Vayechi:Responsibilities

Yaakov is old and must confront his end.  He tries to arrange his legacy. Yaakov has become dependent upon his very successful son, Joseph.  Joseph had spent most of his life away from Jacob and his traditions.  When his first son, Menashe, was born,Joseph  named him  for the amnesia. There had now been 17 years of rapprochement between father and son, but the breach could never be mended perfectly.  When Jacob came to bless Joseph's son. how could he give precedence to one named for his renunciation? ...Menashe, Denial of the Past, will also be great a great nation, but Ephraim. Success,  will take precedence. 

Yaakov wants to be buried in the Promised Land. Before refrigeration and  rapid transportation this is a monumental task.  He adjures, with and oath,  powerful  Jospeph to make this happen.  The talmudists, commenting on Shavuoth,  the current daf yomi tractate, ask how such an oath can be taken.  Joseph does not have the power to carry out the request.  This becomes apparent when Jacob subsequently passes, and Joseph must ask, through intermediaries in the house of Pharaoh, for permission to carry out his father's request. Perhaps the oath means only that he will try his best. 

When my mother ( A"H) died, she had left no clear instructions about her burial.  My parents  had made monthly payments , for some years, to purchase plots in Eretz Hachaim, a cemetery near Beth Shemesh, in Israel.  They also had plots in New Jersey, by virtue of their membership in a society of holocaust survivors.  My sisters demanded that mother  be buried in New Jersey, so that the grave could be visited. (They live in Massachusetts and Florida, I live in Seattle).  I took her body on an arduous journey ( we were bumped from an El Al flight because a Chassidic group would not fly with a corpse on the plane [depite halachic alowance]) to Israel.  When I returned and we opened her safe deposit box, the only thing we found was note that said" bury me in Israel"

Vayechi positions Genesis as the story of how the Israelites became slaves in Egypt.  They enslaved themselves.  They sold one of their number, Joseph, into slavery because of envy (and perhaps out of the fear that they would be enthralled by him). In the process of rescuing Benjamin, who was taken as a slave for (trumped up) theft charges, they pledged themselves as slaves to Pharaoh's slave...and the law is: that which the slave acquires is the possession of his master. 

But I suspect that the true bondage came from the economic advantage of living in Egypt.  They had come down to Egypt to avoid starving to death.  But they found, that in Egypt,  they could make a ( good) living ( Machen a leben) .  Egypt was the America of its day.  Why go to the Promised Land...except to be buried.

The slavery in Egypt was a subjugation of values. 

Vayigash: the final trepidation

Avoiding starvation drives this story,  Ultimately, Yaakov is willing to risk the life of his son, Benjamin, to avoid the death of his family from hunger. Famine can permit almost anything.

I remember my mother  talking about starvation. She would express her memory of it with a frightening ferocity. It was worse than death. There is almost nothing that a person would not give to relieve the agony of such hunger.   The people of Egypt  sell their freedom - their land and their bodies- to avoid starvation.

When Joseph entices his brothers to come (close to) Egypt, he says:  פֶּן־תִּוָּרֵ֛שׁ lest you are impoverished. He does not talk survival, he talks wealth.  Joseph had been, and remained, a slave, and as such, he may have been hungry,  but he had never tasted starvation, like those around him . 

My father had the same experience.  Although he had been degraded, a slave surrounded by the murder of his brothers and sisters, he was spared the experience of starvation.  On that basis, he felt that he had been better off than my mother- who had never been in the camp, but had, at times, no source of food  

What motivates Yehudah to return and attempt to ransom Benjamin from servitude? His stated intent  is to prevent Jacob from going  white head down to Sheol in sorrow

He is concerned about his father's end of life.   He does not want his father to have a difficult, distressing decline in old age to death.  Yehuda would rather spend his life in servitude than be the cause of his father's terminal agony.  

The end of life is enveloped in Elysian fantasy.  The mystery of what follows death aside, sick people,people who know that they will need to confront the end, are concerned about how it will happen.  They fear terminal pain.  They often see the hardship that the dying process imposes upon those they love. There is often a scrum of mercies, the penultimate kindness. 

The parsha confronts what we are: hungry and afraid. Does the awareness protect?  

Miketz

This year, Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in literature.  I decided to read one of his books.  Wikipedia ( possibly democracy's greatest product) identified  Remains of the Day as his most famous book, making it the logical choice.  The role of the underling is one of the  main themes in this great book.  What was the role of Joseph, the second in command to pharoah. 

