Wrestling with Ego: Va-yeishev

Last week we witnessed Jacob’s transformation and the pain involved in that. 

This week, we have Joseph, Jacob/Yisrael’s favorite of all his sons. 

The first thing I wondered was, how exactly was Jacob transformed? 

I guess not in the way we moderns would have hoped, because he doesn’t change his father’s pattern of choosing favorites, even after his own trauma with his brother, Esau. He doesn’t decide, ooh, I’m not repeating that pattern. 

The results of having a favorite are, as we’ve seen, not good. 

Joseph is Jacob’s baby, and more than a little bit spoiled. Papa gives him a special tunic that his brothers don’t get (you know, the multicolored coat made famous by children’s storybooks and Broadway).

And he’s a dreamer--but not a dreamer with his head in the clouds. Rather, in the prophetic sense. His dreams come true, and he’s also able to correctly interpret the dreams of others. 

So he’s a prophet, he thinks he’s really special, and on top of that, he flaunts it. 

Really bad combo. 

Which makes his brothers even more angry and jealous than they already were. 

So the brothers devise a plan to kill him, finally agreeing not to kill their own flesh and blood and, instead, selling him to some passing Midianite merchants.

These merchants bring him down to Egypt where he ends up in Pharaoh’s court, and becomes a favorite there, too! 

Things are going really well, but then Joseph is framed by Pharaoh’s wife because he rejects her sexual overtures, and he is thrown into the dungeon. 

There, he meets Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and chief baker who are also in trouble, and predicts their dreams as well. 

If we could, would we choose to know the future?

How much should we know? 

Does it matter who the deliverer of the news is? 

Does it matter if it’s in our favor or not?

Last but not least, do we really want to know? 

Wouldn’t we love to know that we’re going to survive Global Warming, that the earth will regain its balance, when this pandemic will end, whether the vaccine we are offered for Covid will be safe, and that one day we will live in peace on earth?

For real. It would offer us so much comfort.

A woman who attends my morning minyan said the other day, “If I knew what was going to happen to me, my life would be a mess.” 

I loved that she said that, because she’s so right. 

Her argument was, if it’s good news, then I might become too complacent and not value the time I have left; if it’s bad news, I might lose all hope and think it’s futile to try and change things. 

Or I might live in so much fear that it paralyzes me.

Movies have been made about this subject. It’s a rosy picture if you know you get to make different choices (remember It’s a Wonderful Life?). But most of the time the characters are depicted as not having the awareness that they are getting a second chance, so it doesn’t leave us satisfied and happy. That’s real. 

Back to Joseph. 

There’s something else going on with him that adds a certain angle.

His brothers and father get pissed off with him for more than just knowing and sharing what he knows. Sure; it would make anyone angry if you told them in so many words that you, the youngest, will one day have power over them. 

But they get pissed off also because of Joseph’s attitude; he’s superior, privileged and insensitive to the impact of his words. He talks as if they’re just facts, with no feelings involved.

Even after his brothers try to kill him, he doesn’t stop to think why, and repeats the pattern with Pharaoh’s chief cup bearer and baker. Without a moment of hesitation, he tells the baker that he will soon be impaled. This is no harder for Joseph than telling the chief cup bearer that he will be restored to his post, or than it was to tell his brothers and father that they would one day bow down to him.

Prophets have always been outcasts of society because they rail against the rich and against empty offerings, and for society not taking care of the poor and vulnerable. They care. We get angry because we don’t want to hear these difficult truths. It’s too hard to do things differently--to change the status quo. We’d rather not hear. 

But with Joseph, he doesn’t seem to care; he just keeps doing it over and over again. He has no humility or sensitivity. And the news he shares with his fellow prisoners is not in any way helpful and might be harmful; one finds out he will be saved while the other finds out he will die. They can’t change the outcome, so how does it help to know?

Knowing the future doesn’t solve any problems. It’s not a magic bullet.

Maybe we need a reminder to meet the future with much more humility. Knowing is neither an answer nor a solution to any situation. It doesn’t take away the fact that we still have work to do.

Maybe it’s also about being able to relax with the not-knowing, to value the time we have, and to be sensitive to how our words and actions impact others and the future. 

And maybe, when someone tells us we’re not doing these things, that our patterns are not helpful and may even be harmful, we need to listen.