When Carl Sagan died a couple of years ago, there were lots of stories about him that began to circulate. One of them is very telling. It is said that he kept a postcard near his shaving mirror. The message read: Dear Friend, just a line to let you know that I am alive and kicking and doing grand. It’s a treat. The card was signed by a passenger aboard the Titanic and was postmarked a day before it sank in the Atlantic Ocean!
The first time I heard this story, it reminded me of the saying in Pirke Avot that said, “Repent one day before you die!” The rabbis expound on this verse and ask the natural question about how it is possible to know when you are going to die. They answer it in a thoroughly rabbinic way: Since you don’t know, treat every day as if it is the last day of your life.
I wonder if they meant it literally. After all, how feasible is it to go around to everyone to speak to every single day and tell them how sorry you were for what you did the day before?! Rather, I think that the rabbis were urging us to live a life of teshuvah—of repentance— taking teshuvah in the pure sense of the word of turning to others with the very best that each of us possesses. It means living the values that we espouse and taking them outside the temple and using them whenever and wherever we turn to another.
This is what I would call the “value laden life.” And since there is another presidential election coming up, once again there is a lot of radio time devoted to what “values” are.
The problem is that one person’s values are not another’s. One of the recent manifestations of values that politicians are talking about is putting up the Ten Commandments in public schools. Bob Barr, a major advocate of this value went so far as to suggest that if the Ten Commandments were put up in Columbine High School, the terrible massacre that took place would never have happened. Apparently he believes that merely reading the words would, by their very nature, deter children from killing other children.
It is an absurd argument and everybody knows it. I recently heard it said that putting the Ten Commandments in a classroom to infuse the class with morality and values will be just as effective as the values practiced in hotel rooms even though a Gideon Bible happens to be there. No, the presence of words is almost irrelevant. It is the presence of deeds that go way beyond the written word.
The Torah tells us in the V’ahavta following the Shma that we are to write the words “upon our hearts.” Not upon our walls. Not in our textbooks or in our classrooms. And not in our legislatures and judicial systems.The values we deem to be worthy can not be forced upon us. They must be taught and practiced in the home, modeled for our children, and inspired by the reality that we can be so much more than we are.
Words are very, very cheap and holy words mean absolutely nothing if they are merely read and never practiced. Holy words are not magical incantations that suddenly make people good and moral and virtuous. To believe so would be tantamount to casting spells. Holy words are meant to inspire so that they can instruct and guide toward a better life.
The Torah is our fountain of values. And while there are some values that may not resonate with the Twenty-First Century mind and heart, it is repository of wisdom and life that elevates us to the people we know we want to be. But reading the Torah is useless if we apply nothing from in the moments we turn to others.
One of those values that we can learn comes from this evening’s parashah. It is a wonderful value that comes from our ancestor Joseph. Remember, though, that Joseph is not the paradigm of values. Over the past several weeks, the Torah portions that describe his life have described him as arrogant, demanding, manipulative, and deceitful to the point of being cruel to his brothers.
But now, as he is older, we see a wizened Joseph. He has made peace with his brothers and takes care of them and their father Jacob. He uses his authority to alleviate suffering of his family and he is no longer bound by his dreams of demanding obeisance by them. He is clearly not the same person we met several weeks ago.
In tonight’s parashah, there are two places in which we see the kind of man that he has really transformed into. The first comes where Jacob his father is dying and knows that the end of his life is drawing near. Jacob tells Joseph to swear to him that he will bury him in Machpela, in the cave that Abraham bought as a family burial site many years before. Joseph is reluctant at this request and at first says only, n!x
I will do as you have said. It looks like a lukewarm acceptance of the task but maybe something else is really going on. Maybe Joseph was not really taking the time to listen to Jacob and treated his request as yet another favor. But, when he took to the time to understand what his father was really saying, Joseph responded like a son and not like an Egyptian official.
You see, Jacob was not simply asking for a place to be buried. He was impressing upon Joseph that Egypt was just a way station in the story of the Jewish people. Egypt was not the people’s terminus. When Joseph understood the why of Jacob’s seemingly benign request he readily accepted. The words that follow: and he swore it to him— tell us that not only of the promise that Joseph made but also that his position in Egypt was not as the head of a dynasty but rather as a simple doorman. This would not have sat well with a younger Joseph but an older Joseph accepted in readily.
