His Soul is Bound Up in His Soul

Pity our poor father, Jacob. Having lost his precious elder son, Joseph years ago, circumstances now conspire to deprive him of this youngest son, Benjamin, the only remaining child of his beloved wife, Rachel. Knowing the position he is placing his brother’s in, Joseph demands a heartless exchange: food in exchange for this young brother. Then, once the father and brothers relent to this desperate choice, he arranges a trap that leaves Benjamin as his prisoner, and forces his brother’s to confront the enormity of what they inflicted on him all these many years ago.
And the years have made a difference. This time, Judah steps up (literally and morally), offering himself in Benjamin’s stead. Why? Because he explains that his father has already lost one son of his dear Rachel, and he won’t survive losing a second. “His soul is bound up in his soul,” is Judah’s description of the bond between Jacob and Benjamin.
Three Biblical words: nafsho keshura be-nafsho. Those words contain all the metaphysics we’ll ever need, and all the morality too. Turns out that our sense of ourselves as distinct, separate entities that interact with other equally autonomous entities from the outside (we influence externally, we bump into each other, we rely on coercion and force) is false — a distortion of physics and a moral monstrosity. Nothing is truly distinct. At the smallest level, our atoms swirl endlessly from thing to thing, unaware that they have crossed any real boundary. And even our neurology prunes itself to embody the influences and memories of those who impact our lives for the good. They literally live in us, and always will.
Humans, like groves of trees, are really cooperative communes. Societies of societies, each of us integrates each other in a constantly reformulating and emerging event we call ourselves. Jacob is literally bound to Benjamin. and Benjamin to Jacob. And we to those with whom we share this journey called life.

Rabbi Dr Bradley Shavit Artson is the Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is Vice President of American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

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