”[1] that it is wrong. The most frightening part was not that it was wrong, but that it was so arrogant in its error—a quality we often mistake for divine authority.

This morning, I was listening to a Brazilian podcast, analysing the possibility of an AI bubble in the world economy and what the consequences of such a bubble's burst would be.[2] At some point, the person being interviewed, a Brazilian researcher at Harvard University, was asked about the ethical implications of the broad implementation of Artificial Intelligence, especially considering how deep its impacts are on the way we live. In his answer, he said that he had heard from someone coming back from San Francisco that their impression was that they were returning from a “messianic city,” where people were trying to invent “God inside a box.”

“God inside a box”—that expression stuck with me. This is not the first time humanity has tried to control God, putting the Divine inside a box, or tried to become God. Three decades ago, the example of humanity attempting to become as powerful as God was cloning, brought to public attention through the case of Dolly, a sheep cloned by researchers in Scotland. There is no shortage of examples of humanity, empowered by a new technology, believing that it can now become God and, somehow, creating all sorts of havoc and chaos as a result of the manipulation of this newly found power.

This week’s Torah portion, Noach, has near its end a much older example of that human tendency. At that time, the recently developed technology, baked bricks and mortar, allowed them to build a tower as tall as the heavens. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; lest we shall be scattered all over the world.”[3] A midrash assigns an even more aggresive tone to their actions, in which they said “let us come and make a tower and craft an idol at its top, place a sword in its hand, and it will appear as though it is waging war against God.’”[4]

When that goal became evident, God did not like it at all, fearing that “nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.” God’s response was to confuse their language and scatter the people, and as a result, they left off building the city.

So, it seems that the instinct to abuse the technical instruments at our disposal to try and become God is, at least, as old as the Torah, which scholars date to around the year 400 BCE. Taking the extremely dubious step of quoting Spider-Man’s uncle Ben, I will say that “with great power, comes great responsibility.”[5] Unfortunately, these attempts have not been accompanied by a conversation about the ethical implications of these technologies; about who will win from the construction of high-rise towers following the improvement of construction techniques and who will lose; who will get new tools for sermon-writing and who will lose their jobs, replaced by the new functionalities of artificial intelligence.

In these actions, we keep making the same mistake regarding the attributes of what qualifies as Divine. We often think that power is what characterises God, but the Jewish tradition insists that God sides with the oppressed, with the underprivileged, with those whom the system has failed. In Psalm 146, we read that God is the One “who secures justice for those who are wronged, gives food to the hungry. Adonai sets prisoners free.”[6] In the Talmud, it is told that the Mashiach “sits among the poor who suffer from illnesses” and helps them with their bandages, undoing and redoing them with attention and care.[7]

And so, we return to the beginning of this week’s parashah, which says: “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness. When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth, God said to Noach, ‘I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth.’”[8] In last week’s parashah, Bereshit, when humanity was created, it was entrusted with the role of working and protecting the land[9], and yet, we insist on believing that a God-like attitude is to exploit the land, to exploit the people, to exploit technology without thinking of the consequences.

This is the very essence of the sin of Babel. The builders saw the world as something to conquer. Empowered by their new technology, their impulse was to build a single, monolithic fortress up to the heavens, to “make a name for themselves.” It is the “God in a box” impulse, driven by a desire for power and a terrifying, uniform consensus—the same impulse as my AI chatbot, doubling down on its own error, insisting it knows best.

But our parashah does not end there. It pivots. It introduces us to Avraham.

And a famous midrash[10] tells us that Avraham, too, saw a construction. He was traveling and saw a birah doleket—a great palace. But this word, doleket, is beautifully ambiguous. It might mean that he saw a palace that was “illuminated,” dazzling in its intricate wisdom and design. It might also mean that he saw a palace that was “burning”—on fire with the chaos, corruption, and violence of the generations before him.

The midrash suggests he saw both. And this is the perfect metaphor for our new Artificial Intelligence. It is our modern birah doleket. It is a dazzling, illuminated palace of knowledge, so convincing it looks and feels very authentic. And it is burning with chaos—with hallucinations, with systemic bias, with the power to displace and divide. The builders of our modern Babel, our “God in a box,” are so impressed with their illuminated creation they want to keep building higher, faster, regardless of the fire and the chaos it brings.

