Sh'lihut

I have to believe that the stark juxtaposition between the soaring heights of his early years and the depths to which he would fall in the years to come was not lost on Joseph. The first and favorite child of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel, the recipient of Jacob’s doting affections and coveted coat of many colors, Joseph had every reason to look forward to a life of privilege and purpose. As a young man, not once but twice he dreamed a little dream predicting an auspicious future for himself, an altogether starry future with him at the center. So when Joseph was flung into the pit by his brothers, sold into slavery into Egypt, falsely accused by his master’s wife and then cast into jail, I have to imagine that on more than one occasion Joseph wondered to himself something to the effect of: “Really? For this I was put on earth? How on earth is it possible, that I, Joseph, heir to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, have been brought so very low? A man chosen from amongst the chosen, now separated from my beloved father and all that is dear – and even worse – fated to obscurity.” We know, because the narrator tells us (and because we have seen the musical) that God was with Joseph, that everything would be OK. But Joseph didn’t know, he was unaware of how his story would turn out. Cast down from the high perch where his life began, poor, poor Joseph had fallen very far, into an empty, purposeless existence, a life whose mission was obscured from all – worst of all – from himself.

All of which makes it so very remarkable to hear what Joseph says to his brothers in the denouement of this week’s Torah reading when he reveals his true identity to them. Joseph has become the Egyptian vizier – like a father to Pharaoh. His brothers tremble before him, fearful of the vengeance he will exact upon them for the fraternal crimes of their youth. But Joseph does not reproach them with anger or spite, just the opposite. “Do not be distressed or angry that you sold me here,” Joseph tells them. “It was to save life that God sent me ahead of you . . . God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance.” (45:5-7) Joseph’s response is noteworthy not merely because of his willingness to forgive his brothers, to let bygones be bygones, to be magnanimous at the very moment when it would have been so much easier and human to act otherwise. Joseph’s response is remarkable because embedded within his words sits a striking theological statement – a combination of faith, humility, self-awareness and sense of mission – that enabled him to rewrite the story of his life. Not just his final high stature, but all of the lows that came before. Every chapter, every pivot, seen part of a divinely ordained plan: His descent down to Egypt, his years of imprisonment, even his brothers’ initial treachery – all reframed as necessary steps towards a greater good. Yes, Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers, but that is only part of it. The real revelation of this scene is one of self-revelation, of Joseph announcing to himself that he has been put on this earth for the purpose of saving lives, those of his brethren and all of Egypt. This is the moment that Joseph “gets it,” when he understands that the point of his existence isn’t to have power and it certainly isn’t about some brotherly quarrel that had long since run its course. Here and now, Joseph realizes that the story of his life, past and – most importantly – future is to serve a cause greater than he ever imagined possible.

It is said that the Hasidic master Rabbi Israel of Rhyzen would pray: “Dear God, I do not ask you to explain to me why the world has been created, or why the good suffer and the evil prosper. Only, please, tell me: What am I doing in this world of yours?” This, explains my late teacher Dr. Byron Sherwin z”l, is the fundamental question of human existence, the query at the core of us all, that boils down to one word: purpose. For what purpose have I been put on this earth? Not “we,” not humanity as a whole; interesting as the question of why humankind exists may be, the deeper existential question – the one which we ask as we go to sleep and use our waking hours to answer – is of a far more personal nature: Why me? Why was I put here on this earth? At this time? Would the world be any different if I weren’t here? Sherwin cites the reflections of Pascal, the seventeenth century French philosopher, who wrote:

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and I am astonished at being here rather than there: for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this space and time been allotted to me? The eternal silence of those infinite spaces frightens me. (Pascal, cited in Sherwin, Crafting the Soul, pp. 1-2)

The question is the same for us all no matter our station in life: prince or pauper, rich or poor. To have no answer to the question of purpose is to be rendered rudderless, as a driven leaf tormented aimlessly and endlessly. To have an answer, to have a sense of mission in this world is to have found meaning in the short time allotted to us. It is the balm that soothes the crushing weight of human mortality. As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” (Cited in David Brooks, The Road to Character, p. 23)

