Miketz: apocalypse

Miketz: apocalypse

Ketz means the end, the apocalypse.  In Noach ( 6;13), Gd tells Noach Ketz kol bosor...the end of all flesh has come before me.  The world had set on a course that led, inevitably , to total destruction.  Gd modified the destruction so that the world could be regenerated. 

This week's  parsha is Miketz, from the end, a taste of the apocalypse.The world famine could have led to the destruction of our species, but Joseph, through his interpretation of Pharaoh's dream, rescues humanity.  A result of that rescue is that the enslavement of the Israelite , a process that could have meant their destruction had Gd not redeemed them through Moshe. 

Ketz also means awakening from a dream.. Vayikatz Pharaoh.. and Pharaoh awakened,  The realization of  apocalypse is an  awakening from a dream. Everything comes to an end. 

Miketz, itself signal end of Joseph's imprisonment, a positive event, but a link in this chain of destruction...and redemption. 

One can frame the story such that Joseph manipulates  the future.  Joseph predicts seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.  Farmers plant and reap, anticipating the famine, they plant and reap more and deplete the soil, causing the famine. 

The famine becomes the tool  through which Pharoah becomes the central authority.  He controls the food. He has collectivized the country, brought the food from the countryside into the city.  He has converted the peasants into workers.  This Joseph is the model for a more recent Joseph... Stalin. This is an ancient story of using starvation as a political tool fro collectivization.  

I do not understand hunger. My parents did.  My mother never let me leave the house without food,  When she said "me tur nisht zindigen... One may not sin" she meant that one may not waste food.  In he parsha, Jacob is willing to risk his most prized son, Benjamin, for food. 

May we be spared a world order based upon hunger, a world order that leads to apocalypse