The other episode that is filled with positive values illustrates how Joseph was not merely agreeing to bury him at Machpela after his death. We are told that when Jacob died, the other brothers feared for their lives for they had doubts about how sincere Joseph was in his promise to Jacob. Their suspicion was well founded. After all, Joseph had framed them several years before. And so when the father died they looked at each other and wondered, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil which we did to him.” But Joseph responded to this concern with the most mature statement of his life: “Fear not. For am I in the place of God?”
In one moment, he allays their fears of retribution and has proven that his selfish side has given way to a forgiving side and his vindictive side has given way to a God-fearing side. Now that is a family value that, I hope, all of us can agree to!
It must be true that we remember Joseph because of the man he turned out to be and not because of the man he was when he was younger. Our tradition calls him one of the 48 prophets but not because he as Jacob’s son but because of the wisdom he acquired and the forgiveness he displayed. Joseph is remembered not for fear but for faith not for retribution but for repentance.
It is hard to hear about Joseph’s life and the changes he made without thinking about our own lives. When we read about who he was and the changes that he finally made, it gives us pause to wonder how we should be remembered.
What will each of us leave for the ones that follow us? Will we be remembered for our childish behavior or our lofty ideals that we put into action. All of a sudden the statement from Pirke Avot to ‘repent one day before you die’ means something tangible. We don’t know when that time will come which is precisely the point. And so, in the words of our Sages, “indeed live each day as if it is your last.”
We Jews have a long tradition about thinking what we will leave behind when we are gone. To impart the knowledge that we fixed the world a little bit is a gift that we want to share with those who come after us. That will guarantee that we shall be remembered for good.
We see this very thing happening when the patriarchs bless their children. On his deathbed, Jacob blesses his children with some of the wisdom he has learned. Isaac, too, encourages and gives hope just before he is going to die. And when King David is about to die, he utters to his son Solomon what one author has called a “legacy of intangibles.”
The Talmud, too, is filled with the words of men and women whose ultimate values are recorded in the context of their dying words. There is Yohanan ben Zakkai—the savior of Judaism—who became mortally ill and was visited by his students. They wanted a blessing from him and he said to them, “Fear heaven as you fear man.”
“Is that all?” they puzzled. “Are we not obliged to fear God more than we fear man?”
“Indeed we are,” answered ben Zakkai, “but I would be content if your fear of God would be only as great as your fear of man. When a person is about to commit a wrong, he hopes no person sees him. If he were equally fearful of God who sees all, he would not sin.” And with that, ben Zakkai died.
Our tradition gives a lot of weight to last words like this. We see them as a last chance to impart what we most deeply believe and that honesty makes those words infinitely valuable. So much so that our Sages tried to preserve as many last words as they could. For them, the values they receive from their masters are so much more worthwhile than the valuables they received. It is not important who gets the camel and who gets the tent. That is nothing to be remembered by. Rather it is our Jewish value to gain a measure of immortality through the memories we leave behind and the positive impact our lives had on those who will follow us.
If you knew that you were going to die tomorrow, what would you say to those surrounding you? How would you want to be remembered? What words would you want to be heard throughout the ages? Be careful; you may not have that many chances left.
We may think that we have said all we want to say and that all of our values have been passed on. Maybe, maybe not. But consider this true story (which you may have heard) the next time you think that what is obvious to you is obvious to everyone.
It happened that the Federal Aviation Administration created a device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. They point a cannon-like device and fling a dead chicken out of it at the speed a plane usually flies at the altitude that they are likely to hit flying birds. If the windshield doesn’t break, it’s likely to survive a real collision with a bird.
Well, the British recently built a new super fast train. They were not sure if the windows would survive a collision and so they borrowed the chicken-cannon from the FAA, reset it and matched the speed of the train to the velocity of the chicken.
The bird went through the window, broke the engineer’s chair and made a dent in the back of the engine cap. They were very surprised with the results and so they asked the FAA to check to see if everything was done correctly. The FAA checked everything and then sent the report back to the British suggesting that they might want to repeat the test but this time avoid using a frozen chicken!!!
The lesson is clear. It is not always obvious to those we love what is obvious to us. Sometimes they need to hear us articulate what we believe and they need to see us practice our values. When our highest and most noble values become theirs, then we have left something that will touch the ages.
Take the time, then, to share with those you love the stuff that you are really made of. Do not be afraid to open yourselves up and say who you are. Ecclesiastes is wrong when he says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” He is wrong because you are something new under the sun; there has never been another you and there will never be another you.
And who you are deserves to be remembered throughout the generations. With your words and deeds, you will be. But today, remember the words of the Sages: be careful with your words for they be the last words you ever utter. Make them count.
From <https://americanrabbi.com/bequeathing-values-by-cy-stanway/>
