Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 3, 2004 / 20 Kislev, 5765

Can You Surpass Yourself?

By Rabbi David Aaron


Not only can you transcend nature, you must transcend nature



http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Torah (Bible) relates how the Pharaoh had a dream about seven lean cows and seven fat cows, followed by a dream about seven lean stalks of wheat and then seven fat stalks of wheat. He woke up in a panic, and turned to his dream interpreters to help him decipher the meaning of his dreams, but none of them could. Their answers were not satisfying to him; they seemed false and contrived, not at all in accordance with Pharaoh's own intuition.


Printer Friendly Version

Email this article


Fortunately, one of the people working for Pharaoh suddenly remembered a man named Joseph, a Jewish dream interpreter who was in prison at the time. Pharaoh ordered Joseph to be brought into the palace and related the dreams to him. When the Pharaoh had finished, Joseph said, "These dreams are about economics. These dreams are about agriculture. They are telling you that there will be seven good years of plenty followed by seven bad years of drought and famine." The Pharaoh immediately knew Joseph was right.


After he had finished explaining the dream, Joseph, in a bold display of chutzpa, laid out a brilliant economic plan to save Egypt from the impending famine.


This whole story may seem a bit bizarre. How could the finest dream interpreters of Egypt, who were living in an agricultural society, miss the most obvious interpretation about dreams dealing with wheat and cows? What was it about Joseph that enabled him to see so clearly the message of Pharaoh's dreams?


Only a Jewish boy could offer such an interpretation because he was the only one in Egypt who did not think like an idolater. In Egypt the Nile was a G-d because it was the source of their agricultural wealth. The Nile had a very consistent natural pattern of overflowing its banks and irrigating the area, and therefore it was a G-d. Nobody among the Egyptians could offer an interpretation like Joseph offered, because such an interpretation is the very antithesis of idolatry. It would be heretical.

Donate to JWR


For those who deify nature, you can't say that nature is going to suddenly stop. The Nile had been flowing along its natural course, in a regular pattern for thousands of years and the Egyptians couldn't imagine that could ever change. But Joseph knew that G-d is not nature. His interpretation was a direct message to the Egyptians from the one and only G-d, that nature isn't necessarily consistent, nor is it reliable. Nature must answer to a higher power — its Creator — because only He can stop and start at will the natural processes of the world. Idolatry is the antithesis of Judaism. While people tend to associate idolatry with bowing down to rocks and trees, that is only part of the equation, and not the essence of idolatry. The deification of nature is the justification of man's animalistic drives, the perfect excuse to do whatever comes "naturally" to us. The ultimate moral implications of idolatry were demonstrated to us by Nazi Germany. Hitler was a pagan, who boldly stated:


Yes, we are barbarians! We want to be barbarians! It is an honorable title … Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing men from … the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a false vision (a Jewish invention) called "conscience" and "morality." 1


The Jewish message to the world is that you can surpass yourself. Human beings are not animals. They are not victims to their wild instincts. Nature doesn't rule, and therefore, not only can you transcend nature, you must transcend nature. You have free will; you were created in the image of G-d. You mirror the ultimate reality — G-d — Who is beyond nature, and therefore you too can transcend nature.

1 See Hermann Rauschning's books: Hitler Speaks and Voice of Destruction

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


To comment, please click here.

JWR contributor Rabbi David Aaron is the founder and dean of Isralight, an international organization with programming in Israel, New York South Florida, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Toronto. He has taught and inspired thousands of Jews who are seeking meaning in their lives and a positive connection to their Jewish roots.

He is the author of the newly released, The Secret Life of G-d, and also the author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d and Love is my religion. (Click on link to purchase books. Sales help fund JWR.) He lives in the old City of Jerusalem with his wife and their seven children.

© 2004, Rabbi David Aaron