Unlike Jacob and Isaac, patriarchs whom we follow closely
from birth through adulthood to death, Joseph steps into the foreground of our
story when he is already seventeen years old.
We did read of his birth to Jacob’s favored wife Rachel, a few weeks
back. And, as we have come to expect, he was only born after his mother struggled
with barrenness. But the narrative in between Joseph’s birth and this week’s Torah
portion has nothing to do with Joseph. It is as if his story really begins this
week.
The Joseph cycle echoes many of the themes of the stories
that preceded it – sibling rivalry, deception, exile. But now these themes are
brought to an intensity we haven’t seen before. We do not only have a pair of rival brothers here,
vying for a blessing and a birthright. In this set of stories, we have a whole band
of brothers who sell Joseph into slavery as an alternative to their initial
impulse – to kill him in cold blood. The deception this time isn’t about who
gets to receive a blessing. This time, the brothers trick their father into believing
that Joseph has been torn apart by a wild beast. The protagonist in this story
does not only leave home to sojourn with relatives out of fear of his brother. This
time, Joseph is sold into captivity down to Egypt, the most foreign of foreign lands. Whereas in previous stories, love has been
prominent, here, hate takes center stage.
We also are not only following the story of one future
patriarch in this parasha. Joseph is clearly at the center of the story. But we
also have a whole chapter devoted to Judah, who develops from a person whose
idea it is to sell his own brother into slavery, to a man whose own sons are
dying and who is deceived by his daughter-in-law Tamar, to a man who by the end
of the “cycle” or “novella,” ultimately takes
responsibility for his own brother and father.
I look forward to exploring this story with you tomorrow!
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