It is no great news that our world is a rather unhappy one. Judging by the quantity of sleeping pills sold, Peace-of-Mind books on the best-seller lists and lectures on how to overcome all sorts of personal problems, most of us are in a pretty bad shape. And the best sellers, the sleeping pills and the lectures do little to help us in our unhappiness. Most recently one book has appeared which is different from the rest. It is different because the book itself is far more profound than anything the eager salesmen of Quick Happiness offers us, and because the author is one of the outstanding psychoanalysts of our day. Dr. Erich Fromm’s latest thought-provoking book is entitled “The Sane Society,” and addresses itself to the problem at hand – why is ours such an unhappy day.According to Fromm, this profound unhappiness of contemporary man can be traced to the alienation of the individual from the basic and essential force of life. The alienated person experiences his very self as an alien, an outsider. He is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. The individual has become only a cog in the great machines of production and consumption. We do not know how bread is made, how cloth is woven, how a table is manufactured...we live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them. Our lives have become depersonalized, and we have given up every vestige of self-hood in order to achieve the thin and shallow success which everyone is expected to strive for. Our people are educated, well-fed and profess a belief in G-d. But underneath it all is a great spiritual void and religious bewilderment. Modern man is an alien in his world. This is the analysis Dr. Fromm has to offer. We are unhappy because we are alienated from life, and out of touch with both others and ourselves. It is a brilliant analysis, and you can convince yourselves of it by reading the book. Now, what is the solution? Sto…

The Bible, as the Word of God, inspires in us deep feelings of reverence and awe, sometimes even fear. For when we confront it, we stand face to face with the immortal and imperishable words of the Creator of the universe in all His awesome infinity and power. That is why the Torah often seems to us so austere, so severe. Probably the last thing in the world we would attribute to the Bible is – a sense of humor. It certainly would seem discordant in the context of Biblical solemnity and incommensurate with the weightiness of the Biblical message. Yet if one reads our Sidra in truly perceptive fashion he cannot help but notice that the Torah is not at all straitlaced. Indeed, in one verse it gives us an insight into a situation that is genuinely comical, even downright funny.Consider the situation: at the second visit of the brothers to Joseph, the viceroy of all Egypt orders his Egyptian subjects to prepare a royal banquet for him, the viceroy, for the Egyptian subjects, and for the visitors from Canaan. One would expect that a large official table be set around which would be seated all the guests in appropriate order. Instead, the royal dining room is broken up into three parts, and instead of a large and majestic dining room table, we have three tables: the equivalent of a small bridge table for the sovereign by himself, a slightly larger one for the Canaanite visitors, and probably the largest of all for the various subordinates and lackeys amongst the Egyptians. “And they set on for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, that did eat with him, by themselves; because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is abomination unto the Egyptians.” The King orders a banquet and the subjects bring in – three tables. It is only a Divine sense of humor that caused this verse to be written down for all eternity. A Divine sense of humor – and also a Divine act of goodness because God wanted to teach His Jews something for al…

The enemies of Israel are in a state of exultation, grinning from oil-well to oil-well. Former friends are now hostile, or at best turn away from us. Israel’s one great ally, the U.S.A., is showing signs that she is beginning to desert her. Economically we are in deep trouble. Psychologically we are anxious and depressed. The situation of the Jew in the Diaspora, because it is to such a great extent contingent upon the State of Israel, gives cause for much concern. It’s dark outside.What does a Jew do when it is dark outside? “It is better,” goes an old saying, “to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Judaism has institutionalized that wise insight. The Talmud teaches: נר חנוכה מצותה משתשקע החמה, the mitzvah of lighting the Hanukkah candle is from the time that the sun sets. The Hanukkah light has no function during the daytime. When the sun shines, there is no need for candles. When things are going well, faith does not represent a particularly great achievement. The מצות נר חנוכה applies only משתשקע החמה, when it is dark outside. It is easy to answer ברוך השם (“thank God”) when asked how you are, if you are basking in the sunshine of good fortune. But it is infinitely more difficult to say ברוך השם, or recite the blessing ברוך דיין האמת (“blessed is the True Judge”), when black clouds have darkened the light in your life and you are in deep gloom.So, on these dark days, Judaism does not despair but rather lights candles. I am not offering nostrums, cheap consolations. I do not underestimate the gravity of the situation – although I believe it is not as terrible as most of us feel. But I believe that 3500 years of experience in the course of history should have taught us something about how to act and react when it is dark outside. The spiritual alternative – which is implied in the idea of the Hanukkah candles – is not meant to be exclusive. I am not recommending that all Jews pull inwards and turn their backs on the whole world. Diplomacy, security, eco…

וישימו לו לבדו ולהם לבדם ולמצרים האוכלים אתם לבדם, כי לא יוכלון המצרים לאכול את העברים לחם כי תועבה היא למצרים (מ"ג-ל"ב). There is something faintly humorous about this complicated situation requiring three different tables – for the Egyptians, the Hebrews (i.e., the sons of Jacob), and Joseph (whom the brothers did not recognize). One can understand the brothers – they observed the mitzvot (according to the Gemara, even Eruv Tavshillin) and so would not dine with the Egyptians. The latter, too, had their food laws and would not eat with the Hebrews; Heroditus records that, at a much later date, they would not eat with the Greeks too. But Joseph is the ”odd man out." He fits in neither with Hebrews nor with Egyptians. Indeed, in the next verse we are told that Joseph seated them according to age; they were astounded – presumably, at Joseph’s awareness of their.chronological order. However, the ושב זקנים (by the כעלי תוספות ) suggests that there was nothing unusual about that, because they always acted in accordance with age, and Joseph might well have noticed that from previous ex-perience with them. The source of their amazement was, rather, the strange seating pattern of three tables. Their wonder was directed at Joseph himseIn a sense, Joseph symbolizes — in his appearance and position, not his essence and reality — the Galut Jew who is trying to ”moke it" in the non-Jewish world. He cuts a pathetic figure — he won’t identify with his fellow Jevzs, and he is not accepted by the Egyptians in whose ranks he is so desparately trying to enroll. The Galut Jew, in his flight from Jewish authenticity and his failure to be accepted by others, is reduced to eating at his own third table; he The major brunt of the Ilasmonean revolution was not the Syrian-Grceks as much as the Hellenizing Jevzs who wonted to de-Judaize our people. At worst, they are a mortal danger to us and we resist openly and heroically. At best, they are a bitterly' comical lot who will remain condemne…