What a Fight Over a License Plate Taught Me About Our Torah Reading

As many of you know, I began my Rabbinical career in Knoxville Tennessee.  Those were important years for me, and even though I have lived in Paramus for the past 30 years, I do try to keep up with the news there.

An article about a legal matter in Tennessee that is being appealed to the US Supreme Court appeared in my newsfeed earlier this week. It concerns a battle over a vanity license plate that raised significant First Amendment issues concerning the regulation of personal and government speech. The license plate consists of seven characters.  Yet those seven characters have become the basis of a major case because different people read the same message in radically different ways. One person intended a playful reference; others interpreted it as crude or offensive.

The story reminded me of something profoundly true about the moment in which we live. It also illuminated something in this week’s Torah reading, Parshat Vayeshev, that I had not seen before. And it encouraged me to write this message so that we might consider not only how we communicate, but also to better understand those who communicate with us. Allow me to share four ideas.

1. The Public Square Has No Nuance.

We communicate constantly. We tweet, text, and experience (if not endure) slogans, headlines, bumper stickers, and yes, license plates, yet we understand one another less. The more we shorten our messages, the more we potentially flatten our meanings.

2. Parshat Vayeshev Shows Us This Problem Is Not New.

This week’s Torah reading is filled with examples of what happens when people read each other superficially, quickly, and without generosity.

Joseph shares his dreams and spiritually laden visions. But his brothers see only one meaning: arrogance. They reduce Joseph’s entire character to a single interpretation: “He’s a threat.” A complicated inner world collapsed into a simple, harmful judgment. And that lack of nuance becomes the spark that tears the family apart.

Later, Tamar stands at a crossroads. Judah sees her and assumes he already knows who she is. He fits her instantly into the simplest category available. Only later does he realize the truth, and understand the depth of her integrity, her courage, and her righteousness. Judah’s failure was not only moral: it was interpretive. He never paused to consider that her story might be more than what he saw at a glance.

And then there is the bloody coat brought to Jacob. The brothers do not speak a false word. They simply offer an ambiguous symbol and let Jacob supply the meaning. And he does: instantly, incorrectly, and tragically.

Parshat Vayeshev becomes a study in how misunderstandings, snap judgments, and surface readings can break relationships and cause years of pain. At the same time, it also provides a lens through which we might consider our own responses to the bits of information and minimalist communications that increasingly characterize our world.

3. Judaism insists on a different way.

Where our culture rewards speed, certainty, and instant reactions, Jewish tradition elevates depth, patience, and humility. We believe in machloket l’shem shamayim, what our Rabbis called “arguments for the sake of Heaven” which require sincerity, respect, and the willingness to listen before responding, as well as an abiding commitment not only to the truth but also to the dignity of those engaged in the process. We study a Torah wrapped in commentaries, with layers upon layers of meaning.  We have a tradition that every verse has shiv’im panim laTorah, seventy valid interpretations.  In other words: truth is rarely simple, and people are far more complex than the stories we project onto them. Nothing in Torah can be reduced to seven characters like the license plate in Tennessee.

But the public square pushes us in the opposite direction. We expect instant clarity. We often assume our interpretation is the only interpretation.
And increasingly, we fill in silence with suspicion and ambiguity with fear.
We collapse people into symbols and symbols into slogans. And in doing so, we risk losing our ability to see each other as full human beings with nuance, contradictions, hopes, flaws, and dignity.

By studying the lives of Joseph, Jacob, and Judah, Parshat VaYeshev asks us to look again at their grief and suffering,  and recognize how much pain emerges when we interpret too quickly and too narrowly. And then, having done so, it asks us to bring that awareness into our own lives.

4. A Challenge For This Shabbat.

In a world of quick reactions, let’s attempt to cultivate slower but better understanding. In a culture that thrives on outrage, let’s commit to curiosity. In a public square without nuance, let’s be the people who bring nuance back. And in doing so, may we seek to see one another not as caricatures, not as headlines, not as seven-character summaries, but as complex, sacred beings created in the image of God.