Joseph: Brat, Brother, Authoritarian, All Too Human

My teacher, Julius Lester, was appalled. "Joseph was not a brat," he stated.

It was the 1980's, and I had met Julius at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where (as a graduate student) I'd taken his course Blacks and Jews: A Study in Comparative Oppressions. 

But we were not in the classroom: we were at the synagogue where I taught, and he sometimes led services, and we were in the middle of the Torah discussion--sometime about this time of year. The Torah portion was part of the Joseph saga.

I never found out why Julius was so outraged at my statement about Joseph. Was it pure piety? Joseph was a man who could resist seduction by Potiphar's wife, who could interpret dreams and give all the credit for the interpretation to God. He could rise from prison to the palace, save the land of Egypt from starvation, rescue his family, and forgive them for having sold him into slavery. How could a man like that be less than a saint (or as we would say, a tzaddik)?

I don't know if that's why Julius was shocked at me. But here's why I thought Joseph was a brat.

The obnoxious little brother

Joseph was his father Jacob's favorite son--and he knew it.

 

Joseph's mother, Rachel, was the woman his father fell in love with and worked seven years to marry. The other women his father married were an afterthought. His father gave him the coat of many colors, a sign that Joseph was his designated heir.  

 

Then Joseph had two dreams that both signified he would someday rule over his whole family. Did he keep his dreams to himself? No. Did he tell his father privately? No. He told his whole family. How did he imagine his brothers were going to react?

 

The brat in power

Joseph seems to have had a blind spot for other people's emotions. Only if they had power over his life did he seem to care about them.  

 

* He refused to sleep with Potiphar's wife because of the loyalty he owed his master, not for any other stated reason. 

 

* He sucked up to Pharaoh's cupbearer in the prison to try to get himself out of jail, but once he was appointed to high office by Pharaoh, the cupbearer is never mentioned again. 

 

* True, he kept the people of Egypt from starvation, but the price they paid was turning over all their land and becoming serfs to Pharaoh. Can you say "authoritarian personality"?

 

A different way of understanding Joseph

Just this week, however, I learned a different way of looking at Joseph, one that makes me feel more sympathetic to him. (I give all the credit to participants in Rabbi Ruti Regan's #ParshaChat on Twitter.)

What if, instead of feeling superior as a child, Joseph just felt singled out?

It could not have been easy, being the youngest brother (because his mother had not yet given birth to Benjamin), and the half-brother of all these grown men, and being put on a pedestal by his father. Even if he sensed he had some kind of destiny awaiting him, he could not ignore the way it made his brothers hate him, right there, right then.

What if telling his dreams was not oblivious, not a power play, but a plea for understanding? 

It's not just Dad who thinks I'm special, he might be saying. It's not just me putting on airs. Look, there's a sign from God that I have a role to play. Can you please stop blaming me now?

But they can't. They throw him into a pit. Then, they sell him as a slave.

What Joseph learns, and what he never grasps

If this interpretation is right, it would explain why, in Egypt, Joseph takes care to attribute his dream-interpretations to God and not to himself. Raising yourself in other people's eyes is a dangerous business!

If this interpretation is correct, it would explain why Joseph takes an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife and tries to forget the painful scenes with his family. He did everything he knew how to do to keep his father's love without incurring his brothers' hatred, and nothing worked. Now, as second to Pharaoh, he is competent and powerful.

If this interpretation holds water, it also contains new insights into why Joseph apparently torments his brothers when they come looking for food during a famine. Joseph may be testing them, to see if they've changed, but at the same time he is learning that he has changed, too. He has learned that other people have feelings too (especially Judah, who reveals his love for their father and his guilt for the way they treated Joseph in an eloquent speech). 

And he has learned there is an alternative to dominating or being dominated--and that is forgiveness.

Sadly, Joseph seems to have learned about forgiveness and love only in relation to his own family. He still wields power over the enslaved Egyptians in a way that foreshadows how the Egyptians will eventually exploit the enslaved Israelites. 