Miketz is the story of Joseph's triumph and the actualization of his dream of dominance over the other brothers. He accomplishes this from his position as viceroy, CEO, of Egypt.

When he names his first son, the grandchild of an Egyptian priest, Joseph tells us that he has forgotten his father's house... he has become Egyptian.  Yet , there are three tables set when Joseph feasts with his brothers: one for Joseph, one for his brothers and one for the Egyptians - because it is an abomination for the Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. The hostility of our hosts has always been a strong force in our national unity.

This story comes in a context .  Joseph demands that Benjamin  be brought before him.  He will ransom the imprisoned Simon, and will permit the purchase of additional grain.  Reuben is the first to offer his children as security for Benjamin. When the hidden Joseph makes the unexpected demand for the youngest son , Reuben scolds his brother, he had told them not to abuse Joseph.  Reuben had been ineffectual in rescuing Joseph from the pit. Now he wants to rescue Simon.

 It is only when Judah, who is emerging as the  natural leader, the one that came up with selling Joseph instead of killing him,  offers himself as security that Jacob will allow the son of Rachel  ( the intended wife)  to go to Egypt. They were also starving by then

Joseph has his chalice planted in Benjamin's sack.  This will be the final test for the other brothers.  The purloined chalice is an echo of the escape from Lavan, when Rachel, mother of Joseph and Benjamin, stole the teraphim, the idols, from her father's house.  rachel really stole the idols and succeeded in hiding them.  But the curse expressed by Jacob, that the thief should die, came to pass. Benjamin had not stolen the chalice, that was a set-up. However, the brothers vowed that they would be slaves .  Indeed, that came to pass. In his role as viceroy, Joseph had brought the Hebrews to the threshold of their slavery.

Vayeshev

Vayeshev: degradation

Vayshev contains several stories of degradation.  Joseph is cast into a pit and. sold into servitude by his brothers.  Tamar ,Judah daughter in law, offers herself in prostitution, Joseph is imprisoned on a false rape charge, the royal wine steward actively  fails to mention Joseph's talents to the Phaoroah. In every case, the malefactors are  acting on their own sense of inferiority, forcing the disgrace of the victim. 

The parsha soon reports that Jacob considered Joseph his legacy child and gave him the equivalent of royal robes.  Joseph is given a supervisory role over the estate that  is managed by his other brothers.  Joseph, encouraged by his preferred status,  dreams of ascendance.  He imagines that  all will bow to him.  The brothers  react to the dreams, understanding  them as prophetic of Joseph  as the eternal despot -and they must act for their liberty.  The brothers cannot be cast into this  inferior position forever.  They must eliminate Joseph.  They consider murder in the paradigm of Cain and Abel,  The rejected brother asserts himself by eliminating the competitor. They do not know the end of the story: that Joseph's ascent is temporary and necessary to their survival.  True prophecy can easily be misinterpreted 

The brothers cannot imitate their father's trick, they cannot dress up in the coat of many colors and steal the blessing.  They use the coat as evidence that  Joseph has been eliminated from the picture.  Democracy has been re-established. 

Tamar vies for the privilege of  being a  mother of the tribe of Judah.  In her desperation, she adopts a disguise that seduces Judah, himself, to father her child.  She takes the articles that identify him as the father as a pledge. Identifying the father, who would ordinarily want anonymity,  is critical to the plan Tamar never doubts her worthiness;  brave Judah admits that he degraded himself...again. 

Joseph, although sold as a chattel slave,brings remarkable success to his master, the Butcher of Egypt.  He is very attractive to the master's wife.  In The Evolution of Beauty , the author posits that human mating has a large component of female mate-selection.  Desirable women get to mate with whomever pleases them.  In this context, Joseph's rejection of Potifar's wife is a violation of biology.  She cannot tolerate a rejection on this level, so she recasts the story;  and her narrative results in Joseph descending to the status of an imprisoned slave. 

But every event is an opportunity.  Joseph's talents shine in jail.  He is assigned to attend the newly imprisoned royal  court functionaries.  From  this position, he demonstrates  his knowledge of the future  ( and possibly his ability to manipulate it).  To a royal functionary, the aid of an underling is a degradation.  There is no need to mention it. 

Persecution flows from a lack of self worth and a lack of  focus .