Tag Archives: Vayeshev

Tamar’s Spiritual Journey

In the midst of relaying the saga of Joseph, this week’s parasha takes a detour to explore what was happening with Yehudah at the same time. As is well-known, Yehudah married a Canaanite woman referred to as Bat Shua and had three sons. His eldest, Er, then married a woman named Tamar. After Er passed away young and childless due to his sins, Tamar had to marry his brother Onan to fulfil the law of yibum, or “levirate marriage”. The sinful second son also died shortly after, so Tamar had to marry the third, Shelah. However, Yehudah innocently believed that his two older sons may have died because of something wrong with Tamar, and wanted to avoid another levirate marriage to spare his remaining child.

Rembrandt’s ‘Judah and Tamar’

Tamar decided to take matters into her own hands. She dressed up as a harlot and managed to seduce Yehudah himself. Tamar got pregnant from that union and gave birth to the twins Peretz and Zerach. From Peretz would eventually descend King David and, in turn, Mashiach. What Tamar had done out of desperation might be understandable on some level, but it does not change the fact that she did something completely immoral. In fact, Yehudah himself initially condemned her to death, before learning that he had been tricked by his own daughter-in-law. God always makes sure to mete out punishment measure-for-measure, and souls need a perfectly balanced rectification, or tikkun. Where did Tamar’s soul find her rectification?

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How to Define (and Attain) True Success

In this week’s parasha, Vayeshev, the Torah describes Joseph three times as being matzliach, “successful”. The word appears just four times in the entire Tanakh—and Joseph got three of them! (The fourth was Eliezer, on his mission to find a wife for Isaac.) Joseph was, by far, the most successful Biblical figure. What, exactly, is success? How do we measure if a person is truly “successful” or not? A careful analysis reveals that there are four major markers of success, neatly paralleling the four instances of “success” in the Tanakh.

Health and Wealth

In our modern capitalist society, it is no surprise that the most common marker of success (and sometimes the only marker) is wealth. Society deems a person “successful” if they are materially wealthy. Billionaires are portrayed as the paragons of success, role models for everyone else to aspire to. While wealth is indeed an indicator of success, it is only the first and lowest level. We use it so regularly because it is the easiest to measure and track. It is something we can put a concrete number on: net worth, credit score, investments, bank accounts.

To determine what is a higher marker of success, we need to ask: what is more important than wealth? In other words, what would a person give up all of their wealth for? The first thing that comes to mind is health. A person who is ill will spend whatever they have to get better. Tragically, we probably all know people who were diagnosed with cancer or some other life-threatening condition and spent countless sums for treatments, sometimes selling nearly all of their assets to do so. The same is not true the other way; a person would never willingly accept a life-threatening cancer in exchange for any sum of money! If this is the case, the health status of a person should be a greater indicator of success than their material wealth.

It reminds me of a story my father-in-law likes to tell: Shortly after they had made aliyah from the USSR, and were still living in relative poverty, the extended family gathered for a barbecue at a park. Some time later, a fancy car pulled up and a gentleman was brought to the park by his chauffeur. The man took a seat on a bench and simply watched my wife’s family. My father-in-law put together a plate of barbecue and plov, and walked over to give it to him (with a little l’chayim, too). The gentleman thanked him, but refused. He told my father-in-law that while he was tremendously wealthy and had more money than he could ever use, he could not enjoy any of it, for he was also tremendously ill. He could not drink or eat anything outside his carefully-constructed diet, and could hardly move on his own. He hoped that it was okay he was watching the family, for this way he might draw a little bit of second-hand joy from them. The man concluded with a message: don’t sacrifice your health in pursuit of wealth!

Love and Success

Continuing on the next level, the same test can be applied: what would a person give up their health for? Certainly, one would (and does) sacrifice their health for their family. In other words, for those that a person loves. While a person would, say, never accept a cancer in exchange for money, most people would probably accept a cancer in exchange for relieving their child of the same cancer. Any parent is ready at an instant to take upon themselves the pain of their young child. This brings to mind another powerful story:

An aunt of mine was diagnosed with a difficult cancer while still in her twenties, and with little children of her own. My grandmother was so distraught that she fell on her knees and prayed to Hashem to spare her daughter-in-law (my aunt), and to transfer the cancer to herself instead. My grandmother passed away within a few months—from cancer. Meanwhile, my aunt’s cancer went away and she lived for another three decades. (As an aside, the night before my grandmother passed away, she made my mother promise to have one more child. That child would be me!)

