This is the time of year that we have a lot of contact with family and friends, some directly and sometimes indirectly. Some getting together time and some by mail. It's a mixture of joy and tension. This week's parsha is the perfect example of how a dysfunctional family functions, and one of the remarkable things about our Torah. It isn't all angels and saints who can do no wrong.
The main story line in this parsha revolves around the imminent death of Jacob that follows him being reunited with his favorite son Joseph, who he thought was dead for 22 years. Let's review how all that came about. This parsha has relevance to all. If you are a parent who can look at it from that perspective, but we are all the children of someone so an only child can look at the parent-child relationship or if you have siblings you can look at the whole picture. It's amazingly relevant to us all.
Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob out of 12 brothers. Jacob made no attempt to hide his favoritism. Does this sound familiar? "You like her better than me." "How come he always gets the car." Out of jealousy his brothers sold him into slavery and then covered their crime by dousing Joseph's robe of many colors in the blood of a beast. They presented the coat to their father with the sad story of Joseph's demise. We get minimal information of how they all feel about this heinous crime. Yes they tear their garments and cry but this all in a few verses.
Imagine- a parent loosing a child- loosing a child to a wild beast. Imagine doing something like that to your sibling.
Then finding out 22 years later the truth- that your other sons, flesh and blood did this awful deed and that you have been deprived of a relationship with your child for his entire life. Or did he find out how Joseph got to Egypt? It's not clear that Jacob ever learned the real truth, if he had, it might have been too much for him to bear- even if Jacob doesn't know the real truth, can you imagine the family gatherings? Jacob suspicious, or at least pining for the missing child however he met his end and all the brothers knowing the truth and keeping it inside- and did they wonder themselves about what might have happened to Joseph? And did Joseph all this time try to find out about them or even his supposedly beloved father? Not that we know of.
This is an extreme example, but I'm sure we all have the experience of stressful family gatherings and this time of year seems to be the height of that. Gift giving is stressful- useless things, spending money one doesn't have, showing off. My child got accepted to Harvard, we're building an even bigger house this year, I visit grandma more than you do.
Now looking at the reunion of Joseph and his brothers- fraught with tension. Joseph has become more successful than anyone could have imagined, the other brothers have come to Egypt in poverty- basically starving. So let's look at our parsha which is the culmination of this whole cycle.
If you are like me at this time of year, you receive a letter or in some cases an entire tome complete with pictures, from people that you are not so in touch with the whole year. It's catch up time. Sometimes, you can read between the lines:
Our son moved back home after college and is the grounds manager of the Holiday Inn. Read: we are glad to see him but are concerned that he has all this education and is not gainfully employed.
Mother is now living at a lovely board and care home, nearby, and is happy in her new surroundings. Read: we had to institutionalize our mother and this was the best we could do. She does not recognize us anymore.
So imagine what Jacob's letter might look like. My son Joseph, the perfect Jewish child- an immigrant who becomes a huge success in his adopted country, becomes an activist and changes the socio-economics of his adopted land, the slave becomes a prince! No matter than he married a woman who was not Jewish, raised his children among pagans, basked in the luxury of the royal palace, and wielded almost absolute power and loved it. Is this a person who should have "tzaddik" attached to his name? Which he does in our literature.
Joseph brings his father to Egypt, rather than having him put into an "nursing home" and visiting him there. He is not embarrassed to be seen in public with his poverty-stricken family.
Mother doesn't get so many calls this time of year- after all with Alzheimer's she won't know the difference anyway. Is the bottle of wine we're bringing to dinner good enough, will they think we're cheap if we bring a bottle of $2 buck Chuck? Our son is going to Community College for the first two years because he just isn't ready to leave home, not going to an Ivy League school like cousin Shmendrick.
Now on his death bed Jacob is going to offer a blessing to each son. He will speak about their future contributions based on their past behavior. So lets look again at this Biblical dysfunctional family. None of them is a "tzaddik." In the blessings Jacob offers the sons we see that they all live far apart from each other- they probably send the annual "we are so great tomes" to each other bragging about their own children and wealth.
