Uncategorized

The Seventh Candle: People Are Strange When You’re A Stranger

by

We have writings today that shed some light on how Antiochus and his followers probably viewed the Jews of their time.  They believed Jews worshipped pigs and donkeys because we never ate them. They believed we viewed them as gods, having been influenced by the Egyptians, but we misunderstood which animals should be worshipped.  They believed Jews were lazy because we refused to work one day a week. They believed Jews were xenophobic because we preferred to live with each other. They believed Jews hated sex because we refrained from sexual intimacy on certain days of the month.  Mostly, they believed Jews were simple-minded because we believe that our God is invisible and could not take specific form.

They believed they were enlightening us and saving us from ourselves.

Hanukkah humbles us when we remember that so little has changed as we judge a stranger by seeing them only through our own experiences.

Parshat Miketz: Not You Again…and Again…and Again

by

In a Mussar class, a few weeks ago, we were discussing the often occurring situation of seeing someone you know but not saying hello or making eye contact.  It can be someone you’re passing on the street or someone at a gathering. Sometimes for obvious, or sometimes for inexplicable reasons, we choose to pretend not to recognize someone we know.

And sometimes the opposite is true.  I am on vacation with my family and the other day we were parking the car in a paid garage.  You had to buy a ticket from a machine to display on your dash and the family in front of us, from somewhere in South America, were unfamiliar with the machine.  We walked them through how to get the paid ticket but it was somewhat trickier than we thought. To a passer-by, it may very well have looked like an impromptu game of charades with at least 2 teams (my family alone is more than 12 people).  At last, the ticket was bought and we all warmly said our goodbyes.  

Coincidentally, the entire rest of the afternoon we kept crossing paths with this other family.  The first few times, someone just pointed out to everyone else: ‘look, there’s that family’. Then we noticed them pointing at us as well.  They were saying the same thing. After a few more times we would wave to each other and smile. It was funny and we were enjoying the extended bond of…well…not even acquaintances.

But, somehow, with family or friends we do know, we will choose not to acknowledge them.  In this week’s parshah, ‘Miketz’, Joseph is ruling Egypt during a famine and his brothers have shown up to try and get food.  He recognizes them. The same brothers who sold him into what should have been a life of horrific slavery and certain death. They are standing before him and his dream has turned into a nightmare – he just wants them to go away.  They do not recognize him and he tries repeatedly not to let them know who he is.

In fact, Joseph will try several ways to make them go away, but each time they keep coming back.  He finally enacts a plan to get his blood brother, Benjamin, into his care by framing him as a thief.  The deal he struck was that the thief remains in Egypt while everyone else goes home. But they won’t go away.  Judah insists on offering himself instead of Benjamin and all the other brothers have come along to plead the case.  From Joseph’s point of view, all the powers of Egypt can’t make these people leave him alone.

Finally, Joseph can no longer control himself and breaks down revealing who he is.  His actions to that moment most definitely read like the actions of someone trying to avoid a particular someone they meet in a movie or pass on the street.  In his case, we can well understand why he would behave the way he does and we cheer for him throughout, but, in the end, he must greet them.

The Sages teach us to receive everyone with a welcome expression on our face.  They do not make exceptions for people who bullied us in the past. It does not mean we have to stop and have lengthy conversations with everyone we’ve ever met.  A smile is a welcome expression and a moment of contact. The gesture itself reframes the moment, which can reframe everything that comes after.

Joseph’s brothers are in need of food and he always provides the food…and then he keeps sending them away.  They are never welcomed until he has no choice, but somehow they always end up right in front of him time and again.  

Coincidentally, it reflects his misunderstood  dreams come true. Coincidentally, he now determines whether they will be slaves or whether they will die a certain death of starvation.  Joseph has desperately tried to forget his original family. He married the daughter of an Egyptian priest and named his first child ‘Menasheh’ – God has made me forget the pain of my father’s house.  He is no longer called ‘Joseph’ but uses the Egyptian name Pharaoh gave him. He wears Egyptian clothes and, I dare say, walks like an Egyptian. Yet, despite EVERYTHING the brothers who sinned against him keep filling coincidence after coincidence.

As Albert Einstein said: coincidence is just God’s way of staying anonymous.