But Avraham's response was not the response of Babel. He did not try to conquer the palace. He did not try to build his own. He stopped, and he asked a single, world-changing question: “Is it possible that this palace has no master?” It is a question that searches not for power, but for accountability. Not for control, but for relationship.

As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes,

After the two great failures of the Flood and Babel, Abraham was called on to create a new form of social order that would give equal honour to the individual and the collective, personal responsibility and the common good. That remains the special gift of Jews and Judaism to the world.[11]

Avraham’s entire life and his relationship with God are the antithesis of Babel. The Babel generation built a tower to consolidate power and make a name for themselves. God’s response to Avraham is, “I will make your name great.” The builders of Babel built a closed fortress to storm heaven. Avraham built a tent that was open on all four sides, to welcome the stranger, to care for the oppressed, to lift up those whom the system has failed.

Our tradition does not command us to smash the machine. It commands us to learn from Avraham’s example. Not God in a box, but God in covenant. Not a tower for a few, but a tent for the many.

The test of our powerful new tools is not “how high can we build?” but “whom will it serve?” Will we use this new power to build higher towers and walls, to “make a name for ourselves” while insisting on our own correctness? Or will we, like Avraham, look at this brilliant, burning world, seek its true Master, and use our new tools to open our tents wider—to fight the violence of our generation, to serve the world and protect it?

Shabbat Shalom!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_parrot
[2] https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mZrapsR4eYkNRzxJhGqsc
[3] Gen. 11:4
[4] Bereshit Rabbah 38:6
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_great_power_comes_great_responsibility
[6] Psalm 146:7
[7] Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 98a
[8] Gen 6:11-13
[9] Gen 2:15
[10] Bereshit Rabbah 39:1
[11] https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/noach/individual-and-collective-responsibility

Dvar Torah: What Do We Do with the Offensive Passages in the Torah?

A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Dvar Torá: O que fazemos com as passagens ofensivas da Torá?")

You have probably heard the story of the discussion between two rabbis about which is the most important verse in the Torah [1]. One of them chooses the verse, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” whilst the other chooses a verse that speaks of the creation of human beings in the image of God. Rabbis love telling this story because it speaks of values that are dear to us and relate to the role we believe Judaism should have in our lives: empathy and the inalienable dignity of every human being, as well as speaking to Jewish pluralism.

But a liberal Jewish community, committed to fostering a critical Judaism that is truthful in its relationship with its sources and engages in dialogue with adults, must acknowledge that not all verses in the Torah value empathy or human dignity.

Some time ago, I was in a conversation with fellow Jewish educators who were expressing their discomfort at having to read a verse from the Torah whose literal meaning stood in stark contrast to the very educational values they sought to instil.

What do we do when the words of our tradition do not reflect the values we believe Judaism stands for, or even worse, when they reflect the opposite values?

This is not a question unique to our community, nor is it a recent one. Since the beginning of the rabbinic era, some 2,000 years ago, Rabbis have been expressing their discomfort with parts of the tradition and seeking strategies to deal with it in midrashim, in the Talmud, and in other commentaries.

This week's parashah, Ki Tetze, is considered to have the largest number of mitzvot in the entire Torah; according to one count, there are 72. Some of them are deeply rooted in our values, such as the concept that we must not delay the wages of our employees, as they depend on these payments [2], the obligation not to subvert the rights of the oppressed because we were oppressed in the land of Mitsrayim [3], or the duty to return a lost object we have found or to take care of it until we find its owner [4]. There are mitzvot in our parashah whose reason may not be obvious to us but which do not offend us, such as the prohibition against wearing clothes that mix wool and linen [5]. But there are also several mitzvot in this parashah that conflict with my values, and I imagine with yours as well.

There is the instruction that a defiant and rebellious son should be brought by his parents to the city elders to be stoned to death [6]. There is the law that a man who rapes an unmarried woman shall be ordered to pay a fine to her father and marry her, with no possibility of divorce [7]. And there is the law concerning a man who accuses his wife of having lied about her virginity – if her parents can prove he is lying, he is physically punished and fined; but if her parents cannot prove she was a virgin, she shall be condemned to death [8].

