The Big Picture

Jews don’t believe in the Christian concept of original sin, but if we did, our tainted condition would result from a sin that occurred towards the end of the book of Genesis, not the beginning. “Because they sold a tzaddik (a righteous person) for silver,” explains the book of Amos (2:6), God’s wrath was provoked. Jacob’s sons selling their brother Joseph to the Egypt-bound caravan was and would remain the foundational transgression of our people. According to the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, the sale of Joseph into servitude occurred on the tenth day of the seventh month, corresponding to what we know today as Yom Kippur. Ever since that fateful day described in the book of Genesis, it has been ordained that the children of Israel should afflict themselves, gathering each year to make atonement, seeking to cleanse themselves of an intergenerational wrong that we just can’t shake. Explicitly and implicitly we re-enact the contours of the crime. Every Yom Kippur we read about the sending of the goat bearing the people’s sins out into the wilderness, like Joseph. Every Yom Kippur afternoon, we recite the Martyrology, the account of the sacrifice of the ten martyrs, sentenced to death, according to tradition, for the sin of the ten brothers. The fraternal strife of the sons of Jacob sits at the fault line of our people.

All of which begs the following question: What caused one brother to sell another into slavery in the first place? What was so terrible as to prompt such an egregious act, one that would not only split the first family of our people but have a ripple effect in the generations to follow? If I had to put my finger on it, I would say it was the inability of the brothers, Joseph included, to let the greater good prevail over their respective shortcomings. The tragedy of the sons of Jacob was that despite being born of the same father, raised in the same household, these siblings chose to inflate their differences at the expense of shalom bayit, peace in the home. Every party was to blame. “And Joseph brought bad reports of [his brothers] to [Jacob],” a busybody youth who had no discretion. As for the brothers, they saw Jacob’s favoritism, made explicit by the coat of many colors draped on Joseph, and “they could not speak a peaceable word to him.” Was it right for Jacob to favor Joseph? Of course not. Were the brothers a bunch of choir-boys? I doubt it. The first family of the Jewish people had more than its fair share of sub-plots and palace intrigue. On countless occasions Joseph should have held his tongue and demonstrated the maturity not to speak his mind. But the brothers for their part proved unable to see past his childish behavior. Are we really to believe that they had no other option than to conspire to kill their own flesh and blood? It was Sigmund Freud who coined the term “the narcissism of minor differences,” the notion that it is more often than not the minor differences, not the major ones, that are the source of strife between people. It is precisely the little things that ultimately caused the unraveling of the house of Jacob.

If the rift between Joseph and his siblings stems from this shortcoming, then it is only with its rectification and redress that their relationship is mended. Ostensibly, their reconciliation happened last week as Joseph finally revealed himself to his brothers. But what the reader knows, what the rabbis intuited, and what the brothers no doubt well understood, was that last week’s revelation was not necessarily prompted by a spirit of forgiveness, but by Joseph’s concern for his father Jacob’s well-being and Joseph’s desire to see him. Why else would the first words Joseph blurts out to his brothers be “I am Joseph. Is my father alive?!” Arguably, Joseph’s primary concern in last week’s dénouement was not his relationship with his brothers, not coming to terms with his past, but a desire to be reunited with his father.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that that this week’s Torah reading is really, really important. Because only this week do we see how the siblings interact once their father Jacob has died. On a side note, this is a topic that I could write volumes about from a pastoral perspective: the fascinating and tortured and sometimes liberating dynamic that takes place among children when they are called on to recalibrate their relationships upon the death of a parent. In the case of Jacob’s children, we cannot be sure whether the children’s previous actions were motivated by their own feelings or out of deference to their father. Nevertheless, collectively they fulfill Jacob’s dying wish; the siblings carry their father back to the land of Canaan for proper burial. The midrash explains that as they began their return trip back down to Egypt, the procession passed by the very pit into which Joseph had been thrown some decades before. Joseph’s reaction, not surprisingly, is very different from that of the brothers but also different from that which you might have expected. The midrash explains that Joseph stared into the pit, reflected on the serendipitous journey of his life and recited a blessing expressing gratitude to God for having performed miracles for him and bestowing upon him so much good. The brothers however, see Joseph peering into the pit into which they had thrown him, are reminded of their initial offense, and with their father now dead, fear for their lives, believing Joseph will finally exact his revenge. Only at this point, when the brothers relay a fabricated deathbed request by Jacob that Joseph should forgive them, does Joseph respond with a magnanimous spirit of forgiveness that we know is truly his.

If, as Maimonides teaches, the litmus test for a true penitent is when a person has the ability to commit the same transgression but chooses not to, then the correlative principle must be true as well. How did Joseph know, how do any of us know, when we have truly forgiven someone for a wrong committed against us? At the moment that we have the capacity to do exactly the same thing to a person as that person did to us, but we choose not to do it. Joseph meets this test and then some. “Have no fear” he tells his brothers, “… For while you intended me harm, God intended it for good, to bring about the present result.” As Dr. Avivah Zornberg points out in her study of the scene, Joseph was able to leverage his pain into hope and reconciliation. I imagine it was at this moment that Joseph took a deep breath, or more likely two or three, mulled over whether to quibble about the truth and thus push the squabble forward or take the high road, give his brothers a pass, and get on with the business of living. We know it is exactly this latter path that he decides to take. The youthful Joseph would never have let it slide. It is not exactly clear just how close Joseph and the brothers would be in the years ahead; the text does not provide detail. All we do know is that it is only here and now, after their father died, that we can assess the brothers’ relationship on it its own terms. It is only here that we know, once and for all, that the minor differences dividing the brothers melt away in the warm radiant glow of the greater good.

Today we say goodbye to the Joseph story, not to be engaged with it again for just under a year – or at the earliest, next Yom Kippur, depending on how you look at it. I suspect however, that its lessons will resonate year round because it is the story not only of the first family of our people but of all our families. Brothers and sisters, family and friends who have every reason to see the greater good, to work for shalom bayit, but who – because we are still wired, well, like our predecessors – wake up to relationships that are frayed for reasons that we can’t quite explain, never mind defend. Far too often, far too many of us fail to see the greater good. Our minor grievances eclipse a relationship, our focus is petty, and the richness of our lives is diminished. As noted many times in the past week, it was Nelson Mandela who famously explained that “Resentment is like drinking a poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” Unlike in Mandela’s case, the pedestrian grudges we bear separate us for the most part not from enemies but from family and would-be friends. As Ben Zoma taught in Pirkei Avot, might is not measured in physical strength, but in our ability to conquer our inclinations – not an easy task by any stretch, but necessary if we want our relationships to endure beyond inevitable stumbles.

Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers – the families of the book of Genesis cut so close to home because in many ways their internal dynamics reflect our own. Which is why it makes so much sense that the blessing we bestow on our families every Friday night comes from this week’s parashah. “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” The two brothers Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s children and Jacob’s grandchildren, hold a distinction that sets them apart, not just from their predecessors, but also from families yet to come. They got along peaceably with one another. They were the first biblical siblings who didn’t let strife and pettiness mar their lives. At my Shabbos table, at your Shabbos table, in all our homes, it is our hope and aspiration to be like Ephraim and Manasseh. If we want it to happen, it will take more than just a blessing. It will take hard work, an expansion of our souls and most of all, a willingness to see past pettiness and difference. Not easy, but given what is at stake, well worth the effort.