And how do they treat each other- When the Egyptian ruler seized Shimon as a hostage, the others did not go to his aid, when Joseph tricks them by placing a silver cup in Benjamin's bag according to the midrash, they beat Benjamin up to take the blame away from themselves and blame Judah for the whole sordid thing starting with the selling of Joseph into slavery. How many of us have relatives we never speak to or see because of some perceived slight that we are partly responsible for ourselves?
When Jacob looks back on the behavior of these sons to formulate the requisite blessing, does he also question his own parenting to have raised sons who could do such a thing to a brother? Or who are so alienated from each other and from himself? Here it is Jacob's final days- what will he say to these men? And what about these grandsons that he has never seen?
At the beginning of this parsha Joseph brings these two grandsons for a blessing from their grandfather.
Menashe: name means "For G-d has made me forget all my tribulations and the house of my father."
Ephraim: G-d has made me bear fruit in the land of my misery.
Midrash on this tells us that Jacob found two boys so alienated that he could not recognize himself in them and realized that Joseph was the epitome of the assimilated Jew. Many of us have the experience of the generation before us being concerned about legacy, especially at the end of their lives.
So, with all this, what kind of blessing is Jacob going to offer to these alienated and selfish sons who committed such a heinous crime or who are such strangers but in the end are still his sons and grandsons, and after all Jacob was no saint himself (remember Esau)? "Blood is thicker than water".
The sons were expecting a blessing from their father at his death.
Ephraim, Shimon, and Levi: denied blessings and only offered curses because of past bad behavior. Ephraim for sleeping with Bilhah, one of Jacob's concubines, and Shimon and Levi for their massacre of the men of Shechem.
These three were first in the birth order. Interesting that tribe of Levi later has a sacred job given to it- care of the mishkan. There is definite precedence in Torah for blessing the younger before the elder- can be interpreted as beauty before age. Ephraim gets a blessing before Menashe- even these boys who Jacob hardly knows.
Judah gets a blessing, a "regal" reward- like the lion, but "squatting and crouching". King David will be a direct descendent of Judah. He is no saintly person either with his relations with Tamar earlier in Bereshit. All of these sons have an important place in the Jacob/Joseph cycle. The rest are hardly mentioned before now. So if you want to use your imagination for the "New Year's Tome" that Jacob might have written:
Zebulun: will be a tribe of seafarers and merchants. Jacob has high hopes for "his son the businessman." Even back then-
Yissachar: likens him to a "bone-strong" donkey. Disappointment that he will only amount to being a "working stiff."
Dan: equated to a serpent lurking by the road- bites horse's heels. Perhaps Dan will be that person who makes a living by repossessing the TV when someone can't pay.
Gad: will raid and be raided- victorious in the end- maybe he'll be a "contractor" in Iraq.
Asher: will be a great baker- "delicacies fit for a king"- that 4-star restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Naftali: equated to a swift doe, running with fawns at her heels- makes it to the Olympics.
Benjamin: a wolf who tears to pieces, devouring his prey- CEO of a pharmaceutical company that hides bad side effects for years while he makes his millions.
Joseph: God will destroy his enemies and he will be blessed with abundant rain, rich flocks. The "tzaddik." So in the end what is it about Joseph that makes HIM the tzaddik?
From the midrash: Coming back from his father's funeral, Joseph made a detour and visited the site where 22 years earlier he had been thrown into a hole. For a long time he stood at the well's edge and looked into the darkness. The brothers assumed that he did this to remind them of their misdeeds, but in truth he wanted to recap his past to himself so as better to express his gratitude to G-d, he was thankful for what he had been allowed to experience up to that moment.
Perhaps that is what makes Joseph the "tzaddik"- that he could forgive. So at this time of year- the secular new year perhaps this is the time for resolutions of forgiveness just as we have at Rosh Hashana- reconciliation even if we don't solve the problems in relationships with friends and family- perhaps this is better than the resolutions that are just about "self."
© 2005 Mina Cohen
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Updated 01/02/2005 (rge)