Gainesville 2025
I want to share a little bit of my personal history with you today. When I was in High School, it was the height of the Cold War. Something inside me drove me to want to learn everything I could about what was then the Soviet Union. But, I didn’t know where or how to start. I figured I would take a course in Russian politics and history and I told my parents about it. They were not thrilled.
You see, they came from a time when the most important things a person could study was what they could use in the future. And since classic education in Canada meant Latin and Canadian history, they wanted me to take those subjects and concentrate on them as that would prepare me for the future.
Now, I had zero interest in Latin although I took a Latin course. Unfortunately, it was taught like most language courses…very poorly. And as for Canadian history, I had already studied it, as most Canadian kids were wont to do.
I was stuck between my own interests and my parents ideas of what constituted a rich education. It was not a comfortable place to be.
One day, in the middle of this dilemma, I chanced upon the Russian history teacher, Mr. Young. He asked if I was still interested in his class and I said I most certainly was but that my parents were more interested in Latin and Canadian history. It was then that my man from Dothan appeared…remember him from the Joseph story? Joseph was looking for his brothers and, out of nowhere, this man appeared and turned him to a new direction that ultimately took him to Egypt and, ultimately, saving his family. It was a moment that changed his life.
In the same way, Mr. Young appeared as the man of Dothan at that exact moment. He asked me a question that totally changed the direction of my life. He said, ‘I understand what your parents want and it is very understandable…but what does Cy Stanway want?’ I remember being stunned by the question. You see, up to that moment, as is true for most of us, our parents determined the course of our lives. Basically we did what they told us to do. But, internally, I was finding my own way. It would only become evident much later on that his question changed the course of my life. And, yes, I took the Soviet history and politics course and that set me on a lifelong interest in Russian history. All that because it was the first time that someone had challenged me to be, well, me.
So why am sharing this with you? Well, you see in our portion today Joseph’s brothers stand before him after he had revealed himself to them. His brothers thought that Joseph was dwelling on the terrible deed they had done to him years before. Remember, they threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery. Yet, Joseph’s response to his brothers was not one of retribution. Rather, the midrash tells us that The midrash answers:
“Joseph stood up and prayed, ‘Blessed is God who performed a miracle for me in this place!’” (ibid.) And then the Torah text continues, “Though you intended me harm, God intended it for good, in order to accomplish what is now the case, to keep alive a numerous people.” (Gen. 50:20).
Can you imagine the relief of Joseph’s brothers? For all of them, Joseph included, looking back on this dysfunctional family dynamic elicited a moment of recognition that appeared to the etzba Elohim – a hidden finger of God that guided all of them to a future where the Jewish people would survive and flourish.
Victor Frankl, a survivor of Nazi extermination camps wondered how it was that some people survived. He created a psychological school of thought called logotherapy which postulates that “The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected. … What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning [Boston: Beacon Press, 1963], p. 157)
What this means is that if choose to look at the still, small finger of God in our past, we can give meaning to the moments in our lives that have shaped us and the direction in which we traveled. The meaning of a given moment is hard to see but we gain clarity looking back and framing our experiences with meaning. What happened is important. But how we derive meaning from what has happened is much more important.
Around this time of the year and at the beginning of our Jewish new year, we are sensitive to the past. We look back and many of our memories ove the past years are poignant and often beautiful. We greet those that brought obvious blessing with appreciation. But what about those whose lessons are more painful? Sometimes the blessing is hard to see, if it can be seen as all? Joseph, like us, had a choice to remember with anger at seeing a curse or reconciliation by seeing a blessing. HIs lesson is our lesson. We can’t help remembering those too, and when we can, try to find the blessing even in the pain. Not easy. Not always possible. But sometimes the blessing can be discerned and celebrated.
As a colleague once wrote, “Joseph didn’t allow the bleak memories of the past to be destructive or corrosive, but rather he found blessing and insight in them. For Joseph, the past was prologue. He looked into the pit and, remembering his past, he appreciated the present and dreamed of a future.”
Each moment may be a man from Dothan or a Mr. Young moment that changes the direction of our lives in ways that may not even be know to us for years. But upon looking at these moments each of us can ask the same question as Joseph did – “Did God not bring me to this moment?” Or as Mordechai says in the Book of Esther – a book where the name of God does not appear and yet God’s presence is everywhere throughout it – “Who knows if it was just for this moment that you arrived at majesty?”
Our blessings may be dormant for now. We may not see them yet. But our prayer is that we can see these blessings and make them into moments of peace for a richer and more meaningful life.
