When I first moved to Israel I befriended an individual who used to call me Tzadik(Righteous One). I must admit I found the practice somewhat gratifying. There I would be walking the streets and my friend would call out to me from across the way: “Tzadik! How are you? Tzadik! Let’s get together soon. Tzadik …” What an uplifting feeling. Here for the whole world to hear was a person calling me the Righteous One. I certainly felt special.
… And then one day I saw my friend get in an argument with someone who had just hit his car. And to my surprise I heard him — in the heat of the moment and certainly not as a term of endearment — use myname to address the other person: “Tzadik, why did you do that?” Then a few days later I heard him use the name again to speak to a couple of people he never met before. “How did he come to call them Tzadik?” I thought; he just met them and cannot possibly know what type of people they are. Then it all became clear a few days after that. I was eating at his house and his son decided to spill some soup all over the table. I say ‘decided’ because it was clearly not an accident. He lifted his bowl for all to see, and then with great gusto flipped it upside down. “Tzadik,” my friend called out, “Why did you do that?”
And thus I began to understand the appellation ”Tzadik” did not necessarily imply the what it suggested.
I thought of this story the other day when I began to read the weekly Torah portion (VaYeshev). One of the main themes of this portion is the life of Joseph — how he is sold into slavery but then redeemed by Potiphar, a powerful Egyptian … only to have Potiphar’s wife attempt to seduce him … and when he rejects her advances he is framed for a crime he did not commit and imprisoned in a dungeon … where he meets servants of the Pharoah and interprets their dreams … a skill which ultimately leeds him out of prison and into a position of viceroy for all of Egypt, second to only Pharoah. The Haftarah for this portion, as well as our Sages in the Talmud, call Joseph a Tzadik.
Why? I don’t think they’re playing the same game with Joseph as my friend did with me, and yet … Joseph does not appear to be such a Tzadik from the text of the Torah. He is young and brash, a little bit vain and seems, at least in the beginning, insensitive to the needs of others. This is not to say he doesn’t do amazing and tzadik-like things; he does. But, by and large, his entire life does not seem to be one characterized by what we would normally consider to be the life of a Tzadik. Certainly when one compares his life to some of the other main players depicted in the Torah. Abraham, for example, is never called a Tzadik, though certainly his life is no less impressive (and many would argue significantly more so) than Joseph’s life. Rather, he is simply called a father. Moses, too, is not called a Tzadik, but rather is given the much more modest appellation Teacher.
So why is Joseph called a Tzadik? Rabbi Shmuel Goldin suggests one possible answer might be connected to a larger historical phenomanon. Up until this point in time God speaks directly to all the main players. God and Abraham, for example, have a number of conversations; so too with regards to Jacob. But in this next generation — with regards to the children of Jacob, of which Joseph is a member — God becomes shockingly silent. God no longer speaks directly to the main actors and no longer guides them in an obvious way along the path God has chosen.
And how does Joseph react to this silence? In a sentence: Joseph sees God everywhere! When Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce him, he refuses on the grounds that it would be a sin against God. When he succeeds in the dungeon and is able to interpret the dreams of the servants of Pharoah he gives God the exclusive credit. So, too, a little while later when Pharoah himself requests Joseph’s help. And then even years later when his brothers — who sold him into slavery – descend to Egypt and meet up again with him, Joseph bears no grudges and simply says that everything was a blessing from God.
This is what makes Joseph a Tzadik. In a world in which God is silent, in a world in which God appears absent, Joseph sees God everywhere.
This idea is an incredibly powerful idea. It suggests that a world filled without doubt is not such a bad place after all. To the contrary, it is only in such a world that an individual has the opportunity to express a certain type of faith – a faith lacking certitude – and it is this type of faith that in turn enables a person to become a Tzadik. When beauty, inspiration and kindness are everywhere obvious, seeing these qualities is not particularly special. But when they are hidden, the person who finds them — and better, creates them – nevertheless is to be praised.
This insight helps explain an interesting Talmudic dictum that appears elsewhere: “The Sages are more important than the Prophets.” At first glance, this statement doesn’t make much sense. The Prophets — people like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos — are the inspiration of our people. We read their words every week in Synagogue along the Torah reading. They spoke directly with God! How can we say that the Sages, as important as they are, supercede the significance of the Prophets.
Rav Kook offers one possible explanation. He says that the Prophets provide inspiration but don’t always know how to bring the inspiration to fulfillment. They saw with great clarity the problems of society — the idol worshipping, the abandonment of the poor, the arrogance of leadership — but didn’t not necessarily know how to solve these problems. They also saw the great promise of society, but again, did not always have the tools to ensure the success of their vision. In contrast, the Sages did. Their emphasis on law and practice enabled the people to integrate the vision of the Prophets into their daily lives. It enabled the people to progress incrementally yet consistently towards the fulfillment of the vision. In many respects, this situation reminds me of JFK’s announcement that the US was going to go to the moon within 10 years. He possessed a clear vision of what he wanted, and this vision inspired people. Of course, JFK personally had no clue of how to actually achieve this vision. That would require the talents of scientists, astronauts, financiers, astronomers, etc. . In a similar way, the Prophets provided the vision and the Sages ensured its successful implementation. And thus, says Rav Kook, the Sages are more important than the Prophets.
Based on what we said above about Joseph, we can offer a different interpretation of this Talmudic dictum as well. ”Everything that happened to our forefathers also happenned to the nation of Israel,” thus teaches the Ramban. This means that a parallel exists to the situation in which God spoke to Abraham yet required Joseph to find God without the benefit of direct contact. And that parallel is as follows: When the nation was formed God once again spoke directly to the players involved, from Moses the Leader to Aaron his brother and to all the people that accepted the Torah at Mount Sinai. Afterwards, when the Jews entered Israel, God continued to speak to the leaders of the people — and these included the Prophets. Eventually, though, this direct contact ended and the nation had to demonstrate faith and fidelity to God without the aid of direct contact. This was the period of the Sages. They, like Joseph before them, did not shirk their responsibility; Judaism did not suffer from the silence. To the contrary, Judaism flourished under their guidance. Their love for God was no less than those before them but rather filled with intense passion and expansive wisdom. From doubt sprang forth action, commitment and growth.
Today, I feel perhaps we are in a third go round of this phenomonon. When the state of Israel was founded, people saw God in a whole host of ways. Rav Soloveitchik writes (I’ll speak more about this in a future blog) that he saw God in the UN when it enabled the birth of the State. Others saw God in the fact that a small citizen army was able to defeat the invading masses of trained soldiers from the surrounding enemy states. Still others saw God in the miracle of the 6 Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem. Today, however, it is more difficult to see God’s hand directly involved in Israel’s day-to-day affairs. As Joseph and our Sages before have taught us, though, we should not fear, nor should we retreat. Rather, we must search out and find God in our daily lives and the daily operations of our State, and if need be, create the opportunities for others to see God through our actions as representatives of God.
If we do so, we will once again proven that a time of doubt is not something to fear but rather relish. It is a time when we truly get to prove who we are, what we believe and what we can achieve.
