Just read a story about why the word death isn’t used in Scripture for Ya’akov. I thought: Maybe his kids, after receiving his cursed “blessings,” decided not to hang around for his final kvetch.
So, here goes: Do people change? Am I the bocher that Marsha married?
Yosef and Me/a tragic misalliance:
In honor of the 2705th Shabbos Marsha and I have been married
I grew up bathed in the stories, rituals and practice of Jewish life. I find, still, 70'ish years later that while many of my colleagues and friends find metaphors in Bergman, Kurosawa, Seinfeld, or When Harry Met Sally, my free-floating associations tended to arise from the Torah, Talmud and their commentaries. There grew, however, a notable difference from how my thinking was when I was young. Then, I would find great joy in the heroic stories about the patriarchs and matriarchs and Yosef and the ben Amram Boys, Moshe and Aharon. It was almost 60 years ago that I lost my way for the first time. I suggested to my teachers that since the Torah (Gen 23:2) reduces and superscripts a letter in the word ולבכותה, as in "And Avraham came to eulogize Sarah AND TO CRY FOR HER (ולבכותה)" perhaps reference was being made to Avraham's difficulties with feeling that resonated in his very disturbed progeny. My teachers sent me home for two weeks to consider my perfidy and to eat Mama kuchen.
Stories like Rashi: 46:28 do leave me cold ... where Rashi cites a Midrash as interpreting how Ya'akov sent Yehudah to check out the land as sending him to op[en a Yeshivah in Goshen.
Later, things got much worse. I found myself drawn to the wrong Biblical characters, like an adolescent hanging with a bad crowd. I cried for the first abused babysitter, Hagar (Yishmael's Mom), and could not contain myself in reading about Eisav who just wanted some blessing from his Father and was disliked by his Mother. I was appalled by Avraham's attempt to kill both his kids (Gen 21 & 22) and to blame it on others, frightened by the disfunctionality of (Yitzchak and Rivka's) marriages (last words of Gen 26), and frankly shocked by Ya'akov's household with its kids that would cross the eyes of an inner city social worker. I asked myself: How could you have not seen this, all these years. The answer? I was schooled in the commentaries who were Master Spinners and by design were seeking to whitewash those inside the tribal circle. Groupthink! Like a White House Press Secretary, these exegetists weaved and confabulated! Oh! Lip-service was always paid to how wonderful the Torah was to present the Heroes of Our Nation as flawed individuals but, in the end, they were the most hospitable, the best mates, the most modest and the brightest and best you could ever hope to meet in the Badlands of the Judaean Desert. I think it was Jung who would say that if you meet a Saint in the streets — or in the Arava, I suppose — don't believe it; ask his wife and kids. (Aside: Chances are Jung didn't want to us to ask his kids and Emma but that's another story.)
Fortuitously, I discovered some odd words at the close of the Yishmael story (Gen 21:17). An angel tells Hagar, terrified that her son would die of heat-stroke, not to worry for God had heard the voice of the lad. Great! But then the Writer/writer sneaks in three words באשר הוא שם … "in that he is there." Aha! God sees his creations "in that they are there" … Nu? And as I read the stories? maybe I'm, as one created in God's image, allowed to see these Heroes "as the text presents them." … I was, to say: "Free at last, dear God. Free at last."
So, it was, that I began reading the text, year after year, trying to find the character of the characters, particularly in the Book of Genesis/Breishis, as I read the text. Much like in Marbury vs. Madison, I could look back and decide that certain commentaries maybe had a way of looking at someone but it might not be the only not-unreasonable one and I might be entitled to proffer a different one, indeed. I was pretty good with the first quarter of the book dealing with Creation and the Flood. Avraham, who took up the second quarter? I had all kinds of problems with him but more with Ya'akov's family (who represent the third quarter) who as I noted were like Sharks or Jets … non-consanguineal incesters, a young girl who was just going out to visit her girlfriends when she was set upon by some local Chieftain's son, her lying brothers who genocided the girl's boyfriend's tribe, and a narcissistic dreamer, Yosef, who would take up the whole last quarter of Breishis and would consume a whole lotta family oxygen, in general.
And, so, in 1979, I began to fascinate about why the brothers were so angry with him as to be willing to bury him alive in the Desert? I looked to the two dreams he told to them:
And he said to them: Please, listen up to this dream which I have dreamt. And behold we were gathering
sheaves in the midst of the field and behold my sheaf stood up and was erect and behold your sheaves arose and bowed to my sheaf. (Gen 37:6-7)
And behold I dreamt still another dream and behold the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing to me. (Gen 37:9)
But, why kill him, I asked? And why do I, betimes, in my dreams resort to violence. It was during the recent election cycle that I arose dreaming of strangling a Big Man with wispy hair and a soft wool topcoat. As his breathing slowed and turned to crackles, he turned into the Pillsbury Dough-Boy. Was I dreaming of some politician? But why would I be moved to squeeze the last gasps of life out of him … Again, I digress. But why do we seek to kill? I reasoned for the Yosef case, as follows (many of these ideas appear in my 1998/2016 critique of Freud's thinking: Oedipal Paradigms in Collision).