To summarize, the third marker of success is love, or more broadly, the quantity and quality of a person’s relationships. A millionaire is successful, yes; a person in excellent health and living into a good old age is more successful in the grand scheme; and one that is surrounded by doting loved ones even more so. In fact, we see that attaining a higher measure of success often ensures that a person also has the lower levels. A person in good health is more likely to be wealthier. A person with warm, loving relationships is more likely to be healthier, and also more likely to be financially successful! And this is confirmed scientifically:

In one of the most fascinating studies ever conducted, Harvard University researchers tracked a group of people for over 75 years. Among the conclusions of this well-known “Study of Adult Development” is that the most important marker of overall success and happiness was having loving relationships. The researchers found that those who had good relationships earned, on average, $141,000 more than those that didn’t. (Interestingly, IQ didn’t have much of an effect on having a high income.) They also found that those who had good marriages were healthier and tended to live longer, as did those that had good relationships with their parents.

It seems, then, that there shouldn’t be any higher indicator of success than love. Even the Mishnah apparently echoes this sentiment, stating that “One with whom people are pleased, God is pleased with. But one with whom people are displeased, God is displeased with.” (Avot 3:10) What could be higher than love? Let’s apply the same question once more: what would a person give up their loved ones for?

The Soul

The final and highest level of success can be summarized with one word: soul. A person would not give up their loved ones for money, or health, but many would do so when it comes to preserving their very soul and conscience. Would a person take another’s innocent life to save a loved one’s? Probably not. Would a person commit rape (God forbid) when threatened with their life? Unlikely. Halakhically speaking, they would be forbidden from doing so, for these would fall under the three “cardinal sins” of Judaism. In Jewish law, one must give up his or her life to avoid transgressions under the three broad categories of murder, sexual sin, and idolatry. While these examples are certainly extreme, they serve to illustrate the broader lesson that the soul is the most valuable thing a person possesses. As such, developing the soul to its highest degree would be the greatest measure of success.

Following the same argument as above, a person with spiritual success should also be successful in all the lower levels beneath it. We would expect such a person to also be wealthy, healthy, and surrounded by loving relationships. Indeed, this is what we see in most cases. We find all of our Patriarchs were exceedingly wealthy and lived long, healthy lives. The same is true for most of the Biblical prophets, and the Talmud states a general rule that prophets were all wealthy (Nedarim 38a).

The Talmudic Sages themselves demonstrate this principle well. Rabbi Akiva and Hillel, for example, started out impoverished and spiritually unrefined, but went on to become among the greatest rabbis of all time—and very wealthy and influential, too. There were, of course, Sages that were very poor, but we find that typically they were poor by choice. They wanted to live a simpler, more ascetic lifestyle. The most famous such story is that of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, whose wife was so tired of their poverty that she asked him to pray for wealth (Ta’anit 25a). The Heavens answered with a huge chunk of gold. The rabbanit then had a dream at night where she saw that chunk of gold was given to them from their reward in the Afterlife. She told her husband to give it back!

In short, spiritual refinement is the highest level of success, and includes all the other levels within it. The perfect model for this is Joseph, the man most often described in the Torah as “successful”. Joseph was on the highest level of spirituality, so much so that the Torah tells us “the spirit of God was within him” (Genesis 41:38). He ended up being immensely wealthy and powerful, and we also see he had a loving, monogamous marriage, and good children. His sons were so good, in fact, that until this day we bless our sons every Shabbat evening to be “like Ephraim and like Menashe”! Joseph was the complete package.

If that’s the case, why does the Torah mention him as being “successful” three times, and not four?

Letters of Success

‘Joseph Makes Himself Known to His Brethren’ by Gustav Doré

The one drawback that we find in Joseph is that he died relatively young, at “only” 110 years. From our perspective, this is a long life, but back then it was shorter than any of the Patriarchs. Moreover, our Sages state that Joseph was first of all the sons of Jacob to pass away (even though he was the second-last child, and should have outlived most of them). The reason is that Joseph had a bit of an ego when confronting his brothers. For this he was punished, and his life, though healthy, was cut short (see, for instance, Yalkut Shimoni, Beresheet 151). This might explain why Joseph is not described as successful all four times.

