Drash on Joseph

There was a Bat Mitzvah at services this week, and this girl had one challenging parsha to write a drash on.

Va-Yehi - And He Lived.

Jacob lived. For better or for worse, 147 years. (I still want to know why they lived so long in those days, when we think so much of our medical advances now - but that's a discussion for another day.) Jacob, who, with the help of his mother, conned his way into getting his father's blessing while Esau was out doing just exactly what was expected of him. And for this, he was forced to flee his homeland and live in exile, even if he did become extremely wealthy because of it.

Now Jacob and his family live in Egypt, and he is dying. So he summons Joseph, his favorite son, to him, to instruct him not to bury him in Egypt, but in the tomb of his own ancestors. Then Joseph comes back to Jacob again, when he is very ill, bringing his two sons with him. Then he does a strange thing. Jacob blesses Joseph's sons. But not only does he place his right hand on the head of the younger, and his left on the head of the elder, he has to cross his arms to do it. So, despite his old age and weak sight, this is clearly a deliberate act. And it seems to recall his own life. Never mind Joseph's. Whereas it is expected that the elder sibling will always be favored, he instead favors the younger. It is like a tribute to his own experience, and the birthright he garnered, despite his less-favored position in his family.

And this, in some ways, is the tradition we inherit. I know it from another source. Because I grew up with the teachings of Jesus, one of perhaps, the most famous Jews of all time, who said, "and the last shall be first, and the first shall be last." In a similar vein, he also said, "And the stone that was rejected shall become the chief cornerstone." This is another way of saying, Don't trust what you've been given. Don't trust what looks obvious. What seems to be the stronger, more obvious choice, will not necessarily be so. What you at first reject may become the most important element of your life. And sometimes, being rejected, that is often the first step in the process of becoming something or someone truly instrumental.

But that isn't what I had planned to write about today. I wanted to write about forgiveness. Radical forgiveness. Which, to my mind, at least in this case, is not forgiveness at all, but rather, an extremely whole and sensible point of view.

Because, while the story starts with Jacob, it becomes a story about Joseph. Joseph was certainly the favored of Jacob's twelve sons. So favored, in fact, that they hated him, tore up his clothes and threw him in a pit to die. Joseph was saved, was taken to Egypt, where he became wealthy and saved the land from famine by way of his dreams. And after this, he saves his own family from the famine as well - the same family that tried to kill him.

Now, I may think I have it bad sometimes, but at least my siblings didn't try to kill me, in a literal sense. Or even figuratively. My parents didn't try to kill me. They did other things that upset me, but not that. It gives you a little perspective when you realize someone else's life is worse than yours.

After Jacob dies and Joseph buries him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah are buried, the brother's get together and say, "What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for the wrong we did him?" Fair enough. They should be concerned. After all, it seems they have a guilty collective conscience. They admit themselves that they wronged their own brother, and now, of course, they have been brought to shame because in end he saved all their hides.

I was told, during the service, that the bat mitzvah girl is the daughter of a child psychologist. And this was somewhat evident in the fact that she spoke about the way we inherit our parents' bad behavior sometimes, and this is all over the Torah - especially in Genesis. But I read a lot of psychology, too, and part of me is saying that, while I don't know why Jacob favored Joseph, and probably none of us will know why, there's a good chance that his doing so actually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell one child they are a good child, and one child they are a bad one, eventually they will both figure out a way to live out the designations you have made on them. (I knew a woman once who had two sons, and every time she would talk to one of them, she would tell him, "you're the good son." She did this with both sons.) In a way, we can even do this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy on ourselves. Or, as Henry Ford (and doubtless others have) said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right."

So Jacob planted in Joseph the seeds of greatness, and in his other sons, the seeds of resentment. The next plan of the other 11 sons was motivated by guilt and fear. Rather than confront Joseph and say, Hey, you know, look, we were crap back there when we threw you in the pit. It really sucked and we're sorry. So we hope you can forgive us. Instead they make up some phony message from their dead father, which obviously can't be corroborated, saying that he (Jacob) had instructed Joseph to forgive his brothers.

Joseph is in tears, so we can only assume that he believes them. Or perhaps he takes this as their own confession of guilt, and sees through their hastily-constructed lie, even though he doesn't say it. Then they fling themselves down and offer to be his slaves. But Joseph refuses. And I love what he says:

Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God?
Besides, though you intended me harm,
God intended it for good,
So as to bring about the present result -
the survival of many people.

From there it is a short paragraph to his death at the age of 110 years. But in this statement alone is an enormously valuable legacy.

I mentioned that I read a lot of psychology. I read a lot about cycles of abuse and bad behavior and bad thinking, and about how these things become perpetuated, both within ourselves, and with other people, by constantly responding to the abuse, the fear, and the pain. The message is always the same: the only way to break the cycle is not to respond to the abuse. Don't acknowledge the fear. Don't let the pain drive your actions. As soon as you've done that, you've lost the battle. But it's one of the hardest things to do when you think those are your only options. When everyone you have ever known has abused you or treated you badly, it is really easy to want to do the same thing. And yet Joseph refuses. He refuses to be caught up in that cycle.

But it is not through his own power, or his own perspective that he is able to achieve this enormous sense of - probably unjustified - forgiveness. Because he not only forgives his brothers. He, in essence, thanks them. He says, If you hadn't done that to me then, I wouldn't be where I am now. Talk about heaping coals. But heaping coals was when he saved their lives. Now he is on a whole new level.

Now he is on the level of God - seeing the Big Picture. He doesn't respond to his own feelings of pain, of hurt, of betrayal and abandonment. He has accepted his past, and he is grateful for it. Because even though he knows he can never really "know" the Mind of God, he can see how circumstances have led him to where he is, and get past what would be simply a knee-jerk reaction and instead see how a negative experience became a positive one for him. He doesn't say to his brother's a lame, "It's okay, guys, let's move on," either. He acknowledges a higher power, a greater plan. He humbles them again, indirectly pointing out that even their most vicious intents were no match for the Mind of God. And maybe he believed in himself, maybe he didn't. Maybe he just lived his life with his eyes open, and wasn't willing to "take an eye for an eye." Because he, like Ghandhi, realized that that would make the whole world blind. But in the end, by being able to step back, to step out of his own experience and look at it with the cool eye of reason, he was able to stop the cycle, giving his brothers nothing to feel guilty for, nothing to be angry about, and putting responsibility exactly where it belonged - in God's hands.