How might this text help you navigate these uncomfortable moments in the future?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

The Sixth Candle: I Need a Hero

by

One of the festive songs of Hanukkah is ‘Mi Yimalel’ – ‘Who Will Speak Of’.  Not to take anything away from our classic ‘Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel’, Mi Yimalel is a bit more layered in describing what it is we are celebrating.

When we speak of Hanukkah and the Maccabees, we often talk about the war they waged and the victory of the few over the many.  It is the stuff of fantasies. Unfortunately, outside of discussing a war, we often only think of oil, fried foods and dreidels.  Is the sophistication of Hanukkah sitting in a celebration of warfare?

The song ‘Mi Yimalel’ asks who will speak of the mighty deeds of Israel.  It then proceeds to state that every generation needs a hero who can lead everyone.  It concludes by saying that in our day all Jews must unite and stand together.

As Jews, we don’t celebrate a war or the killing of an enemy.  We celebrate heroes, leaders and the brave people with vision who unite us when we so easily divide ourselves.

Hanukkah celebrates the understanding that brave leaders with strong Jewish grounding can bring us to a place where we can overcome insurmountable odds.

The Fifth Candle: Only I Get To Say Who I Am

by

In the ancient world, it was common for empires to conquer lands and grow their religions.  Empire building is about maximization not minimization. When one people are consumed by another, their culture and gods are added to the existing dominant culture.  There would be some repackaging involved but, in essence, the conquered gods are still recognizable. It’s actually very practical. A conquered people are less likely to rebel if they feel they have not been disconnected from their faith or their gods.

The problem with the Jewish people was that you can’t add more gods to a monotheistic faith.  When Antiochus marched into the Temple in Jerusalem, he put an image of Zeus into the Temple (granted it looked like Antiochus but no one said heads of invading empires were humble).  Adding Zeus to the Temple is a typical way of growing the pagan pantheon of gods: the more the merrier.

It is baffling to foreign empires that this bothers Jews.  It seemed to work with other conquered peoples, why were we being so difficult?  This problem arises each and every time. It happens with Antiochus and it will happen with the Romans.  They truly believed they were saving us from our primitive, myopic view of the world. It is the age old story of the dominant and powerful people believing they must save the native, primitive and backward people.

In fact, some Hellenistic concepts did make their way into Judaism because we decided which concepts enhanced our perspectives.  We decided what fit our fundamental identities and then brought them in through a Jewish lens.

Hanukkah is about celebrating the right to self-define.

‘Pinky Swear’ Has Nothing On This 

by

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  I had an interesting adventure this week that involved a trip to Ikea, a 4 year old girl and confronting my own integrity.  It happened within seconds of entering an Ikea store. Between you and me, it happens to me within seconds every time I go into an Ikea store…I get lost.  To be clear, I enjoy the bright colours and the way things are set up so that I can leave the outside world outside for the time I spend in Ikea.  The problem is that the time I spend in Ikea gets longer and longer because I’m trying to find my way through the labyrinth of aisles and displays.  I follow the arrows on the floor and try and see the number codes hanging from the ceiling all at the same time. It results in my eyes quickly moving from floor to ceiling and back and forth until I wonder if it got dark outside yet.

A few days ago I had to take a family member with me, a little 4 year old girl.  I picked her up from school and we merrily sang of our ‘girl adventure’ to the furniture store.  I had pretzels waiting in the car for a fun snack and we held hands as we skipped into Ikea (ok, we didn’t really skip but you get the picture).

This Ikea was the same as any Ikea I’ve ever gone into in my city.  The ground entryway immediately leads to a staircase to the floor where the furniture displays begin.  We walked up the stairs and I stopped to get my bearings. I’m not sure what my facial expression was or if my hand stiffened as I held hers but something prompted this little cherubic 4 year old to tug on my hand and say: ‘are we lost?’

I immediately lied and said, ‘of course not’.  That’s when I confronted my own integrity and realized she deserved the truth.  I looked at her and said, ‘I’m always lost’ followed by a realization that I needed to provide context and added ‘in this store’.  I told her I would watch the signs on the ceiling if she could keep us going in the direction of the arrows on the floor. Team work, I thought – maybe I should tell her ‘team work makes the dream work’, or maybe I should just zip it and focus on the signs above.  Everything was working beautifully until I heard those dreaded words from her, ‘I need to pee’. I felt the blood drain to my feet.