Finally, we find in the very letters of “success” (מצליח) a way to remember its four categories. The first letter mem represents mammon, “wealth”. The mem literally means “water”, and its shape represents flow. Appropriately, money is described as being “liquid”, having a “currency”, flowing through the economy. In the Talmud, too, money is called zuz, which literally means “move”. The next letter tzadi is read as tzadik, meaning “righteous”. It represents that highest level of success, spiritual refinement. The lamed, the longest letter in the alphabet, represents longevity and health. Finally, our Sages teach that the chet stands for, and is in the shape of, a chuppah, standing for love and marriage. In this way, the letters of matzliach spell out what it truly means to be successful.

Wasting Seed: Minor Taboo or Grave Sin?

In this week’s parasha, Vayeshev, we read about the incident of Yehuda and Tamar. Yehuda’s eldest son, Er, marries a beautiful woman named Tamar. Unfortunately, Er “was evil in the eyes of God, and God put him to death.” (Genesis 38:7) As was customary in those days, since Er died without a son, it was expected that his brother, Onan, would perform levirate marriage and take Tamar as his wife. As the Torah describes, the purpose of this is to essentially provide a sort of heir for his childless brother. Onan was happy to marry Tamar, but

knew that the progeny would not be his, and it came about, when he came to his brother’s wife, he wasted [his semen] on the ground, in order not to give seed to his brother. And what he did was evil in the eyes of God, and He put him to death also. (Genesis 38:9-10)

As we know, Yehuda would end up being with Tamar himself, and out of that union would come Peretz, the ancestor of King David.

‘Judah and Tamar’

The big question is: what was it that Er and Onan did that was so despicable to God? The classic answer is that they wasted their seed (as the Torah states above), which is why they were punished so severely. This narrative is then used as proof from the Torah that wasting seed is among the gravest of prohibitions.

And yet, the Torah itself does not actually prohibit wasting seed anywhere, at least not explicitly. Considering how strictly the Sages spoke about not wasting seed, we might be surprised to find that it is not one of the 613 commandments. So, what is the true extent of this prohibition? Where did it come from? And what was really going on with Er and Onan?

A Closer Look at Er and Onan

While the Torah tells us that Er was evil in God’s eyes, it does not explain why. Many commentators (including Rashi and Rabbeinu Bechaye) assume that he must have been evil for the same reason his brother Onan was: for wasting seed. Rabbeinu Bechaye (1255-1340) clarifies that the sin was not the act of wasting seed itself, but rather for an ulterior motive. Er did not want to impregnate Tamar so that her beauty would not be ruined. He wanted her solely for physical pleasure. This is what was despicable to God.

Similarly, a careful look at the Torah makes it clear that Onan’s sin was not wasting seed either. What the Torah says is that Onan did not want to fulfil the mitzvah of levirate marriage. He avoided impregnating Tamar because he “knew the progeny would not be his”, and the reason he spilled his seed on the ground was “in order not to give seed to his brother”. The sin here was not the act of wasting seed, but rather disrespecting his own brother, and refusing to fulfil the mitzvah of levirate marriage.

Such is the opinion of Tzror haMor (Rabbi Abraham Saba, 1440-1508), and we see similar comments by Sforno (Rabbi Ovadiah ben Yakov, 1475-1550). Chizkuni (Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoach, c. 1250-1310) goes even further, saying that Onan was really out to increase his share of land, for if he would have fulfilled the mitzvah, the child would receive Er’s portion of land, and if not, then Onan would be the inheritor. From these commentaries, and the Torah’s own simple reading, we can definitively conclude that the sin was not the wasting of seed itself but the evil ulterior motives behind it, especially greed and disrespect for a brother.

All of this is right in line with the Torah’s persistent theme of brothers failing to love each other, starting with Cain and Abel and continuing through Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and Yehuda’s sons. The Torah takes every possible opportunity to remind us to love each other wholeheartedly (as we are all brothers), and that tragedies always befall the Jewish people when we lack brotherly love—as our Sages explicitly state countless times.

