“Knowing our roots” means cultivating conscious contact with a deeper source of nurture and support. This core Jewish spiritual practice is embodied by Joseph, the protagonist in the Torah reading cycle which coincides with and follows Hanukkah, and which concludes the Book of Genesis.
Throughout the story of Joseph and his brothers, he manifests the middah (spiritual/ethical quality) of bitachon, awareness of being implanted in and connected to a source in which he trusts. When Joseph interprets the dreams of the butler and baker in prison and, when he is freed, the dreams of Pharaoh, he insists that God, not he, is the source of their interpretations. According to Rashi, Joseph in effect tells Pharaoh that “the wisdom is not mine, but God will answer and put an answer into my mouth that will bring peace to Pharaoh.” Through his quality of bitachon or trust, Joseph understands himself simply as a conduit, a vessel through which the Divine source will flow.
Despite the manifold challenges and injustices Joseph experiences throughout the narrative (being sold into slavery, imprisoned unjustly, and forgotten by those on whom he depended) he maintains this awareness of a greater or deeper power operating within him. His consciousness of and trust in this process does not waver, even when its energy leads him into extreme challenges and painful experiences.
Strikingly, throughout the Joseph narrative in Genesis this deeper, greater power is never described as operating overtly. God functions down below the surface, in the roots, never “speaking” explicitly to Joseph or anyone else. The hidden reality of the Divine is clearly present but, as depicted in this the narrative, human beings must acknowledge and draw it out. The character of Joseph illuminates and symbolizes this process of drawing up sacred energy through the roots.
Joseph is associated in Jewish mystical tradition with Tzadik, one who does that which is right, acting in alignment with the deeper flow of the Divine. The Friday evening liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat features Psalm 92 (click here for a healing chant by MIRAJ, a trio consisting of Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, Juliet Spitzer, and Rabbi Margot Stein), which concludes:
tzadik katamar yifrach,
the righteous bloom like a date palm, thrive like a cedar in Lebanon,
sh’tulim b’veit Adonai, b’chatzrot eloheinu yafrichu,
planted in the house of the Holy One, they flourish in the courts of our God.
Od y’nuvun b’seivah d’sheinim v’ra’ananim yehiyu
In old age they still produce fruit; they are full of sap and freshness,
Lehagid ki yashar Adonai, tzuri v’lo avlata bo
attesting that the Holy One is upright, my rock, in whom there is no flaw.
Our roots, planted in the Divine, represent the nexus between ourselves and the deeper Source from which we emerge and which is constantly causing us to flourish. When we grow in awareness of this constant process—when we “know our roots”—then we, like Joseph, can experience a sense of bitachon, trusting in that flow and our ability to draw it up through ourselves into the world. Through this practice, moment by moment each of us has the potential to act as a tzadik, one who does what is right, manifesting the Divine flow, healing and repairing ourselves and our world.