D’var Torah on the Parshat Miketz

By Steven Shankman
College of Arts and Sciences, Distinguished Professor of English and Classics, Director of Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon (Ph.D., Stanford)

December 10th, 2004

Shabbat Shalom! I’d like to thank Rabbi Maurice for his Hanukkah gift of offering me the opportunity to ponder this week's richly suggestive parshah, and to share my reflections with you. It's a privilege to be presenting the D'var during this evening's service. And a very special Shabbat this is, for it falls during Hanukkah, which celebrates the Jewish victory in 165 BCE over Antiochus, the Greek King of Syria. The successful Jewish revolt was led by Judah Maccabee, the namesake of Joseph's brother Judah, towards whom all eyes are turned at the end of this week's parshah.

At the time of the Maccabeean revolt, the Jews were subjects of the Seleucid Empire, one of the states formed out of the larger empire ruthlessly carved out by Alexander the Great. In 168 BCE, Antiochus had seized the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and insisted that it be dedicated it to the worship of Zeus, the greatest of the Greek gods. Given the fact that Hanukkah celebrates the successful revolt of the Jews against the compulsory worship of the Greek gods, perhaps it isn't inappropriate for me, as a sometime scholar of ancient Greek literature, to reflect on the cult of the hero in archaic Greece and its relevance to this week's parshah – its study banned, along with the rest of the Torah, by King Antiochus in 168 BCE.

This quarter at the UO I've been teaching the literature of the ancient world. We read the whole of Homer's Iliad, the bloody tale of the wrath of Achilles, the fierce warrior who came with the Greek army and its coalition of the willing to Troy to retrieve Helen, the beautiful Greek princess who had run off with the Trojan glamour boy, Paris. The Iliad is a magnificent but also a gruesome poem. The war is being fought for honor. Life is brief, man is the creature of a day, and the most powerfully lasting way to compensate for a tragically brief existence is to make a name for yourself on the battlefield so that a great poet, like Homer, will sing about your exploits and preserve your fame far into the future – indeed, forever. Though I believe Homer distances himself from the warrior ethos that he is singing about and that he is, at least to some extent, critical of that ethos, it is nevertheless the case that the Iliad has provided inspiration for subsequent military exploits. That charismatic egomaniac Alexander the Great, celebrated in Oliver Stone's recently released film, carried a copy of the Iliad in his back pocket as he pushed through India in his attempt to conquer the world and forcibly spread the ideals of Greek culture. The implacably violent warrior Achilles was Alexander's role-model.

After finishing the Iliad this quarter, we read Genesis, composed at roughly the same time as the Homeric poems. I was struck, indeed overwhelmed, by how insistently anti-heroic, in comparison with Homer, is the vision, offered in Genesis, about what it means to be human. In Genesis 2 we are told that God made "the human, humus from the soil" (ha 'adam . . . min ha 'adamah, 2.7). God punishes these "humans, humus from the soil" for proudly constructing the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11, because, in so doing, they were striving to make a name -- a shem --- for themselves (11.5). Making a name for oneself through building the Tower of Babel is the equivalent of the Homeric hero’s pursuit of fame, of what the Greeks called kleos. The author of Genesis 11 clearly disapproves of this pursuit.

Heroes wish, above all, to be admired. There is, however, something narcissistic and adolescent – if sometimes irresistible! -- about the need to be admired by others. The Joseph story begins with a portrait of the comely, indulged seventeen-year-old Joseph, his father's favorite and the recipient of that famously ornate coat of many colors. As the narrative opens, we witness, almost at once, Joseph showing off his extraordinary God-given talent for interpreting dreams. He dreams that he and his brothers have been binding sheaves in the field and that his own sheaf arose and stood up -- like the Tower of Babel before its destruction? – while his brothers' sheaves, Joseph says, "drew round and bowed to my sheaf" (37.8). Joseph’s dream is indeed prescient, it turns out, but did Joseph really have to tell his brothers about it, and thus rub their noses in their younger brother’s superiority and the special favor he enjoys? Joseph, like a Greek hero, basks in his glory. He enjoys inspiring envy in his brothers and courting his father’s favor at his brothers' expense. No wonder Joseph’s brothers despise him!

Joseph, like the people Israel, has a special relationship with God. Joseph, like Israel, has been chosen. But to gloat over one's chosenness, to engage in an adolescent triumphalism, is to betray the very meaning of election which, for me, signifies that I, as a Jew -- and all people of conscience are Jews in this respect -- am chosen to be inescapably responsible for others, to be my brother's (and sister's) keeper. True glory consists not in striking heroic poses, but rather in facing up to my responsibility, even to the point of substituting for my sister or brother.

