Sermon: Something From Nothing (Cantor Cheryl Wunch)

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 21 March 2015

In our Kuddle up Shabbat service yesterday, I read one of my favourite stories to the kids – Something from Nothing.  This story is based upon an old Jewish folktale from the shtetl days in Eastern Europe.  I don’t know how long it may have been since many of you have read this classic, but here are the basics:

When Joseph is a baby, his grandfather makes him a wonderful blanket. After a while his mother tells him that the blanket is worn out and should be thrown away. Joseph does not want to give up his blanket and tells his mother that his grandfather can surely fix it. Sure enough, Grandpa has “just enough material” to make a wonderful jacket. Over time, Joseph outgrows the jacket, and so Grandpa finds that he has “just enough material” to turn it into a waistcoat, and when that wears out he makes a tie, then a handkerchief, and finally a button. When Joseph loses the button, his mother declares that even Grandpa cannot make “something from nothing.” The next day Joseph goes to school and starts to write. He realizes that he has “just enough material” to make a wonderful story.  While nothing remained of the physical blanket, his memories were enough to help him create something valuable.  The blanket may have been gone, but the story of the blanket and how much it meant to him will be able to live on.

And so it is with so many of our experiences.  We live through joy, fear, pain, and excitement, and most often all we have to show for it are our memories and our stories.  2014 was a tremendous year.  Let me be clear – when I say ‘tremendous’ I mean it in the truest sense of the word; It was intense, terrifying, exciting, gratifying, and a great deal of important events occurred in our community and in the world at large.  Some of us are thrilled that 2014 is over, while others among us may be sad to see it go.

This Shabbat, as we bid farewell to another calendar year, we also say goodbye to the book of Genesis.  In this first book of the Torah, we are constantly looking back and then looking forward.  Throughout the book, we are reminded over and over again of the blessings God gave to our ancestors – that they will be fruitful and multiply, and will rule over the land that God has given them.  This statement is repeated again by Jacob in our parsha this week.  Throughout the book our ancestors go back to various locations time and time again.  Themes are repeated, similar motifs appear and reappear, and lessons are learned and relearned. In this week’s parsha, our patriarch Jacob also looks back in order to look forward.  On his deathbed, Jacob bestows blessings on each of his sons – but they are, by no means, standard blessings.  Jacob reminds his sons of the good and the bad that they have done.  Jacob doesn’t use positive reinforcement with his sons, rather he blesses them according to what he believes they deserve, based upon their behaviours and character.  Some of these blessings sound more like curses.  Our portion ends with Jacob’s body being returned to the land of Canaan where he was buried with his ancestors, Joseph and his brothers making their final peace with each other, and then before he dies, Joseph reminds his great grandchildren of their birth right as God has promised, and asks them to carry his bones with them when they return to the land of Israel. He looks to the past, and looks to the future.

This is the perfect week to be reading this portion.  Just as many of us spent the past few days reflecting on our year and reviewing the lessons that we’ve learned, so too is it important to take some time at the end of each book of the Torah to reflect upon the lessons of the past 12 weeks of our people’s ancient narrative.   12 weeks ago we saw the creation of the world, a great flood, the beginnings of monotheism, and the birth and death of our matriarchs and patriarchs.

As we finish this book, and we finish out calendar year, we reflect on the difficulties and challenges in both – we think about our expulsion from the garden, of fratricide, of the challenge of our matriarchs’ bareness.  We remember that Isaac was almost sacrificed by his father, that a birth right and blessing was stolen, that a father-in-law used trickery to marry off his daughters, and that brothers sold one of their own into slavery.

We remember a war in our beloved homeland. We recall escalation of anti-Semitism in our own backyard.  We think about missing airplanes and potential terrorist threats.  We worry about a deadly disease killing our fellow human beings.  We remember with sorrow all of those wonderful people in our own lives that we have lost.

We also reflect on the successes – the beauty.  We marvel at the wonder of creation, the joy of birth and love and reunion, the beauty of a rainbow.  We find meaning in our ancestors’ triumphant tests of faith and how they knew that God was with them every step of the way.

We recall the excitement of the Winter Olympics and the World Cup.  We feel pride when high-profile celebrities publicly defend Israel.  We feel hopeful when recalling recent medical advances.  We are overjoyed when members of our community have high honours bestowed upon them.  We rejoice in the birth of beautiful babies, and we celebrate each other’s personal and professional achievements.

We look at it all, the good and the bad, and we get to decide what to take with us into our new chapter, and what to leave behind.   Jacob’s blessing to his children is this same type of looking back to look forward. He reminds them of everything- good and bad.  He doesn’t pull any punches telling his children what he is proud of and what has so greatly disappointed him about their behaviour.  He reminds them that they, and indeed all of us, take our whole selves with us, but it is up to us to decide what we will focus on.  Jacob is right – we don’t get to ever really, fully wipe the slate clean.  There will always be people who remind us of who we once were, and we will always carry our own struggles and challenges with us as we continue our journeys.   Time doesn’t stop just because we turn the page of a calendar, or move on to the next chapter.

And just as our world didn’t take a break or a pause at the end of the calendar year, nor does our people’s story end with this book of Torah.  Our portion ends with the death of the final members of the first family of Judaism – our ancestors as we have come to know them are gone, but it is, in fact, in the next book, in Exodus, that the story of the Jewish People truly begins.  The final word of the book of Genesis is mitzrayim, Egypt.  We end the book with a clear arrow pointing us to where we are to go next.  We look back, and are immediately shown the way forward.

This looking back and looking forward continues throughout the remainder of the Torah.  It is our own way of time travelling.  Jewish time isn’t linear – we don’t think about a straight path from a beginning to an end, but neither is it cyclical.  Yes we go through the cycle of the year, but it is expected that each time we return to something it is with fresh eyes, a new perspective – our lives are more a spiral than a circle.  So as we begin our journey into Exodus, and our journey into the secular year 2015, we get to write our own story, we get take our memories with us in whatever way best serves us.

As we read in our study passage this morning, it may be impossible to remove an imperfection from a diamond, but with skill and patience, an imperfection can be turned into a beautiful rose.  This is our job as we move forward.  This is why Jacob didn’t sugar-coat his blessings to his sons.  We can’t just shield our eyes and pretend that the negatives didn’t happen, but we can choose to embrace our past and strive to make something beautiful out of it.

So yes, 2014 was a tremendous year, and Genesis was a tremendous book.  2014 ended with many loose ends still waiting to be tied.  Genesis ended with death, sadness, the end of a family dynasty, and the daunting foreshadowing of mitzrayim…. All of our main characters are gone, and we are left feeling very unsure of what comes next.  We end Genesis feeling as though we are literally left with nothing.   But if we look to the name of the parsha, we are given some specks of hope.  The portion is called vayechi – and he lived.  Even though Jacob died, his story lives.  The story of the people of Israel lives, as long as we continue to write it. As long as we can make something from nothing. We don’t always get to take our blankets or our buttons with us into the next stages of our lives, but we do carry our lessons with us, and we always have just enough material to write our own stories.