Remember me when things go well

(Genesis 40:14)

Kislev 23, 5777/December 23, 2016

"Yaakov dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan." (Genesis 37:1) So this week's Torah reading begins, and it sounds like we are in for a happy ending to our saga. Yaakov, after a lifetime of travails, is ready to settle down with his twelve sons in the land promised to him by G-d, and live out his day, happily ever after. That, at least, seems to be what Yaakov had in mind. But G-d, as so often is the case, had other plans. And far from a happy ending, parashat Vayeshev ends on the edge of a precipice: "But the chief cupbearer did not remember Yosef, and he forgot him." (ibid 40:23)

Through a series of unforeseeable and startling turn of events, which, however familiar we are with the story never fail to shock us anew, Yosef, the beloved son of Yaakov, finds himself completely and utterly alone in the world, cut off from all his loved ones, and desperately placing his fate in the hands of a faceless government functionary guilty of an unknown transgression against his superior, beseeching him, "But remember me when things go well with you, and please do me a favor and mention me to Pharaoh, and you will get me out of this prison." (ibid 40:14) As we say, in modern vernacular, "good luck with that one."

Even our sages frown upon Yosef's plea to his fellow inmate, about to be released, and castigate his placing his trust, as it were, in a human being and not in G-d, and attribute the additional two years that Yosef sat in prison to this misplaced trust. The incomparable Rashi quotes Psalms 40:5: “Praiseworthy is the man who made HaShem his trust and did not turn to the haughty,” saying that "the haughty" refers to the Egyptian cupbearer.

But while Yosef can't seem to get a break at this moment in his life, even from the great sages who would follow, (and called him the most righteous of all men), it behooves us to take a closer look at his words to the feckless cupbearer, and the parasha's concluding response. Yosef asks that the cupbearer "remember" him to Pharaoh, and Torah tells us that the cupbearer not only "did not remember Yosef," but that he also "forgot him." Why the double language? It Torah just rubbing it in?

Today we use the words remember and memory as referring to a technical capacity to recall information, sometimes useful, sometimes not, or to bring to mind distant events which have occurred in our lives. Sometimes these memories are beloved, sometimes they are painful. Sometimes we conjure them ourselves and sometimes they burst into our consciousness as a result of an outside stimulus. Forgetting is merely the opposite of remembering.

In the Torah's usage of the word, remembering means to fill one's consciousness, mind and heart, and to place before one's eyes, recognition in the source of one's being, namely, G-d. Memory is self-awareness, and its source, as is the source of our knowledge of self, is G-d. Yosef, who interprets dreams, knows all this very well, for the recollection of dreams is a pure act of memory, yet the dream itself, at least the essence of the dream, is a direct message from G-d. Yosef had to rely upon the cupbearer to recall for him his dream, but Yosef had the ability to hear G-d's words in the dream's imagery. Memory, in short, is a direct channel between our being and G-d.

Forgetting, in Torah parlance, is not, as we understand the word today, the opposite of remembering. Forgetting is failing to act positively upon the knowledge that memory endows us. The cupbearer, in our case, not only failed to appreciate that his incarceration and later liberation were all part of G-d's plan for him, but he failed to act positively, in accordance with that knowledge. He failed to act as a participant in G-d's plan for mankind.

Yosef had a perfect facility for memory. He remembered his dreams as a young boy. He remembered where he came from, ("I am a Hebrew"), he remembered his righteous father Yaakov, as Midrash tells us, when confronted by Potiphar's wife. He was able, as a dream interpreter, to properly understand other people's memories, and in his ultimate reconnection to his brothers, it becomes clear that he remembered every detail every scene, of what had transpired between them many years before. Yosef's weakness, which he would overcome, only with his reconciliation with his brothers, was in his misplaced trust that others shared his insights, that others shared his ability to remember and therefore not to forget, or again, in modern vernacular, "to do the right thing." We do not forget, and do the right thing when we remember that G-d is our creator, and our purpose in life is to direct our every act as an expression of this knowledge.

The ultimate message of the festival of Chanukah, which we begin to observe Saturday night, is the very same message. The Greek oppressors were doing all within their power to compel the Jews to forget their covenant with G-d by outlawing the very acts which expressed and fulfilled that covenant. They sought to rid the world of a people whose deeds were an irrefutable declaration of G-d's presence in the world by starving their memory and acknowledgment of G-d through lack of ways to express it. The uprising led by the Maccabeans declared, in response, not only do we remember our covenant with G-d, but we shall not forget it: we will go to war and do whatever necessary to preserve forever our way of life, our covenant with G-d and our responsibility to declare His presence and praise in all our deeds. May that message ring loud and clear for us today that we shall always remember that we are the children of G-d and never forget that this is His world. Chanukah Sameach - Happy Chanukah!

-The Temple Institute