#WINNING
Vayechi 5783
This week, it has been interesting to compare what happened in the Vermont Statehouse yesterday and what we see happening in the national Capitol this week. In the Vermont statehouse where I was honored to give an invocation for the inauguration yesterday, there were three parties represented, and the administration includes members of all three parties. There was also more than civility in the ceremony – there was visible connection and respect across our partisan lines and our principled disagreement.
In Washington, DC, we’ve seen the dysfunction of partisans and ideologues, and an inability to work together even between people who most agree on many issues and who are, nominally, on the same side of the aisle.
When reflecting on this, it occurred to me that one way to think about the different scenes is by asking a simple question: What does it mean to win? What does winning look like?
It seems that more and more in the US and the world, “winning” has come to mean destroying the enemy. The pleasure of winning seems for many people to be the pleasure of seeing the defeat of the other side, the submission of enemies. Winning a battle in this view becomes a virtue in itself, and no other ethics or considerations are relevant.
In this view, life is a zero-sum game of winners and losers, strong and weak, and how I win or the fall out of the battle doesn’t matter. In the rearview mirror, all that will matter is whether or not we won.
I believe this view is horribly flawed. “Winning” can be much more cooperative and less destructive.
In this week’s Torah portion, has some interesting insights on this. We are at the very end of Genesis- which we will read from the Torah tomorrow morning, please come - when Jacob dies, the brothers reconcile, and Joseph dies.
By any measure, Joseph is a winner.
· He went from being thrown in a pit and sold into slavery by his brother, and then thrown into another prison in Egypt, to being the second most powerful person in Egypt, on a par with Pharaoh himself.
· He is a winner because he has both a technicolor dreamcoat and a King Tut wardrobe.
Joseph wins not by destroying his enemies and oppressors, but by working to help them while helping his own agenda and fulfilling his own needs.
· Joseph is a winner because when Pharaoh took him out of prison to interpret his dream, he was focused not on the catastrophe that was coming, but on the solutions that were possible if they planned ahead.
· Joseph is a winner because instead of trying to “win” against his brothers through punishing and degrading them, he instead “wins” by reconciling with them and helping them find a good life, without ever giving up his own comfort, power, wealth, or his separateness from them. He wins neither through vengeance nor through self-sacrifice.
· Joseph is a winner because instead of focusing on revenge and “getting even,” and “doing to them what they did to me”, Joseph looks for ways to make his point while also building or rebuilding relationships and allegiances.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves more often: WWJD: What would Joseph do?
From my experience at the statehouse yesterday, I would say despite all our challenges here in Vermont, we are winning, because we are trying our best to work together to make things better instead of trying to tear the “other side” down, no matter the consequences.
I pray that those in Washington, DC learn quickly that fighting constantly doesn’t toughen us up but tears us down and leaves us weaker and pathetic. I hope they learn quickly how easy it is to win a battle and lose a war, and how much more we all win if we can see find solutions to challenges that allow us all to flourish a bit more, and leave us, at least for a while, in the rich land of Goshen.
Shabbat Shalom