Joseph is a vehicle for revealing God's goodness, but to glory in that role – to strike a triumphalist pose -- is to betray the humility of goodness. And so Joseph must suffer. He makes the descent into the pit, is sold into slavery and goes down into Egypt, a vulnerable stranger in a strange land. Long before the Exodus from Egypt, Joseph is a Hebrew slave living in Egypt, where he eventually uses his divining powers to help others. This week's parshah begins as Joseph, known for his ability to interpret dreams, is summoned by Pharaoh to interpret a troubling dream. Pharaoh rewards Joseph’s divining genius by making him a ruler who will answer only to Pharaoh himself, who clothes Joseph finely (as Jacob had done, with the elaborate coat he made for adored son), and marries him well. In return, Joseph is expected to provide for those who come to him in need.

When Joseph’s brothers first arrive in Egypt in search of provisions in a time of famine, Joseph recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. Joseph could, at this point in the narrative, simply avenge the crime his brothers had committed against him. Powerless against his brothers when they betrayed him and sold him into slavery earlier in the narrative, he could, triumphantly, exert his power over them now by killing or imprisoning them. His display of restraint and his concern for their welfare are extraordinary. Rather than seek vengeance and exult in his triumph over them, in the mode of Homer's heroes, he instead lays the groundwork for the redemption of his brothers.

Joseph begins to spin a plot that requires him to accuse his brothers of being spies. We are not spies, the brothers assure Joseph: "Your twelve servants are brothers, we are the sons of one man in the land of Canaan and, look, the youngest is now with our father, and one is no more" (42.13-14). Joseph then tests his brothers' veracity by demanding that they go back home and then return to Egypt with their youngest brother, Benjamin. Joseph detains one brother, Simeon, while the others go up to Canaan to retrieve Benjamin. The brothers now express to each other their feelings of guilt for what they had earlier done to Joseph. They experience their current misfortunes as just recompense for their shameful treatment of Joseph.

The brothers return with Benjamin, thus passing Joseph's test on the question of their veracity. Joseph releases Simeon and sends all the brothers back to Canaan, with their provisions, but he also surreptitiously has his own silver goblet planted in the bag of Benjamin, the youngest of the brothers. Joseph sends the person in charge of his house to catch up with his brothers before they leave town. The overseer finds the silver goblet in the sack of Benjamin, the one brother wholly innocent of the crime of selling Joseph, and the brothers must now return to Joseph's house to face Joseph's wrath.

The stage is set for a moment of decision in which fraternity will either be betrayed, as it had at the beginning of the Joseph narrative, or enacted and affirmed. The brothers are innocent of having stolen Joseph's silver (keseph, 44.2) goblet. But they are guilty of having betrayed Joseph, of having sold him into slavery in exchange for silver (keseph, 37.8) years ago. The overseer of Joseph's house, when he had stopped the brothers to search for the missing silver goblet, told them that "he with whom" the silver goblet shall "be found shall become a slave to me," and the rest will be free to return home. Judah now steps forward, on behalf of his brothers, and says, "What shall we speak and how shall we prove ourselves righteous (nitstadak)? God has found out the crime of your servants (avadecha)" (44.16). Judah is here referring to the alleged crime of stealing the silver goblet. His words also, however, and at a much deeper level, express the responsibility Judah feels for the much more serious – and real – crime of having betrayed Joseph and sold him into slavery. Judah, out of a deep sense of fraternity that he had once betrayed, is now beginning to assume responsibility, on behalf of his brothers, for a crime– the stealing of Joseph's silver goblet – that he and his brothers in fact did not commit.

"Here we are (hinenu, 44.16)," Judah tells Joseph, "both we and the one in whose hand the goblet was found." Joseph responds to Judah, "The man in whose hand the goblet was found, he shall become my slave, and you, go up in peace to your father." Judah, on behalf of his brothers, has announced, "here we are" (hinenu). But will he now step forward and say “her" I am" (hineni), in the sense not of a solitary and singularly prideful and showy heroism, such as we saw the young Joseph exhibit at the beginning of the Joseph narrative, but rather in the sense of the "Here I am" of the uniquely and inescapably responsible one ready to substitute himself for his brother? Or will Judah once again betray fraternity and sell an innocent younger brother into slavery? Joseph, having outgrown his adolescent triumphalism and having become a wiser and better person as a result of his suffering, has created the miraculous possibility of our witnessing a remarkable act of fraternal generosity performed by Joseph’s often disreputable older brother Judah. As this week’s parshah ends, we, both as readers of the text and as engaged participants in the world, remain in suspense as to what Judah’s final response will be in this always unfinished story of Joseph and his brothers.

Shabbat Shalom!