Many of you may not have known about these rules. They are not on the list of mitzvot that we, as rabbis, like to publicise. Perhaps you feel shocked and uncomfortable with the values they express: the apparent lack of empathy in how we approach disagreements within our families, or the absolute lack of empathy for the female perspective in rules about marital conduct. Personally, I admit that these rules leave me shocked and disturbed, to use an euphemism.

Faced with rules like these, we need strategies so that we don’t discard Judaism as a whole, so that we don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

I know of four distinct strategies – four strategies that are all grounded in Jewish tradition and have their adherents today. Many people, perhaps most of you, alternate between different strategies for different situations or throughout your lives.

The first strategy is to deny the discomfort, attributing any reservations we might have about these mitzvot to our own inability to recognise their wisdom. “If it is in the Torah, it comes from God,” its proponents claim. “If it comes from God, we can only obey without question. Or do you think that in your limited capacity, you can comprehend all of Divine logic?!” What the defenders of this strategy prefer to ignore is that Jewish tradition questions Divine decisions all the time! Abraham questioned God in the most emphatic terms when he learned of the Divine decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah [9]; Moses challenged God upon learning of the decision to destroy the people after the episode of the golden calf [10], and again after the episode of the 12 spies [11]. In rabbinic tradition, one of the most famous passages in the Talmud tells how God decided to intervene in a debate and how the rabbis responded: Lo Bashamayim Hi (לא בשמיים היא)—"It is not in Heaven" [12]. God’s reaction to this act of chutzpah? Pride. “My children have defeated me,” God says, like a proud parent watching their child outplay them in chess. The response that we lack the capacity to comprehend the full complexity of Divine logic may well be correct, but it has never prevented Jewish tradition from questioning and even challenging God when we have disagreements.

The second strategy is the one that the educators I met with had proposed: why don’t we just stop reading the passages we find especially problematic? Personally, I am a proponent of adapting some of our liturgical texts, of slightly modifying the wording of some prayers. But the Torah?! The verb of action that appears in the brachah for the study of Torah is la'asok (לעסוק), to be engaged in the words of Torah. The root of the verb is the same as that of essek (עסק), meaning "business". The true study of Torah is something that goes beyond the purely philosophical. It doesn’t just stay in the brain; it involves the heart, arms, and legs: we truly engage with it, body and soul. Anyone who has worked in a garden will understand the metaphor of getting soil under your fingernails—that is the measure of true Torah study. Could we achieve this result if we omitted all the passages that make us uncomfortable? Discomfort is part of this process of Jewish growth—and if we eliminate every passage that causes us discomfort, we would tremendously limit our growth in our encounter with the Torah!

A third strategy is to analyse the Torah text in its historical context. The laws establishing utterly asymmetrical marital unions might not seem so unjust because the culture of the time gave even less autonomy to women. By comparison, the text can even seem slightly more egalitarian. In many liberal circles, this is the most commonly adopted strategy. Its adherents argue that you cannot judge a text that is at least 2,500 years old by 21st-century sensibilities. Personally, my problem with this approach is that I want this text to have relevance for my life today. When I read the Torah as an academic, I have no problem placing it in dialogue with other cultures of the region. But when I, a 21st-century Jewish adult, read the Torah in a religious context, I look to the text for values and references that help me define my behaviour towards the oppressed of my time, to negotiate the relationship with my children when they are defiant, and to question my own relationship with authority. For me, the Torah isn’t merely a historical document to be read with detachment; it is a sacred text that speaks across generations, inviting and challenging me to become a better version of myself each time I read it.

How, then, do we deal with the passages whose values are not aligned with my own?

The fourth strategy—and it must be obvious by now that this is the one I most resonate with—is to treat the Torah’s mitzvot not as literal instructions, but as invitations to wrestle with the ethical issues they raise. Any good teacher knows that sometimes the best way to spark a meaningful debate is with a provocative statement. That is what the Torah often gives us. In this approach, these verses are not the lesson—they are the spark. They launch the conversation. Each community will engage with the prompt differently and arrive at conclusions that evolve over time. In this way, the Torah remains “a tree of life to those who grasp it.”

