Igniting Compassion
Rabbinic tradition has it that we read a bit of our sacred story, the Torah, every week. But it would be too easy to have one text to mull over - the rabbis add in the Haftarah, a companion excerpt from the Nevi’im, the historical and prophetic books that follow the Torah in the Hebrew Bible. These excerpts dance around the Torah portion, sometimes developing themes or highlighting resonance, other times offering intriguing counterpoint, and generally establishing a dynamic interpretive energy when we look closely at both Torah and Haftarah together.
In this week’s Torah portion, Miketz, Pharaoh dreams troubling dreams and Joseph interprets them. Through his wisdom and discernment he is elevated to second-most-powerful person in Egypt.
The Haftarah associated with Miketz tells the famous story of King Solomon and the baby claimed by two women (1 Kings 3:15-4:1). Solomon too has just awakened from a prophetic dream, and he too then acts with wisdom and discernment.
Yet the parallel between these two stories that startled me this year comes from a shared phrase. Upon seeing his brother Benjamin, Joseph’s “compassion ignited” - nichmeru rachamav (Genesis 43:30). And the true mother of the baby (unlike the other woman) also had her compassion ignited - nichmeru rachameha (1 Kings 3:26). In both stories, this suddenly warming and tender compassion is the narrative pivot where truth and justice begin to emerge.
In both stories, we have characters – Joseph and Solomon, respectively – who, through their wisdom, conduct a compassion test that results in justice. For Joseph, he seeks to know if the brothers who cruelly planned to kill or sell him off had grown in their capacity to honor and care for the youngest brother, Benjamin. They pass the test, and finally we have the first generation of siblings who see themselves as more united than divergent. Strangely though, Joseph is the one who experiences compassion - he is able to forgive his brothers and invite them into wholeness once he recognizes how they have grown from the emotional burden they have carried since treating him so harshly.
For Solomon, he acts with apparent callousness in order to elicit compassion from the true mother of the baby. When her compassion ignites, the authenticity of her claim stands revealed. The key element here is that whatever it means for compassion to ignite, it isn’t something that can be planned or prepared for or play-acted. It seems to indicate a spontaneous emotional reaction to a deeply felt connection to another being.
Strikingly, this verb appears in yet one more place in the Hebrew Bible in a similar phrase, this time referring to God. “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah, render you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart, all My comfort is ignited (nichmeru nichumai)” (Hoshea 11:8). In this poetic prophecy, God contemplates anger at the people’s idolatry, but ultimately rejects utter destruction (Admah and Zeboiim are deep-cut references to cities destroyed alongside Sodom and Gomorrah). Instead, God passes God’s own compassion test, in a sudden fit of desire-to-give-comfort.
In this season of war, many of us are experiencing a time of inner tension and tensions within our American Jewish communities. (Psychologist Richard S. Stern mentions in a recent article that he just ran a workshop titled: How to Connect with Other Jews, Even When They Are Wrong and Their Views Will Lead to Catastrophe.) I believe we all want truth and justice to win out, even if we assess the situation differently, and I believe we yearn for a sense of solidarity, both with the Jewish people and with those who largely share progressive values. These biblical stories encode comforting compassion as the key to discovering scenarios where our deepest yearnings are realized. Compassion is at the core of wisdom.
But, how do we ignite our compassion? How do we get better at being spontaneously compassionate? One Buddhist teacher once said, “Enlightenment is a happy accident. We can’t force ourselves to be enlightened, but mindfulness can make us more accident-prone.” Here’s one great resource for ways to be more accident-prone.
As we move out of Chanukkah, you might imagine little candles inside of those you care about, and when you open your heart to them their flame ignites your feeling of care. Imagine that even as we put the chanukiyah away for the year, we keep adding a candle every single night, another person and another person and another personin an ever-expanding glow of warmth. Through the repeated practice of igniting compassion, we have the capacity to rebuild and rededicate this world to peace.
Shabbat shalom!