Going back to the subject at hand, nowhere else in the Torah is wasting seed an issue. The Torah does state that a man who has an “emission” is impure for purposes of going to the Temple. What he must do is immerse in water, and wait until the evening for the impurity to go away (Leviticus 15:16). No other punishment is prescribed, irrespective of why the man might have the emission.

Spilling Seed, or Spilling Blood?

It is in the Talmud where wasting seed takes on its grave overtones. The Sages compare one who wastes seed to a murderer, an idolater, and an adulterer (Niddah 13a-b). This is quite shocking, considering that murder, idolatry, and adultery are the three “cardinal sins” of Judaism. These are the things one must give up their life for in order to avoid, even if coerced. The Sages are equating wasting seed with the worst possible sins.

In the same pages, we read how Rav Yochanan holds that one who wastes seed “deserves death”. Interestingly, he bases himself on the verses in the Torah concerning the deaths of Er and Onan! Yet, as we’ve seen, their sin was not the act of wasting seed, but their evil ulterior motives. In reality, the Sages are hard-pressed to find a good source for the prohibition. They resort to various colourful interpretations of Scriptural verses in an attempt to illustrate the evils of wasting seed. For example, Isaiah 1:15 says “And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; when you make many prayers, I will not hear, [because] your hands are full of blood.” Rabbi Elazar says that “hands are full of blood” is referring to those who masturbate, since spilling seed is like spilling blood! This is far from the plain meaning of the verse, which is obviously talking about actual bloodshed.

We should keep in mind that in these Talmudic pages, the Sages are not just prohibiting masturbation or wasting seed, but even for a man to simply touch their “member”—even to urinate! “Rabbi Eliezer said: Whoever holds his member when he urinates is as though he had brought a flood on the world.” Rabbi Tarfon later adds that his hand should be cut off! It goes without saying that the Sages were exceedingly careful to avoid any sexual transgressions, and raised many “fences” to ensure that no one should even come close to sinning so gravely. We must remember that the Talmud often uses hyperbole to get a point across and it isn’t always wise to take statements literally. The Sages themselves question Rabbi Eliezer, and say that not holding one’s member would be very impractical, for “would not the spray splatter on his feet…?”

The point, rather, is to teach us that “such is the art of the evil inclination: Today it incites man to do one wrong thing, and tomorrow it incites him to worship idols and he proceeds to worship them.” (Niddah 13b) The Sages are specifically referring to one who fantasizes to “give himself an erection”, and that such a person “should be expelled”. After all, the yetzer hara works in such a way that it gets a person to make a tiny sin, and slowly leads them to greater transgressions. It might start with a small thought, grow into a consuming fantasy, and eventually leads one to grossly misbehave. In short, the fear is that a person will get accustomed to bad habits, and it will end up leading to more severe transgressions.

Halacha & Kabbalah of Spilling Seed

The Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1135-1204) codifies as law the prohibition of wasting seed, whether with one’s partner or on their own (Mishneh Torah, Issurei Biah 21:18):

It is forbidden to release semen wastefully. Therefore a person should not enter his wife and release outside of her… Those who release semen with their hands, beyond the fact that they commit a great transgression, a person who does this will abide under a ban of ostracism. Concerning them, it is said: “Your hands are filled with blood.” It is as if they killed a person.

The Rambam makes a distinction between a situation of husband and wife versus a man doing it on his own, which is far worse and likened to “murder”. Having said that, many other great authorities in Jewish law were more lenient when it comes to wasting seed, especially when the intention is not evil. The Rambam’s contemporary, Rabbi Yehuda haHasid (1150-1217), wrote in his Sefer Hasidim that while masturbation is forbidden, and requires a great deal of penance to repair, it is occasionally permitted if it will prevent a person from a more serious sin. On that note, the Rambam himself wrote elsewhere (Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 7:4) that wasting seed is not an explicit Torah prohibition, and carries no actual punishment of any kind. However, he writes in the same place that although many things are permitted when done consensually between husband and wife, it is nonetheless important to be exceedingly modest when it comes to sexuality.