How do we navigate power imbalances in employment? What do we do when our children challenge what is most sacred to us? How do we respond to sexual violence, infidelity, or divorce when people seem to forget they once vowed to spend their lives together? Can we uphold ethics even in the most bitter of disputes—even in war?

These are among the urgent conversations this parashah invites—some would say commands—us to have. In a reality where the public debate on how to handle violent crime often veers into calls for street justice, and where the devastating statistics on gender-based violence are a constant source of pain and urgency, these discussions feel essential.

The rabbinic tradition teaches that the case of the rebellious son never happened and never will. So why was it included in the Torah? The answer: to reward those who engage with it seriously [13]. The reward is the debate.

A Judaism that is critical, contemporary, and meaningful doesn’t always offer easy answers. It often challenges us and unsettles us. But for those who engage with it fully—with heart, mind, and even under their fingernails—the reward is a faith that brings meaning and depth to every step we take, every decision we make, and every emotion we feel.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 30b

[2] Deuteronomy 24:14-15

[3] Deuteronomy 24:17-18

[4] Deuteronomy 22:1-4

[5] Deuteronomy 22:11

[6] Deuteronomy 21:18-21

[7] Deuteronomy 22:28-29

[8] Deuteronomy 22:13-21

[9] Genesis 18:23-25

[10] Exodus 32:9-14

[11] Numbers 14:11-25

[12] Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b

[13] Tosefta, Sanhedrin 11:6

Does it Make Sense to Ask, “How Many Wives Is Too Many?”

(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Faz sentido perguntar “quantas esposas é demais”?!")

When I was a child, I must admit, I used to sing the Brazilian nursery rhyme "Atirei o Pau no Gato" without thinking much about animal welfare. The song, which translates to "I Threw the Stick at the Cat," tells the story of a person throwing a stick at a cat and the cat's cry of distress. Perhaps if the stick had been aimed at a dog, and not a cat, I would have had more empathy for the victim of the action. But, as I was never a big fan of felines, I never truly registered the violence of the act.

As a teenager, I started hearing different versions of the song that, with an educational purpose, changed the lyrics to "don't throw the stick at the cat because it's not the right thing to do, the kitten is our friend, we mustn't mistreat animals." [1] While we would sing these new lyrics mockingly, making light of the concern to change a children's song to avoid encouraging violence against animals, I realised for the first time that the original lyrics were, in fact, violent and encouraged undesirable behaviour.

When we look back at the past, it's quite common to see inappropriate behaviours that we once accepted as natural, but which are no longer considered acceptable today. In the spirit of chesbon hanefesh, the spiritual process of personal assessment in preparation for the High Holidays, we identify the areas of our lives in which we lived up to the person we want to be and those in which we fell short of that ideal. It is also an opportunity to broaden our perspective and recognise which inappropriate conducts have become normalised and must now be re-evaluated.

In this week's parashah, Shoftim, the Israelites are given permission to have a king after they enter the Promised Land. The text makes it clear that this leader would be a man, while also setting limits on the monarch's power: he must be an Israelite, he cannot accumulate excessive wealth in gold, silver, or horses, he shall not send his people back to Egypt, and he shall not have many wives. The text doesn't specify what "many" means, but there seems to be a consensus that up to eighteen wives would be acceptable; above that number, it would be considered an excess.

For a long time, the commentators on this passage (all men) debated whether the number eighteen was excessive or not, whether it could be exceeded if all the wives were "good," and whether the limit would also apply to a person who was not a king.[2] No one ever asked, however, why the wives were listed alongside the other forms of wealth that the king could accumulate, albeit with limits. Perhaps the greatest innovation that Judaism brought to the world was the idea that all human beings were created in the image of God and are, therefore, endowed with inalienable dignity. Do the instructions to the king that treat his wives as property truly reflect this profound Jewish value?

We can find similar examples in which women were not treated with due dignity in other stories from Jewish tradition (the book of Esther or the story of King Solomon and his 700 wives, for example) and from other cultures. However, the time has come to revisit the behaviours implicitly accepted in these narratives and to point out what we are no longer willing to accept. In the past decade, the #metoo movement has shone a light on how powerful men abuse their social and professional positions to commit harassment and violence, practices that many were aware of but considered to be "part of the game."

