Gen. 37:1 - 40:23
Précis: The story of Joseph
begins with the words, “And Jacob dwelt (vayeshev) in the land of his
father’s travels.” We learn that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. Joseph
receives the famous coat of many colors, and dreams strange dreams and relates
them to his brothers and father, creating additional concern (jealousy) on
their part. The sons conspire to do away with Joseph, but before he dies, they
sell him into slavery. Jacob is devastated when the sons present evidence of
Joseph’s “death.”
We then
have an intervening story about Judah. He marries off his first son to Tamar.
The son soon dies, and, the next son is married to the widow (“levirate
marriage.”) The second son (Onan) dies, and Judah is loath to offer the third
son. The widow dresses as a harlot, seduces Judah, becomes pregnant, and
reveals herself to Judah as a woman wronged. He acknowledges her as a rightful
daughter.
The scene shifts back to Joseph, who is now a servant in
the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian official. Potiphar’s wife attempts to
seduce Joseph but he refuses her advances. She accuses him nonetheless of
attempted rape, and Joseph is tossed into prison. There, he meets jailed
servants of Pharaoh, for whom he interprets dreams successfully. When the chief
butler is restored to his post, he promises to “remember” Joseph, but the
parasha ends with the words, “but he forgot him.”
Gen. 37:4 “And when
his [Joseph's] brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his
brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.”
The inability to “speak peaceably” that we read about in
this week’s text is a stark reminder of the current atmosphere in the American
polity. I read today in the Washington Post an important column by the late
Charles Krauthammer (who I was privileged to call “Charles”). In it, he talks
about the miracle of our Constitution. He points, in fact, to three miracles:
that there was a collection of political geniuses living on the edge of the
civilized world that could have written it; that they created a system which
still works after almost 250 years; and that Americans have a deep reverence
for the document. He concludes his column with the following: “I would summarize by quoting my favorite
pundit, Otto von Bismarck. He was not known for his punditry, but he is
famously said to have said, ‘God looks after children, drunkards, idiots and
the United States of America.’ I think He still does. I hope He still does.”
As we approach Chanukah next week, may we rejoice in the
miracles of Chanukah as well as the miracles Charles has articulated. And we
should pray for one additional miracle: that we can remember how to “talk
peaceably” to each other.
[An aside: I began
writing a weekly d’var torah because of Charles. He spoke about the fact that
his father began sending him a weekly d’var torah when Charles went away to
college, and his father continued writing him one each week for more than 30
years. As it happened, my son Dan was going way to college then, and I was
inspired to write a weekly d’var, which I subsequently shared with my
professional colleagues, family, and friends. When I told Charles that his
father was my inspiration, he was deeply moved. May his memory be for a
blessing.]