The later Kabbalists understood that the Torah carries no explicit punishment for wasting seed, but found an allusion to a more mystical punishment. They taught that wasting seed produces banim shovavim, literally “wayward children” (a term that comes from Jeremiah 3:14 and 3:22). These impure spirits—potential souls that are brought into this world without a body—attach to a man’s neck and cause him great damage, and can harm his children, too. There is no doubt that the Rambam, being a strict rationalist and staying away from anything “Kabbalistic”, would disagree with this approach. The Rambam did not believe in demons or evil spirits, and refused to accept the validity of many Kabbalistic ideas and practices.

The Arizal (Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534-1572), perhaps the greatest of Kabbalists, was a major proponent of the banim shovavim notion. Since his time, it has become customary in some communities to focus on purifying from sexual sins and from wasted seed during the weeks when we read the consecutive parashas of Shemot, Va’era, Bo, Beshalach, Yitro, and Mishpatim. Since the initials of these parashas spell “shovavim”, it is thought to be an auspicious time for such repentance. Yet even the Arizal taught that wasting seed is primarily a problem when a person does so on their own, for selfish, lustful reasons. If one is married, and there is genuine loving intimacy between husband and wife, the prohibition is no longer so clear cut. (See, for example, Sha’ar HaMitzvot on Noach).

Indeed, many authorities were lenient with regards to wasting seed in the context of a husband and wife being together—as long as they are not like Er or Onan. If the intention is pure, and the couple has fulfilled the mitzvah of procreation (so they are obviously not trying to avoid having children), then occasionally wasting seed is permissible. Among those that held this opinion include the tosafist Rabbi Isaac ben Shmuel (c. 1115-1184, in his comments to Yevamot 34b) and the Maharsha (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, 1555-1631, in his comments on Nedarim 20a).

In fact, even the Arizal taught that, in certain special cases, wasted seed can serve a positive purpose. In Sha’ar HaGilgulim (ch. 26), we read how the ten drops of wasted seed that unintentionally emerged out of Joseph (as per the famous Midrash) resulted in levushim, protective “garments” for the soul. The seed wasted indirectly by tzaddikim may similarly produce such protective garments, especially when it happens during proper, loving, holy zivug (union) between husband and wife. Such union, while not fruitful in this world, corresponds to “heavenly unions” that are spiritually fruitful. It is important to repeat that this entails being an actual tzaddik—being righteous, just, observant, modest, humble, selfless—and being intimate in a holy, loving, kosher, monogamous union.

On that note, it is worth mentioning that a couple that is childless, or already pregnant, is absolutely allowed to continue to be intimate, and this is not at all considered “wasting seed”. (The Talmud adds that intimacy during the third trimester is particularly healthy for both mother and baby, see Niddah 31a.) At the very start of Sha’ar HaMitzvot, the Arizal explains that such unions might not produce physical children, but they produce many spiritual children. This is one meaning for the verse in the Torah that says Abraham and Sarah “made souls” in Charan (Genesis 12:5)—although they were physically childless, they had produced many souls in Heaven, and these souls later came down into human form. In fact, there are those who say these souls are given to converts, who receive a Jewish soul upon their successful conversion. The souls that Abraham and Sarah made all those years come down into the bodies of converts, which is the deeper reason why all converts are referred to as “ben Avraham” and “bat Sarah”.

To summarize and conclude, the issue of spilled seed is indeed a serious one, and should not be taken lightly. There is room to be lenient in certain situations, such as a righteous married couple who already has multiple children, or a young, unmarried gentleman, whose frustration might reach a point where he might be led to worse sins. The Sages recognized how incredibly difficult the latter case can be, and stated that a young bachelor who lives in the city and can still hold himself back from sexual sins is so praiseworthy that God personally calls out his name in Heaven every day (Pesachim 113a). Rabbi Chiya, meanwhile, said that it is best to stay married no matter what, and to always treat one’s wife exceedingly well—even if she is the worst kind of wife—because wives “save us from sin” (Yevamot 63a). It is fitting to end with another famous adage from the Talmud (Sukkah 52b): אבר קטן יש לו לאדם מרעיבו שבע משביעו רעב “There is a small organ in a man’s body—if he starves it, he is satisfied; if he satisfies it, he starves.”