Yosef’s oldest brother, Reuben, interjected, suggesting they just throw him in a pit instead, intending to come back for him later. So they threw him into a pit, but he didn’t get the chance. Before Reuben got the chance to come back and get Yosef out, an Ishmaelite caravan passed by, and the other brothers decided to sell him to them. They faked his death, spilling goat’s blood on the colorful coat their father had made for him, and on they went with their lives.

This is the part Hebrew school teachers always brush over, so I suppose I will too. Yehudah, another of Yaakov’s sons, had three sons of his own, and throughout a series of events, two ended up dead and he ended up marrying a woman named Tamar who he met at the side of a road—such a meet-cute. King David and his dynasty are descended from the family tree of Yehudah and Tamar, and so will Mashiach. (Mashiach now!)

Cut to: Yosef, taken to Egypt, sold to a man named Potiphar as a slave. He worked his way up through the ranks, earning respect, but also earning unwanted attention. Potiphar’s wife was enamored with him, infatuated, and started throwing herself at him; he rejected her advances and ran away. Spiteful, she spun the story around so she’d be seen as the victim, and for his crimes, Yosef was imprisoned.

In prison, Yosef gained a bit of a reputation as a dream interpreter. Two men, the baker and the butler of the Egyptian Pharaoh, both recently imprisoned, asked for his help interpreting their dreams. He tells the baker he’s going to be killed, tells the butler that he’s going to be pardoned, and asks the butler to remember him once he is released. The interpretations come true just as he predicted they would, but once the butler is released, he forgets about Yosef and goes back to his life.

In this week’s parsha, we see dreams of glory and dreams of the most mundane, dreams causing strife and dreams resulting in death and dreams resulting in freedom. What’s in a dream? What is a dream?

I love dreams. I rarely dream vividly, and even more rarely do I remember a single thing I dreamt, so when I do remember my dreams, I get childishly excited.

I hate dreams. My passions are ever-changing, the future unknowable, my goals abstract and undefined. “What are your dreams?” people ask me, “What are your goals?” And I have nothing to say but a small “I don’t know.” 

From Yosef’s dreams early in the parsha, we can learn to dream big. He dreamed of glory, of kingship, of being recognized for his greatness. Spoiler alert, it came true. We learn to have goals, aspirations. But we can also learn from his brothers’ reactions to his dreams that some things are best kept quiet. We learn not to be too cocky, not to spread word of our dreams or goals around people who don’t especially care about our success.

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When heavy rains and a flood were about to destroy the entire world, Noach gathered two of each animal and his family: his wife Naama, his sons Shem, Cham, and Yafet, and his three daughters-in-law. The humans lived on the top floor, the animals on the middle one, and their trash went on the bottom floor. The rains started and continued for forty days and forty nights, flooding the entire world. Every living thing outside the ark died, and all within it were spared.

It took months for the water to dry.

Noach sent a raven out of the ark to see if the water had yet abated. Then he sent another messenger, a dove, to check. It came back. Seven days later, Noach sent the dove again, and this time, it came back with an olive branch in its mouth. This was a sign the earth was going back to normal, that things were growing again, so they parked and disembarked.

G-d created the rainbow, a promise that He would never destroy the world again and a sign that He wants to. It’s a shame they’re so pretty; maybe, if they looked a little scarier, we’d actually be scared into working on our shortcomings.

And life went pretty much back to normal, as life is wont to do, despite the massive changes and destruction that had just occurred. I guess we get used to even the worst situations.

Generations later, the world was more populated, all these new people speaking the same language. This new generation decided to fight G-d and built a tower to be able to reach them. Teamwork didn’t make the dream work, though, even though every member of this group project pulled their weight. G-d created different languages in order to confuse them, each tower-builder now unable to communicate with the next.

From Noach’s son Shem came Terach, and to Terach a son named Abraham was born. Abraham married his brother’s daughter, Sarai.

It took forty days for the flood to destroy everything, and three hundred for things to only slightly go back to normal. It took one generation to destroy everyone, and ten generations to build the population back up. Our words work the same way: it takes just a few nasty ones to tear someone down, and hundreds to build them back up. The power of speech is hinted to in this parsha, when G-d commands Noach to gather the pure animals and the not pure ones, rather than explicitly calling them impure. Admittedly, this comes off as a stronger distinction in Hebrew, but the point stands: you don’t refer to things negatively when you don’t need to. As a teacher of mine pointed out recently, the specified measurements of the ark actually hint to speech as well—it was 30 amot by 300 amot by 50 amot, which, if translated by gematria into Hebrew letters, spell out lashon, speech.

We humans were created in G-d’s image. We were created with the power to build and destroy. It’s so easy to destroy, and so hard to build, and we need to use these gifts wisely. Use your speech carefully, to build others up rather than tear them down. Create, don’t destroy.

