Parashat Vayigash, 5772, Nurit Novis-Deutsch
Parashat Vayigash
December 31, 2011 / 5 Tevet 5772
Nurit Novis-Deutsch
Shabbat Shalom.
Ever since the book of Bereshit begun, we’ve been reading stories. Why would a religious book want to fill itself with so many stories?
Biblical stories, as most folk tales and hero legends, can be roughly divided into two types: Stories of personal change and stories of supernatural intervention. The first kind are the morality tales: The hero begins with a fault or sin and in the course of many trials and tribulations learns a lesson and manages to change in some deep way. A classic example would be Jacob who cheated his father, ended up being cheated on by the father of Leah and Rachel, and finally learnt the value of honest confrontation with the angel who named him “Israel”.
The second kind of stories are those in which a hero struggles to change things, but ends up learning that God is the one directing the plans, superseding human attempts. Pharaoh’s refusal to release the people of Israel because God is forcing him to refuse would be one such case. These stories serve to demonstrate God’s presence in the world.
So, morality and theology - stories can carry a pretty heavy weight. As I looked at today’s Parashat Vayigash, I wondered: Which kind of story is that of Joseph? Is it a moral story of personal change, of a young vain boy, full of pride for being his father’s favorite, who learns, through many painful experiences, to become humble and kind?
Or, it is a story of Godly intervention? A story where a terrible act of selling a brother to slavery turns out to be a divine ploy to keep the people of Israel alive during seven years of famine? Joseph himself tells his brothers: “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive”. Alternately, this could be part of even a larger plan: The people of Israel were scheduled, so to speak, to go into exile for 400 years. God told this to Abraham in a famous prophecy called “The covenant among the parts”. Might the whole story of Joseph be nothing but a way to get the children of Israel to Egypt, so their preordained exile could begin?
As we might expect, different readers saw in the story different things.
For example, In the Koran, which re-tells the story of Joseph from Muhammad’s perspective, it is very clearly the second interpretation which is preferred. Muhammad says that the whole purpose of Joseph’s story which he calls “the most beautiful of stories” is to teach people about how God works in mysterious ways to make his plans materialize. The Koran states: “Indeed, the story of Joseph is a key to those who wonder” (about the way God runs the world). Thus, when Joseph is thrown into the pit, God tells him, in the Koran’s version: “Don’t fear, you will end up reproving them for this”. It is all planned from the beginning.
This interpretation echoes that of some of our sages. For example, Rabbi Yudan said: God wanted to keep his decree of “You shall know” (That your progeny will be slaves in an unknown land”) and he brought all this plot to pass, that Jacob will love Jospeh and that that his brothers will hate him and sell him to slavery in Egypt”.
Meanwhile, other Sages focused on the moral component of the story, and read it as a four part theme: Sin, punishment, repentance, salvation. (It’s the basic Biblical theme for the pro-change crowd). God may dispense the punishment and salvation, but it is people’s actions, and people’s internal change, which cause things to happen. And what sins do Hazal identify? Joseph is accused of pride, the brothers – of jealousy, and even Jacob is accused of a sin:
Rav said: A man should never differentiate between his sons, because it was for the weight of two stones of cloth that Jacob gave Joseph (the weight of the coat he made him) above his other sons, that his brothers became jealous of him and this is how it happened that our forefathers went down to Egypt”.
The sages also elaborated upon the repentance. For example, in our parasha it says that the brothers drank wine with Joseph and became drunk. The Midrash tells us that for 22 years they had been abstaining from alcohol as a self-inflicted atonement for their terrible sin towards Joseph. This is why a glass of wine with Joseph made them drunk.
And since this needn’t be a dichotomous either-or solution, there is a third option: a combination of A and B. Indeed, this is what the Biblical scholar Uriel Simon suggests: That Joseph’s story is the perfect example of personal change directed by God’s plan and God’s plan propelled forward by moral transformation. It would seem that each part in this plot serves the double purpose of documenting personal change in Joseph and his brothers while at the same time chronicalling the ways in which God ensured the survival of the people of Israel. This solution sounds good but it assumes two things about which I am not sure: 1. That God is moving behind the scenes at all times, and 2. That Joseph truly changed, making personal change really possible.
The option of God’s hand behind the whole plot may have found favor with the sages and with Muhammed, and it may even be the original intention of the Bible, but I find it hard to accept as a guiding principle for my own life. It would necessitate too much apologetic explaining in order to fit it into tragedies of the magnitude which the past 100 years have witnessed.
I am left to ponder the option of Joseph’s change which is I see it as a case of a larger issue: How much can people change? With the help of the in-house Bible psychologist and through Joseph as client we could perhaps get an indication of how much we ourselves can expect to change, and what it might take to bring about a personal transformation.
Now, change can happen on all sorts of levels, and some kinds of change are simpler than others: people can lose weight, if they really try. They can become fit if they enter a training program. They can become bitter as they grow older, they can become more peaceful as they grow older. But how much of a change can we author in our basic personality? In our moral makeup?
[[Psychology’s basic answer is that we can changes more the younger we are. The most popular trait taxonomy on the scene today is the Big Five model of personality traits which names extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience as the five main factors in our personality. The correlations between these Big 5 among people as children and as adults are about .40, but they grow to about .70 when people turn 30 or so. It is harder to change when we grow older.]]
Looking at Joseph, I am not so sure how much he was transformed. His three sins seem to be the sin of pride, the sin of basking in being the favorite, and seeing the world through the lens of hierarchy, as can be witnessed in his dreams.
Did these traits change?
After Pharaoh accepts his dream interpretation, Joseph makes a suggestion which involved Pharaoh turning the entire people of Egypt into his slaves. This indeed is what happens:
Joseph said to the people, “Since I’ve now purchased you and your farmland for Pharaoh, here’s seed for you. Plant the seed on the land. When the crop comes in, you must give one-fifth to Pharaoh. […] So Joseph made a law that still exists today: Pharaoh receives one-fifth from Egypt’s farmland.
This is not just a case of a monarch caring for his people in time of need. Along the way he also turns them all into slaves, through Joseph’s management. In a way, Joseph seems to have introduced serfdom into Egypt for posterity! So much for Joseph turning egalitarian.
As for pride, listen to what he says to his brothers:
“Hurry! Go back to your father. Tell him this is what your son Joseph says: ‘God has made me master of all of Egypt. Come down to me. … I will support you there, so you, your household, and everyone with you won’t starve”.
And he sums up: Tell my father about my power in Egypt.
Finally, let’s see if he’s cured of favoritism:
To all of them he gave a change of clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of clothing.
So Joseph the prideful teenager turned into a haughty powerful leader. Joseph the favored son favors his brother Benjamin, and Joseph the brother sold to slavery convinces Pharaoh to turn all of Egypt into slaves. I am left with my original pondering: If not about moral transformation, what is this story about?
[Well, we examined the option that this story is all about God making things happen, the option that it’s all about Joseph undergoing a moral change of heart, the option that it is a mixture of both]
Are there other options? I think there is another possibility, which necessitates seeing some Biblical stories as neither moralistic not theological, but merely as good literature. Good literature reflects reality. It is about being human.
Perhaps Joseph’s story is about being human: We needn’t change completely to become more human. All that is needed is a modicum of self-understanding, some ability to forgive, and the willingness to accept faults in others as well as in ourselves. It seems that Joseph did manage these feats: He may not have changed his personality, but he gradually comes to forgive his brothers, he accepts who he is and does his best for those he serves. Joseph has definitely matured. And perhaps that is all we can hope for in a story… or in life.
Shabbat Shalom.