I thought: it is quite curious that Yosef would be so brazen as to report these highly charged dreams to his brothers. The brothers, predictably (?), confront the upstartish lad with his expressed wish to dominate over them and go off, as if to be rid of their annoyance, to a distant oasis to shepherd their sheep. At his father’s behest, Yosef traipses off into the wilderness in pursuit of his brothers in order to bring back to Ya'akov information concerning the brothers’ dealings … Joe the Snitch. Scripture seems to announce Yosef’s ill-suitedness for this task by noting that he became confused and lost in the wilderness (Gen 37:14-17). The brothers, upon his arrival in camp, strip him of his coat and his embroidered cloak and throw him into a pit to permit themselves time to ponder appropriate means for disposing of the troublemaker. After some debate, the brothers decide it best not to kill this master of dreams and, by happenstance, a band of Midianites raises Yosef from the pit, selling him for twenty pieces of silver to a caravan of Ishmaelites who are travelling down to Egypt.
These initial scenes of a complex, multi-act dramatic play close in the incomplete manner to which one is inured by readings in Genesis. Reuven returns to find an empty pit, the brothers conspire to and, thereafter, convince their father that Yosef was eaten by a feral beast, Ya'akov mourns inconsolably, and Chapter 37 of Genesis comes to an abrupt closing while noting that Yosef was sold to Pharaoh’s royal butcher. While the degree of Yosef's obliviousness to the aggression implicit in his dreams is striking, the brothers’ reaction to this adolescent’s behavior is equally curious. What, we repeat, could have so seriously irked the brothers that they were willing to consider fratricide in order to dispose of their anxieties and frustration with this adolescent? Furthermore, I continue to be struck by the absence of even a whisper of condemnatory preaching in the text against these murderous and lying brothers.
As an aside, we may note that even the Biblical exegetists had problems with Yosef. Their commentaries are of a type that are never applied to other characters in Torah. Several, as we may see in Ginzberg’s compendium, note oddities in the personality of this child of privilege (1920, Vol II, p. 5): “There was something boyish about Yosef. He painted his eyes, dressed his hair carefully, and walked with a mincing step.” Another (Midrash Talpiyos) associates with Yosef a scenario of comic proportions. The author relates that when he was pursued by the wife of his employer, Potiphar, he became so sexually aroused that he ejaculated through his fingertips. And yet, we, in retrospect, can but point to the following typically childish flaws in Yosef: he was a gossip and tattle-tale; he was interested in dominating over his brothers and parents; and he was apparently oblivious to the impact that such matters might have on others.
While Thomas Mann and others have memorialized and idealized Yosef, a brief examination of his later life suggests that his characterological flaws, those perchance that motivated the curious exegeses mentioned above, did not, in fact, alter as he aged. When famine struck Canaan, motivating Ya'akov to send his sons to Egypt in order to secure provisions, Yosef mercilessly tormented his brothers. The text interestingly notes (42:9): “And Yosef remembered the dreams which he had dreamed for them; and he said to them ‘Spies you are, to see the vulnerability of the land you came.’” Yosef, without identifying himself as their brother, incarcerates them on trumped-up espionage charges. After three days, he releases all but Shim'on who would be held hostage until Yosef’s full brother (Binyamin) might be brought to Egypt from Canaan. Yosef, furthermore, arranges for their funds, those that they had utilized to purchase their grain, to be placed back in their travelling sacks yielding much confusion and feelings of guilt in the older brothers. The brothers, other than Shim'on, return to their father who balks at placing at risk his youngest and only remaining child from the now dead and still-beloved-and-preferred Rachel.
The drama resumes as the famine hardens in Canaan and after the guilt-ridden brothers plead with and offer promises to their father who seems disinterested in the fact that Shim'on is not back on the ranch; Ya'akov relents and the brothers appear, once again, before this Viceroy of Egypt, this time with Binyamin. Upon seeing his younger brother and hearing that the now ancient Ya'akov is alive, Yosef’s inclination is to cry. He restrains himself, however, for a further turn of the screw. He sends the brothers back toward Canaan with grain, with the money they presumably had already spent in purchasing that grain, and with his personal silver goblet hidden, specifically, in Binyamin’s sack; he allows them a very brief taste of freedom and then arranges to have them overtaken by the soldiers of Egypt. The brothers are interrogated on the road and, thereafter, questioned by Yosef through a translator (44:15ff). Yosef wonders how they could not have known that a man such as he would certainly divine their treachery and suggests that he will keep the offending Binyamin as his servant, allowing the remaining brothers to go in peace. It is, in fact, only after the lengthiest plea reported in the saga of Genesis — one that begs the Viceroy to understand that the loss of Binyamin would assuredly yield the death of Ya'akov — it is only at this point that Yosef abandons his ruse and, in a display of royal magnanimity, identifies himself as their long-lost brother Yosef whom, he assures them, they should no longer fear! What a guy!
