This
week's parshah is Va-yekhi, that last in the book of Bereshit. It
recounts the promise Joseph made to bring Jacob's body back to the
land of Israel for burial; Jacob's adoption of Joseph's sons Ephraim
and Menashe and the intentionally reversed blessings his gives them;
Jacob's testament to his other sons (one can scarcely call some of
them “blessings”), and then the aftermath of Jacob's death. It is
here that I want to focus.
Read
50:15
So
they're afraid that Joseph is Michael Corleone and they are 10
Fredos. But in case you needed to be told, that's not the case.
Read
16-17
So they
lie, basically. Comparison to God misquoting Sarah's words in Gen 18.
Read
18-21
It's
interesting to see what is said here, and what isn't said. What do
they want? Forgiveness. What does he say in response? 1) I'm not in
place of God, it's not up to me to exact punishment, and 2) you meant
it for ill, but God meant it for good.
It
occurs to me there's a psychological truth here that we need to
notice. And let's begin by asking a question. Why is he called by the
tradition “Joseph the tzaddik” the righteous one. First he's a
callow youth who can't keep his dreams to himself, then he's a bit of
a climber, maybe even a schemer, rising to the top of whatever
establishment he finds himself in – Potiphar's house, Pharaoh's
kingdom – the midrash even says he was basically running the jail
when he was there.
Yet
here he is, the most powerful man in Egypt, with every reason in the
world to stick it to his brothers, yet he chooses not to – why?
Joseph chose to believe that his role was divinely ordained – that
it was God's will that he end up in his position of power in Egypt,
to help his family and the many others that he helped. One cannot
reconcile this approach with holding a many-decade-long resentment of
the way he was treated way back when. The two cannot be reconciled
psychologically. Joseph chose to be psychologically healthy, and the
way he had to be healthy was not to obsess about what had happened to
him in the past, and who made it happen to him.
It
reminds me of Victor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and went on to
develop a long career as a psychologist. In his book, “Man's Search
for Meaning” he came to the remarkable conclusion that even in the
most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, such as the one faced
by inmates in the camps, that life has potential meaning and
therefore even suffering is meaningful. He says that one of the
differences between survival and not, and after the war the
difference between a life consumed by the demons of memory, or not,
is the ability to see meaning in what has occurred.
Extraordinary
that the Torah is able to get to this psychological truth thousands
of years ago.
In an
account of a particularly bad moment Frankl talks about seeing the
face of his wife, and he says, “The salvation of man is through
love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in the
world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the
contemplation of his beloved.”
“And
Joseph was in tears as they spoke to him.”
Maimonides
mentions that there are three steps to teshuvah, or repentance from a
sin – 1) recognition that the action taken was wrong, 2) regret,
and third, when the opportunity to do the same thing happens again,
the opportunity is not taken.
We see
all of these in the story of Joseph and his brothers. When in parshat
Mi-ketz (Gen 42:21) Joseph, still unrecognized by his brothers, wants
one of them to stay while the others go home to get the youngest
brother, they say, “Alas, we are being punished on account of our
brother, because we looked on at his anguish, yet paid no heed as he
pleaded with us. That is why this distress has come upon us.” And
then when he plants the cup on Benjamin, he is testing his brothers,
and when at the beginning of parshat Va-yiggash (Gen 44:18) Judah
pleads for his brother, and offers himself in Benjamin's stead,
Joseph knows that they have made full teshuvah.
And
that's the end of the matter for him. Any other punishment that the
brothers may face will have to come from God. The fact that they held
on to their fear of what would happen after their father's death for
all those years is what pains him.
What
does Joseph not offer them? The one thing they ask for - forgiveness.
In fact Joseph never mentions forgiveness in any of his conversations
with his brothers. It's often struck me that the ritual offering and
accepting of apologies is the most superficial form of
reconciliation. What are we saying when we forgive someone? Oh,
that's okay, never mind, don't worry about it. Does that accomplish
what it's intended to? Joseph recognizes that just as it's not his
role to punish, neither is it really his role to forgive. He puts it
behind him – that's what allows him to be psychologically healthy,
even “righteous” - and it's enough.
Difficult
to do, though, on the personal or on the political level.
Some of
the people who are the most admirable in history show this same
ability to put their resentments to the side. I think of someone like
Nelson Mandela, who spent 24 years in prison in the harshest and most
inhumane environment and yet came out dedicated not to violent
revenge but to a peaceful transition for his nation.
And in
fact this tendency was lived out on a institutional by the truth and
reconciliation commission in post-apartheid South Africa. Victims of
human rights violations during the apartheid era gave statements
about their experiences, and perpetrators of violence could also give
testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal
prosecution. Owning up to what they had done, honestly and openly,
was the condition of reconciliation. The issue was forgiveness, it
was honesty, taking responsibility, and it allowed the society to
move forward with a marked lack of expiatory bloodshed.
And
it's this approach that is markedly missing in the current situation
in Israel/Palestine. If you follow spokespeople of either side in the
press or on twitter you'll see a lot of people talking past each
other. Each side has a laundry list of wrongs done to it by the
other. And each side is right. If a report from human rights watch or
some similar organization comes out, the parts that support our side
are trumpeted, and the parts that support the other side are either
ignored or are seen as evidence of bias or hatred.
One
particular attempt to move past this battle of justifiable homicide
is in the The Parents Circle - Families Forum (PCFF), a joint
Palestinian Israeli organization of over 600 families, all of whom
have lost a close family member as a result of the conflict. Sharing
their stories, sharing their grief, has allowed them to humanize the
so-called other, and to point the way to a resolution of the conflict
based not on victory but on reconciliation and mutual respect. They
were portrayed in the documentary film “Encounter Point.”
But the
other significant dynamic in the story of Joseph and his brothers is
that the power relationship is very one-sided. Joseph could do
anything he wants to just about anyone he wants, and his
righteousness comes from the fact that he doesn't. He chooses not to.
The
dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians is also one-sided. Here
I'm going to talk about the PA, Abbas' quasi-government, because the
situation is Gaza is more complex. But in regard to the Palestinians
in the West Bank: Israel has the army, Israel has the economy, Israel
has the unquestioning support of the United States. And Abbas'
government has done all what it's been asked to do in terms of
protecting Israel's security and building the infrastructure of
statehood – as the American negotiators and even many Israelis will
tell you. But instead of
using its strength to pursue reconciliation, Israel keeps pressing
its advantage – now announcing plans to build thousands of new
housing units in East Jerusalem and in the area between Jerusalem and
Ma'ale Adumim called E-1. These provocative gestures threaten both
the possibility of a two-state solution and the relationship between
Israel and the United States.
This is
why I and over 600 of my rabbinic colleagues have signed an open
letter sponsored, by Rabbis for Human Rights-North American and J
Street, to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, asking him to desist
from these plans, and to return to the negotiating table as soon as
possible, before it's too late.
The
letter quotes Pirke Avot 1:12 in telling us, "Be of the
disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving humankind
and bringing them closer to the Torah." But it could just as
easily reference our parshah today. Joseph is a man of great power,
and a lot of justification for using it unwisely, should he have
chosen to. But he recognizes that what's done is done, and that it is
neither productive nor healthy to keep stewing on it. Rather, let the
focus be on, as the Torah says later, “seeking peace and pursuing
it.” Then we and our Israeli cousins will live up to the legacy
that Joseph the tzadik, Joseph the righteous one, leaves for us.
Shabbat
shalom.
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