I do believe that each and every one of us has a purpose, a function, a mission here on this earth that only we, uniquely, can fulfill. Earlier this week, my neighbor and colleague Rabbi Haskel Lookstein drew my attention to a beautiful article by the late Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik called “Shlihut,” a concept that can best be translated as the act of being an emissary (Yemei Zikaron). As human beings created in the image of the divine, we carry an awesome responsibility to be God’s emissaries, to instantiate the divine will here on earth. The mission is not necessarily explicit, we are not called on by God as were Abraham and Moses. Rather it is the very fact of our being that is our implicit calling. No different than Joseph, who came to understand the particular role that he was called on to play, so too each one of us. It is a posture both audacious and humbling – a “summoned life” driven by the belief that each one of us has a vocation, a life driven not by the question of what I want out of this world, but what this world wants or expects out of me. (Brooks, The Road to Character, p. 21) In language that mirrors Pascal and carries of whiff of the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, Soloveitchik writes, “The fact that a person is born in a specific time and era and place and not in another era and other circumstance can only be understood by accepting the concept that every person is an emissary.” (p. 11) Nevertheless explains Soloveitchik, not everyone will fulfill her or his mission. None of us is ever informed as to what our mission is, and granted the gift of free will, the choice of whether we do or don’t fulfill it is ultimately our own to make. To be human, however, is to live with the knowledge that every life does bear the potentiality of purpose and that a life well lived is lived in pursuit of discovering that purpose and, more importantly, seeking to fulfill it.

When it comes to shlihut, identifying and fulfilling the particular mission of our existence, there are no hard and fast rules. Some people run towards it, some resist. Joseph embraced his mission as it became apparent to him. Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of hearing from Wendy Kopp, a woman who nearly twenty-five years ago thought up the idea of Teach for America as her senior thesis in college. Tens of thousands of teachers, students and school systems have been forever changed by that single and sustained shlihut. Others, like Moses, like Esther, like Jonah take some convincing along the way; they only accept their life work grudgingly or with great apprehension. There is not necessarily a correlation between the success of any person’s shlihut and his or her initial willingness to accept that shlihut.

Some people find their shlihut early, some people find it late. Rabbi Akiva, the greatest scholar of his day, was an illiterate shepherd until he was forty. Theodore Herzl’s frenzy of Zionist activity, leadership that would alter the face of Jewish history forever, all happened in the final ten years of his life. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in his late forties, Ray Kroc built up McDonalds in his fifties and Abraham and Sarah were ninety-nine and ninety respectively when they got around to having children. I often remind myself that one of my heroes, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, didn’t write his major work until he was in his mid-fifties. One never knows when one will find one’s shlihut.

Furthermore, continues Soloveitchik, not only might one’s mission not be what one thinks it is, it might also not be just one. Over the course of his or her lifetime, every person has multiple missions to fulfill. A mission can be momentary – an unanticipated intervention in another’s life, whereby one acquires the world to come in a single instant – or it can be ongoing, like parenting a child. Perhaps most importantly, Soloveitchik writes, there can be no hierarchy to shlihut. It is expressly forbidden to rank one person’s shlihut as higher than another, even if one of the people is a powerful ruler or a great Torah scholar. There is no person without his or her hour, as Pirkei Avot teaches, there is no thing that does not have its place. For if we are all created equally in the infinite dignity of God, then every person’s task is unique and thus deserving of respect. As Martin Luther King famously wrote:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or a Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

No question, shlihut is an elusive, slippery concept that raises as many questions as it resolves. Nevertheless, what we can not do, what we dare not do, is abdicate our obligation and opportunity to find our purpose in this world, going to the grave with our song unsung, failing to contribute that one thing that only we can and that this world is waiting on us and counting on us to do.

The final and perhaps most important thing to say about shlihut is that it is an outlook on life that never ceases. Nobody ever sees the mission of his or her life fulfilled, and no person will ever know the full extent of his or her influence. Even Joseph, who believed his purpose to be one thing, understood that it would not be for generations that the full impact of his existence would be realized. So too each one of us must live attentive to the possibilities of every moment, aware that the ripple effect of every moment extends well beyond the horizon of our vision. We must, like God, muster the courage “to be that which we will be,” asserting our faith in our humanity and our God with the self affirmation that we are indispensible to God’s creation. As Heschel wrote, “In the eyes of the world I am average. But in my own heart, I am of great moment. The challenge I face is how to actualize, how to concretize, the quiet eminence of my being.” (Who is Man, p. 35) Today and every day, may we all live up to this challenge, actualizing the fullness of our being and living lives that will stand as enduring testimony to what it means to live a purposeful existence.