All of this happened yesterday and since then I’ve been thinking about my moments of honesty and judgment in securing a little 4 year old without lying to her.  Then I wondered about what circumstances might indeed prompt me to lie to anyone and then I thought about being a woman in Judaism today and that I could never be called as a witness in an Orthodox court because women cannot be witnesses.  I can never sign as a witness on a Ketubah, as my signature would invalidate the document if it were ever needed in an Orthodox court. ‘But’, I said in my heart, ‘I tell the truth in Ikea! Why can’t I be a witness?’ And then I thought of this week’s parshah: Chayei Sarah.

In the parshah, Abraham makes his servant, Eliezer, take an oath.  In order to take the oath, Abraham tells him to place his hand under his thigh.  The oath is administered in that position. I remember learning this portion as a little girl in school and wondering what on earth could be so important about grabbing the back of your thigh.  I thought it made you look ridiculous. How much more noble to ‘raise your right hand’ like they did on the Perry Mason shows. I had one of my first questions of Jewish difference at that moment: just because we’re Jews doesn’t mean we have to do EVERYTHING so differently!  It wasn’t until decades later that I realized ‘under the thigh’ is where the testicles are – a nuance completely lost in my little girl Jewish world.

Taking an oath in the ancient world meant that a man would hold his manhood and symbolically put it on the line if he should break the oath.  He is now risking everything to fulfill the vow and therefore I can believe he will move heaven and earth to get it done. He is believed because he placed his hand ‘under his thigh’.  It certainly beats the childhood oath of ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ – a phrase every parent is horrified by. (By the way, as a child in a Jewish school we were all making ‘x’ signs on our hearts, it’s actually supposed to be a Christian cross on the heart – boy did we get that one wrong).

So, if a man takes an oath by risking his external maleness, how could a woman do anything comparable?  How would you believe a woman taking an oath, in the ancient world, if she cannot put up collateral to hold her to her word the way a man can?  It is a biologically skewed system of exclusion. But it’s not saying a woman can’t be believed, it’s saying we don’t have a comparable mechanism to administer.  That should all have changed in the modern world.

Today, no one goes into a court of law and grabs their genitals.  I dare say they might be found in contempt of court if they tried.  Women in a secular court are administered an oath the same way a man is and are held to the same legal standards.  But the Jewish courts never equalized things when the rabbinic courts introduced oath taking in God’s name. Clearly, no one goes into a Jewish court with the biblical ‘under the thigh’ gesture, everyone invokes God’s name to tell the truth.  Lying under those circumstances is the definition of “taking God’s Name in vain’, a commandment equally binding on men and women.

It’s time for women’s equal oath taking status to move through the Jewish world.  If a woman can bear witness without restriction in Judaism, then she can hold leadership roles without restriction as well, and that, I believe, is the political issue at stake that impedes this.

And just before we conclude how wonderfully modern and egalitarian our western secular world is, let’s not forget that a witness in our courts is called to ‘testify’ as they give their ‘testimony’, words that root back to a man being believed in his words because of what he holds in his hands under his thigh.

See?  I told you trips to Ikea are never as simple as they seem.

Can I Leave My Jewish at Home?

by

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a good week.  I was reading this week’s parshah, Ki Teitzei, and how it discusses who you are when you venture out of your home, your community and your comfort zones.  In fact, Ki Teitzei means ‘when you venture out’.

It made me think of questions like whether someone is comfortable showing their identity in the world at large.  Would you wear a Magen David on the outside of your shirt? The parshah tells us that we need to carry our identities with us wherever we go.  When an Israelite soldier is attracted to a war captive, he must allow her time and space to mourn her previous identity. Then he can marry her and she gains full rights as his wife.  Her identity has changed and he remains true to his Jewish identity and its code of ethics.

In today’s world, we’re always sensitive to anti-semitism and the line between the public and the private.  The Torah can tell us that we must be firm in who we are, no matter where we are, but that is far easier said than done.  A few years ago, my family and I vacationed in rural Texas at Christmas time. We didn’t know it was rural Texas, we thought it was a suburb of Austin.  It seems that Texas has quite a bit of open land, so what they consider a suburb is what I would consider ‘the bush’.