So, he is not entirely a brat, entirely a tzaddik, or entirely a reformed character who has learned from experience. Joseph is a complicated human being. That may be why, thousands of years later, we still read and reinterpret his story.

 

Joseph, Jonah, Miriam, and Nelson

Some weeks in shul, I don't hear any cogent words about the Torah portion.  But today at Temple B'nai Brith, reading Parshat Vayigash, I heard at least three wonderful thoughts.

The Torah Portion

Parshat Vayigash brings the story of Joseph to its climax.  When he was young, his brothers sold him into slavery, but he rose to become the leader of Egypt, second in command to the Pharaoh.  At this point in the story, his brothers have come to Egypt three times, twice seeking food in a famine, the third time accused of stealing from the Egyptian leader whom they do not recognize as their brother. 

Joseph has threatened to keep the youngest brother (Benjamin, the son of Rachel, who was Joseph's mother too) in prison forever.  An older brother, Judah, offers to take Benjamin's place, to keep their father Jacob from dying of grief for his favorite remaining son.  Moved to tears, Joseph reveals himself.  He tells them that not they but God sent him to Egypt so that he could do good, and he gets Pharaoh's permission to invite them to bring the entire clan to Egypt to settle.

Today at shul, the twins Jonah and Miriam Freed Boardman celebrated their b'nai mitzvah.  Each said something penetrating about the story.

Three Interpretations

Jonah pointed out that even though the Egyptians regarded the children of Israel/Jacob as barbaric, in the midst of a famine, the Egyptian government invited the Israelites in and made them welcome.  Contrast this to our government, he said, which has been doing so much to turn immigrants and refugees away at the door!

Miriam called our attention to the name of Serach bat Asher, Joseph's niece, one of the only women to be mentioned in the list of Jews who came down to Egypt.  What was so special about Serach?  The text gives no clue, but as usual, that was no bar to the rabbinic imagination.  The rabbis came up with three midrashim about Serach:

1. She was the one who broke the astonishing news that Joseph was alive to her grandfather Jacob.  He had been mourning Joseph for years, perhaps decades, and even good news might have shocked him and even killed him if not for her gentle manner.  As a reward for caring for her aged grandfather, she was granted a miraculous old age...and lived all the way until the time of Moses.
2. Serach was the only one who knew the code word that God had given the Israelites to recognize a true prophet.  She vouched for Moses to her people.
3. Before he died, Joseph arranged to have himself embalmed and made his people promise to take him back to the land of his ancestors.  Four hundred years later, during the Exodus, they had the chance to keep that promise--because Serach knew where Joseph was buried.

Miriam (the namesake of a prophet) reminded us that even a generation ago, she might not have been allowed to celebrate becoming bat mitzvah along with her brother.  With her words of wisdom, she brought women's voices back into the story...including her own.

In response, our congregation's senior leader, Phil Weiss, compared Joseph to another prisoner who rose to leadership: Nelson Mandela.  Like Joseph, Mandela refused to seek revenge on his oppressors.  He and Archbishop Tutu set up commissions for truth and reconciliation instead.  As a result, South Africa still faces many problems, but solving them will not take divine intervention, nor the death of the firstborn.  In this way, Mandela was greater than Joseph.  Joseph left Egypt in a feudal state.  Mandela left South Africa a democracy.

Brotherly Love

Throughout the book of Genesis, brothers are fighting brothers.  At the same time, there are barely concealed lessons on how the fratricide is going to cease.  By the time Exodus begins, the Israelites have learned those lessons.  Have we?

Sibling conflict is as old as the world.  Cain kills Abel.  The birth of Isaac leads to the expulsion of Ishmael.  Esau loses his birthright to his younger brother, Jacob, and Jacob has to flee Esau for his life.  He goes to the home of his mother's brother, Laban, who treats him like a brother: that is, cheats and exploits him.  Ten of Jacob's sons sell their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt.  It seems as if this cycle of family violence will never end.

Yet along the way, we see brothers coming together when they share a concern for someone other than themselves.  At first, it is their father.  Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father Abraham.

