The Cup

I was asked to write something for my professional organization newsletter (it still comes out in paper!). The topic was how Torah stories intersect with our lives - they always have a piece from Israeli colleagues - and the specific Torah story we were asked to write about is the upcoming parshiyot about Joseph. I am posting it earlier than it will appear in print because of our upcoming trip. The piece I wrote seems especially relevant today - we spent the afternoon at the Thanksgiving celebration of neighbors - many anglos there though including Canadians, British and Australians. The food was terrific but Thanksgiving is really the only US holiday I miss and I've suffered from some homesickness as you read in my last post.

I began and ended the day singing the sentimental song Halley's Comet by Mary Chapin Carpenter to Gabi and Sasha - lots of tears in the morning but managed not to cry in the evening - Gabi said "you're almost crying" after I promised not to! I will mention the kids and I also did a great hike to and from the horse farm today today with some high risk bimba riding (with helmets of course). As a result Sasha was asleep at 7:30 pm with Gabi not far behind!

Here's my piece about Joseph:

The Cup

I want to use this space to explore what it means when members of our families and close friendship circles are far from us. The Joseph Story is of course the first extended treatment of life outside the land of Israel that we find in the book of Genesis. For a period of his life, the years in which he grew up and matured, Joseph lived far from his family. He seems to have brought with him to Egypt values and natural talents, but he exercises them without the benefit of parents or siblings, not to mention without the internet or facebook. Or we might say he is able to exercise his talents precisely because he is far from his father and siblings.

I know something about being an immigrant – I come by it honestly. My mother left her native England and moved to the US when she married my father at the (then late) age of 29. In some ways, she was a Joseph. She dreamed of going to the US and getting away from the small, closed London Jewish community and the multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins that surrounded her.

My mother-in-law, may her memory be a blessing, lived a similar story. She dreamed since high school of traveling around the world. She met her Trinidadian husband at university in England and eventually traveled to make her home halfway across the globe in Trinidad. In her last years, she traveled around the world for work, and she died while working in Africa. Both these strong women have been models to me as I try to make sense of living away from "home".

In the Joseph story, the cost to Joseph of his distance from his family is apparent. The distance is one of estrangement and his desire to reconnect with his brothers when they appear is palpable. In thinking of the story, my mind is drawn to the cup that Joseph sends back hidden with his brothers. To me, the cup symbolizes that part of Joseph that can never be reconciled with Egypt – the part of him that wants to run back with his brothers to reach his father. It reminds me of the special smile that I only see on my partner's face when she's laughing with her brothers in Trinidad – so like the special laughter my mother shares only with relatives in England. The cup is that piece that doesn't fit in – the feeling I sometimes have when I'm trying and failing to make connections with native Israelis – the feeling that I am always on unfamiliar turf.

At the end of the Joseph story, though, Joseph does not return to Canaan with the cup. Instead, he is the instrument of bringing his father and brothers out of the land of Canaan. Unlike Joseph, neither my mother nor my mother-in-law tried or succeeded to bring their parents or siblings from England. Rather, both experienced the same costs Alen and I feel today, raising our children far from their grandparents, aunts and uncles. As our remaining parents age I feel more acutely the distance. I also feel the pain of distance from friends and colleagues as they face illness and other challenges.

Joseph becomes whole when his brothers and father arrive in Egypt. I don't feel that wholeness is available to me, so I find ways to live each day with a missing piece. And when friends and family come to visit, I send them home with a cup.