But, we only realized that when we arrived at the lovely cabin on the lake…in the middle of nowhere.  There were neighbouring cabins we could see here and there. When we walked around the lake we came across a pick-up truck parked with fishing gear, extra clothes and what looked like a rifle or two.  As it was December, we definitely noticed all the Christmas decorations and lights around us. In fact, the trees in the forests by the highways were decorated as well. It had the appearance of Christmas tree forests that were growing already decorated. 

Living in the city, we’re quite comfortable with the Christmas decorations around this time but we didn’t realize that we are also comforted by the diversity that surrounds us.  There was no diversity in this ‘suburb’ in Texas. And so, we had “the” discussion of what happens if we run into a neighbour who might ask about our lack of Christmas doo-dads. Some of our answers ranged from ‘we’re not Christian right now, but thank you so much for asking’ to ‘airlines are so inconsiderate with your luggage these days, am I right?’  We never considered explaining that we’re Jews.

Let me be clear, no one had made us feel unwelcome or was anything but warm and friendly.  People in the shops, market, on the road or by the lake were all open and lovely. No one ever asked us about our religion but they always wished us a merry Christmas and we always thanked them and wished them the same.  

The question of who we are when we leave our homes, pass the mezuzah on our door, and enter the world, is a real and daily question.  How do we navigate multiple identities? When Superman wants to hide his identity, he puts on a suit and glasses and apparently no one is any the wiser.  But when Clark Kent sees crime happening, why does he have to change into his Superman suit? Why can’t Clark Kent save the innocent? Superman’s vulnerability isn’t kryptonite, it’s someone finding out that he leads two lives – God forbid someone finds out that at home he lies around in a cape and tights.

I made a new friend this summer.  This woman is a devout Christian and her church is central in her life.  We shared time together and enjoyed each other’s company and humour. The more she talked about her church, the more I worried about whether it would matter that there was no church in my life.  She asked me if faith was important to me and I toyed with the answer: ‘airlines are so inconsiderate with your luggage these days, am I right?’ Instead, I made eye contact and said that religion is very much a part of my life, I’m a Jew.

She couldn’t have been more thrilled.  She saw faith as one more thing we had in common.

The parshah this week challenges us about our identities.  Who are we when we go to war? Who are we when we encounter vulnerable people?  Are we ever willing to re-identify our children as criminals and who are we when there are no witnesses to our actions?

But long before we get to those extremes, we can sit every morning with our coffee, think about the day ahead and ask ourselves who we are when we shut the door behind us.

The Beautiful Places I Don’t Want To Go

by

Hi all,

Hope everyone had a great week.  This coming weekend is the start of the Hebrew month Elul, which means the High Holidays are around the corner – and as daunting as it is confronting our mortality at the High Holidays, a close second is encountering all the family politics, shul decisions and meal prep…what was God thinking?!

But Elul is the month before the High Holidays and it’s a wonderful month of transition.  The word itself is often seen as an acronym for the verse: “Ani ledodi vedodi li”. That’s the verse many brides say under the chuppah when giving a ring to their groom.  I said it years ago under the chuppah, I think, though, to be honest, that hour is a bit of a blur in my memory. I remember circling my husband right after getting under the chuppah.  I remember thinking I’m weaving our souls together to create a new spiritual entity and I would be with him for the rest of my life and was I crazy and did we really think this through enough and honestly how solid were the plans we made and maybe we should talk about this some more and I’m not sure that’s the music that should be playing right now.  As I was walking around him, deep in my moment, I realized I had no idea how many circles I had actually completed. I passed in front of him, locked eyes with him through the veil and he quietly said: ‘that was 5’. 

So, I said that verse under the chuppah as my declaration to him.  The verse from Song of Songs, ‘Ani ledodi vedodi li’ is often translated as: ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’.  That’s actually the wrong translation and anyone who knows me knows I am a stickler for translations. The phrase in English implies ownership, I belong to my beloved and my beloved belongs to me.  It raises a two-fold problem: not only do I not want to belong to anyone else, but I certainly don’t want to own anybody – too much responsibility. I don’t even consider that I own my children and I actually made them from scratch.

Here’s how the verse actually translates: “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.”  It’s a verse said by the woman about her lover.  It is a declaration of support and loyalty – it is not a declaration of ownership.

