Amid Dreams and Disagreements

Vayeshev 5777 / 9 December 2017

The second act of the Torah’s epic narrative starts here, at the beginning of this week’s parshah. A rift within one family reverberates outward, ultimately resulting in millions of Israelites enslaved to a genocidal Pharaoh. The specifics of the conflict are only part of the picture. The Torah’s language highlights the intimacy of the situation: words signifying family relationships — father, son, brother — appear twenty times in the first aliyah. The people who should have been closest become enemies.

As always, the details matter. Right at the beginning the story tells us, וַיָּבֵא יוֹסֵף אֶת־דִּבָּתָם רָעָה אֶל־אֲבִיהֶֽם, “Joseph came to their father with bad reports about them.”^[1] Right away we learn the defining quality of Joseph’s relationship to his brothers: whatever disparaging information he could share about the other sons, he would. They surely had some redeeming qualities, but Joseph highlighted only the bad.^[2] The story gives no hint of slander; all indications suggest that Joseph reported on actual behavior that was, at least according to his interpretation of things, negative.^[3] 

It wasn’t only Joseph. Jacob, for his part, “loved Joseph most out of all of his brothers.”^[4] Siblings always know when a parent favors one child, but Jacob made no secret of his preference. The striped cloak he gave his favorite son served as a clear and persistent marker of the inequities of love in this family. The brothers bear their own measure of responsibility: their father’s visible preference for Joseph incites their hatred toward him, וְלֹא יָֽכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹֽם, “They could not speak peaceably with him.”^[5] Their animosity ran so deep that we hear of their hatred for Joseph three times in just eleven verses.^[6] 

Joseph’s dreams reinforce his sense of superiority and exacerbate the rift in the family. Each time he retells a dream, the text describes the other brothers’ deepening resentment.^[7] Joseph, seeing in his dreams prophetic justification for his preferred status, lacks the humility that might have tempered his exultation, or even just the common sense to keep it to himself. Some of the commentaries go even further, questioning whether Joseph’s dreams can even be considered prophecy. Citing the Talmud’s assertion that “A person’s dreams show only what he thinks about during the day,”^[8] they suggest that Joseph only experienced these dreams because he spent his days glorying in their father’s attention.^[9] The dreams merely echoed Joseph’s established conviction that he deserved to rule over his brothers.

Animosity turns brother against brother, and it’s not long before feelings and words spill over into actions. I can’t wrap my head around the vehement anger and bitter hatred it must have taken for the brothers to plan on killing Joseph, throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery, and then fake his death and present the evidence to their father. Jacob, of course, is devastated; he tears his clothes, sits in sackcloth, and refuses consolation from his family.^[10] Rashi suggests that Jacob mourned continuously for twenty-two years, until Joseph returned. Even knowing that the story will have a happy, if ambivalent, ending, I can’t help connecting the conflict between Joseph and his brothers with the immense suffering of the Israelites at the beginning of sefer Shemot. It all starts here.

This week has been, without a doubt, one of the biggest weeks for Israel and the Jewish people in decades, and may prove to be one of the key moments in Israeli history overall. On Wednesday, the president formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, acknowledging in policy what has been the practical reality since the 1949 Armistice.

It would be impossible to overstate Jerusalem’s importance for the Jewish people throughout our history. Jerusalem sits at the heart of the Biblical story and the center of Rabbinic geography; it serves as the focus of longing in psalms, poems, and prayers and the image of redemption at our holiest moments. At the conclusion of the Passover seder and as we end Yom Kippur, we sing לשנה הבאה בירושלים, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Israel’s first government set up shop in Jerusalem from the very beginning. There seems never to have been a question in the minds of Ben-Gurion and other leaders that the State of Israel’s capital would be anywhere other than Jerusalem; on the contrary, the IDF kept a foothold in the city at great cost because they couldn’t imagine an Israel without it.

At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the simple fact that history moves ever forward, bringing with it new dimensions and fresh challenges. We don’t live in the times of King David, the Rabbis of the Mishnah, or the great poets of Jewish Spain. We can’t deny Jerusalem’s centrality in Jewish thought and Jewish life, but it would be equally absurd to pretend that no one else lives in or has a claim on that city. It’s hard to say how anyone might address the many conflicting claims on Jerusalem — not least because the official positions of the Israeli and Palestinian governments boil down to “all mine.” But retreating into Biblical proofs and ancient history in support of an exclusive claim leads to a fundamentalism that I can’t accept or endorse. This is a deeply personal issue for me — Odelia was born in Jerusalem and, until now, has carried a passport listing her birthplace as only “Jerusalem,” not Israel — but I can’t quite get to a place of unadulterated joy.

As American Jews and Diaspora Zionists, we must approach America’s new position on Jerusalem with a large measure of humility. For us, Jerusalem is a potent symbol — but for a million Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others, Jerusalem is home. What we see as questions of policy and theory have a very real impact on their lives, for better or for worse and usually both. There’s no question this has been an important week for Israel, and it’s hard to know what it will mean in the long run. I doubt this will be the definitive vindication some of us hope for, nor will it be the great catastrophe some of us fear. My concern lies closer to home: how will a deeply divided American Jewish community talk through the implications of this watershed moment? How will we, a synagogue community with diverse opinions and passionate feelings, relate to one another in the midst of such momentous change?

Parashat Vayeshev offers us at least one lesson, asking us to take care in how we talk to and about one another. We often blame Jacob’s favoritism for breaking apart the family, but even before we hear of his love for Joseph the Torah has already shown us Joseph bringing Jacob bad reports about his brothers. Bad reports that were true, at least as Joseph saw things, but which emphasized the negative traits while failing to take note of what was positive. Earlier this week, at the United Synagogue’s biennial convention, I had the opportunity to study with the Jewish Education Project’s Dr. David Bryfman. In a challenging workshop about the difficulty of talking about Israel in a synagogue, Dr. Bryfman emphasized our need to recognize that the people who disagree with us on Israel-related issues still care enough to have an opinion. The biggest risk to Israel lies in the potential for the American Jewish community to grow apathetic or indifferent to Israel. Anyone invested in learning about Israel, keeping up with current events, and sharing their views in the community is an ally — even when we staunchly disagree. We need the humility that Joseph lacked, to recognize the limits of our own knowledge and beliefs. We need leaders who, unlike Jacob, will make room for all of the tribes to develop along their own paths. And we need, most of all, to remember that disagreement on what policies will best protect and strengthen Israel is rooted in agreement that Israel is worth defending and supporting. Seeing one another in this way won’t be easy or comfortable, but I know this community — and I know that we can.

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Tags: community, Israel, Jerusalem, Joseph