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Parashat Vayechi - Genesis 47:28-50:26
A conversation between Dina Pinner and Julian Sinclair When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong that we did him!" So they sent this message to Joseph: Your father commanded before his death: "You shall say to Joseph, 'Please forgive your brothers for their sin, that they treated you so harshly.'" Therefore, please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father. And Joseph wept as they spoke to him. His brothers approached him, fell to their faces before him and said, "We are prepared to be your servants." But Joseph replied to them, "Do not be afraid. Am I a substitute for God? For although you intended evil against me, God intended it for good, in order that a great people be kept alive as it is today." (Genesis 50:15-20) JULIAN: At the close of the book of Genesis and the climax of the Joseph story, one might expect a weepy reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers. This is not the ending that the Torah gives us. Instead, when Jacob dies, his ten eldest sons are seized with terror. What if Joseph still bears a grudge, they tremble. With their father's death they fear that Joseph, the number two man in Egypt, will exact justified revenge for their nasty treatment of him twenty years earlier. So they go to Joseph and plead with him: Your father commanded before his death: "You shall say to Joseph, 'Please forgive your brothers for their sin.'" According to Rashi, this is an outright lie. Jacob never said such a thing. In their desperation, the brothers made up the whole story. Joseph waves aside their protestations with an Olympian declaration: Do not be afraid... for although you intended evil against me, God intended it for good, in order that a great people be kept alive as it is today. Joseph casts his brothers as instruments of Divine providence. Their designs to kill or sell him were God's mysterious way of ensuring that Jacob's family would be saved from famine in Egypt. Does this count as forgiveness? No. Joseph does not excuse or overlook his brother's motivations or actions. On the contrary, he reminds them of their malicious intentions. But in the grand providential scheme that Joseph sees, it is insignificant. His siblings' vile deed is subsumed as a detail in the Divine plan. I don't blame Joseph for treating his brothers like this. There are offenses too deep for any but the most saintly to truly forgive. Sometimes the best that most of us can do is say gam zu l'tova - it's for the best - and move on. DINA: Move on? Who moves on in this episode? Why do the brothers only now remember that Joseph might still be upset with them? How is it that they saw that their father was dead long after his parting words, his death and their mourning for him? What prompted a resurgence of their fear of Joseph, and how does Joseph respond? This is a family who holds onto bitterness and resentment. In Jacob's parting words to his sons he reveals his pent up fury. Some sons are spared by the obscurity of the blessing but to most he is clear and direct: I remember every wrong step you took and it will come back to haunt you. Suddenly, as he is dying, this often silent, never direct man becomes very lucid. His last words to his children remind them that rage contained is not necessarily rage diminished. Now, as men, the brothers have truly lived out the prophecy of their disapproving father. Maybe, had he managed to talk to them at the time, when each unfortunate incident took place, he wouldn't have repressed all his anger. When they stand before their dying father they become the boys they once were - their history floods back. Now, they "see" their father is dead but the family dynamic remains: What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us? What if Joseph carries the same bitter anger against us as our father did until his dying days? Joseph then confirms this: Joseph wept as they spoke to him... How raw and unchanged. Joseph avoids confronting his brothers and their collective pain and instead hides behind his majesty: Do not be afraid. Am I a substitute for God? For although you intended evil against me, God intended it for good, in order that a great people be kept alive as it is today. Joseph plays the God card here, just as he did with his prophetic dreams as a youth. What answer did he expect to the question, Am I a substitute for God? Did he expect a theological discussion? Still full of hate and bile, he lets his brothers know that nothing more can be done in this world. In the next world, however, a far greater justice will pay them back. Joseph has not moved on in any sense. He is still threatening his brothers, lauding a higher power over them and the hatred between them has only increased. JULIAN: A man hears a knock at his door. He opens the door and sees a snail. The man picks up the snail and hurls it to the bottom of the garden. Six months later there's another knock. The man opens his door. "What the hell was that all about?" demands the snail. Dina, you're right that Joseph's family processed resentment and grievance slowly. It's easy for us to say, "Go to therapy, get over it," but being left for dead in a pit by your brothers who then sell you for a slave as a humane compromise is a lot to get over. I don't think that Joseph is "playing the God card" when he says, God intended it for good. He's trying to understand being thrown to the bottom of the garden from a bigger perspective than that of the snail. There's another reason why it's hard for Joseph to truly forgive, which is encapsulated in the following story: Rav Chaim of Brisk used to dress up as a poor man and travel through Russia to see how the Jews lived. Toward the end of one of his trips, a rich man, offended by Rav Chaim's impoverished appearance, threw him out of his railway carriage. When the train arrived in Brisk a huge crowd had assembled on the platform to welcome their rabbi home. The rich man soon realized that he had insulted a famous rabbi, and so he went to beg Rav Chaim's pardon. The rabbi answered: "Don't ask me for forgiveness, ask the poor man from the train." Joseph's brothers are begging for mercy from Joseph the nearly omnipotent ruler. They will never truly be able to ask forgiveness from Joseph their terrified, cowering brother. DINA: Upon hearing that their children need therapy, many parents become very disappointed. They will often recall unspeakable events of their own traumatic childhood and exclaim, "I picked myself up and carried on! I didn't need to talk to anyone." It is as a result of this inhumane litany of earlier events that the child of such parents often finds himself needing to talk. As for Joseph's brothers, they aren't coming back a month later, saying, "What the hell was that all about?" Would that they could! Would that they had the inner strength or self-esteem to say to Jacob, as he doled out his vile final words, "What the hell was that all about?" and maybe, "Why are you always blaming us? Had you been a little more attentive to our needs and the needs of our mothers, none of this would have happened!" Perhaps then, one of them would have had the insight to understand that it wasn't really Jacob's fault. Jacob, bless him, also did not grow up with an attentive father. Isaac was never able to intercede in his sons' conflicts. Old before his time and blinded to a world where fathers kill sons, Isaac was neither a model of fatherhood nor brotherhood. Destroyed by a father who didn't even consider a humane alternative to killing him, Isaac was constantly searching for comfort from Abraham, who was long dead. And now Isaac's grandsons, Joseph's brothers, are acting out their father's and grandfather's bitter childhoods. These offspring of Terach never really stood a chance, forever re-enacting the stories of the damaged men who came before them. Only the enormous external trauma of slavery allowed for a break in the hostilities, but they were rapidly resumed at the earliest opportunity. The Book of the Prophets is basically a recollection of men carrying out the conflicts of their fathers, only by that time no one even remembered what the initial conflict was about. Julian, I agree that Joseph's brothers will never truly be able to ask forgiveness from him, but Joseph doesn't fare any better in his response: God intended it for good is what we say when we want to avoid responsibility. In short, each generation is destined to relive the strife of its ancestors until we take that responsibility upon ourselves and break the tradition by looking outside the "family" for other models. |