In fact, elsewhere she says: “My beloved is for me and I am for him, he shepherds among the lilies,” yes, lilies, not roses (I say this because it’s always translated as roses).  In biblical Hebrew that word means ‘lilies’, it’s only later in Hebrew that it means ‘roses’.  

Why do I care, you ask?  Because lilies are poisonous, so she’s not saying her beloved is so deep and romantic (roses), she’s saying he leads her into beautiful, dangerous places.  Though, interestingly, she never goes there to look for him. She knows that’s where he is but she doesn’t feel the need to follow him there.

How does all of this relate to Elul, the month whose name stands for ‘ani ledodi vedodi li’?   It is not only the month I explore my relationships, it’s also the month I reflect on my personal relationship with God.  In this analogy, God is my Beloved. And yes, as the High Holidays approach I realize that God can lead me into beautiful and dangerous places.  When the thought of the mortality of those I love dawns on me, I can sometimes dwell on it and it will grow inside me, it can paralyze me, the fear can be overwhelming and it becomes poison to me.

So I choose not to follow my Beloved there.  I create my High Holiday filters so I can enjoy the holidays without being overwhelmed.

The Sages have taught us many times that Torah truths can often be heard in the words  of children and I was lucky enough to see this profound truth unfold at the park the other day.  A 4-year-old girl was at the park with her twenty-something aunt (I know these people). The aunt was enticing the little girl to go on the big slide.  The girl said she doesn’t want to. The aunt told her several times that there’s nothing to be afraid of and that at the top of the slide she could see the whole park and lots of things she can’t see from the ground.  The aunt said she would even go with her so it wouldn’t be scary. The girl kept saying ‘no thank you’ to each offer. Finally, the little 4-year-old looked directly at her aunt and said: “I know that I can do it, I just don’t want to.”

So happy Elul everybody.  Enjoy time to consider who are the beloveds in our lives, who has our backs and whom do we protect.  At the same time, consider the unique nature of everyone’s journey and maybe the beautiful places they enter that we prefer not to explore.

Mussar Monday

by

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to my Mussar blog.  Remember that Mussar is about real life moments and expanding our free will so I will always share a Mussar moment of mine and end with suggestions for you.

Before we jump in, here’s a dictionary for today’s post:

Middah/Middot = Hebrew for: Measure / Measures (not a character trait / characteristics, I’ll explain as we go)

Tikkun Olam = Hebrew for: repairing the world

Mussar =  The Hebrew word referring to learning about our middot to expand our free will in order to heal the world

Mundane = regular or everyday, seemingly insignificant

Holy = the level above the mundane

Automatic Mode = when our Middot readjust themselves without us knowing or choosing

Quick theory review: If we imagine for a minute that all our personality traits are held in cups.  Some cups currently hold more than others and when we encounter things in life, the cups pour their contents around without us knowing. Mussar is the study of how much is in each cup and how we use our free will to actively rebalance what’s inside them.  We try to become the masters of our measures, the sommeliers of our own cups (as it were).  

So, here’s my Mussar moment: I went for a manicure a few days ago.  It took my nails 20 minutes to dry. Twenty minutes of not using my hands, not touching anything, not going on my phone.  Twenty minutes to patiently wait, literally, for paint to dry. It was agony.

I had never realized before that twenty minutes can sometimes feel like a lifetime – Einstein is dancing a hora somewhere as I write those words.

I never realized that my measure of patience could reduce to almost nothing in an instant.  The description of one’s patience is measured by the middah of patience. People who are perceived as  ‘patient people’ have more patience in their cup so it takes longer for their patience to run out. My patience cup seemed to empty  after a few minutes of waiting for my nails to dry. I thought I had more in there, I was surprised by how quickly it emptied, how fast the ticking of the clock on the wall became really really loud.

In Mussar language, my middah of patience set itself without me consciously choosing the measurement, which is called functioning in ‘automatic mode’.  My free will stays dormant, my patience middah reacts to the world, and basically I’m along for the ride.

The obvious problem with this is that the world will never change if we’re all functioning in automatic.  The only thing that can possibly repair the world is to use my free will and make active choices.

So, back to my nails…the twenty minutes that simply wouldn’t end.  If I weren’t in automatic mode, I might have realized that I had been gifted twenty unexpected minutes.  I could have met someone new, struck a personal moment with someone who works there who might welcome a conversation.  I saw none of it, I was frustrated so I couldn’t see I still had choices.

