~ The portion of Vayeshev inaugurates the cycle of Yosef. Our triennial focuses on what happens to Yosef once he is already in Egypt.
~ How is Yosef viewed in Egypt? What are the main ways he is described? Check how the brothers and the narrator describe him before the sale. Is there a change? Is how Yosef is viewed a continuation of the story?
וירא אדניו. על ההצלחה הטבעיית לא שם לב רק על הצלחה ההשגחיית, מה שראה שה' אתו. ויש סימן להכיר בין שני מיני הצלחות האלה, שההצלחה הטבעיית תזמין אל המוצלח תמיד ענינים מוצלחים בטבע, למשל שיסחר דבר שיש בו ריוח וילך בדרך מוצלח, אבל לא תועיל לו אם בחר בבחירתו דבר בלתי מצליח, אבל ההצלחה ההשגחיית תהיה בהפך, שאם הוא בלתי מצליח מצד המזל ובוחר בדברים רעים ובלתי מצליחים, בכ"ז תהפך אותם ההשגחה לטוב נגד הטבע, וביוסף שהיה בו ב' מיני ההצלחות, ע"י הטבע וע"י ההשגחה, הכיר אדניו כי ה' אתו, ע"י שראה שכל אשר הוא עושה, אף שיעשה דבר שאינו מוצלח עפ"י טבע, בכ"ז ה' מצליח בידו, נהפך להצלחה בעת שהוא בידו ע"י ה' והשגחתו:
[ Commentary written and published between 1845 and 1870 by Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser]
And his master saw - He didn't pay attention to the successes that were natural, but he did pay attention to the successes that were providential: "he saw that Ad-nai was with him". And we have an indication that we should make a distinction between these two types of success. The natural success is brought to those who succeed through issues that are obviously successful in nature, such as one sells something that is searched for, and obviously succeeds, but this won't happen if he chooses to sell things that can't be sold well. But the providential success is actually the opposite, that if he can't have luck, and chooses things that are bad and cannot bring success, despite all this the things are changed to being good through providence against nature. And Yosef had those two different types of success, natural and providential. His master recognized "that Ad-nai was with him", through seeing "that all that he does" - that he succeeded even things that he did that were not naturally successful, because "Ad-nai lent him success" - [meaning] God transformed into success what was "in his hand" through Ad-nai and His providence.
Yosef is obviously different from all the other servants of Potiphar. We know Potiphar's wife will also see him as different.
~ Yosef is always the other. Even among his brothers, he is the other. As hard as he tries to reinvent himself into Egyptian, he remains the other - check the scene regarding him dining, already as Tsafenat Paneach: he eats alone.
אכזר in Hebrew is someone who is cruel.
אַכְזָרִיוּת is the noun "cruelty".
I want us to play for a moment with the sound of the word in Hebrew: Achzar, cruel, can be broken into two sounds - Ach and zar. Ach means brother, and zar, is stranger.
We could see every incident described in the Torah while Yosef is a slave a succession of moments of cruelty - when he gets to become Tzafenat Parneach this changes, but his otherness never changes. In our reading, his mistress trying to frame him, his master sending him to jail - even though he sees that Yosef is on God's side. The seed of this is the moment when the brothers call him "a dreamer" and "see him from afar". The ach - brother has become zar - stranger. We can only act with cruelty to those whom we demote from being our "brother" or "sister" to the level of "stranger".
When the brothers do the selling and come back to the father, they do not expect to be confronted with the pain of the father, right in front of them. They just thought that they'd solve the problem as they see it: this uppity brother, the preferred one, the dreamer, would disappear. And we know - we will be reminded of it - that they do live with the remorse of their actions, never to admit their sin to their father. When they are under Yosef, having to buy food from him, and he himself does his cruel tricks, they do turn to each other and begin blaming one another, and admit their wrongdoing.
We know no one is clean in this story - Yosef is not, Yaakov is not, and so on. I am not trying to assign blame here, I just want us to notice what seeing people as "the other" gives us internal permission to do: to behave cruelly.
That is why, at the conclusion of the Torah, in Devarim or Deuteronomy, we see the word "ach" brother, appear so much - particularly in connection with the poor. We are constantly reminded that the poor are our siblings precisely because it is easy to stigmatize those in need, to see them as "other" and then to behave cruelly towards them.
That certainty is an easy place to be: black and white. Us and them. The deserving and the undeserving. Those who merit respect, and those who don't.
And we know, due to our history also, how easily swaths of the population can be convinced to destroy "the others". How this certainty can spread. How darkness can fall into humanity. How we take weapons against each other,
This is the cautionary tale of Yosef: when we forget to see our human siblings as "us", we are apt to act without measuring the consequences. We are apt to close our hands. We are apt to close our eyes. We are apt to close our hearts, and let despicable things be done to them. And maybe even do despicable things ourselves.
As we approach Chanukah, we are reminded of this message as well. Chanukah, beyond the miracle of the oil and the miracle of the military conquest, is a story of a civil war. The Hellenized Jews and the Maccabees face it off, in a way, in the beginning of the story, one killing the other.
The Hebrew expression for civil war is "milchemet achim", literally, "a war of brothers". Chanukah, for adults, is the warning of what can happen when we can't see our siblings as us. May during this week we remember that we are all siblings, and may the lights of Chanukah shine and send away the darkness of being so sure that others, whom we only see from a distance, are not really our siblings.