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In his speech to the Jews, Moshe said that when we’re punished, it’s our own fault, and he rebuked the nation for sinning. (Um, victim-blaming much?) He reminded us of when G-d found us in the desert and essentially adopted us. “Look at what G-d did for you,” rebuked Moshe, “He gave you plenty, and you got spoiled and rebelled against Him.” And that’s why we had to undergo troubles, go through famines and lose wars and face demons. If we neglect G-d in favor of idolatry and false gods, then when we go through troubles, we can’t go to G-d to complain about it. We’ll have to go to the idols and the false gods to ask for help, and unfortunately for us in that situation, there isn’t very much help they can offer. G-d swore, though, that ultimately, He’ll rain his revenge not onto us but onto His enemies.

“Pay attention to what I just told you, and pass this on to your children,” concluded Moshe. “Torah is your life, and you’ll now be crossing the Jordan River to inherit it.” The Jewish nation would be crossing, but Moshe wouldn’t be. Because Moshe sinned in the desert of Tzin. (Not to plagiarize Moshe Rabbeinu, but pay attention to what I just told you. I’ll bring this back up in a bit.) He would see the land from the mountaintop on which he now stood, but he would never make it into the Land of Israel.

Something that comes up repeatedly in the parsha is the word tzur, which means rock. G-d is characterized (what’s the opposite of personification, objectification?) as our Rock, the Rock of our salvation. Even the other deities, the lesser, imaginary ones, are characterized as rocks, albeit mockingly. These idols are small rocks, pathetic ones, the kind you get stuck in your shoe.

I suppose it’s a common enough metaphor, even in modern English. “He’s my rock,” a lovesick girl might say, gushing about her doting boyfriend, and listeners would understand the connotations of stability and support that are implicit in the term. But common as the metaphor may be, isn’t it a silly one? A rock is something you kick aside with your shoe while walking; it lies in the dirt. It feels hypocritical. We base metaphors on the rock’s strength, we laud it as the pinnacle of stability, but when it comes down to it, we don’t appreciate the rock itself. I think we need to get back to appreciating the little things, and I don’t mean the little good things (although we should definitely appreciate those too!) but even the little neutral things. A really fluffy cloud. Cool-looking shadows. Yeah—the rock on the side of the road.

It isn’t lost on me that the parsha ends with a callback to Moshe’s sin. What was his sin in the desert of Tzin? Hitting a rock. Because he hit a rock, he was not permitted to enter the promised land. He didn’t hit a sentient human being. He didn’t hit a puppy or a fish or a brand new iPhone. He hit a rock! Are rocks really all that great? By punishing Moshe for this sin, G-d is saying, “Yeah. They are.” Just because rocks are seen as ordinary or boring doesn’t mean you’re allowed to mistreat them.

My point is that we should appreciate the ordinary. We should respect the ordinary. Interpersonally, we should respect and appreciate even the people we perceive as ordinary, should try to notice the little things that make them extraordinary. Even the ordinary, boring things, even the rocks, are Hashem’s creations, which means they must be necessary.

Learn to love the ordinary, and rock on.

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But Moshe assured them that G-d would help them defeat their enemies and conquer the land, that they didn’t need to be scared of fighting. They would dwell in the land and keep the mitzvot, as G-d had commanded. Moshe then wrote the Torah and gave it to the elders of the nation and his fellow Levites.

He commanded a new mitzvah to them, the mitzvah of hakhel, which I can only imagine to have been THE event of the decade. Once every seven years, there would be a Lollapalooza type of sitch, except instead of a massive lineup, it would be the Jewish king; and instead of performing his hottest-charting singles, he would read the Torah in front of the entire nation; and instead of buying tickets and people checking whether you’re 21+, all the men and women and children and strangers in the nation, people of all ages, would go.

Once Moshe was finished passing along these messages to the Jews, G-d told him that after his passing, the Jews would forsake His covenant, and they would face consequences for it, and G-d would turn away from them. Following the earlier metaphor, this is akin to the teacher not only missing the final exam, but also knowing, preemptively and with certainty, that his students were doomed to fail. Then G-d told Joshua to be courageous, that he would lead the Jews into Israel, that G-d would be with him.

After speaking with G-d, Moshe preemptively rebuked the nation, saying, “I know you’re going to sin after my death,” (“You’re all going to fail the final,” our hypothetical teacher tells his class, on his last day teaching,) and thus conclude the events of this parsha.

For Parshat Vayeilech, all I can think about is taking a step back. Letting someone else take control. It’s something I’ve always struggled with, especially when it’s something I care about; I think I subconsciously don’t trust anybody else to do as good a job as I would.