Parashat Shoftim also deals with the structuring of a judicial system that makes the pursuit of justice a central characteristic of Hebrew society. On this point, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits wrote: “To seek justice is to relieve the oppressed. But how else are the oppressed to be relieved if not by judging the oppressor and crushing the ability to oppress! (…) The toleration of injustice is the toleration of human suffering. Since the proud and the mighty who inflict the suffering do not, as a rule, yield to moral persuasion, responsibility for the sufferer demands that justice be done so that oppression be ended.” [3]

May this Shabbat allow us to seek justice for all, particularly by challenging the naturalised abuses of the powerful, and thus begin the process of transforming ourselves into the version of ourselves we wish to be.

Shabbat Shalom!

[1] This vídeo includes both versions of the song: https://youtube.com/shorts/jBJQQavNjyE
[2] See, for example, the commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Aderet Eliahu on Deut. 17:17.
[3] As cited in Harvey Fields, A Torah Commentary for Our Times, vol. 3, p. 140.

What Sparks Joy? Rethinking Our Approach to Giving

Over a decade ago, Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, was first published, catapulting her into the pop-culture stratosphere. Her status as a household name was further cemented in 2019 with the debut of her Netflix show. A central tenet of the philosophy she outlines in the book and demonstrates on television is decluttering one's home by discarding items that don't “spark joy.” The core principle is that if an item is neither useful nor brings happiness, it's time to part ways with it. What, then, should you do with these unwanted possessions? Kondo advocates thanking each item for its service before disposal, encouraging responsible practices such as donating usable items to charity, selling items in good condition, and recycling textiles wherever feasible.

I'm one of those people who find it really difficult to let go of their possessions. When I'm clearing out my wardrobe, instead of asking “Have I used this item in the past twelve months?”, I tend to frame the question the other way around: “Can I possibly imagine a situation in the next 12 months in which I might use this item?”—and whenever the answer is "yes" (which is almost always the case, even if I'd need to lose 15kg before being able to wear it!), I keep it. For this reason, Kondo's method has never really resonated with me.

But there was an aspect of her approach (and I confess I consulted ChatGPT to get a better understanding of it) that caught my attention: the suggestion to donate items that don’t spark joy, or sell those in good condition. This highlights an issue with our donation culture that has often bothered me. We often donate things that are no longer fashionable, or clothes that are ripped or stained. If items are still in good condition, the prevailing advice is to sell them as second-hand goods and make a bit of profit.

The Hebrew word for “charity", tzedakah, comes from the same root as tzedek, "justice." This recognises that in a as world full of inequalities as ours, sharing one's wealth isn't merely an act of kindness, but a matter of bringing justice into the world. Seen as a question of justice, our donations should bring dignity to those who receive them. I once volunteered with an organisation whose motto was, “If you wouldn't give this to your nephew, don't give it to anyone.” Returning to Marie Kondo’s method, it's the items in the best condition that should be directed to charity; let the torn and stained items be sold at second-hand shops!

This week’s parashah, T’rumah, exemplifies this kind of behaviour. God asks for donations for the construction of the Mishkan, the portable Sanctuary that the Israelites would use whilst wandering in the desert. Remember that this was a people who, until recently, had lived as slaves and left Egypt in haste, without being able to carry much. For them, any donation would mean parting with something they valued, something that genuinely "sparked joy." And yet... the volume of donations was so significant that Moshe had to ask the people to stop giving.

We live in confusing times. A decade or so ago, it was common for billionaires to be generous with their fortunes, creating foundations that helped communities and countries in need. The wealthiest nations also provided aid, recognising their responsibility in a world in which so many lacked basic necessities. Unfortunately, we are experiencing the opposite trend in recent years, with the ultra-rich accumulating even more wealth, but not being generous in the least, and with countries suspending their foreign aid programmes, convinced that their own people must come first.

May our sense of justice move us to see the dignity in every human being and adjust our generosity accordingly.

Shabbat Shalom!