We return, though, to our earlier question: What might have so seriously irked the brothers that they were willing to consider fratricide in order to dispose of their frustration with this adolescent?
We begin by reminding ourselves that homicide (both successful and attempted), incest, lying and litigiosity with the Deity all fail to be followed by any form of Divine wrath unleashed against the perpetrators of such actions in Genesis; and this is not contradicted by the treatment of Yosef’s brothers after their intended murder. What purpose, then, does this story serve? We might posit that the story of Yosef is one that preaches against the liabilities that may attend fraternal envy and parental preference, envy being one of the Seven Deadly Sins that turns up in Christendom. This, disappointingly, does not, however, comport well with our experience in reviewing the thirty seven chapters of Genesis that precede this tale; envy had already been dealt with and many times. What could there be to add, after all, to the tales of covetousness that had already been noted, those between: Kayin and Hevel; Sarah and Hagar; Ya'akov and Esav; or Rachel and Leah (Gen 29)? Envy, covetousness and rivalry can only be described as stale material at this point in the saga of the Family Genesis.
By 1981, I reasoned: Letting go of the content of Yosef’s dreams, however, and concentrating instead on the evanescent choreography of its characters, we may bear witness to three curiosities. We note first that there is a sameness in Yosef’s mode of relating with each family member; each plays the same role, each a duplicate of the other. Be it the sun, the moon or the eleven stars, each is restricted to the task of bowing down to Yosef, just as the brothers would bow to him many years later in Yosef’s palace; and the sheaves and their prostrations in the earlier dream, we clearly note, are indistinguishable, one from the next.
Secondly, we witness an absence of communication between the dreams’ faceless dancers. For instance, the celestial bodies of the later cosmological dream are individually in orbit about Yosef; each separately relates to him and to no one else. Lastly, and related to the previous two anomalies, we note a repeated inclination to view each and every situation in a self-referenced style; there is, that is, no evidence provided that Yosef was inclined to view the impact that his actions might have on another, never mind any indications that he was other than oblivious to these others’ world-views, relationships or personal senses of agency as Subjects in Their Own Right. If we had doubts concerning this matter, they were put to rest by our brief examination of his sadistic treatment of the brothers on their repeated trips to Egypt and his apparent willingness, in calculated and premeditated form, to subordinate interest in his father’s well-being to personal wishes for vengeance.
It is not, we should add, that envy fails to play a part in this scenario, either in the dreams or in the brothers’ response to these dreams. We may assume envy to be present, defensively, in the construction of such dreams and in the brothers’ responses to the actual preferential treatment that Yosef received from Ya'akov, as well as in Yosef’s insatiable demand for ever more! Yosef’s particular form of envy, however, seems to transcend the mere wish to have what another has or even the wish to be the sole possessor of those entitlements. The unilateral self-referencing nature of his envy appears to require that the others relinquish even their claims to a personal point of view or Selfhood. (Consider, some recent politicians.) These others, examined in light of the above considerations of his dreams, may not be separate or distinguishable and are permitted no intercourse with each other. It is, we might say, a form of covetousness that disallows others their very existence in forming their own identities and subjectivities. There is, one might say, to people such as Yosef only one subjectivity and that is his own. All others are Objects.
There is a general principle in Talmudic Law that suggests that when one party is pleasured or has gain and another party has no loss, there is no tort and, therefore, there can be no legal claim; for characters such as Yosef, we aver, this principle carries no weight. And, indeed, it is quite the reverse. Even when he has no gain by so-doing, such a person may take away from another just so they won't have access to this or that Good. Yosef needed it all!
Let me close with an admission: I might have wanted to kill Yosef, too.
So, this week's Parsha, has three characters ... four if you include Pharaoh. Nearing the close of our tour thru Breishis, And so I ask:
Have Ya'kov, Yosef and Yehudah changed?
Yehudah? 44:18-34 ... seems consistently like a good guy ... Like Adam on Bonanza.
Yoseph: 45:1-20 ... he was certainly generous w his gifts to F? and torturous with his machinations.
46:28 Rashi … Yitzchak went to study in the Yeshivah of Shem and Ever after Papa tried to cut his head off and Yehudah went to open a Yeshivah in Goshen … “boy, have I got a rusting infrastructure to sell!”
The Meeting: Ya'akov and Yosef: 46:30-34 (How to pass) 47:11-12. Ya'akov and Yosef sort of mirror each other.
The Meeting: Ya'akov and Pharaoh: Pharaoh tells Yosef: It's all Good: 47:7-10. Ya'akov kvetches ... I hope I do better near the end.
Yosef as Administrator and the 20% Egypt Tax Act of of the 4th Millennium BCE: 47:13-end of ויגש ....
Yosef really does the Tax Act thing ... 1/5 of everything you got unless you're part of the Priestly Oligarchy.
So, let's party! Sell off the parks ... redistribute the $ to a Priestly class. Yoseph … Donnie Boy … Golden haired children of preferential treatment.