Jan 9 2009 - VAYIGASH:THREE TANGLED WEBS

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” These perceptive words of the Bard, William Shakespeare in Twelve Night more than tantalizingly describe three scenarios we are experiencing this week. The first is, of course, Gaza and Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Based on the idea of liberation—of throwing off oppression, victimization, and fear that dreidls molded from lead symbolize for us Jews, Israel’s avowed purpose of stopping the rocket fire emanating from the Hamas held Gaza Strip has exposed us all to the deceptions and brutality that this regime of thuggery has brought to the very people they are responsible for, the Palestinian residents of Gaza. In their web of distortions, deceptions, lies, theft, and murder, Hamas and its supporters around the world have actually caused the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of their own people. For, we must remember that before this current war, Hamas brutally dispatched hundreds of their own Fatah brethren in a coup back in 2006. Their web of falsehoods includes the use of their own people as human shields, the illegal storage of tons of munitions near and actually within schools, hospitals, universities, mosques and other internationally recognized “neutral facilities.” And we all know that this is illegal by the international laws of armed conflict. You and I are once again appalled by Hamas’ despicable deeds and their callous disregard for human life or for any value short of the destruction of Israel and their leaders’ own survival. O, the tangled web they and their Iranian masters have woven! But other Arab states including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordon now alerted to Iran’s hegemonic, nuclear plans, have recognized Israel’s right to attack Hamas and to defend its citizenry from the unending rocket barrages that have no purpose other than to murder and maim innocent Jews, Arabs, Druze, and Bedouin who live within the legitimate borders of the state of Israel.

“Hamas could play its games of duplicity for only so long. Now caught in its own webs, Hamas must be and is being held accountable for the terrorist regime it is. And the responsible nations of the world like the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and interesting, the current head of the European Union, the Czech Republic, are exercising their diplomatic powers, giving Israel the time it needs to untangle Hamas’ webs of falsehoods, tunnels for rearmament and indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilians.

“The second scenario, the second instance of web-weaving is the Madoff scandal. Bernie Madoff, a long time darling of Wall Street and a trusted founder of the NAS-DAQ, has done irreparable damage to his own Jewish community and to Jewish causes. Hadassah, Yeshiva University, the Ellie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation and many, many private, Jewish individuals whose life savings totaling in the millions and billions of dollars have disappeared into Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme. Organizations and individuals, too many to mention, were duped by Madoff’s oversized returns for years on end, as the Swindler’s List grew and grew, attracting enormous sums of money which, in turn, were used to pay off the earlier investors…until a run on the funds uncovered the empty, gigantic web of fraud. Predictions are that Jewish Day Schools and Foundations which support Jewish institutions in America, Israel and abroad will be suffering to the point of collapse for years to come…all due to the greed and avarice of one very likeable and very evil Jewish investment agent. Oh, the tangled web he wove, ensnaring the wealth and wise, the altruistic and the benevolent, ruining thousands if not millions of lives of the very people from whom he springs. There are those who say that not since the Nazis themselves has more fiscal damage been done the Jewish people than what Bernard Madoff succeeded in doing…and for what?

“The third and final instance of tangled webs involves Joseph and his brothers. Due to the fact that last month we took a very lengthy hiatus from our readings in Tanak, we have missed the entire Joseph saga. But, you will recall, Jacob showed indiscrete partiality toward Rachel’s first born and, as a sign of that foolish favoritism, gave him a fateful, colorful coat. Joseph’s brothers nearly kill him; but, weaving their own web of deception, manage to sell him into slavery to passing Midianites, and cover their crime by spinning out a lovely lie to their grief struck father about Joseph’s having been killed by some wild animal.

“This week’s parasha, Vayigash, finds Joseph, now Pharaoh’s right hand man, playing a cat and mouse game with his unsuspecting brothers. Having come to Egypt in search of food on this second of a seven year famine--which Joseph had predicted to Pharaoh--the brothers are given their rations but are detained when a cup which Joseph had had planted in his younger brother Benjamin’s bag was “discovered.” The tangled web of jealousy, revulsion, deception, retribution and revenge now comes to an ironic and passionate head as Judah argues to be allowed to substitute for Benjamin lest his father, Jacob, learning of the loss of the second and last of Rachel’s children die of sorrow and grief.

Unable to contain his emotions and his longing to be reconciled to his family, Joseph now agonizingly reveals himself to his shocked and very frightened siblings. They suffer moments of terrified recognition fully anticipating the reprisal their act of so many years ago now is likely to bring, most justly, down upon their heads. “Oh the tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

One wonders what might have happened were Joseph’s brothers first to have confronted Jacob; had they addressed their grievances to their father; perhaps, all this misery might well have been avoided. But, then, too, had Israel slammed Hamas hard when missiles first began falling on Israeli soil; had investors with Bernie Madoff not followed the adage that if it seems too good to be true, it is; then pulled their money out and walked away from their own greed and avarice, maybe all this suffering could have been avoided…just maybe. But as the Jewish expression goes, “if grandma had wheels, she’d be a bus” and life doesn’t usually work this way. People spend hours, days, and years having to undo the damage they do themselves and others by not playing it straight with life. In the end, someone winds up undoing the tangled web…whether it is the IDF, or the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department, or Pharaoh’s own vizier. Joseph, now fully assured that his brothers feel remorse for their acts against him and their father so many years ago, drops his façade and all pretenses, and reveals himself to his brothers. This act of truthfulness and transparency is the antidote the Tanak and, indeed, our world needs to untangle these webs that have caused so much trouble and suffering.