It is a mundane moment, but Mussar is defined by entering the mundane and finding more choices.  The world heals a tiny bit when we see that mundane frustrations can be opportunities of choice. I know I won’t see it every time, but maybe now I will see it one more time than I did before.

Here’s my Mussar suggestion for you: ask yourself when your patience middah readjusts itself without you choosing. Find a moment of challenge in your everyday where you might see a new choice, a new opportunity.

Comment below with your Mussar moment.  Mussar is about engaging with each other – but let’s also remember our measure of ‘respect.’

Food Glorious Food

by

Hope everyone had a great week.

This week’s parshah is Eikev and, as always, there’s a lot of things in there.  But there’s one verse about how we should handle food and God, so I started thinking about food and I started thinking about being the food-giver.

When I had my first baby, I decided I would nurse her, I mean how hard could it be?  It was always ready to go and I had images of a long line of women before me – I was ready to be nature woman!  I was also a student and nursing was free.

Then my daughter had her first meal and the red streaks of pain that flashed across my eyes was indescribable. I let out a loud yelp and literally saw stars.   Back in my day, women admitted that labour was painful but we told each other it was a ‘good’ pain. I’ve had five children and by my fifth labour I asked the nurse if I could have an epidural ‘to go’ for when I got home.  I’ve concluded there’s no such thing as good pain. Whether a woman births through natural or surgical means, it will be scary and it will hurt. But in spite of being told about the good pain of labour, no one, and I mean no one, told me nursing would hurt so much.

Ironically, the only thing that solves the pain of nursing is (wait for it) to nurse some more.  Add to the mix that while you’re dealing with all of this pain, the baby is hungry and not understanding any of the explanations you are tearfully putting forth, so you just have a screaming infant in your arms.

You are the food-giver and the receiver is screaming, demanding and anything but understanding or grateful.  At the end of the day, after baby has been fed, you hope for that final statement of thank you that will come in the form of a burp.  

For 40 years in the desert, we were the infant, God was the food-giver and we complained and cried and kvetched about food constantly.  The number 40 is not random in the Torah. It is used with Noah and the ark, it is used with Moses on Mount Sinai and it is used with Israel in the desert.  It is also the total number of weeks of gestation. It takes 40 weeks to birth something new. The new world in Noah’s time, the new law from Sinai and the new nation that will enter Israel.

So we hungered in the desert and we demanded and screamed that God nurse us – hardly the portrait of a spiritual and holy interaction.  But the focus isn’t on what we do when we’re hungry, it’s what we do when we’re full.

When I’m hungry, I’ll probably agree to almost anything you want me to do.  My mother taught me that if I wanted the food on the table I would help set the table.  If she asked me to make salad, I would. I would get a bottle of pop from the basement and I would call everyone to the table – without shouting ‘Dinner’s ready’ – she made me do it again if I shouted.  I would have combed out her beehive hairdo then and there – anything to get dinner on the table. 

But once I ate, my inclination would be to run from the table with no more than a ‘howdy do’ to anyone.  If I got to the den first then I could choose what TV show to watch, since family viewing was a ‘first come first choose’ proposition.  My parents taught us that we had to ask to be excused from the table to stop the mad bolt to the TV. In other words, once my stomach was full I was no longer the sweet, giving and obedient little elf.

So it’s clearly not what we do when we’re hungry, it’s what we do when we’re full.  This week’s parshah says: ‘you will eat, you will be satisfied and then you will bless God.’  That’s why we say Birkhat Hamazon after we eat. We experience what it means to have the food warm us from the inside and we thank the Food-Giver.  We aren’t babies anymore, it’s not coming to us and we’re not doing it so that we’ll get the food. We learn not to bolt from the table but that food either builds relationships or keeps us behaving as animals demanding and taking – it’s our choice.

I ended up nursing all my children and it was a strain and adjustment each time.  Each relationship that developed taught me about my baby – one of my kids couldn’t wait and would try and nurse through my shirt while another one thought biting was funny.  Whether it’s nursing or feeding from a bottle or a can or any of the many ways to provide food, the animal in us will view food as the end goal but the Torah reminds us that food is the medium and the relationship is the end goal.