And Rabbi Jonathan Kligler comes up with a beautiful midrash to say that burying their father let Isaac and Ishmael reconcile.  (May this be a model for their descendants in Israel and Palestine!)

Similarly, the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Menasheh, could have been at war with each other over their grandfather Jacob's blessing.  Jacob, a younger son himself, gives his best blessing to the younger son Ephraim.  He does bless both of them, however, without hesitation or reservation.  They, too, come together for the funeral of their father, Joseph.  And they stay together.  Even though (or because?) the two half-tribes are allotted separate territory in Canaan, they remain the tribe of Joseph.  

Look now at the book of Exodus, which we are reading from January through mid-March 2013.  Moses is a younger son, raised in luxury in the Egyptian court, while Aaron, his older brother, is an Israelite slave oppressed by the Pharaoh.  Moses returns to his family and his people with a message from God--which he stutters too much to deliver by himself.  He needs Aaron.

And Aaron steps in.  Until his death, Aaron speaks for Moses and acts in concert with him.  Certainly, Aaron and their sister Miriam (a leader and prophet in her own right) sometimes argue with Moses, but only about whether he is leading well, not about whether or not he should lead.  The project of making the Jews ready to receive the Torah and to live by it was bigger than any sibling rivalry.  It still is, today.  Jews need to remember that, and all people can take a lesson about how to turn brotherly hate into brotherly love.

This blog entry is dedicated to my brothers Gary Fischman, Joel Fischman, and Ron Fischman, my sister Yael Fischman, and my brother-in-law Jonathan Charry. 

Interpreting the Dream Today: Joseph in Egypt and Obama in the White House

The leader of a great and powerful nation looks ahead and sees economic disaster looming. He searches for an adviser who can help him create sweeping change and provide hope to the land. The qualifications of the person he elects are 1) that he has shown good judgment before in interpreting visions of life and death, and 2) that he comes from a group that was previously denigrated and despised in his country--to the point that the majority would not even sit down and eat with them at the same table.

This is the story of Joseph in Egypt, too.

In Parshat Miketz, which we read in synagogue a few weeks ago, the Pharaoh (or king) has a dream that seven fat cows are feeding by the great river of Egypt--and seven lean, emaciated cows come and swallow them up. He has the same dream again, only with ears of corn instead of cattle. The only one who can make sense of his dreams is Joseph, the enslaved Hebrew being held prisoner in Pharaoh's dungeon. Pharaoh's butler had met Joseph in prison, when he had been sent there in political disgrace, and Joseph had correctly predicted his return to a position of influence.

On the butler's recommendation, Pharaoh listened to Joseph's dream interpretation: that seven years of prosperity would be swallowed up by seven years of famine, and that it was time to begin preparing now. Pharaoh makes Joseph his famine czar: "Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled; only in the throne will I be greater than thou."

Barack Hussein Obama is the Joseph who has become the Pharaoh. After the eight relatively fat years of the Clinton administration, we have seen eight lean years, all of which were recession years for the poor of this country (and disasters for our rights and liberties). Obama famously showed good judgment in denouncing the Iraq war. Since his father was from Kenya and his wife's family includes the descendants of slaves, he is also associated with African Americans, who have not had such influence in Washington since the days of Reconstruction. Joseph (for good and for ill) centralized control at the national level. Obama promises to move in that direction too.

As an American Pharaoh who has been treated as a god by many of his followers to date, will Obama choose his own advisers as well as the Egyptian Pharaoh did? His appointments do not look promising. On foreign policy, many of them are the same people who helped George W. Bush get us into Iraq in the first place. On economic policy, they are the same people who helped Bill Clinton fritter away America's "social contract with its citizens," leading us to the awful state we're in.

The best we can hope for is that Obama will challenge his inner butler. He must remember where he came from--a community organizer who spent time with average people in the prison of poverty--and listen to the voices that tell him, "Make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house."

The best we can do is to organize, pressure him, and make it so. Pharaoh cannot be Moses, and Obama cannot be a movement leader from the White House. We need to lead from here.