Miketz

Genesis 41:1 - 44:17

* Joseph interprets Pharaoh's two dreams and predicts seven years of prosperity followed by seven years of famine. (41:1-32)

* Pharaoh places Joseph in charge of food collection and distribution. (41:37-49)

* Joseph marries Asenath, and they have two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. (41:50-52)

* When Joseph's brothers come to Egypt to buy food during the famine, Joseph accuses them of spying. He holds Simeon hostage while the rest of the brothers return to Canaan to retrieve Benjamin for him. (42:3-42:38)

* The brothers return to Egypt with Benjamin and for more food. Joseph continues the test, this time falsely accusing Benjamin of stealing and declaring that Benjamin must remain his slave. (43:1-44:17)

WOLPE - Sinai

Dreams

Profoundly affected by dreams. They have real consequences unlike most of our dreams.

Adam awakens to a new world, dreamlike. Eve is there

Abram awakens from a dream. Promise from God.

Insensibilities that lead to New sensibilities

Jacob’s dream. He cannot walk right.

A ladder means that heaven and earth are connected. There is interchange.

Interestingly he believes there is truth in the dream. We usually think that there is nonsense or fantasy in the dream.

Dreams come from God.

Yates poem about ladders

Ladders a way to advance but also a way to fall back.

Joseph’s dreams. Pharaoh’s dream.

Joseph rises when he listens to the dreams of others, falls when he listens to his own dream

Very little dreams after Genesis

Pulling boat to shore, pulling shore to boat.

You’re not changing God you are changing to align yourself c God

“Heard” and “understand” are the same verb (shamaʿ), which has both these senses, precisely like the French entendre. Although the second clause has often been construed as a kind of hyperbole—you need only hear a dream to reveal its meaning—the straightforward notion of understanding dreams makes better sense.”

“provisions. Most of the biblical occurrences of this noun shever, as well as the transitive verb shavar (verse 3, “to buy”) and the causative verb hishbir (verse 6) are in this story. The root means “to break,” and the sense seems to be: food provisions that serve to break an imposed fast, that is, a famine (hence “provisions to stave off the famine,” shever ra‘avon, in verse 19). The term “rations” adopted by at least three recent translations has a misleading military connotation.”

“and recognized them, and…played the stranger to them. The verb for “recognize” and the verb for “play the stranger” are derived from the same root (the latter being a reflexive form of the root). Both uses pick up the thematically prominent repetition of the same root earlier in the story: Jacob was asked to “recognize” Joseph’s blood-soaked tunic and Tamar invited Judah to “recognize” the tokens he had left with her as security for payment for sexual services.

8. And Joseph recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him. Given the importance of the recognition theme and the verb to which it is linked, it is fitting that the fact of Joseph’s recognizing his brothers should be repeated, along with their failure to recognize him (in other words, the success of his playing the stranger).”

“Alas, we are guilty. The psychological success of Joseph’s stratagem is confirmed by the fact that the accusation and the hostage taking immediately trigger feelings of guilt over their behavior toward Joseph. Notably, it is only now, not in the original report (37:23–24), that we learn that Joseph pleaded with them when they cast him into the pit, a remarkable instance of withheld narrative exposition. Reuben, who tried to save him, now becomes the chief spokesman for their collective guilt.”

Excerpt From

The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary

Robert Alter

“D’rash: Kaplan’s Insight

A servant of God is a master of circumstances.

Kaplan’s declaration supports Joseph’s boldness before Pharaoh. We serve God, he counsels, by taking command of the situations life throws our way. ”

Excerpt From

A Year with Mordecai Kaplan

Steven Carr Reuben

“Cain may be right about one thing—perhaps, as the verses cited indicate, he is not intended to be his brother’s keeper. But he is intended to be something else: his brother’s brother.187 And that, too, comes with enormous responsibility. Whether as keeper or as brother, Cain is responsible both for his actions and for the fate of his brother.”

“But something shifts in Judah, and just a few chapters later, in parashat Mikkets, he seems like a changed man. Faced with a famine so severe that the family’s provisions have all but totally run out, Jacob instructs his sons to return to Egypt in search of more food. Judah reminds his father that the viceroy in Egypt—Joseph, who had recognized them, though they hadn’t recognized him—will not see them again unless they bring along their youngest brother, Benjamin. Understandably frightened and anxious—and quite possibly distrustful of his sons and their intentions—Jacob resists, whereupon Judah declares: “I myself will be surety for him; from my hand you may seek him: if I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever” (Gen. 43:9). Judah, who had been so utterly indifferent to Joseph’s fate, now insists that Benjamin’s is his personal responsibility.”

“to be enslaved in Benjamin’s place (Gen. 44:33). The same man who had callously sold one brother into slavery now stands willing to be enslaved lest the same fate befall another”

“to be enslaved in Benjamin’s place (Gen. 44:33). The same man who had callously sold one brother into slavery now stands willing to be enslaved lest the same fate befall another”

Excerpt From

The Heart of Torah, Volume 1

Shai Held

“Dreaming demands that a man or a woman have three basic areas of expertise. First, dreamers remember their dreams. Second, dreamers interpret the dreams and sometimes ask for help. Third, dreamers act on their dreams, often in partnership with other people and with God.”

Excerpt From

The Women's Torah Commentary

Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

Every piece of this story reminds us of the power and courage that leadership requires. Every character demonstrates the faith needed to believe in oneself and others to be a leader

Our modern view of dreams is influenced by the works of psychiatry pioneers such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud believed that dreams revealed a person’s unconscious desires. Jung, who worked with Freud for a time, believed that dreams come from a person’s unconscious and help regulate the psyche.