But Moshe Rabeinu knew nobody else would do as good a job as him leading the Jewish nation. He himself told them in this week’s parsha that they would become corrupted and turn away from the path he’d led them on, and he handed over the reins to Joshua anyways. It wasn’t that he wasn’t able to lead them anymore because he was getting older or weaker. Physically, Moshe was just as capable as ever of leading the Jews, but he handed over the leadership because it was time to do so.

In life, we get too caught up on having full control of everything. I see people planning their summer vacations from the autumn before, or having a dream college when they’ve just barely entered high school, or having Pinterest boards of what they need their wedding to look like before they even know who they intend to marry. We get so caught up on being in control of every small detail that we forget we have no say in the bigger picture either. Like the old Yiddish adage says, “Man plans, and G-d laughs.”

This predominantly refers to the large scale, the grand scheme of things, when G-d is the One to dictate what happens next. Don’t worry about making sure everything goes right, because it’s not your place to worry about that. But this is also applicable on a smaller, interpersonal scale. You can let other people take control, even when you’re fully able to do it yourself. Don’t worry about making sure everything goes right, even when it is your place to worry about it.

Even after Moshe left the leadership role in Joshua’s hands, as the contemporary commentary Rashi points out, the Jewish nation still did as they were told for an entire generation. When you pick the right people to delegate your tasks to, and when you communicate their responsibilities in the right way, you’ll see they’re more than capable of carrying on your legacy.

So I’ll leave off for today with a message to my fellow micromanagers and perfectionists out there: Chill out. Loosen up. Let someone else take control of a project every now and then. The worst case scenario is that it won’t be perfect, but perfection is unreachable regardless. Chill.

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“Atem nitzavim hayom,” the parsha begins. “You are standing today,” said Moshe Rabeinu to the Jewish nation, “all of you, in front of G-d.” The entire nation, regardless of age or career or social status, stood in front of G-d, making a covenant with Him, heavens and earth serving as the two witnesses. If we do the wrong thing, we will be punished for it, deeply and painfully. But if we return from the bad that we did, G-d will welcome us back with figurative open arms and redeem us from the exile. He’ll bring us back to our Holy Land, increase our population, make it easier for us to serve Him with love; the curses we bore while not following G-d’s plan will be inflicted onto our enemies and all who oppressed us. 

The entire nation was gathered together, the great with the not-so-great with the ugly with the bad, because the Torah is not in the heavens, nor across the seas. It’s not something so lofty and spiritual that only the greatest religious leaders among us are able to reach; it is a requirement for every Jew. You can think you’re dumb and incompetent and unable to fulfill very much, and yeah, this can be true, but even so, you are required to help uphold our side of the covenant, just as much as all the smart and competent and cool Jews are.

The topics mentioned in this week’s parsha are timely, more relevant this week than any other. Next week is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish year, wherein we accept G-d and crown Him as our King. The holiday isn’t just about the food, (although, let’s be real, Rosh Hashanah food slaps,) but about accepting responsibility. We’re warned with preemptive curses, consequences and disasters we’ll face if we abandon G-d and don’t follow His covenant, then bribed, almost, with blessings, a promise that we’ll be freed from exile as soon as we repent and return to Him. It’s heavy—and that’s because being Jewish is heavy. (I repeat—Jewish food slaps. There’s no way to get through holiday after holiday without racking up a few extra pounds on the way.)

Every so often, a parsha begins in the middle of a chapter. Parshat Nitzavim, starting in the ninth verse of Chapter 29, is one of them. It feels almost poetic; you don’t get your own beginning and rather have to start off where someone else left off. Correcting someone else’s mistakes, finishing someone else’s story. In a sense, it teaches us that beginnings are kind of overrated. That our beginnings are out of our control. We don’t decide where we come from, you know? We can’t pick our parents, or our day school, or how religious we’re raised, or any negative situations we are forced to go through early in life. All we can control is what’s next. One day a shift happens, and we become adults, and all of a sudden we’re responsible for what happens next in our lives. Maybe this is a fun little Easter egg G-d hid in every parsha that starts in the middle of another chapter. Maybe this is His way of telling us that the situations we are born into are not an integral part of our stories, and that what defines us is what we choose to do next.

This parsha, as mentioned earlier, is an intense one, to say the least. It’s one of the ones that makes me look away, sit back in my seat, take a bunch of shallow breaths, and freak out that I’m not doing enough. That I’m not serving G-d as well as I should be, that I’m not ready to accept G-d and His covenant wholly, that I’m not ready for all the responsibility that being a member of the Jewish nation entails.

Maybe, though, maybe that’s where the earlier thoughts come in. Maybe it’s okay that I’m not perfect, or I’m not serving G-d as well as I should be. Because we all start somewhere, and the point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to take the beginning we were born into, whichever beginning that may have been, and do good with it. Take your beginning, and be more than what you were.

So I’ll ignore where I was up until yesterday. What will I do to make my today more meaningful?

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