PUTIN HAD A JEWISH FATHER FIGURE

Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, who passed away on March 27, 2024, was the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in 2000, running with Al Gore.

But Joe Lieberman lost the elections.

The story goes that he came home on the night of the loss, feeling dejected. As he entered his home, his wife Hadassah saw how sad he was. Wanting to cheer him up, Hadassah Lieberman said to her husband: “Joe! Don’t worry; in THIS home you will always be VICE President!

In life, it is vital to know your place in the world.

There is something strange in this week’s Torah portion Vayetze.

When Abraham sent his servant to find a spouse for his son Isaac, he sent him off with an entourage of ten camels and lots of jewelry. Abraham’s servant could display enormous wealth to the family Abraham cast his eyes upon.

Yet when Jacob goes out to find his wife, in this week’s portion, he comes with bare hands.

These are the words Jacob himself says later upon returning to his homeland from this long journey, after twenty years:

I have become small from all the kindnesses and from all the truth that You have rendered Your servant, for with my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

Isaac was a wealthy man; the Torah explicitly states. Why did he send his son off to the same exact location where Abraham sent his servant decades earlier—but this time without anything?

What is more, Abraham dispatched his servant for merely a few days, till he could find a suitable girl for Isaac. Jacob, in contrast, was dispatched for years, to settle down in Mesopotamia and build a family there. Who sends a child away for twenty years without giving him or her even some spending money? Especially when Papa Has Dough and a lot of dough! Why did Jacob cross the Jordan, on the route from the Holy Land to Charan, merely with a staff? Why did Jacob come empty-handed?

When Jacob meets Rachel for the first time he weeps. Why? Says the Midrash, because Jacob came empty-handed.

Why did he have nothing?

Jacob indeed traveled like a gentleman stocked with wealth. His father did give him all he needed. But Esau, who at this point wanted to kill him, sent his son Eliphaz to ambush Jacob on the road and kill him. Eliphaz pursued Jacob and managed to reach him. He was about to kill him. But since Eliphaz, the Midrash says, Eliphaz had grown up in Isaac’s lap, he held back his hand. He somehow could not get himself to murder his uncle Jacob. On the other hand, in his family, respect for a father amounted to everything. He said to Jacob, “What shall I do about my father’s orders?“ Jacob replied: ”Take what I have, for a poor man is counted as dead." Eliphaz took everything Jacob owned and left him alone. Hence, Jacob crossed the Jordan with nothing more than a stick.

But there is more to the story than what meets the eye. There is a deeply surprising component to this story.

For this, we need to discover who Eliphaz was.

Eliphaz was the son of Esau and the father of Amalek. His father has become a ruthless killer, and his son emerged as one of the greatest Jew haters in history. As such you can understand that Eliphaz was no saint himself.

Eliphaz went and married his daughter Timna! The child born from this union was none other than Amalek!

This, we can presume, is enough to give us a glimpse into the character and behavior patterns of Eliphaz. They were disgusting, to put it mildly.

Yet, astonishingly, “Eliphaz grew up in the lap of Isaac.” This boy did not only visit his grandfather; he grew up in his bosom. Isaac nurtured him, loved him, invested in him, and showered upon him deep affection and caring—just as he had done for this boy’s father, Esau.  

Despite this Eliphaz was inundated with Isaac’s love.

What is more, The Torah also states clearly that Isaac was a prophet. He probably had more than a hunch about who this kid was and where he was going. But this did not stop him from keeping him extremely close to him.

Yitzchak embraced him, raising him on his lap as one of his own!

Now you might say, what a waste of time of Isaac’s sweat. It was all in vain. Eliphaz grew up to behave in a depraved way and live a morally abhorrent life.

But wait! Look at what happened because of Yitzchak’s love. When Esau dispatched Eliphaz to murder Jacob as he was traveling alone, vulnerable, and defenseless, Eliphaz felt he could not lay a finger on him because of Isaac’s influence. Had Jacob been killed at that moment, there would be not a single Jew alive today—the entire Jewish nation would have never come into existence. It was Isaac’s infinite love and extraordinary embrace of Eliphaz that saved not only Jacob but the entire Jewish nation for eternity!

