{"id":40159,"date":"2018-09-16T13:57:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T10:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=40159"},"modified":"2022-04-11T16:35:41","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T13:35:41","slug":"the-other-is-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-other-is-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Is Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[587,433,503],"acf":{"old_id":"40159","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33859,"related_cahpter":"47","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Egypt's response to otherness is fear, enslavement and oppression. The Jewish mission is to teach the world the alternative.","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From God&#8217;s mysterious last words to Jacob in chapter 46 about Joseph placing his hands on Jacob&#8217;s eyes, we don&#8217;t hear the idea of the &#8220;eye of Jacob&#8221; repeated until Moses&#8217; last words in the Torah. Moses describes an idyllic vision with the words &#8220;And Israel dwells in security, the eye of Jacob in solitude.&#8221; (Deut. 33:28)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik explains at the end of his essay <em>Kol Dodi Dofek<\/em>, this is an ultimate vision of a solitude &#8220;that is to be identified with a person&#8217;s spirituality and individuality; it is a solitude that makes manifest man&#8217;s dignity and freedom.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This idea is at the very heart of the Jewish people&#8217;s message to the world. It is what Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks calls &#8220;the dignity of difference,&#8221; a synthesis which celebrates individuality without worshipping individualism, and which affirms Divine Truth without demanding fundamentalism and uniformity. It is a message which calls us to fully see the Other, not as a threat, not in our own image, but in the Divine image.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How can a people internalize this lesson and make it part of their identity? At the dawn of the Jewish peoplehood, God tells Abraham that before becoming a sovereign people in our land, before we can enjoy the privileges of power, we need to experience what it is to be a <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ger<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, to be an &#8216;Other&#8217;. The Torah demands countless times that we not only remember that experience, but that we transform that memory into policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More than anything, it is Joseph&#8217;s actions in chapter 47 which guarantee Jewish otherness in Egypt. The Gemara goes so far as to suggest that he was trying to create this experience not only for his own family, but for the entire Egyptian people, by dislocating everyone from their homes. God&#8217;s promise that we will be &#8216;<em>gerim<\/em>&#8216; is realized through Joseph&#8217;s actions. Egypt&#8217;s response to otherness is fear, enslavement and oppression. The Jewish mission is to teach the world the alternative.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"The Other Is Us","main_caption":"Egypt's response to otherness is fear, enslavement and oppression. 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