Both of these views diverge from the more mystical, spiritual approach of Torah in general, and this week’s parashah in particular, which proceeds on the premise that there is some external influence (God/gods) that imparts prophetic or precognitive insights to people through the medium of sleep. As Rabbi Ismar Schorsch states:

“Nowhere does the secularization of the modern mind find more striking articulation than in the view that dreams are no longer regarded as an emanation from above but rather as an eruption from below” (Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, “The Power of Dreams,” Jewish Theological Seminary, December 12, 1998).

“These three tensions (freewill vs. providence, particular vs. universal, and appearance vs. reality) lie at the heart of Judaism, and they reach their fullest exposition in the story of Joseph.

“The Joseph story is written to be read at two levels. On the surface it is a story about human beings and their relationships. It is not a happy story. Brothers are prepared to sell their own flesh and blood into slavery. The chief steward, released from prison, immediately forgets his fellow prisoner, failing to intercede on his behalf. People betray people. Dreams are mere dreams. Hopes are destined to be dashed on the rocks of reality. That is the point at which Vayeshev ends.”

“Only now, chapters and years later, are we given the vital information: a dream, repeated in different images, is not just a dream. It is a message sent by God about a future that will soon come to pass.

“At first reading, the Joseph story reads like a series of random happenings. Only later, looking back, do we see that each event was part of a precise, providential plan to lead a young man from a family of nomadic shepherds to become viceroy of Egypt.”

“The apparent paradox arises because of the nature of time. We live in time. God lives beyond it. Different time perspectives allow for different levels of knowledge. An analogy: imagine going to see a soccer match. While the match is in progress, you are on the edge of your seat. You do not know – no one knows – what is going to happen next. Now imagine watching a recording of the same match on television later that night. You know exactly what is going to happen next.

That knowledge does not mean that the players have had their freedom retroactively removed. All it means is that you are now watching the match from a different time perspective. When you were in the stadium, you were watching it in the present. On television you are watching it as an event in the past”

“So it is with life itself. As we live it day by day, we choose in the present in order to shape what is for us an unknown, undetermined future. Only looking back are we able to see the consequences of our actions, and realize their part in the unfolding of our autobiography. It is then, with hindsight, that we begin to see how providence has guided our steps, leading us to where God needs us to be. That is one meaning of the phrase spoken by God to Moses “Then I shall take away My hand, and you will see My back, but My face cannot not be seen” (Exodus 33:23). Only looking back do we see God’s providence interwoven with our life, never looking forward (“My face cannot not be seen”

“These two time perspectives are embodied, in Judaism, in two different literatures. Through halakha, we learn to make choices in the present. Through aggada, we strive to understand the past. Together, these two ways of thinking constitute the twin hemispheres of the Jewish brain. We are free. But we are also characters in a divinely-scripted drama. We choose, but we are also chosen. The Jewish imagination lives in the tension between these two frames of reference: between freedom and providence, our decisions and God’s plan”

“Life in exile, the Torah is warning us, may begin innocently, but in the long run it is hazardous in the extreme.

There is a secondary theme, whose echoes continue to reverberate today. Can Jewish identity survive outside Israel? Specifically, can it survive freedom and equality? The irony is that under conditions of poverty and persecution, Jews tend to stay Jews. It is only when they are affluent and integrated that, in large numbers, they assimilate and abandon their identity”

“Hashem is a word of different logical form. It is, according to HaLevi, God’s proper name. Just as “the first patriarch” (a generic description) was called Abraham (a name), and “the leader who led the Israelites out of Egypt” (another description) was called Moses, so “the Author of being” (Elokim) has a proper name, Hashem”

“Elokim is God as we encounter Him in nature. Hashem is God as we encounter Him in personal relationships, above all in that essentially human mode of relationship that we call speech, verbal communication, conversation, dialogue, words. Elokim is the aspect of God to be found in creation. Hashem is the aspect of God disclosed in revelation”

“Hence the tension, within Judaism, between the universal and the particular. God as we encounter Him in creation is universal; God as we hear Him in revelation is particular.

“The first is birkat hamazon, “grace after meals.” It begins with a blessing that is completely universal. We speak of God who “feeds the whole world with grace,” who “provides food for all creatures” and who “feeds and sustains all.” The second blessing is saturated with singularity. It talks of the things that are specific to Judaism and the Jewish people: the “land ” (Israel) He has given us as a heritage; the history of our ancestors (“for having brought us out…of the land of Egypt and freed us from the house of bondage”); the covenant (brit) He has “sealed in our flesh,” and “Your Torah which You have taught us.” These are not universal. They are what make Jews and Judaism different.

The second example is the blessings we say before the Shema, morning and evening. In both cases, the first blessing is universal.

“The difference between them is this: ḥokhma is the truth we discover; Torah is the truth we inherit. Ḥokhma is the universal heritage of mankind, by virtue of the fact that we are created in God’s “image and likeness” (Rashi translates “in our likeness” as “with the capacity to understand and discern”).5 Torah is the specific heritage of Israel (“He has revealed His word to Jacob, His laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation” [Psalms 147:19]). Ḥokhma discloses God in creation. Torah is the word of God in revelation. Ḥokhma is ontological truth (how things are); Torah is covenantal truth (how things ought to be). Ḥokhma can be defined as anything that allows us to see the universe as the work of God, and humanity as the image of God. Torah is God’s covenant with the Jewish people, the architecture of holiness and Israel’s written constitution as a nation under the sovereignty of God.

Excerpt From

Covenant & Conversation: Genesis

Jonathan Sacks