Isaac could have easily dismissed Eliphaz from his lap, after all, watching Eliphaz grow up the way he did must have caused deep anguish to Isaac. But he did not cast him away from his home. He did not give up on him. He continued to cradle him on his lap and in his soul. And as a result, the entire Jewish nation is here forever!

In the long history of Jews in Russia, the government has rarely been an ally, and often been the source of savage persecution. Jews in Russia suffered beyond imagination, both during the years of the Czars, and then even worse under the Bolsheviks, after the 1917 revolution.

Some thought that under current Russian president Vladimir Putin, Jews may also suffer. After all, many see Putin as a dictator and a semi-czar, not always the most sympathetic to the way of democracy.

Yet surprisingly, the opposite has happened. Vladimir Putin has been exceedingly kind to the Jews. He has helped rebuild Judaism in the Former Soviet Union and has become a friend to Russian chief rabbi, Berel Lazar.

Today, Lazar said, Russia has in Vladimir Putin its “most pro-Jewish leader,” whom he credits with “fighting Anti-Semitism more vigorously than any Russian leader before him.”

How did this happen?

At the International Assembly, Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Berel Lazar, often referred to as “Putin’s Rabbi”, told a remarkable story about the Russian leader, which he heard from Putin himself.

When he was a young child, he grew up in a very poor family. His parents were always out at work. He was deprived of almost everything. But his next-door neighbor was a Chassidic Jewish family, and they always made sure to invite him over. They were extremely kind to him, and he realized that not only were they kind to a child that wasn’t theirs, not only were they kind to a child that wasn’t Jewish, but they were kind to a child in a time and place when it was dangerous to do that.

“Thirty years later, because of the gratitude he felt for that family, and for the respect he felt for the Jewish people as a whole, as deputy mayor of the city of Leningrad, he granted official permission to open the first Jewish school in the city.”

The Chassidic family that displayed affection to Putin as a child was that of Anatoly Rakhlin, Putin’s high-school wrestling coach, a man he considered to be a father figure and at whose funeral he cried. Putin described the family in his autobiography, First Person.

“(They were) observant Jews who did not work on Saturdays, and the man would study the Bible and Talmud all day long,” Putin wrote. “Once I even asked him what he was muttering. He explained to me what this book was, and I was immediately interested.”

There is a story I find very moving, about how in 1966 an eleven-year-old African American boy moved with his family to a white neighborhood in Washington. Sitting with his brothers and sisters on the front step of the house, he waited to see how they would be greeted. They were not. Passers-by turned to look at them, but no one gave them a smile or even a glance of recognition. All the fearful stories he had heard about how whites treated blacks seemed to be coming true. Years later, writing about those first days in their new home, he says, “I knew we were not welcome here. I knew we would not be liked here. I knew we would have no friends here. I knew we should not have moved here …”

As he was thinking those thoughts, a woman passed by on the other side of the road. She turned to the children and with a broad smile said, “Welcome!” Disappearing into the house, she emerged minutes later with a tray laden with drinks and cream cheese and jelly sandwiches which she brought over to the children, making them feel at home. That moment – the young man later wrote – changed his life. It gave him a sense of belonging where there was none before. It made him realize, at a time when race relations in the United States were still deeply scarred (as they are sometimes to this very day), that a black family could feel at home in a white area and that there could be relationships that were color-blind. Over the years, he learned to admire much about the woman across the street, but it was that first spontaneous act of greeting that became, for him, a definitive memory. It broke down a wall of separation and turned strangers into friends.

The young man, Stephen Carter, eventually became a law professor at Yale University and wrote a book about what he learned that day. He called it Civility. The name of the woman, he tells us, was Sara Kestenbaum, and she died all too young. He adds that it was no coincidence that she was a religious Jew. “In the Jewish tradition,” he notes, such civility is called “Hessed – the doing of acts of kindness – which is in turn derived from the understanding that human beings are made in the image of God.”

“To this day”, he adds, “I can close my eyes and feel on my tongue the smooth, slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches that I gobbled on that summer afternoon when I discovered how a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life forever.”

This is true with strangers. How much more so with our children and grandchildren. Never allow estrangement to take root in your family. Make sure, each child is welcome on your lap. Love and embrace your children, and your friend’s children, and all children, with all your heart. Even if the child or teen is deeply challenged, do not give up on the love. You never know how and who will save the world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky