Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Playing favourites

I’d like to share with you interesting questions from my Devar Torah that I delivered to the students.

In last week’s assembly, if you remember, we conducted a poll. I asked which of you, who had siblings, thought you were a favourite of at least one of your parents.

I then asked:

“Which of you like being a favourite?”

“Which of you thought it was good to be a favourite?”

And, “which of you thought it was good for your parents to play favourites?”

Then, for the few who remained standing, I asked: “Do you believe you will play favourites with your children?”

Today, I have a different question to ask you.

If you believe in God, please rise.

If you believe in yourself, please rise.

Some argue you can’t believe in God unless you believe in yourself. While others argue you can’t believe in yourself once you believe in God.

This week’s parashah, VaYetse, addresses this question. The siblings יעקב (Jacob) and עישו (Esau) leave home and each other after the playing of favourites by their parents causes them too much friction to bear.

Setting out on his own path, we read that יעקב experiences God. The text relates this in a strange way:

“And יעקב woke from his sleep and said surely God is present and I didn’t know”.

Since the text literally says: “Surely God is present and I, I didn’t know”, our tradition explains that it is until Jacob came to know himself he could not know God.

In trying to be like his brother עישו whom his father favoured he became a stranger to himself.

Now, as he starts his own journey and begins to know and believe in himself, he experiences God. 

From the Jewish perspective, to truly know and believe in yourself is to know and believe in God.

We are each, in our uniqueness, a manifestation of God.

So you cannot rise and say you believe in God unless you believe in yourself. And, if you declare you believe in yourself you are declaring you believe in God.

God doesn’t play favourites. For Judaism, as this week’s parashah tells us, you are God if you are yourself.