Parashat VaYeshev
Genesis 37:1-40:23
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I'm traveling for work this week and haven't had time to write anything new, so most of what follows is something I wrote last year for this parasha.
I have often noted that part of the greatness of Jewish tradition is that our sacred texts do not gloss over the faults and misdeeds of our the founders of our faith. Indeed, our texts cover these in great detail, and we are encouraged to learn from them as much if not more than we learn from our ancestors' virtues. And we see plenty of each in the three central incidents of this week's portion: Jacob's sons selling one of their number into slavery, the incident of Judah and Tamar, and the incident of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. In the interest of brevity, I will focus here, however, on only the first of these.
Joseph was the favorite of Jacob's twelve sons for a variety of reasons, but mostly because he was the first-born of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel, and because he was particularly devoted to his father. He was also a remarkable young man; the sages describe him as equal in greatness to the rest of his brothers combined: as capable of prophecy as his brother Levi, as noble as his brother Judah, as deserving of the rights and responsibilities of a first-born as his brother Reuben, as wise as his brother Issachar, and so on. And as a mark of Joseph's favored position, Jacob awarded him a coat of many colors. (Though contrary to popular cultural conception, it wasn't technicolor.)
But Joseph was also an arrogant, immature little jerk, lording his superiority and his status as their father's favorite over his brothers. And his brothers didn't handle it well at all. When Joseph prophesied about ruling over his brothers, they had had enough. Aware of Jacob's favoritism and Joseph's greatness, they feared that the prophecy meant they would never attain their due from their father, that they would always be despised, and that Joseph truly was meant to rule over them. As Rabbi Joseph Hertz comments, the hardest thing to realize without envy is the superiority of a younger brother; the brothers' jealousy turned to hatred and they hatched the plot we read about to murder Joseph and convince Jacob that he had been devoured by wild animals. At the last moment, Reuben convinced his brothers to spare Joseph's life and cast him into a pit instead, hoping he would be able to rescue Joseph later. Judah, beginning to regret his role in the decision to murder his brother, convinced his brothers to follow this new course of action. Relieved, Reuben left his brothers. In fear that his brothers might revert to their original plan to kill Joseph, Judah then convinced them to sell Joseph into slavery.
As a slave, Joseph was taken to Egypt. The brothers returned to their father, telling him Joseph was dead and causing him great anguish. As noted above, many commentaries tell us that Reuben and Judah in particular had already begun to regret their actions even before lying to their father about Joseph's death, and many more tell us they all suffered from having caused their father such pain and from the horrible sin they realized they had committed.
The Talmud (Shabbat 10) explicitly warns us not to be like Jacob -- had he not played favorites with his children, the events that followed may never have occurred and he and all his sons may have been spared the anguish that followed. But we are also warned to learn from the mistakes of Joseph and his brothers, that arrogance may cost us everything and that failure to control our envy of others may lead us to commit unspeakable acts we'd all be best off avoiding.
Truly this is a crucial problem in contemporary public discourse. Admitting the superiority of another -- that s/he is smarter, more creative, stronger, better, more worthy, more deserving, etc., etc., etc., in any way -- is perceived as weakness. Asserting our own superiority -- no matter how empty, baseless, or unworthy such a claim my be -- is perceived as strength. We are discouraged from exploring the nuances of complex arguments in favor of reductionist, simplistic sound bites. We are told that my way is the universally correct way, context and circumstance be damned. In short, we are told to sacrifice integrity for expediency, to pretend that merit is a function of who you are rather than what you do, and to ignore the legitimacy of others' claims and complaints that are not 100% in concert with those of the wealthy and powerful among us, or even among the not-so-wealthy or powerful if their claims and complaints are simply not in concert with our own.
Part of the greatness of Jewish tradition is that it does not gloss over the weaknesses of its heroes. And so two of the greatest gifts of Jewish tradition are that by confronting the weaknesses of its heroes, it has always spoken truth to power and warned us of the consequences of failing to do so. We do not ignore the faults and misdeeds of our heroes because it would be unjust to do so and because failing to correct misdeeds within our community inevitably yields great misfortune for our community.
As the year-long presidential election process engulfs us, let us remember this exactly. President Obama is not the candidate many of us would have preferred four years ago nor is he the candidate many of us would prefer today, but he is by far the smartest, most creative, strongest, best, most worthy, and most deserving candidate. We can acknowledge that and work very hard to get him reelected while still recognizing that his opponents, like stopped clocks, are not always wrong, and that his critics are often right. We can remember that criticism is not always an attack, that friends tell each other the truth when one does something wrong, and that there is a difference between constructive criticism and polemical hot air. And we can remember that it can take decades to clean up a disaster that takes only a short time to cause, and BushCo's eight years of disaster-making were just the tip of the iceberg. Our job is not merely to help Obama win reelection -- or, if you're so inclined, keep his opponents from undoing what progress he's been able to make in cleaning up the messes left behind by his abominable predecessor -- but to force him to do better and be better.
We hear a lot at this site about the 99%; here's our chance to translate rhetoric into action. Our side wins when it comes to ideas and the welfare of the vast majority of the people in this country, as well as the welfare of those abroad affected by US policies. And if even a bare majority of the 99% can live up to the lessons of this week's parasha, then we can continue the long, tireless, often painful work of dragging our country kicking and screaming back from the brink of the abyss into which too many powerful interests would shove us for profit and their own self-interest. President Obama may not be the candidate many of us would have preferred four years ago or the president many of us wish we had today, but we do ourselves no favors if we sell him out in the coming year in the hope of someone better in 2016. If anything, just as Joseph's brothers condemned themselves and their descendants to generations in exile by removing their far-from-perfect brother, we too would regret empowering Republicans to cause further damage to our society.
It's not always satisfying to push for incremental change in the right direction, but it's always preferable to monumental change in the wrong direction. Let us hope that the coming year will empower people who will push for genuine progress in greater and greater increments.