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Orchard of Delights
£Goshen and the Secret Goshen and the Secret Goshen and the Secret
££
of the Dreidelof the Dreidelof the Dreidel
A further hint to the connection between redemption, longing, and
Goshen is found in a variant form of the word “Goshen” – “Goshnah.”
Twice in the portion of Vayigash the word Goshen has the letter heh
added on to it. This construct means going “to Goshen.” The four
letters of Goshnah – gimel, shin, nun, and heh – are the exact letters
found on the four sides of the dreidel, the four-sided spinning top
used on Chanukah. As with all Jewish customs the dreidel has many
deeper meanings. It is not merely a toy used for childish games.
The four Hebrew letters comprising the word “Goshnah” and
inscribed on the dreidel add up to the sum of 358, the same as that
of the two archetypal rivals symbolizing good and evil, Mashiach
and the Nachash (see “Transformations” above). What do Goshnah
and the dreidel have to do with this epic battle? Egypt the site of
the Jewish people’s first exile and Chanukah the quintessential
battle fought against oppression within the Jewish homeland form a
template for all the nation’s struggles.
As in every struggle, the battle took place on two planes, the
physical and the spiritual. The physical enemy had to be defeated
and the hearts and minds of the Jews had to be won. In Goshen,
the nation of Israel first learned to grow and even thrive in exile,
surrounded by foreign cultures and religions. In Goshen the seeds of
physical redemption were sown when God took us out of Egypt and
slew the Egyptians. On Chanukah, the last of the holidays enacted
by the Sages, the Maccabees fought on the battlefield to defeat the
Greeks, and everywhere else to win back the hearts and minds of the
Jews, many of whom were enamored with Greek culture.
For a nation that has endured over two thousand years of exile
and returned home, Chanukah has a profound message. The lights
of freedom and the inner fortitude of the Jewish soul have lit the
way through the darkest of times. The promise of redemption and
the eventual return to Israel gave hope and meaning to generations
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experience and love of life as vibrant, dynamic, and full of energy.
Paradoxically, only in Egyptian exile did Jacob “come to life,” and,
furthermore, only in Egypt – as the last verse of Vayigash relates –
did the children of Israel multiply greatly and metamorphose from a
family into a nation.
Indeed, the last seventeen years of Jacob’s life in Egypt were
in a sense his most rewarding in that he no longer faced constant
challenges and he merited seeing what he had worked for all these
years, the foundations of a united nation of Israel, come into being.
Many commentators point out that seventeen, the number of years
Jacob lived in Egypt, is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew
word meaning “good” (tov), symbolizing the essential goodness that
surrounded Jacob during this last stage of his life.
In light of the above explanation, perhaps this jarring juxtaposition
is trying to teach an important message. Jacob foresaw that most
of Jewish history would take place in exile, so he wished to create
a paradigm that would infuse his descendants with the strength to
turn the Diaspora into a place of dynamic growth and development.
Jacob and the children of Israel’s abilities to “live” in Egypt pave the
way for Jewish survival and even success during all future exiles.
However, we must not forget that this blessing that Jacob and,
in a sense, Joseph as well, implanted within the Jewish psyche can
be a double-edged sword. Far too often, when exile has become too
comfortable and Jews have attained too much power and success,
one or both of the following two scenarios have taken place: Jews
have begun to assimilate into the host culture; the non-Jews have
become jealous of the Jews’ success. This has led to a host of negative
outcomes, including voluntary or forced assimilation and sometimes
even mass murder or genocide.
Delving further into the notion of Vayechi as a closed portion,
we must note a mystical sod interpretation as well. In the bigger
picture of existential reality, every person lives in a “closed portion”
– a pure, eternal soul comes to dwell in a temporal, relatively frail
body located in a material world fraught with trials and challenges.
This juxtaposition between the supernal and the earthly, in fact,
is symbolized by Jacob and the Jewish people going down to the
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