Vayeshev: No Mud, No Lotus
Vayeshev: No Mud, No Lotus
Welcome to Shabbat Moment, a text study series with Yael Shy, from our friends at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Every week we share Yael’s Torah text study, mindfulness practice tips, and discussion questions for you to reflect + share with others at your Shabbat table. Subscribe here to get the Shabbat Moment delivered straight to your inbox!
This week’s Torah portion is Vayeshev: No Mud, No Lotus.
As this week’s Torah portion so painfully teaches us, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and our fate is bound up in theirs. If there is no escape from our individual suffering, and no escape from the suffering of others, what is our plan? Should Jacob simply have resigned himself to a life of pain, and so should we?
I think the answer lies not in closing our eyes to suffering, not in simply slipping into despair, but in committing ourselves to acknowledging the pain, turning towards it, holding it gently, and working carefully for justice with our entire being.
About the Author
Special thanks to Yael Shy and our friends at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality for joining us in creating weekly Shabbat moments for your Friday nights.
Yael Shy is the CEO of Mindfulness Consulting, LLC, where she teaches and consults on mindfulness for universities, corporations, and private clients around the world. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017), and the founder of Mindful NYU, the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the US. Yael is a graduate of the IJS Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Certification.
